Learning from Your Mistakes and Planning for Next Year
It’s that time of year for homeschoolers—spring break is over, the end of the school year is in sight, and we’re so, so ready for summer vacation! It’s also a wise time to sit back and evaluate what went right and wrong this school year and figure out how to adjust for next year.
For our family, 2020-21 was perhaps the hardest homeschool year ever, and only partly because of moving to a new state in the middle of a pandemic. In an attempt to jump-start community and simplify my life, we joined a hybrid program used by some of our friends in Iowa. But because of covid protocols that essentially separated activities for my four big kids onto four separate days, it meant that we didn’t ever just have a full day at home for our all-together activities, and the big kids had so much more busy work with their google classroom virtual classes than I even knew was possible.
So, what have I learned from this experience? First of all, if you’re looking for advice from another homeschool mom, it’s a good idea to make sure your goals are aligned. My friends who used that program eventually confided that their main goal for middle school is getting their kids comfortable with using a chromebook, navigating google classroom, and learning to work independently. Since I’m a very low-tech homeschooler, using chromebooks and google classroom were not priorities I had for my middle schoolers, and my vision for working independently looks completely different than that hybrid situation. For my friends whose families use more technology than ours and whose kids are looking at a different type of college situation, they have found what works best for them. But since our family has different priorities, it wasn’t as helpful for our kids. On the other hand, foreign languages were very important to our family, so we leaned into Latin and French because those were the ones I knew. My friends who had studied Spanish and did missions work in Central America would be silly to follow my lead instead of playing to their own family’s strengths!
I don’t use an all-in-one box curriculum because I love lesson planning and researching and putting things together myself, but another mom might do much better just picking a curriculum package and sticking to it. In short, look into the strengths and weaknesses of the mentors you’re following, and if your lifestyle or philosophy doesn’t look the same, then don’t tie yourself in knots trying to follow something that doesn’t work for your family.
When we moved from Iowa to Indiana, however, I asked better questions and put my younger girls in a Charlotte Mason-style hybrid program loved by a homeschool mom friend who shares my values. It was a beautiful experience, and my only regret is not putting my big kids in, as well!
Second, hold on to your ideals loosely. In spring of 2020, when things were shut down and we weren’t leaving the house, we did a ton of art, music appreciation, and family read alouds. We finished our math and spelling and grammar books for the first year, ever! The next year, with everyone going different ways on different days, we barely opened our sketchbooks, read alouds slowed to what Dad read after dinner, and my big kids who were awash in busywork weren’t able to participate in our family poetry memorization. Science happened in occasional clumps, we didn’t take a field trip in a year, and I occasionally did three weeks worth of catch-up history in one fell swoop. I could feel like a total failure for not providing my kids with all the rich learning opportunities I wish for them, but I can also acknowledge that it was an unusual year.
Third, recognize what you have managed to do well. We’re often just focusing in on math and language by the end of school, and those subjects have shown progress each year, even if I'm not doing everything we did in the fall. Math in general has looked different for me since the older four hit harder math, as I’ve slowed down to work all the way through each lesson with each kid on a markerboard (rather than teaching the lesson and the sending them off to do their practice problems on their own and eventually get around to grading them even later). In doing this, I realized that one of my kids had some math facts that just weren’t as solid as they needed to be, so we stepped back and drilled them ten different ways for a couple weeks. They are now rock solid, and she’s moving ahead again with confidence. If you’ve managed to get a child reading fluently, are getting math done solidly (even if it feels that’s all you’ve done), or have finally gotten a child interested in practicing an instrument, celebrate that as a worthy achievement!
Fourth, as Miss Stacy says in Anne of Green Gables (which I read aloud to my middle two girls during our covid year in another accomplishment worth celebrating!), tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it yet! It was especially encouraging in the aftermath of the pandemic to hear my public school teacher friends share that they also felt like covid was a disaster for kids, but that they were going to try again next year. For our family, starting fresh in that life stage meant stepping away from the local hybrid homeschool classes and going back to our own tried-and-true combination of well-run online tutorials for the big kids and Mom teaching most of the core subjects again. Instead of heading out every day for something or other, we limited regularly-scheduled outside activities to once a week. A year of dull textbook science for my big kids reinforced my commitment to Charlotte Mason-style nature study the next year.
Even if this school year has been hard, next year could be great!
