Secure, not Stressed

I met another family that has returned their children to public school today. I felt sad. It is hard to keep up with all the mothers I have met over the years that have homeschooled at one time or another. This mom tried it with her oldest for three years. When the next child became ready for public school, she begged to go to school with her friends. The mother, exasperated with her structured school-at-home program, threw up her hands and decided to send everyone to school that year.

I wanted to express my encouragement to try a different way of home educating. I wanted to argue all the great points of home education and how well things have gone for us. But, she has already passed that point and is sure she is unable to homeschool "properly" as she put it. I nodded my head and just listened.

Twelve years ago I remember a very similar conversation with a mother of eight who homeschooled all of her children. I was the one giving all the reasons why I couldn't homeschool. I brought up all the reasons I could think of, even going so far as to say my children were nothing special and did not need any special attention. I remember this wise mother nodding her head and listening. She did not offer an harsh words nor did she begin giving all her reasons why SHE homeschools. She just offered a listening ear.

A few years after this conversation I had with the experienced mother of eight, I found myself remembering that she had responded with nothing but kindness and understanding. She left me pondering my own excuses and reasons rather than feeling judged.

I hope that I can always emulate the same.

A book that helped me with the 8th Key of Great Teaching - Secure, not Stressed -  is "The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook" by Raymond and Dorothy Moore. The concepts are all compatible with A Thomas Jefferson Education (TJED).

Educate to Innovate Initiative

Recently President Obama said in the State of the Union Address that he wants to focus on "educating for innovation" because we need to compete in a global world. (See the White House webpage here.) The website says this will be done through:

"five major public-private partnerships are harnessing the power of media, interactive games, hands-on learning, and community volunteers to reach millions of students over the next four years, inspiring them to be the next generation of inventors and innovators."

The part that bothers me the most about this statement is "media and interactive games".  From the list of contributors on the website, it seems like video games to me.

Several years ago before I started educating my children at home, I worked in a computer lab at the local elementary school where my children attended. I oversaw a set of educational games that were engineered to teach the children for the state's mandatory testing. The school district was shown all kinds of charts and predictions on how much the children's test scores would improve with this system. The school district spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase this system for all of the schools and built additional computer labs in each school, then employed teachers like myself to implement and oversee the system.

I had access to two years worth of records on the student's test scores and I can firmly say that across the board absolutely NO improvement was made. A handful of individuals had improved scores, but as a whole it was a huge failure. In fact, the school lost some of the funding used for state testing after the second year. In other words, their test scores went down, not up. The school's test score rating in the state was lowered and they lost funding based on these results.

So what does that tell us? Could it be that entertaining educational products do not work?

In a 2003 study done about improving test scores using an ILS (Integrated learning System a.k.a technology driven, game like teaching) the following was reported:

"Controlled studies of ILS effects on reading achievement carried out over a period of three decades suggest, therefore, that ILSs do not usually make meaningful contributions to reading improvement in elementary schools."

However, if you do a search over the web you'll find countless websites telling us that educational video games do improve test scores. So what should we believe?

First of all, if you spend all your time teaching to the test then test scores will most likely improve. But what effect does that have on education for the individual? It might mean they know everything that their classmates know, but for how long? What cements that knowledge in place long-term?

Second, what do test scores matter in the world anyway? Does a student who does well in science and math always become an innovator? Does a student who aces the math section on the SATs always become an inventor?

I am a firm believer that we are what we eat. I also believe that we are what we read. If I spend all my time reading Comic Books, then I will only understand short sentences with very little plot. My focus will be minimal in understanding how the world works. I'll remain at a childish state of knowledge.

If I study Jane Eyre, Shakespeare, Socrates, Euclid, Einstein...all the great classics, I will be able to understand good vs. evil, philosophy, science, history, etc. My ability to discuss things of value will greatly improve and I'll know what the great minds of our world knew. I will grow to a mature state of knowledge.

I will become what I read.

The question is...what do people who focus on media and video games become?

Grades? What Grades?

One area that seems to confound people the most when they scrutinize our home school is the relative lack of grades. I used to try to keep grades, but what are grades anyway? Aren't they just a set value associated with a group of peers that you are competing with? A 100% says I got everything right in comparison with everyone else. An 80% says I got quite a bit right in comparison with everybody else, but others did better and some did worse. We see this become very competitive when we get into high school and college with grade rankings of 4.0 to 2.8.

Where were you ranked in high school/college? What did it have to do with real life? How did it make you feel? Does it matter today?

In my studies, I've come to believe that we are really only in competition with ourselves. Heavenly Father wants us to do our best, to continually be on a path of improvement. I don't believe He cares if we are in the top 5% of our peers as far as grades are concerned. He wants us to be our best selves  and compete against our own abilities.

The Path of Mastery
When I show people that we are based on mastery, they (those who ask about it) often are stumped, angry, or shocked. My questions then become:

• Did you master everything in high school? 
• Can you demonstrate that knowledge today on what you learned?

Most of the time the answer is, "No."

Our education system has lost the ability to teach how to think, focusing on what to think instead. Therefore, the ability to retain information over a long period of time becomes much more difficult. If you don't use it, you lose it. That is what happens to memory over time. Our current educational system relies so heavily on memorization, that the education only lasts for a short time.

Did we master a topic or not? Can we teach it to someone else? Can we demonstrate mastery? These are the "grades" in our home education. If they have learned a topic enough to explain it to someone else, then they have learned the thought processes behind the topic and have built the neural pathways to connect that learning to other things...most importantly, how that information relates to the other information they know, thus cementing it more firmly in their long-term memory.

Education for the Future
We've been hearing on the news and from political leaders that we need to have innovators to compete in this global economy. Our current public education system is the cause of this decline in innovative thinkers. The shift should be towards learning how to think by mastering basic subjects and topics to create the building blocks in the minds of our children (and ourselves) so that we can become innovative thinkers. No other overhaul of the education system will work. Not more tests. Not more grades. And definitely not more short-term connections in the brain through memorization.

Concurrent Enrollment (Dual Credit)

With my previous post being about the "College Conspiracy", this post may come as a surprise. I really do believe the college bubble will burst and thus lower college expenses and have a balancing effect on secondary education. College is not what it used to be and I do not think everyone needs to have a college degree.

That said, I do believe there may be reasons, when the time is right, to take advantage of the classroom environment. We decided that Nayna should take advantage of concurrent enrollment at BYU Idaho since they are offering classes for $30 a credit, which is a fantastic price. (Concurrent enrollment are classes that count for high school and college credit.) I want my children to have various types of educational experiences so that they can choose the best path based on those experiences. One class in an online college environment will give her a view of what the Professional Conveyor Belt is like without a huge cost or commitment.

My oldest daughter, Sam, has chosen a Professional Conveyor Belt path to become a pharmacist. At least, that is what she wants right now. We have stressed over and over again that she should not go into debt for this education. So far, she has managed to avoid any debt. She has done well, her grades are excellent, and she is getting some education, even if it is not the Liberal Arts Education I would like for her.

Preparing for College Entrance - The Transcript

Many parents sweat over the question, "How will my child get into college?" I have to say, I have thought long and hard about this too, if my children choose college as their path. So far the university has only asked for a simple transcript. The TJED way seemed a bit difficult at first in order to show a transcript that will mesh with the Conveyor Belt world.

We decided on the following transcript format:



In addition to this very simple transcript, I am preparing a list of materials used for each class. Sometimes that is very simple, say for math, where we used a curriculum like Math-U-See Algebra 1. For the literature classes, we are listing the books read. Science and history have been a bit different since we used a menagerie of books, videos, and fieldtrips to accomplish these "classes".

I'll post more as we go through this process. They may yet come back and ask for more details and items.

College Conspiracy Video

I've been following the idea of this documentary for some time and I know it has been a topic of conversation among many home educating families. I hope you'll watch and determine for yourself if this information is true and/or useful.

Personally, I find the information on student loans and the terrible condition of tuition costs to be true. I know that my husband and I have college degrees and loans which have had very little effect in increasing our income. Yet, we are still paying off the debt. Some might say, we just didn't get enough college education...that may be true. But shouldn't some college education be worth something? It is worth practically nothing in our current state.

What do we tell our children? I have one in college now and another starting some concurrent enrollment classes in the Fall. I have all kinds of questions...Should they go to college right now? Is it worth it? Will they be straddled with debt like their parents? We don't have any money to pay for their college, how much will they owe the government if they get loans?

...and most important...Is there a better way?

The Silent Treatment

Imagine a day where you are not allowed to talk or make noise all day. You must go through all your duties without talking, not even a whisper. There are peers all around you, also going throughout the day in silence. The others make little signs to you. Signs like waving "Hi!" with a silent gesture as you pass by. You sit side-by-side with your peers sharing the space at your work area, without talking, without making contact verbally, and without any verbal social interaction. On occasion, you may raise your hand to ask a question to the overseer. To go to the bathroom, you must make a hand sign and wait for someone to allow you  to leave.

That is how I've spent almost every day substitute teaching. Yesterday, I spent the day with a Kindergarten class in which I was instructed that their school is a "silent learning" school. No talking is allowed anywhere... except the playground. No talking in the classroom. No talking in the halls. No talking in the bathrooms. No talking at lunch. Nothing.

It is such an unnatural experience. I allowed my class yesterday to talk during free play times like stations (centers) and art. A teacher came marching into the room and informed the class that they were not following the "silent learning" rules. I was then chastised for not knowing their school and classroom rules. The children were not loud, quite the opposite. They were simply talking in regular, "inside voice" volumes. This is not the first time this has happened to me and is probably the reason I was banned from another school recently.

I am often asked, "How can we fix public schools?"

I'm beginning to think there is no fixing them. I am not allowed to have any voice (no pun intended) or say in how a classroom is managed. What's worse, the downturn in the way our society is instructed at public school is becoming much more strict and prison like than I've ever seen before.

The Parable of the Grocery Store

A friend wrote a beautiful post about home education and another one on her love of public schools. Both have their reasons and stated them with feeling, thought, and purpose. I am always extremely thankful for the freedom of choice in educating our children...whichever way you choose for your family, at least the freedom of choice is there. Here is a parable I started as a comment at one of the blogs mentioned above, but decided to post it in it's entirety here.

The Parable of the Grocery Store
Let's say the government made a law that we are assigned our closest grocery store to shop at. We can only shop at our assigned store unless we want a boundary exception, which are scarce. At first, we think, "OK, I like my local Albertson's so I'm happy with this new law."

A few weeks later, you discover that a couple miles down the road, your friends tell you that Wal-mart has cheaper canned goods than Albertson's. You are frustrated that there is a difference in what you are getting. Shouldn't they all be the same if they are operated by the government?

Two months later, you realize the produce at your Albertson's is rancid all the time. You can never get good, fresh produce. At the Fry's however, everyone boasts of the best, freshest produce they have ever had! You LOVE fresh produce and would rather drive a distance and pay more to shop at Fry's for the fresh produce than at Albertson's. You apply for a boundary exception and you are told there is a two year waiting list. What? Two years to wait until you can get good produce? But, your family needs good produce now.

You want to sell your house and move closer to Fry's so that it would be your assigned store, but you cannot afford any of the houses in that area.


You are discouraged, but your neighbors seem fine with not having fresh produce. They accept canned vegetables in place of fresh produce and make the best of the situation. They apply their time towards trying to help Albertson's acquire better produce. They volunteer to help and see some improvements at times. They encourage all of their neighbors to not go anywhere else, but to stay with Albertson's so that they can improve their situation.


A woman next door is frustrated and decides not to even bother with boundary exceptions or the assigned grocery store. She decides to grow her own food and plants a garden. She raises chickens and a pig. She works all day long on raising her own food. You and your neighbors are stunned. The work she puts into her own food seems ludicrous to you. You would never put in that time and effort for your own food. The grocery store saves you a lot of time and effort. Plus, almost everyone you know, except the woman next door, uses the grocery store.

The woman next door toils all day long on her food production. Sometimes her carrots are small, her tomatoes eaten by worms, and her lettuce wilts before she can use it all. The neighborhood laughs saying, "You should just stop wasting your time! The grocery store is so much more convenient." The woman next door is saddened that no one encourages her in her efforts. She feels lonely and judged for being different.


Over time as you get by with canned produce even though you would prefer fresh, the woman next door has perfected her food production skills. Her tomatoes are getting plumper and wormless, her carrots are turning out better, even though they are still smaller than the ones at the grocery store. Sometimes, she even has extra zucchini to share with her neighbors. Her zucchini is really the best you've ever seen.

This is the same as education. One family may value a certain sports program (canned food) or academic program (produce) than what is offered at your school. Some may even choose to grow their own (educate their children at home).


Shouldn't we have the choice? Shouldn't we stop judging each other for their choices and uplift and encourage each other?

I do not want anyone's choice taken away. I want all to have what they feel is best for their family. I hope everyone will respect the need for choice and support boundary exception, open enrollment, charter school and homeschool laws that allow these freedoms.


By Celeste Batchelor  -- February 8, 2011

A Homeschool Mother's Plea

I have to tell you that I copied this from a friend's note on Facebook. I've read it a couple times before and thought, "I would really like to post that on my blog." Then I chicken out. This time...I didn't chicken out!

By Deborah Markus from Secular Homeschooling, Issue #1, Fall 2007


1. Please stop asking us if it's legal. If it is — and it is — it's insulting to imply that we're criminals. And if we were criminals, would we admit it?

2. Learn what the words "socialize" and "socialization" mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you're talking to me and my kids, that means that we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other human beings on the planet, and you can safely assume that we've got a decent grasp of both concepts.

3. Quit interrupting my kid at her dance lesson, scout meeting, choir practice, baseball game, art class, field trip, park day, music class, 4H club, or soccer lesson to ask her if as a homeschooler she ever gets to socialize.

4. Don't assume that every homeschooler you meet is homeschooling for the same reasons and in the same way as that one homeschooler you know.

5. If that homeschooler you know is actually someone you saw on TV, either on the news or on a "reality" show, the above goes double.

6. Please stop telling us horror stories about the homeschoolers you know, know of, or think you might know who ruined their lives by homeschooling. You're probably the same little bluebird of happiness whose hobby is running up to pregnant women and inducing premature labor by telling them every ghastly birth story you've ever heard. We all hate you, so please go away.

7. We don't look horrified and start quizzing your kids when we hear they're in public school. Please stop drilling our children like potential oil fields to see if we're doing what you consider an adequate job of homeschooling. (This one happens to us from "loving" and "concerned" family members.)

8. Stop assuming all homeschoolers are religious.

9. Stop assuming that if we're religious, we must be homeschooling for religious reasons.

10. We didn't go through all the reading, learning, thinking, weighing of options, experimenting, and worrying that goes into homeschooling just to annoy you. Really. This was a deeply personal decision, tailored to the specifics of our family. Stop taking the bare fact of our being homeschoolers as either an affront or a judgment about your own educational decisions.

11. Please stop questioning my competency and demanding to see my credentials. I didn't have to complete a course in catering to successfully cook dinner for my family; I don't need a degree in teaching to educate my children. If spending at least twelve years in the kind of chew-it-up-and-spit-it-out educational facility we call public school left me with so little information in my memory banks that I can't teach the basics of an elementary education to my nearest and dearest, maybe there's a reason I'm so reluctant to send my child to school.

12. If my kid's only six and you ask me with a straight face how I can possibly teach him what he'd learn in school, please understand that you're calling me an idiot. Don't act shocked if I decide to respond in kind.

13. Stop assuming that because the word "home" is right there in "homeschool," we never leave the house. We're the ones who go to the amusement parks, museums, and zoos in the middle of the week and in the off-season and laugh at you because you have to go on weekends and holidays when it's crowded and icky.

14. Stop assuming that because the word "school" is right there in homeschool, we must sit around at a desk for six or eight hours every day, just like your kid does. Even if we're into the "school" side of education — and many of us prefer a more organic approach — we can burn through a lot of material a lot more efficiently, because we don't have to gear our lessons to the lowest common denominator.

15. Stop asking, "But what about the Prom?" Even if the idea that my kid might not be able to indulge in a night of over-hyped, over-priced revelry was enough to break my heart, plenty of kids who do go to school don't get to go to the Prom. For all you know, I'm one of them. I might still be bitter about it. So go be shallow somewhere else.

16. Don't ask my kid if she wouldn't rather go to school unless you don't mind if I ask your kid if he wouldn't rather stay home and get some sleep now and then. (I've done this and ended up with a very mad friend when her daughter started begging to be homeschooled.)

17. Stop saying, "Oh, I could never homeschool!" Even if you think it's some kind of compliment, it sounds more like you're horrified. One of these days, I won't bother disagreeing with you any more.

18. If you can remember anything from chemistry or calculus class, you're allowed to ask how we'll teach these subjects to our kids. If you can't, thank you for the reassurance that we couldn't possibly do a worse job than your teachers did, and might even do a better one.

19. Stop asking about how hard it must be to be my child's teacher as well as her parent. I don't see much difference between bossing my kid around academically and bossing him around the way I do about everything else.

20. Stop saying that my kid is shy, outgoing, aggressive, anxious, quiet, boisterous, argumentative, pouty, fidgety, chatty, whiny, or loud because he's homeschooled. It's not fair that all the kids who go to school can be as annoying as they want to without being branded as representative of anything but childhood.

21. Quit assuming that my kid must be some kind of prodigy because she's homeschooled.

22. Quit assuming that I must be some kind of prodigy because I homeschool my kids.

23. Quit assuming that I must be some kind of saint because I homeschool my kids.

24. Stop talking about all the great childhood memories my kids won't get because they don't go to school, unless you want me to start asking about all the not-so-great childhood memories you have because you went to school.

25. Here's a thought: If you can't say something nice about homeschooling, shut up!

Things I Learned From Public School Teachers

...that are useful in home education.

Last week I taught in a Kindergarten and 1st grade classes. Each teacher had some things that are smart that I realized I could use at home. Many things in public school are not useful at home (most really), but there are things that are useful in both circumstances.

Personal Dry Erase Boards
I have a large dry erase board, which is nice in a lot of ways when teaching a concept that I want to have both of us (or all of us) write on the board together or I want to write a lot of details. The drawback is that it takes up space and in our smaller rental we don't want to a) put big holes in the walls to put it up and b) use valuable wall space that is needed for all our furniture.

These personal sized dry erase boards are much better for spelling quizzes, math computations, and grammar practice. I have tried to reduce the amount of paper we use and these dry erase boards are PERFECT! The 1st grade teacher has them for each student and has them practice math problems and spelling on them while she teaches the lesson. It made it pretty easy to have the children show me their boards so I could quickly see who needed help. The second thing she had was to use socks as erasers instead of the flimsy erasers that come with the sets. Personally, it gets a lot more of the flakes erased than the eraser anyway, and you can always throw them in the wash. (It is also very easy to find "divorced or separated" socks). She has the students store their dry erase markers in the sock.

Rolling Carts
The kindergarten teacher I subbed for (and will sub every Wednesday through the end of the year) has rolling carts for each child under their tables. I also saw this used for a special education room. If I had a home school room I would definitely use the rolling carts. Right now, I like our "cubby" solution, but if I had younger children the rolling cart would be my choice.

My Week in Special Ed.

I spent the early part of this week (and will be there tomorrow as well) substituting in a special education pre-K class for autistic children. Needless to say, it has been very interesting. Early intervention is for some parents a saving grace, but I wonder how parents would feel if they knew what was really going on in the classrooms.

I've seen children forced to play with shaving cream while they are screaming, "No, please! Too sticky!" or forced to lay on their tummy rather than sit on their bum to read a book. Some of it is so excessive for silly reasons that I just can't imagine why it happens. What is the purpose? So, I decided to ask a few questions about why the children have to lay on their tummy rather than sit on their bum. I got an explanation of how the child's muscles need to be built in their necks and lower jaw.

But still, I'm wondering why force them? Why not inspire them to follow our lead to lay on their tummy and play a fun game to strengthen those muscles? Do we have to practically sit on kids (yes, I've seen this) and make them do what we want just because they are autistic? Now, I have not spent a lot of time with autistic kids and I KNOW they all have behavior issues (this is part of how they are diagnosed).

My question is...can the Leadership Education model work with autistic children? I believe it can and will even be better for the children. The problem then becomes an issue of wanting results NOW rather than taking the time to inspire the kids. So it seems to be a matter of quick results over allowing time to make the changes in a more loving and respectful way.

I was reminded by a friend about how Helen Keller needed to be forced somewhat in order to learn to communicate. I observed, however, that the conformity was in behavior mostly...eating with utensils instead of hands, eating from her own plate, not being rewarded candy for bad behavior, etc. The people around Helen had created these bad behaviors in the first place. Ann Sulivan only reversed these bad behaviors and replaced them with good ones.

Also, Helen Keller was not autistic and had the ability to learn these behaviors. I don't believe that the comparison is a good one, but still I can see that sometimes force is a matter of getting the child's attention long enough to inspire them. For the children in the class I'm working in they do have "mainstream" kids coming in to be an example, which I think is excellent in teaching them to communicate and model preferred behaviors. I just don't agree with the extreme force some of these kids are put through at times.

Behaviorism in the Schools

I started my Substitute Teacher training today. Well, all of one hour of it that they provide. The rest was handing us a manual and telling us to study it on our own if we want to be called to sub. I'm fine with that. Basically, the substitute positions are very competitive. They are telling us we should have "business cards" and to "market ourselves" to the schools and teachers so that they will request us often. Hmmpf!

I got to page 5 of my manual and was already stewing about the content.

Students behave or misbehave due to what it happening in the classroom more than the influence of outside factors. If the teacher changes the environment in the classroom, the behavior of the students will change. ~ "Substitute Teacher" manual page 2

So - no students misbehave because they have not been taught to behave? I know it says "more than", but as I read on I found more evidence of behaviorism and less about teaching children what is "right" and what is "wrong." In fact, you cannot categorize any behaviors as "good" or bad".

Do not allow yourself to be led off task by students protests and long, useless discussions. ~ "Substitute Teacher" manual page 5

I guess students must conform...no protesting allowed..."resistance is futile." I'm not saying students should be allowed to do whatever they want. What I am saying is that shouldn't students know why they need to know these things and why they need to participate in class. Discussing these things is useless?

I think I'm going to have a harder time with this than I thought. I hope that I can still take what I know about how people learn and be useful in the classroom without snuffing all forms of discussions. Hopefully I can somehow inspire the students I come in contact with and still perform to a level as to not get fired. LOL!