I just set up a new site that has the basic information regarding the Torah Homeschooling Conference.  If you’re interested in viewing the scheduled presentations, look on the top right side of the screen where it says ‘Conference Schedule’.  There is a contact email there for further questions or regarding payment.  http://jewishhomeschooling.wordpress.com/

I’ll add specific details as they arise.

Avivah 

Even though I’m still finalizing some last details, I want to give anyone who lives out of the area some advance notice about the first Torah Homeschooling Conference, so that you’ll have time to make arrangements if you want to come in for it.

The conference is geared towards providing support and encouragement to those who are already homeschooling, as well as answering questions of parents who are considering homeschooling.  It will be held in Baltimore on June 28, 2009, on the second floor of the Park Heights JCC, 5700 Park Heights Ave. 21215.  Check-in/registration will begin at 8:15 am; the talks/workshops will begin at 9 am and end at 5 pm.  Topics that will be covered will include (but aren’t limited to): creative approaches for teaching Hebrew reading and writing, teaching limudei kodesh, different approaches to homeschooling, the benefits of homeschooling and dealing with challenges, socialization, marriage and homeschooling, burnout, and a veterans’ panel in which questions will be accepted from the audience.  A couple of topics are still being finalized. We have a rav who will be speaking on the importance of chanoch l’naar al pi darko, and a parent educator/author who will speak about building the connnection with your children. 

Except for the two general sessions, which will be for all attendees, there will be two workshops during each time slot (for a total of five workshop choices), and parents will need to preregister for the workshops that most interest them, as there is limited space.  All workshops will be given by experienced homeschool parents.  I plan to have all workshops and talks recorded for later purchase, so that if someone misses one, they’ll be able to hear it later on.

The cost will be $15 per person or $25 per couple for advance registration.  Payment for advance registration needs to be received by June 15 and your workshop choices should be included at that time.  If you choose to register at the door, the cost will be $20 per person or $35 per couple.  Your workshop choices will be limited to the available openings at that time, so while you’ll definitely be able to attend something in each time slot, you won’t necessarily be able to attend the one that most interests you.  If I can get a website set up within a week, the workshop schedule will be available online; otherwise it will be available from me or another volunteer by email (I’ll share those details when we’re ready to send the schedule out). 

I’ve spoken to the JCC and they are willing to provide babysitting for infants through age 3, in the same building where the conference will take place.  They are licensed and insured, and well set up for children of this age.  The payment for this will be separate from conference costs and will be made to the JCC at the time you are there.  Since they will be bringing in staff just for this, and are going well outside of their usual services of providing babysitting for just an hour at a time, I’ll need to know by June 15 if you’ll need babysitting services so that I can let them know how much staffing they’ll need.

Lunch can be purchased at the Eden Cafe, a kosher dairy restaurant in the same building, or attendees can go to other area restaurants during the hour long lunch break.  There will be some Jewish academic resources available for purchase from the Center for Jewish Education’s store, as well as a huge variety of curriculums available for browsing in their library (on the same floor as the conference rooms).

Since as you know I’m due any minute, if you want to get involved and help out, I’d love to have your help!  As of right now, what I most would appreciate help with is:

– keeping track of registration, payment, and workshop choices

– if you know how to set up a basic wordpress blog with a shopping cart and online registration capacity, and can do it inexpensively, please let me know. 

– **if in Baltimore – setting up the recording devices for each talk

– **if in Baltimore – making Shabbos arrangements for visiting families.  I’ve negotiated a  discount at an area hotel (Radisson at Cross Keys) for workshop attendees, but this will be the only option for out of town visitors if someone isn’t able to help with Shabbos arrangements. 

– compiling useful homeschooling articles to include as handouts; someone has already volunteered to compile lists of homeschooling resources

– helping to get the word out about the conference

I think our community is very overdue for an event like this, and am looking forward to the conference.  I hope that I’ll get to meet a number of online homeschooling friends in person!  And meeting new friends will be wonderful, too!

Avivah

>>Can you explain a little bit about the “copy work” you mention?<<

Copywork is a method espoused by Charlotte Mason.  Being an eclectic homeschooler, I don’t limit myself to approaches or techniques from just one method – I adopt ideas that resonate with me.  When I read about Charlotte Mason’s work, I connected with several things she wrote about.  One was the focus on quality literature; another was the idea of copywork. 

Copywork is exactly what it sounds like – you have your child copy written passages.  My kids begin copywork as soon as they finish a basic workbook on handwriting, so that they are familiar with how to form the letters properly, at about the age of 6 or 7, depending on the child.  My six year old now isn’t doing it; I don’t feel it would be constructive for him yet.  It’s important that whatever they copy be quality writing samples; though the copywork serves as handwriting practice, it also serves as so much more.  They continue doing copywork on a daily basis until they are ten, at which point I transition them to developing their independent writing skills.

By providing your child with a good model of writing, over time he will develop a sense of good sentence structure, grammar, and spelling.  I don’t make grammar or spelling an independent subject – I know that they’re internalizing these things when they do their reading and copywork.  How much they do is much less important that the quality of the work they do.  When they do their copywork, it has to be exact – every punctuation mark copied properly, every word spelled correctly, written neatly.  If it’s sloppy then they have to do it over (that has rarely happened).  Part of the goal in doing the copywork is to help a child focus on the details; too often kids gloss over small details in their rush to get their work done.  Before they show it to me, I tell them to look at it and compare it to the original, to be sure there are no mistakes.  They often see things on their own that need to be corrected, and finding your own errors is more valuable than having someone else point them out to you.  Their copywork should be something that they can take pride in showing someone. 

I’ve used different things for them to copy from over the years.  It can be any book that you feel is well written and appropriate for the child’s age.  Initially, I used A Child’s Garden of Verses, by RL Stevenson.  That was good but then I felt that copying poems wasn’t as helpful in developing a sense of regular sentence structure as a book would be.  I started my dd8 (then 7) on the first book in the Billy and Blaze series, and now she’s using a McGuffey reader, as is my ds10 (they use different levels – McGuffey readers begin with a primer and go up to level 6 – I start the copywork with the first reader, which comes after the primer).  I plan to use the McGuffey readers for copywork for all of my kids from now on, with the exception of when they are new to copywork – to start them off, I’d give them something more engaging if I felt it would be helpful to them.

Avivah

>>My daughter is so resistant sometimes. She has a very short
attention span and gets easily frustrated.<<

>>My oldest is 7 almost 8. The days which are good are good. We can get our kodesh and chol done in 3-4 hours (spaced around breaks and lunch). On the bad days we cannot get school going because he shleps out (or had chutzpah about) his morning routine (dressing, making bed, davening, eating breakfast and usually a chore) so he is late in getting started, then it goes downhill from there. I have seemed to solve one of the problems (more or less) by having him go to his own office with his work and a timer which he tries to beat and I also give him firm limits on how long he can take to finish an assignment (otherwise he shleps that out forever). He gets distracted by his siblings’ (boy 5, girl 2) antics and schooling. That seems to work (and takes a lot of stress of me watching him mess around all monring/afternoon). <<

I’m answering both of these questions in this post, since they both seem to be to be about how to handle a child who is resistant to learning.  I had this, too, when I started homeschooling my son for half a day.  He really didn’t like my ideas of what to do and how to do it, and we had a lot of conflict about it.  He was about 7.5 at that time. 

When I started off, I didn’t have any homeschooling philosophy formulated – my goal was to teach my child at home whatever he would be learning in school.  I read The Well Trained Mind (classical approach based on the trivium), and it sounded good.  It was the only thing I read, so I didn’t have much to compare it to.  Anyway, it was terrible for us because it was totally not a fit for my child’s needs and personality.  He was resistant because he didn’t like it – pretty simple, right?  So I had to learn more about different ways of learning, and look at what my deeper goal was.  My true goal was for him to find learning relevant and meaningful (to some degree, anyway!), and for it to be a positive experience for him, since I wanted learning to have positive associations throughout his life. 

This meant reassessing what learning looked like and how it took place.  Of course the only model I had was the school model and the classical model of education followed that in many ways, which is why it initially appealed to me.  It felt secure and safe and seemed to promise a quality education.  But it wasn’t working.  He was unhappy, and I was unhappy that there was so much tension and negativity involved in getting him to do his work.  Finally, I realized that I had to let go of my expectations and look for what would work with him.  I took a big step backwards, and started focusing on making our home learning environment enjoyable and relaxed.  I read to him, and stopped expecting him to read out loud to me a certain amount of time.  I stopped giving him grammatical rules to copy into his grammar notebook.  I stopped just about everything, I think!  I replaced that with more hands on activities, and just relaxed time together.  Though I worried that he wasn’t learning anything, our house very quickly became a much more pleasant place to live.  In seven weeks, he went from adamanatly refusing to read aloud to me, or even open a book on his own (“I hate reading!”), to independently reading to himself in his free time.

Children this age (up to and including age eight) need very little official learning time.  For our family, I’ve broken down their academic needs to the very basics – reading, writing, arithmetic.  That’s all that I expect and I know that with solid basics in place, they’ll be well eqipped to handle anything else they need as they get older.  And I don’t think it should take very long at this age at all, not more than an hour total for kodesh and chol.  My dd8 started this year (when she was still seven) reading for 15 minutes daily (alternating days for Hebrew and English), 10 minutes (or two – three sentences) of copywork, and 15 minutes of math.  Now she reads all the time so it’s not part of her official schedule; only math (one lesson) and copywork are.  3 – 4 hours is a LOT, and more time doesn’t necessarily equate with more learning.  (That’s why I’ve thought for a long time that the schools would benefit everyone if they cut the hours down – the longer a child spends on his work, the less effective he becomes.) 

I know, it sounds inadequate, doesn’t it?  But don’t forget, children are learning all the time, from everything they do.  There are lots of fun ways to ‘sneak’ in the learning and if you integrate it naturally into your day, they won’t perceive it as school work.  I didn’t even try to sneak it in; I started looking at education and information from a different paradigm, which would best be reflected by the statement ‘Education isn’t about filling a bucket, but about lighting a fire.”  (My apologies if I didn’t get the quote exactly, but that’s the gist of it.)  Then my focus became more about helping motivate them to want to learn instead of stuffing them full of what I thought they needed to know.

In my opinion, resistance from a child is a sign that you need to reassess what you’re doing and why.  This isn’t an either you get your way or he gets his way situation – if it’s not working for both of you, then it’s not working at all.  Both of you need to be basically enjoying your time together and feeling your needs are met.  That’s the beauty of homeschooling, that we can have an enjoyable educational environment that fits everyone’s needs.  Educating our kids is about really working with each of them according to their needs.  I’d suggest you think about what is a priority to you, regarding what you want him to learn, and drop everything else.  He has many, many years ahead of him to learn other things, and the best time for a child to learn something is when he wants to learn it.  You can make a child do their ‘work’, but you can’t make him internalize the message and really learn anything (I once argued this with a first year teacher, who adamantly disagreed with me – he said that a good teacher can make a child learn.  I said, ‘No, a good teacher makes a child want to learn’  He didn’t see the distinction, but it’s a very important one.) 

I really like having games around because they are a wonderful way to give a child something to do that he’ll enjoy and you’ll know he’s learning.  There are games like Scrabble and Boggle for spelling, Battleship and Monopoly for math, and so many others for every possible subject (this is a good way to get in history, geography, or even Latin roots – I bought a card game for that).  

I also have a lot of hands on manipulatives that I let them play with; I don’t really use them to explain mathematical concepts though that’s what I initially got them for.  These manipulatives include: pattern blocks (which are just wonderful), base ten blocks, cuisenaire rods, linking cubes, tangrams, teddy bear counters, a hundred number chart, spherical shapes, fraction pieces, a scale, magnets, and other things I’d have to go downstairs to look at to remind myself about.  I have flashcards for numbers, time, abcs, Hebrew letters.  I have Brain Teaser kind of things, puzzles, etc.  These aren’t getting used all the time, but when someone wants to use them, they’re there for them. 

I’m giving these as examples that taking a more relaxed approach doesn’t mean being neglectful of their education or letting them do whatever they want all day long.  One thing I feel strongly about is that the time that is freed up for the child can’t be used on tv, videos (unless they are educational ones that you feel are valuable), or computers.  If children are giving wholesome alternatives as to how to spend their time, they’ll find productive ways to spend their time.  The chances are high that the activities they choose will be those which you can honestly identify as academic time when you look at all that they’re learning.

Oh, one more thing.  I can see how a 7 yo would find it very distracting (and unfair!) to do his work when he sees his younger siblings playing around.  That’s normal, and it’s reasonable for him to feel this way.  I used to do a lot of reading to all of my kids when they were younger while the littlest ones played, and then when the little ones were ready for a nap, that’s when I had the oldest one do the more formal work – I didn’t try to do much with him until the house was quiet enough to focus on him (when my oldest was 8, we had a 1, 2.5, 5, and 6.5. so there were a lot of distractions for him!).  This dynamic does change over time – since most of my kids are now old enough to be formally doing academic work each day, the younger ones want to do what the older ones are doing!  (That’s why my three year old will insist he has to do his math before he can do anything else – a few days ago he was trying to convince me that he was 6 so he could do what his older siblings were doing. :))

Avivah

Can I ask one more question? Why do you homeschool? What is the financial, hashkafic, halachic reasoning behind such an unorthodox choice for a family that seems (from your bio) to be pretty normal? I am dying to know.

This isn’t a short answer, but I’ll try to be as succinct as I can without leaving out the major factors.

I didn’t set out to homeschool – Hashem kind of led me to it and I feel unbelievably blessed that He did.  When I moved from Israel in August 2000 (my husband had been offered a position as a shul rabbi so we moved to Seattle for that), my oldest was in second grade and struggled because the secular subjects required reading and writing skills that he didn’t yet have, and his Judaic skills were much more advanced than his classmates.

We brought him home for half a day with the intent to bring him up to par in secular subjects – I did it out of desperation, because he was so stressed out that it was affecting the entire family, and nothing else I was doing was helping.  (This was one of the worst periods of my life, which has shown me how often the best things come from the most difficult situations.)  I didn’t know anything about homeschooling, and didn’t consider myself to be homeschooling him.  I was just tutoring him at home.  The principals and teachers were very supportive of me doing this, because they knew they didn’t have the ability to help him catch up.

Despite the many obstacles (like not knowing what I was doing and constantly doubting and second guessing myself), he thrived and we achieved our goals for him. Along the way he became much happier and more relaxed, which positively affected everyone.

We put him back into school for the full day about three or four months later with no intent to bring him back home.  But then we started to see behaviors we hadn’t seen for a long time that were attributable to nothing but being in school, behaviors that were subtle and everyone would say were normal.  In the past we thought it was because he didn’t yet have friends after moving there, was pressured academically, felt the strain of a major move, etc.  But now he was doing great academically in all his classes, socially fine, the family had settled down, and life was all around positive and relaxed – there was absolutely nothing wrong.  And I saw that school actually created a kind of tension in children, even a child who was succeeding, something I never would have recognized if it hadn’t been totally absent from him for so long.

For the next few months, I thought about the significance of this.  I thought about what it would be like to have all the kids at home (if it was such a big improvement with one child home just half a day, imagine if everyone were home all day!), without the school induced pressures of carpool, tuition, mandatory parent service hours, and constantly worrying about keeping up with exactly what the school was up to, all issues I had to deal with when he was home for half a day.

What if we didn’t have to rush everyone to bed so that they could get up on time the next day, what if I could relax through our morning routine instead of rushing to get them to school on time; what if my primary goal wasn’t school centered but values centered?

I had by now started reading a lot about homeschooling philosophies, educational models, and thinking very seriously about what it all meant to me and where I stood.  I was working through some very major ideas about where parenting and education met, and my role in that.  I thought a lot about the kind of children I wanted to raise, the qualities I wanted to help them develop, and in what environment those would best be nurtured.  I strongly felt homeschooling would help us best meet those goals, though I had no idea how right I was.

But I was scared.  I was a conservative kind of person, someone who was very much part of the mainstream, who was comfortable being part of the mainstream and in fact found security in being clearly identifiable as being mainstream.  I didn’t want to be different from everyone else.  I didn’t want to listen to my conscience.

Not only that, my kids were all doing great in school – there were no behavior issues, academic issues, social issues – nothing.  And the following year all three of them were going to have the most experienced teachers in the school, teachers who were so good that people would actually switch their kids for the year to this school to have these teachers.  Who in their right mind would take out their kids at a time like this?

But the problem was, I was trying to live my life with integrity and I couldn’t silence the voice inside me that kept telling me that this was a change I should make, that even as seemingly successful as the kids were, that there was more they could be than model students.  I couldn’t ignore what I really believed was best.

I had two discussions at this time about this that gave me the support I needed to make the leap to homeschooling, one with my husband, and one with the wife of the rosh kollel of that area, and with both I expressed my fears and feelings of inadequacy.  My husband told me that no matter how wonderful the teachers were, he was confident that I could do just as well.  The rosh kollel’s wife, when I told her my fears of appearing non mainstream and not being like everyone else, said, “Who cares what people think?”  These two conversations gave me the final boost I needed to do to begin to live out my vision.

It was making the decision to homeschool that was the hardest thing. But since then, I’ve never looked back.  It was clear from the very beginning that it was the right thing for our family – there were so many advantages that I can’t begin to express them here.  I had the advantage of knowing what life with kids in school was like, and it was very easy to compare and contrast that to homeschooling.

Life with kids in school is a pale (and stressful!) comparison to a homeschooled life.   Though people have told us that because we’re such good parents our kids would have been great anyway, I know it’s not true and they’re making false assumptions.  I’m not an amazing or unusually good parent.  But homeschooling my kids and the time it’s given us together has been the factor that has made all of the difference.

To go back to the original question, there were no negative factors – tuition was affordable for us (I’ve never felt that finances alone were a reason to homeschool), the kids were successful in school (and I was happy with the school), and I had a great rapport with the administration.  I don’t have a bone to pick with schools, not then and not now.  Choosing to homeschool wasn’t coming from negative motivations, but rather from a strong philosophical belief that it was the best thing for my children, to educate each of them according to their individual needs and personalities (‘chanoch l’naar al pi darko’).

I didn’t and don’t believe that a one size fits all institution with hired workers can know and understand a child and their needs (crucial to effectively educating them) as well as a loving and motivated parent.  I felt that building a strong family would happen most effectively when the family had ample time to spend together in a relaxed way, not pulled in lots of directions all day long, every day, with everyone coming together at the end when they were tired and uptight.  And there were lots of other more specific concerns about education and child raising that I had.

As the years have gone by, my belief about all of these things has only gotten stronger. I’m at the beautiful place in life where I don’t have to wonder if this homeschooling business was all a major mistake on my part and what will all come out from it in the end. I’ve been so fortunate to have seen the things I trusted to happen, happen, beyond what I ever hoped for.  Is life perfect?  No.  Are my kids perfect?  Obviously not.  And me?  You all know I’m not perfect by now!  🙂

But I can’t tell you how incredibly grateful I feel every single day for the life I’m privileged to have with my family.  I don’t take it for granted because I hear and see from all that goes on around me how special what we have is.

Avivah