Intrinsic motivation

One of my major premises for homeschooling is to instill a love of learning. The highest hope is to learn for the sake of learning, because intrinsic learning is fascinating and blissful. Now, not all of life will be about following your bliss. But, you should be given the time and space to follow your bliss because that is your path that is where your deepest learning will happen. How do you learn to follow your bliss if you are following a carrot instead? I think the idea of rewards to lead you in a direction of uninterested learning is confusing. Learning multiplication before it has any inherent use or interest is a waste of time and energy. Why worry so much about manipulating children with rewards to get them to do intellectual work of which they have no interest. Most likely they will not use it, not know how to apply it, or just forget it.

Learning to follow intrinsic motivation or bliss is a powerful teacher. We are doing our kids a great disservice these days to put so much responsibility for 'remembering' and 'executive functioning' at such young ages. Their minds are wondering and wondering about so much. They are taking in the world in great gulps and then little sips. They are not little adults, they are children and they need to develop their minds and learn from doing and experiencing consequences. Their minds should be given permission to roam and explore and make mistakes. They should have room to be irresponsible and make mistakes while we are watching so they can get feedback and learn from mistakes. They should be given encouragement when they fail and role modeling to learn the skills of goal setting and caring for one self, the world and for others.

I am so grateful to be homeschooling. I cannot imagine having to try and stuff my children into the box we call public education. It has gone so far off track. The learning that was so important to the early childhood educator (like sharing, eye hand coordination, singing, dancing, and so many other important developmental games that lead to a complete whole functioning body/brain connection) has gone to the way side for important 'standards' brain based outcomes. The other day my son said 'mom, you know what is wrong with the world? People don't help one another enough.'  I felt like I might not be such a bad teacher after all.


If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

Albert Einstein

Deschooling

We are coming to the end of our 'deschooling' semester. After getting my son's testing done in January I came home feeling quite overwhelmed and sure that most everything I had been doing as a teacher was not good for my son.  I didn't feel like I had any energy left to fight the 'curriculum monster' and find a way to cram more information down my son's throat. I pretty much gave up on producing work samples and just went for reading and experiencing life together with my children.
I was going through was the 'deschooling' process.

I have a masters degree in education. I did very well in school. I taught high school mathematics. I have been engrained in the educational system my entire life. It was very hard to see my son through eyes other than those of someone who has relied on the education system to guide my life. I kept referring to the 'list' of skills that should be achieved at his age and the things we need to work on to get him up to speed. Although he is way ahead in many areas I was most concerned with the areas of weakness. I focused on his weakness and tried to get him to 'work' on that weakness.  I kept seeing him through the eyes of the public education system not the eyes of an educator.

It was not working. It was painful. It made him angry and me angry. It made us both want to cry. I had to stop. I had to stop just about everything. We cut 'school' down to about 10min a day.  One page of math (3 problems), maybe one page of handwriting, maybe one vocabulary, or reading and only a couple times a week. We did the bare minimum needed to produce work for our ES. We calmed down. We found time to read together and go hiking and play games and build legos.  We found the calm center of our being together of our enjoyment of one another. This was my deschooling experience and it felt good. I was enjoying being home with my children.

Now it is May. I am looking toward September and wondering if I will be able to maintain this sense of calm and joy when we start up 'school' again. I need more structure. I need to feel like we are making chartable progress. I need some of the reassurances I get from school structure, feedback telling me we are 'on track'. I want to feel my child will have choices when they get to the age they are ready to choose for themselves. Will I be able to create a curriculum that both fills my needs as a parent and the needs of my very different children and their learning styles? Will I rise to the challenge? Can I become a true educator?

I think I can.