What is Modern Homeschooling?
I can remember the day we adopted our first unofficial family mantra.
It was moving day. We didn’t have movers. We had a toddler. We lived in the south and our air conditioner had conveniently gone on strike that morning. Our house was nearly empty and I was running on empty myself.
Mr. two-and-a-half took off down the hall in his diaper. I needed a laugh.
“Embrace the chaos!” I shouted, throwing my arms in the air.
“Embrace the chaos!” he parroted back, throwing his arms in the air as he ran.
I can still see that diaper bum running away from me now - the mantra echoing in the empty house.
Aaaah, memories!
Little did I know the long and lasting impact those words would have on the history of our family for years to come.
That was the second of four moves we would make in six years. We were running a small business. We had another baby. And in the middle of all that, we would decide to homeschool our kids.
What were we thinking?!
Perhaps we weren’t. Sometimes thinking things through too much makes you chicken out, doesn’t it? Do you ever prefer to jump and trust that the net will appear?
We definitely do.
And so here we are, eight years after that big move from our once-romanticized mountain life, to the small thriving southern town we’ve called home ever since.
And embracing the chaos matters at least as much now as it did then.
It matters because we’ve decided it does. When your family values lightheartedness, humor, spontaneity, risk-taking and adventure, you realize you can’t get there without embracing the chaos from time to time.
On the flip side, we also get to decide what doesn’t matter to our family. Arbitrary timelines, tradition for its own sake, playing politics and keeping up with The Joneses are a few of the things on that list.
And when you look at both lists, that’s where modern homeschooling comes in.
“At the heart of modern homeschooling is exercising the freedom we have to choose what matters – and doesn’t matter – to our family and the opportunity to build a life around those things. ”
That’s what drew us to this lifestyle and what compels us to share it with you.
We know many more parents would choose to home educate if they knew it didn’t have to look like “school at home”. And we don’t want those families to find out about this option after their kids are grown and their chance to build a life on their terms has passed them by.
As parents, modern homeschooling is about the freedom to choose what skills, knowledge and values we believe are most important for our kids to thrive in this world.
For our kids, it’s the freedom to choose what they’re interested in learning about, and the flexibility to choose their level of participation.
For our family, it’s about the freedom to learn together from our shared life experiences and teach each other things.
We’ve noticed that over-planning and over-scheduling our lives often makes it challenging to focus on what truly matters in the moment for our family. Creating time, space and flexibility in our days has helped us to listen, observe and respond to needs as they arise.
“And what a gift to give our kids the time and space to just be. To get to know themselves outside of all the noise. To play. To tinker. To experiment. To prioritize their needs and follow their curiosities. ”
Life has taught us that the small choices we make every day will have a greater impact on our lives than almost anything else. Letting our kids make real choices while they’re young and the stakes are low also matters to us.
The deeper we get in our journey, and the more time and space we give ourselves to figure things out, the more clarity we’re getting around our priorities. Right now they include big picture goals focused on building healthy habits, strong relationships and authentic communities.
We recognize that as parents we’re our kids’ role models for everything. They’re watching and listening to everything we say and don’t say and piecing together their own ideas about how to do life. We’ll never be perfect, but every day we try to do more of the right stuff and less of the wrong stuff. We own up to our mistakes and make sure our kids understand that we’re learning alongside them.
“Put simply, modern homeschooling is individualized learning through life. ”
We like to think of it as taking a deep breath, stepping back and looking at learning through the lens of a young child. A child doesn’t ask how to learn – they just do it! They figure out how to eat, sit, talk, walk, jump, hop, laugh, sing, play, build, (etc. etc. etc.) mostly unassisted.
So, why does the trust end there?
The irony is not lost on us that just as children begin to grow in their competencies, traditional schooling models tell us that it’s time to jump in front of them instead of letting them learn in their own time and their own way.
Traditional models also prevent kids from experiencing life outside the systems that have been designed to keep them busy. In a world of classes and lessons for everything, many kids today are suffering from a life experience deficit. Their survival depends upon figuring out how to navigate a world they spend very little time in.
We wanted something different for our kids.
“Modern homeschooling isn’t about planning our children’s learning. It’s about trusting that they are born to learn and following their lead.”
Around here that often means candid conversations about what everyone wants to do each day and figuring out a way to meet all of our needs. It looks like going to the grocery store together and negotiating what goes in the cart. It means two assistants at checkout even if that means it takes twice as long. And the same goes for preparing and cooking food in the kitchen. Sometimes it’s about supervising them as they set up and run their business in the driveway. Other times it's engaging in a conversation about an important purchasing decision or the difference between watching something we’re learning from versus passive entertainment.
Real skills for the real world.
At home they’re protected from the mindset of the education system (straight As = success), but they are not sheltered from the world. Modern homeschooling prioritizes those real life skills and family relationships over academic achievement.
And we’ve learned through experience that when we trust in our children’s innate abilities to learn from everything they do, we take the pressure off. We’re reminded that like seeds, most of what our kids need to thrive in this world has been inside them all along. We believe our job as parents is to guide and nurture them as they figure it out.
And through this freedom of choice, they’re able to discover their unique curiosities, what they’re good at, what they enjoy, what they struggle with and how to ask for help – foundational tools for their own individual learning process.
We don’t believe that learning happens on any particular timeline. It happens when our kids are ready. We aren’t sure what all the “falling behind” hype is about.. This isn’t a race and most of our kids aren’t even headed in the same direction!
Almost everything we do in our home begins with conversation and connection. We believe learning should be a natural and enjoyable process. That doesn’t mean everything will be easy – learning new things is filled with frustration! - but it does mean that there is no need for strict deadlines, assessments and testing.
By shifting our focus from outcomes to open-ended, process-driven projects and embracing failure as part of the learning process, we’ve seen our kids come face-to-face with challenges and learn to work through them. We’ve seen them learning how they learn. And in time that has built trust.
Ultimately, the past decade has taught us to trust that our kids will learn everything they need to know to be successful in their lives when they are ready and motivated and mature enough – because that’s when it will serve a purpose for them.
Your kids will, too.
The beauty of modern homeschooling is that it's unique to your family’s needs. You begin by thinking about your family as a whole and then look carefully at all family members (strengths, needs and limitations), the kind of home you have, the climate where you live, your community and available programs, your budget, your work schedule, extended family relationships and anything else you think will have a major impact on your days, and use your intuition to begin where you are. Daunting? Yes. But also exciting, don’t you think?
The flexible structure of creating something unique to your family is that you can do something as long as it feels like it’s working, and when it stops working, you pivot.
The future-oriented perspective means that you can remind yourself not to get stuck in the nitty gritty of everyday living. No doubt you will have hard days (we all do!), but you’ll sleep better knowing that in the big picture, this feels right for you and your kids.
Finally, modern homeschooling strives to keep politics in its place and out of our children’s education: good ideas and resources can be found everywhere. People are not their politics. They are people. In order to build this community, we have to work together to see that we have more in common than our differences.
“What modern homeschooling needs most is a family that is fully invested – prepared to put in the work to shift their mindsets from seeing learning as a school thing to valuing the learning that is happening all the time and everywhere. ”
If you’re already part of it - thank you! And if you’re thinking that it feels like somewhere you’d like to be, we encourage you to be brave and jump in. And share your story. That’s how things change. That’s how we break the stereotypes. That’s how we make a better education system– outside the system. By starting small and doing it right. The new system is about individualized learning that values what actually matters for our kids and their future.
Anyone (like me) who has spent any significant amount of time behind the curtain of public education knows it is irreparably broken.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have good parts: good teachers, good kids, good ideas. What it means is that fundamentally, the way that children are taught is flawed. It is a system that doesn’t believe in individualized education. Natural learning. It can’t. It wasn’t designed for it and can’t possibly manage it.
Our mission is to take what we know is working and help families to apply that to a personalized model that begins in our homes. What that looks like is up to you. For us, its become an approach to education that allows us to set a seasonal rhythm, and is a combination self-directed projects, videos & games, hands-on teaching, entrepreneurial endeavors, drop-off classes, free play, sports, adventure and exploration.
We hope that helping parents to expand their idea of what homeschooling can look like will help you to design the rhythm that works best for your family.
To summarize, we’ve distilled modern homeschooling into four simple steps :
Time & space.
Teach what matters.
Trust the process.
Enjoy the ride!
Never easy, but more simple than you might think.
We hope you’ll join us.