by Alanna Cohen
This is for anyone who is just starting out with home education, or for anyone who has ever had a bit of a wobble. Which is probably most of us, as self-doubt and self-questioning are just part of being human, especially when you’re responsible for educating a child. Home educators frequently ask things like, “How do I know if I’m doing enough?” On the surface, it sounds like a question about curriculum, timetables or activities. Often, though, it’s really a question about how we judge whether an education decision is the right one. Not just the big decisions about home-ed vs school and whether to use a ready-made curriculum or which one to choose, but the smaller decisions about whether to push on with the phonics or just enjoy the story, whether to do the online lesson this morning, get outside whilst the weather is cool enough or whether to abandon the latest project because it’s feeling like hard work now, even though it was an obsession for months before you bought all the things to make it happen.
There isn’t always a neat ‘right answer’. A given decision could be right for one particular family or child and not for another. Today’s decision might be right for today but not on Thursday morning when the washing machine starts leaking. Over time, those individual decisions begin to tell the story of our children’s education. The wobbles come when we lose hold of the narrative thread that connects those decisions.
The thread begins with our hopes for our children. It helps us to focus on what is important in the day-to-day realities of home education. For some parents that might be rebuilding confidence after a difficult experience at school or supporting a child to feel safe enough to try new things. For others, it might be nurturing curiosity, developing independence or rediscovering the joy of learning. It might be developing the knowledge and skills to pursue the future of their choice, gaining the confidence to navigate the wider world, or working towards qualifications that open up future opportunities. These hopes form our education aims. They can help us make decisions when we’re planning ahead, but they can also help us to look back and make sense of the responsive decisions we made along the way. If putting those aims into words feels difficult, it can help to think about why you chose home education in the first place. Those early motivations often shed light on the hopes we have for our children.
If one of our hopes is to rebuild a child’s confidence or to nurture a love of learning, then choosing to put aside the phonics to enjoy a story together might not be avoiding learning at all. It might be exactly the decision that moves us towards that aim. Equally, if we are trying to nurture curiosity or encourage relationship with the wider world, then swapping an online lesson for an unexpected morning outdoors isn’t necessarily a distraction from education. It may be exactly the education we’re trying to create.
Once we’re clear about what we’re hoping to achieve, we can begin to think about the approach that is most likely to support those hopes. Two families may share an education aim but choose very different approaches because their children, circumstances and opportunities are different. Equally, as a child grows and develops, circumstances change or we reflect and realise that our approach doesn’t quite fit, it can be changed or adapted without losing sight of the aspirations we began with. Our aims provide the narrative thread that helps us make sense of our children’s education story. Our approach is how we choose to write the next chapter.
What hopes shape your education decisions? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Author Bio: Alanna Cohen is a home-educating parent and trustee with Education Otherwise’s report checking team. She is interested in reflective practice, authentic parent voice and helping families to develop meaningful ways to make sense of and express the learning that already exists within their children’s education.
