Educational Roadblocks

Turns out that worldschooling isn’t all puppies and unicorns. My boys are wonderful, and we are all trying to make this work. They know they want to keep up with their classmates and progress to the next grade in school, but they also know our structure isn’t firm and they have wiggle room to resist.

This rebellion looks different for the two boys. 

Geoff has now completed his required math for the year. I tried to supplement with a javascript course and physics, which he sort of enjoyed, but fundamentally he finds school without friends to be drudgery, without joy. We’re spending only a few hours at work now and many more hours in the day exploring museums, city streets or bigger adventures. But I hate hearing him complain on Sunday nights. As his teacher I take it personally! 

So in Kerala we tried to do things a little differently (side note: both boys tested positive for Covid so illness + 105 degree weather meant more time indoors and on screens than I would’ve liked, but what can you do). We kept his requirements of some math practice, reading and journaling, but replaced the rest with a deeper research project about India on a topic of his choosing. Matt works with a client called Pure Earth that focuses on eradicating lead poisoning around the world, with a site in Tamil Nadu, India. Geoff got interested and decided to go deep on lead poisoning around the world, so this became the framework for Geoff’s learning and he put together a (great!) presentation to teach us about the issue. We then watched Bollywood movies because, you know, sick in India.

For Toby, he loves math and creative writing but hates keeping his journal. I’ve tried all sorts of things to make sure that he is documenting this trip — allowing drawings and comic strips, short blurbs between sketches, or just fighting through the tears so he will write an entry. We’ve recently landed on the 5 W’s to provide a framework for his writing, so he can color within the so-called lines. He also struggles with typing so we’ve added typing games to his day and allowed him to hand-write his blog posts. He’s now concerned he has more work to do than Geoff since he has a long check-list each day.

Another 6 weeks until the kids graduate from 4th and 7th grade. Hopefully they will stay afloat academically, and we will still be friends.