don't laugh, but i've recently taken a cue from my sister and started using the term home-educating instead of home-schooling to describe our family's approach to learning at home. maybe it's a silly thing, but i feel like it fits us better. and not that we have to have a label, but sometimes i need that reminder that the process of one's becoming educated doesn't (shouldn't?) have to look--or feel--like "doing schoolwork". it can be more organic than that, child-led, spontaneous, unpredictable, interesting, relevant, fun.
people ask me how we do it, and i'm never sure how to answer that. we try a lot of different things. some of them work and some of them don't. at the heart of it all, there's this element of growing trust between us. i trust that my children want to learn and try to give them the freedom and opportunity to do so. they, in turn, trust me to do the best i can, be present and compassionate, make adjustments when needed, and just generally not screw them up too much.
i can say that it's both terrifying and exhilarating following a path that isn't mainstream. we're just figuring it out as we go. and maybe that's why giving a name to what we do seems important to me right now? i find that i'm constantly asking myself: what is this we're doing? are my children getting the right opportunities? what exactly is an education anyway (i know it isn't the same as a diploma or a degree, though more often than not the terms are used interchangeably) and how do we get it?
pause.
are you educating at home? what do you call it? does it matter?
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