Home Learning Victoria

What's New, New Year?

noreply@blogger.com (Rebecca) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:01:00 +0000

My big resolution for 2012 is "less blog, more ukulele!".

Last May, I realized that I had pretty much said all I've wanted to say on this blog about the path of homeschooling and the wonderful things we can access to support living and learning at home with our kids. Spending a year to share my own thoughts and ideas on the topic seemed about right to me and I was happy to let it wrap up naturally.

I even contemplated deleting the whole thing, but when I brought this up to home learning friends, they told me to give my head a shake. I've decided to archive instead.

I could just leave things here, status quo, but I find the blogger format a bit unwieldy in terms of indexing and organizing previous posts. So, over the next several months, things will disappear from this site and will show up on www.victoriahomeschooling.com (which will eventually assume the www.homelearningvictoria.com url).

The content on both sites will be pretty much static from this point on, but the posts that people frequent most often (mostly about homeschooling in BC and favourite resources) will still be available to you for future reference.

I also may have enough juice left to write one last article about learning music. Perhaps my ukulele will inspire me.

Happy New Year to you all. And may 2012 be your best adventure yet.

Diana Sandberg: Finding Community

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 14:34:00 +0000

Diana is a veteran homeschooling momma (and theatre goddess) from the lower mainland. She graciously consented to having the following comment posted on Home Learning Victoria.

* * *

My kids are grown and flown now, so perhaps I can offer a long view. We learned about homeschooling when I was pregnant with my first and, after doing some research (mostly library books, it's hard to remember those pre-computer days...), we happily resolved to take that route. We did, however, put both kids in preschool in our neighbourhood - mainly in the hopes of finding other local families with young children. Herewith, several observations:

1. In the total of 4 years of preschool for the 2 kids, we only connected socially with one family. We did just as well (also one family) with the community centre parent-and-tots program (that family also became homeschoolers). We did make the effort to get involved - they were both parent-participation schools, and, in fact, my husband volunteered and was elected president the 2nd year (the politics of *that* little world is a whole other story, lol!).

2. The first child's preschool was a "gentle immersion" French program. Essentially, the teachers switched back and forth with French and English. The kids didn't seem to notice, nor did they seem to pick up much French. For the second, we specifically picked a preschool that actually advertised that they did NOT teach reading and writing and other "school readiness" skills - their philosophy was all about play. This was 22 years ago, I'm guessing such a place might no longer exist, lol.

3. Things still happened that should not have. On one occasion, I arrived to pick up my daughter one afternoon to find her and another child with masking tape over their mouths. My daughter was at pains to explain that it was a "game", but she also said it was because the two of them "talked too much". I was such a wimp in those days I didn't actually rip the teacher into tiny pieces. It was only years later that my daughter told me about the pedal car - it was such a popular toy that use was time-limited *for boys* and girls were shooed off to play with other things! Ack!

4. The homeschooling community was MUCH smaller around here in those days. None of my research even really talked about homeschooling as a community endeavour. I was totally focused on going it alone and never thought to even look for other homeschoolers near me. It was only when my elder girl turned 5 and we started having the "No, not going to kindergarten next year, we're going to be homeschooling" conversation, that a local shopkeeper told me that she knew someone else who was doing that and put me in touch with her! From there we found the Greater Vancouver Homeschooling group, and within six months were hosting meetings in our home. That was a community that we connected with socially. Many of those parents and kids are still our friends all these years later.

Learning with Graphic Novels

noreply@blogger.com (Home Learning Victoria) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:24:00 +0000

We've always loved graphic novels. Ones that are done well are just... awesome.

Since writing down some of our favourites in the post linked to above, we've discovered even more graphic novels (for good reason -- more and more excellent ones are being published every month).

The common theme to the graphic novels in this post is information. The books listed below all deal with subject matter that we typically present in traditional (and somewhat boring) ways. The authors/illustrators take the content out of the typical and present it in a way that will intrigue and entice the reader. Booyah!

Gareth Hinds has written and illustrated four "classic" graphic novels that we can't wait to get our hands on:

The books get great reviews, including one from Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson) regarding The Odyssey: "Gareth Hinds brings THE ODYSSEY to life in a masterful blend of art and storytelling. Vivid and exciting, this graphic novel is a worthy new interpretation of Homer’s epic."

We've also been collecting some of the Manga Shakespeare books. We bought our first one at the kiosk at Bard on the Beach and my pre-teen son just loved it (we had to go back and see the play)! So we've been buying more. There are 14 books published thus far and they are available at many different bookstores (including Amazon.ca).

The Manga Guides move into more heavy duty topics such as calculus, biochemistry and relativity. These books are definitely for the teen (or older learner) who would like to dive into some fairly dense topics in a fun and straightforward way. For example, "In The Manga Guide to Calculus, you'll follow along with Noriko as she learns that calculus is more than just a class designed to weed out would-be science majors. You'll see that calculus is a useful way to understand the patterns in physics, economics, and the world around us, with help from real-world examples like probability, supply and demand curves, the economics of pollution, and the density of Shochu (a Japanese liquor)."

Other great books that are info-oriented and "graphic" are Larry Gonick's fabulous offerings (watch the age level ... and your parental comfort level), Jay Hosler's Clan Apis (about bees) and The Sandwalk Adventures (about Charles Darwin), Jim Ottaviani's fantastic books (such as T-Minus: The Race to the Moon and Two-Fisted Science), and Mark Shultz's The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA. Great stuff.

Some parents are concerned that graphic novels aren't as good as "real books" or that somehow they are a lesser species of book (or information source). For folks who may worry about that, perhaps think about your goals for your children's learning. Are you really wanting your children to read heavy texts, perhaps biting off more than they can currently chew and potentially turning them off classics or certain kinds of information for many years? Or do you want them to have to wait to read about these topics until they are ready to tackle them (based on skill development, cognitive development, or interest)? Or do you want to give them the opportunity to discover a new passion or interest, something that they may then follow-up on afterwards because they are fascinated and want to uncover more, regardless of how sturdy the topic?

Offerings like graphic novels, legitimate as they are in their own right, also plant seeds for deeper exploration -- if the child decides to follow through. These are perfect items for sharing ideas and topics with your kids, regardless of your learn-at-home philosophy. At our house, I strew them around. I don't have any agenda by doing that other than opening doors to possibilities, expanding my child's world (and my own) by bringing in a few more things that my child may enjoy or that will support his current interests. I see that as my primary role as a home educator and I'm grateful for resources like these that help make my job so much easier (and fun).

If you have other favourite graphic novel that are "info-based", kindly share the titles in the comments. I'd love to read your suggestions.

Matt Hern: Schools as Resources

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:47:00 +0000

from my archives...

Mighty Matt Hern was a colleague of mine as once upon a time (~20 years ago), we both operated alternate schools within the same umbrella organization. I had the privilege of hearing Matt speak a few years ago and although he's not a direct proponent of homeschooling (he sees it as somewhat elitist as usually only one-income, two-parent families can afford to do it), he has some interesting ideas about how to provide alternatives to schools (which he discusses in his book Field Day).

He feels that schools should be open, community resources where it is an individual choice as to when and how to access them (and what to do when one is there). His parallel illustration is a library. He asked us to imagine going to the library, being greeted at the door by the librarian, being shown where we were going to sit for the next two hours (without talking) and being given a pile of books that we were allowed to read that day (and no, we couldn't browse the stacks). Oh, yes. And we'd have to raise our hands to ask to use the bathroom. His point - how many of us would actually go to the library if it was like that?

What if schools were more like libraries? School resources would be available to all individuals (regardless of age) to use and to explore. Classes offered would be based on expressed interest rather than provincial or teacher-mandated curriculum. Activities would be "fun and useful" rather than rote and boring.

It's an interesting idea.

[If you get a chance to read it, Matt's book Deschooling Our Lives is awesome and is certainly worth the time. It's out of print, but you might find it at your local library or from Abe Books. The updated version, which is in print, is Everywhere All the Time: A New Deschooling Reader.]

Diana Sandberg: On Support Groups

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:51:00 +0000

Diana Sandberg is a veteran homeschooling mom from Vancouver, BC. She recently responded to a request made on a Canada-wide email list: do you have any thoughts, tips or feedback on how your support group runs? I loved her response so much I asked to share it here!

Everybody - and every body, I guess - is different. I can say that when I was involved with the support group that was a major mainstay of our homeschooling lives, we were proud to say that it was a functional anarchy. We had no officers and no membership requirements. Anybody could come to anything, anybody could plan anything, or host anything. If nobody did, then....nothing happened. We had a few dry spells, but the desire to get together and stay in contact overcame inertia fairly quickly. It did help that we had one place - our house - which was comfortably large enough to host pretty big gatherings every month - at the annual potluck in December we often had over 100 people stuffing the house, the deck and the yard, lol. The other meetings weren't THAT big, but 40-50 people was not unusual. And we hosted that monthly evening meeting for 13 years.

When the meeting became large, we did have a spell where the kids were beginning to have some issues with each other during the playtime. Some kids felt excluded from activities, other kids felt pressured to participate when they didn't really want to. So we held a special meeting; parents and kids discussed their issues before coming to the meeting, and then everybody had an opportunity to speak. Most of the speakers were kids; everybody listened, everybody heard different perspectives and opinions and together we hammered out a set of rules for the kids at the meeting - I can't recall what all was on it now, but the salient point was that the kids worked it out, with the support of the parents, and after that things were much better.

What is your objection to people joining and not participating? And, come to think of it, what do you mean by "joining"? We used to keep a contact list with members' names and addresses, and there would be one taped to the table at meetings, where anybody could add their name. Just to keep it from getting too unwieldy, I would tend to prune the list every so often if there were names on it that I didn't recognize after several months, but otherwise...[shrug].

As to how the group ran, it was entirely free-form. As a visible member, people did used to approach me from time to time with suggestions about what the group ought to "offer". My response was always to smile cheerily and give them my permission to go right ahead and organize that. It worked surprisingly well. For quite a while, in the early days, when homeschooling was still pretty rare around here (Vancouver area), and there wasn't much available for us to do with our kids during the days, one of us would organize weekly field trips - it could be just a park play day, or a trip to a museum, a veterinarian's office, a shoe factory, the port authority, the stock exchange.... I can tell you that that day was sacred in our family, nothing else was scheduled for that day. The activity of the day wasn't always of enormous interest, and until the kids were upwards of 9 or 10, they weren't terribly needy for other kids' company, but by golly I was eager to spend some time with other homeschooling parents! The person who organized the field trips would tend to plan ahead and circulate the list of planned trips a few weeks in advance. Very rarely was it necessary to spend any money on these things, but if it was, we learned to collect the money in advance - otherwise, regrettably, people would tend not to show up at the last minute, which was occasionally problematic. As to who was the field trip organizer, this was, again, left to Fate. What tended to happen was that someone would do it for several months and then sort of burn out. Another person would take up the chore, sometimes right away, sometimes after a bit of a drought. People who had done it before would tend to pass along lists of contacts they had acquired, which was always helpful. Nothing wrong with going back to some of the same places from time to time.

Another parent-organized event that happened during the years we were participants was Theme Day - very popular - in which the host family would suggest a theme for a monthly gathering: boats, say, or Japan, or ancient toys, or musical instruments. The participating families would give some kind of short presentation involving that theme, and boy was there a diversity of ideas. Kids were, of course, encouraged to be the presenters, but parents were allowed as well . My kids learned quite a lot from watching me prepare and present the odd Theme Day presentation, and eventually decided to contribute themselves. One thing that really helped get this ball rolling was the original host mom, when suggesting the monthly theme, would also hand out a sheet of ideas - have you ever been to Japan? what kind of food do they eat there? what is interesting about their traditional architecture? traditional clothing? do they have unusual folk tales? what is their music like? etc., etc...

Parents also organized weekly or monthly gatherings for creative writing, science experiments, math practice, game playing, basketball, ice skating, and Shakespearean theatrical production, among others. Families participated in these things as they felt inclined. If they involved hiring instructors (we had Karen Magnussen for skating for years, and professional Shakespearean actors for our theatrics), then obviously a time and money commitment might be required.

I would encourage you not to worry too much about whether people are or are not making a big contribution at any point in time. Everybody's availability for that sort of thing varies over time. And some people are just generally more...available...than others. I wouldn't let the non-contributors dictate what is or isn't being done, but if they want to show up for stuff, why not? You may find they will become more involved as their sense of belonging grows, and their family situation shifts.

Cheers and good luck,

Diana

The Utopia of Sweden?

noreply@blogger.com (Rebecca) — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 14:41:00 +0000

Not for home educators. On June 22, 2010, the Swedish Parliament passed a new school law that is so restrictive it makes homeschooling illegal except in "exceptional cases".

Because the social values in Sweden are written into law, the government feels that any objections to public schooling a parent might have based on religious or philosophical grounds have been addressed, so there is no reason these types of objections could support a parent's desire to have a child learn at home.

"Current school conventions make it clear that the education in school shall be comprehensive and objective, and thereby be created so that all pupils can participate, no matter what religious or philosophical views the pupil or its legal guardian/s may have. In accordance with this it is the opinion of the Government that there is no need of a law to make possible homeschooling based on the religious or philosophical views of the family."

Page 523 in Prop. 2009/10:165 (Swedish Government proposition)

Sweden is the only democratic country that has made homeschooling illegal (with the exception of Germany in 1938, if it was in fact "democratic" at that time).

Jonas Himmelstrand, who is a proponent of both home education and attachment parenting (and is an associate of Gordon Neufeld), is a founder of ROHUS, the Swedish Association for Home Education.

On May 5, 2011, Jonas Himmelstrand spoke at the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada (which was started by Focus on the Family Canada, an evangelical Christian organization).

In his informative (and areligious) presentation, he gives a very stark picture of the state of family values in Sweden and how families simply are not allowed to have values other than what the state dictates.

Apparently, there are only 100 children being home educated in Sweden.

These families face some peculiar forms of persecution: fines of up to $40,000 CA for a year of homeschooling; repeated visits from social workers in an attempt to find something "wrong" with the family so the children can be forced to school or removed from the home; removal from the home of children as in the case of Domenic Johansson, who was removed two years ago (before homeschooling became legally impossible) without any reason other than the fact he hadn't attended daycare or school. (See minute 19:56 on the above video.)

On June 25, 2009, Domenic was removed from a plane that was preparing for take-off to India where his mother's family lives. He was 8-years-old. His parents were given no reason for his removal until after Dominic had been apprehended and placed under the care of the state. The parents are allowed supervised visits once every 5 or 6 weeks (and is mother is not allowed to cry during visits under the threat of having the visits revoked).

I have worked with troubled family situations in the past and my first reaction to the situation with the Johanssons is that there must be some back story that no one knows about, something "more" to the situation than meets the eye. In Canada, my experience has been that social services does everything possible to keep children with their families and it is only in cases where the parents cannot get it together for some reason that the children remain in care. In the above video, however, Jonas Himmelstrand says that one of the verdicts for the Johansson case states that because Domenic has not been in daycare and has not been in school, he has been harmed. The child also wasn't vaccinated and had a small cavity in one of his baby teeth. That's it in terms of the court documents.

It's outrageous.

Recently, the social workers have been telling the courts that the father is "weird" (despite psychiatric assessments that say otherwise) and is obsessed with human rights. Well, after two years of not having the custody of your child, I think anyone might be "obsessed" with human rights. I don't think that's a good enough reason to deny parents custody of a child.

There has been a recent petition circulating for people to sign that asks for Domenic to be returned to his parents. It has been timed to coincide with a political festival in the Johansson's hometown, Visby -- and today is the last day of this festival! I don't know if it will help for people outside of Sweden to sign, but it will show international support for the family and for home education freedoms in Sweden.

If you want to help the family with their legal costs, you can donate via PayPal. Please note that the HSLDA is involved in the case, if that matters to you.

You can also write letters of support to the family. The address is listed on this blog: Friends of Domenic Johansson.

If you want to show support for home education in Sweden, then you can sign a petition on the Rohus website. Only Germany and Sweden currently have laws restricting home education, whereas it is allowed in other European countries. Both Norway and Finland, Sweden's next door neighbours, are home education "friendly". Himmelstrand says that we will have to wait and see if other countries will follow Sweden's lead.

I think it's important to look at the progression in Sweden that has made a situation like this possible: national daycare (where daycare is a "right" of a child), early daycare entry and a push for women to re-enter the workforce when their children are 12 months old. In addition, Himmelstrand talks about how the social provision of parenting outside the home strips the parents of their sense of responsibility for their children's development and negatively affects healthy family attachments, creating a whole generation of insecure and troubled youths. He actually uses the words "home parenting" to describe what his family is trying to do, which I found to be rather effective in terms of helping me understand how far things have gone in Sweden.

He cautions Canada to not adopt the Swedish model of child care without studying it carefully first. As our province moves toward full-day kindergarten this coming fall (in all schools in BC) and considers providing pre-kindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds in future years, his words should give us pause for thought.

About the money...

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Sun, 01 May 2011 16:30:00 +0000

Home learning families often limp along on one income. It's the reality of choosing to have your children with you 24/7: someone needs to be available to be the caregiver for the children, to give them support and attention as fits their developmental and emotional needs. Often, depending on the ages of the kids, that's a full-time job right there.

Families have different ways of making it work, but it often comes down to figuring it out on a penny by penny basis.

This is one of the reasons why Distributed Learning (DL) schools, especially with the current cornucopia of choice, are so popular among home learners. Many parents cannot walk away from difference that $1000, $3000, or even $5000 (in large families!) can make in the lives of their children. I have often heard of children who would not be able to afford to pursue passions like music or dance or sports if it wasn't for the money provided through a DL school.

It's also a fact that there are home learning families who, if not "for the money", would gladly choose registration and the freedom from government oversight over enrollment. And, from time to time, people in this situation may feel that it's unfair that DLs appear to be receiving financial preferential treatment from the government, almost as though the registration option is not worth notice. These parents may wish to rattle some cages and ask the Ministry of Education to provide more money for registered families.

But that's because they may not understand this one vitally important thing: the money is never for the family.

School Funding

No DL or registering school in this province is required to give any home learning family any money in any form. In fact, they do not have the legal right, in the case of DL, to provide direct reimbursement, in the form of a cheque or cash, to parents.

Why? Because the money is not for the child or the family. It's for the school.

DL schools are obligated to use school funding to provide an educational program to a child (and that includes children eligible for a special education grant). It's up to them to determine how they will deliver that, including materials, resources, instruction, and support. Because home learning families are a choosy crowd, many DLs do the same thing -- they figure out a way to provide materials and services of a family's choosing through purchase orders or a reloadable Visa card or direct payment to a community-based service provider (like a dance school or music teacher). No money is to land directly in a parent's hand.

Why is that? In 2006, Bill 33 changed the School Act and made it legally clear that DL enrollment is not the same as section 13 registration.

Because, according to law, schools can reimburse section 13 families for home education related expenses--at their discretion. They don't have to, but they most certainly can.

Incentive-Free DL

Earlier in the 2000's, DL schools were competing for students by means of reimbursements. More learners means more money for their programs (and school districts).

Bill 33 clarified that money cannot go to parents by legally identifying Distributed Learning (DL) as a regular school program, bound by the requirements and expectations of every other school in the province. In addition, the DL school contracts with the Ministry clarified that no DLs are allowed to use funds as an enrollment incentive. The Independent DL school agreement, which covers the majority of K to 9 DL enrollment in this province, states that a DL "may not provide financial payments or reimbursements to students or the parents or guardians of Students" and "may not use any of the funding... as an incentive to have a Student enroll."

It's pretty clear. There is no money, not officially, for families enrolling in a DL program. The money is for the school alone. If they choose to supply materials or classes or resources and have figured out a way to pay for those things in a way that fits the law and their MinEd contract, then that's the way it currently works. And, as things currently stand, it means it works for a lot of families.

By the way, the law also says:

82 (1) A board must provide free of charge to every student of school age resident in British Columbia and enrolled in an educational program in a school operated by the board,
(a) instruction in an educational program sufficient to meet the general requirements for graduation,...
(c) educational resource materials necessary to participate in the educational program.

(I suspect this means your child should never have to pay additional fees to participate in a class or program offered by your child's DL, but you could check with the Ministry of Education to clarify.)

Registration and the Law

We often get as far as sections 12 through 14 in the School Act when it comes to registered home education in BC and that's where we stop. But there is a lot more there, including "the money" and what a school's responsibilities are to a registered homeschooler.

But there is nothing written that suggests that registered learners are entitled to any money at all.

In fact, as it stands, the Minister of Education, as per the School Act, has the jurisdiction to make orders:

168 (1) (j.2). establishing, for the purposes of section 168.1, the amount a student or a child registered under section 13 may be reimbursed, including
   (i) setting the maximum amount that may be paid,
   (ii) establishing a limit on the number of educational activities or categories of educational activities for which reimbursement may be made, and
   (iii) setting different amounts and different limits for different educational activities or different categories of educational activities,

It's all in the Minster of Education's hands.

168.1 The minister may reimburse a student or a child registered under section 13 for expenses incurred for instruction, examination or certification with respect to an educational activity or a category of educational activities designated by the minister, in the amount established by the minister, if the student or child
   (a) is of school age,
   (b) is resident in British Columbia, within the meaning of section 82 (2), and
   (c) demonstrates a standard of achievement, satisfactory to the minister, in the designated educational activity or category of educational activities.

Fees for Students Registered Under Section 13

Here's an interesting tidbit. According to the School Act, all schools, including those providing registration under section 13 of the School Act, can charge fees.

82 (6) A board must publish a schedule of the fees to be charged and deposits required and must make the schedule available to students and to children registered under section 13 and to the parents of those students and children before the beginning of the school year.

And...

82 (4) A board may require a deposit for educational resource materials provided to students and to children registered under section 13.
(5) If a board requires a deposit under subsection (4), it must refund all or part of the deposit to the student or child on return of the educational resource materials.

What Must Schools Offer as Part of Section 13 Registration?

It's all in the School Regulation.

3. (1) A school or francophone school that registers a child under section 13 of the Act must offer
   (a) evaluation and assessment services sufficient to enable the parents of the child to determine the educational progress achieved by the child in relation to students of similar age and ability, and
   (b) the loan of educational resource materials that are authorized and recommended by the minister,
   (i) which, in the board's opinion, are sufficient to enable the child to pursue his or her educational program, and
   (ii) which will be offered to the child on a similar basis to the offer of such educational resource materials to students.

(2) With the permission of a board, a child registered in a school or francophone school under section 13 of the Act may audit educational programs offered by the board subject to any terms and conditions established by the board, including the payment of any fee.

(3) A child in grade 10, 11, or 12 registered in school francophone school, or independent school under section 13 of the Act may enroll in all or part of an educational program that is
   (a) offered by a board or an independent school, and
   (b) delivered through distributed learning.

Note: If your child in grade 10, 11, or 12 enrolls in a class in a Brick and Mortar school, he will lose his registered status. Your child in those grades can, however, take as many DL courses as she likes without losing her registered status.

There is additional Ministry of Education policy about the responsibilities of Registering Schools (although policies are much easier to change than statutes).

Bottom Line

The government does not want to directly give DL families financial compensation for learning at home.

DL money is for the DL school, so the school can provide an educational program to the enrolled students.

Why? Because it's not fair to the Brick and Mortar families. The Ministry doesn't want to differentiate between the two types of enrollment in terms of services, administration, or relationship to families. The only difference is mode of delivery or "venue".

Unlike DL, however, registered families can receive compensation for educational expenses. But only to a point. When Sections 12 and 13 became part of the School Act in 1989, public schools received $1200 for each registered homeschooler and independent schools received $600. By 1994, that number had been decreased to its current levels of $250 per learner for a public school and $175 per learner for an independent school. Why?

Registration money is for the registering school so it can do the administrivial tasks required and be compensated for the time involved.

I suspect that public schools were not providing much in the way of access to resources to home educating students, so the amounts were dialed down to cover administration costs only. It may also have been that the government was thinking that more money required greater accountability and, instead of increasing oversight, decided to decrease funding. I don't know for sure.

The Alberta government, however, minces no words on the matter. As per the Alberta Home Education Handbook: "The Alberta government uses public dollars to fund education. Funding varies according to the level of public accountability in the program. School authority programs are subject to a higher level of public accountability than home education programs and so receive a higher level of funding."

I'm always amazed at registering independent schools in BC who, at their own discretion, provide up to $150 to compensate home learning families for materials and resources. I'm very grateful to them. And I know that independent schools offer this reimbursement to families as it then takes care of their obligation to loan materials (a headache to administer). Money, however, is not something that registered homeschoolers are entitled to receive. In fact, independent schools, unlike public schools, don't even have to register anyone if they don't want to. They provide this service as a kindness.

No More Money

Most currently registered homeschooling families would balk at "more money". Here's why.

More money for registering schools would very likely mean more oversight for registered families. Money always requires increased accountability to government and to tax payers -- not just for how the money is used, but how effectively the money is being used.

We don't want that.

We don't want to go the way of Alberta where even the least intrusive option (where parents do not follow the Alberta Programs of Studies) requires two home visits a year from certified teachers who "measure progress" based on parent developed learning outcomes as well as basic provincially determined learning outcomes.

This is not even the "online learning program" option, which would be the equivalent to DL in our province. This is the equivalent to our sections 12 and 13, and is much more intrusive than many BC DL options. Sure, home educators get more money per child, but is it worth the price?

It's the same in the Yukon, which once had laws similar to ours that were changed in 2002... and where there is no financial compensation for home educators in any form. Now, "as part of registration, parents are required to submit an education plan. The plan includes the methods of teaching and the resources you will use for the subjects of literacy and numeracy [including "the skills of literacy, listening, speaking, reading, writing, numeracy, mathematics, analysis, problem solving, information processing computing"]. There is no requirement to provide this information for other subject areas." In addition, the children are subject to testing and "the Minister may, in writing, terminate the home education program if the Minister is of the opinion... that the student has failed to meet standards of student achievement, as measured by achievement testing, comparable to schools operated by the Minister or a School Board."

This is very different from BC where it's stated in both law and policy "The school has no authority to approve or supervise the educational program of a homeschooled child."

This is the beauty of registration in BC. This is why our legal status under sections 12 through 14 of the School Act is so precious and deserves to be protected as is. Parents truly are in charge of their children's learning without having to submit plans and learning outcomes to schools or Ministry officials. Our children are not poked and prodded with respect to what and how much they know (and neither are their parents). It is educational freedom at its best.

If preserving our statutory rights to educate our children free of government oversight and involvement means not taking "the money", so be it!

______________________________

John Holt: Uninvited Teaching

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 15:01:00 +0000

I've recently written a post about Skipping those Teachable Moments, outlining some of the recent research that explores how children learn and how intentional teaching actually gets in the way of a child's learning.

Pat Farenga, of Holt Associates, has been posting youtube videos of talks given by John Holt when he was still living.

This morning, I was listening to a talk John gave in Sweden in 1982 and it reminded me of how incredibly wise and insightful this man was. The videos are all linked below, but here is some text I pulled out of Part III of the series. It's about "uninvited teaching" and how that affects a child.

Unasked for, uninvited teaching gets in the way of learning, prevents, slows it down, stops it altogether... That will seem, perhaps, a surprising thing to say.

There are several reasons why teaching which has not been asked for by the learner prevents, slows down, impedes learning.

This is a terribly important thing to understand. When one person says to another, without being asked, I am going to teach you something, that statement carries two hidden messages, very often unconscious messages. It says two things that we might not want to say. But it says them none-the-less.

And the first is, "You are too stupid to understand why this is important, why this is something you should know." And the second is, "Even if you understood that it was important, you are still too stupid to learn it or to figure it out for yourself with your questions and experiments, so I am going to have to do all that work for you."

Very little children are extremely good at hearing the emotional meaning of what we say. They hear these messages, which we may not even know we are sending... and it makes them angry.

"A word to the wise is infuriating"...

Unasked for teaching and I have to say, unasked for testing, is a statement of no confidence, so do not... give information that people have not asked for as they will hear this as an insult.

Lots of other good John Holt stuff in these recordings.

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

These are not visually exciting (just stills, not video), so you can put them on and do other things. Definitely worth the time to listen to.

Living History

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 14:29:00 +0000

When we think of history, we think of the past and, often, big and glorious events or eras. Sometimes what we know about history is limited to what someone else has told us, usually in a book or in a video, or what someone has displayed in a museum, and we have to rely on their research and conclusions to inform our own.

But there is a way to look at history with much fresher, first-person eyes. It's about seeing our world and how it evolved.

John Stilgoe, a historian who teaches the History of Landscape at Harvard University, says:

Education ought to work outdoors, in the rain and in the sleet, in the knife-like heat of a summertime Nebraska wheat field, along a half-abandoned railroad track on a dark autumn afternoon, on the North Atlantic in winter. All that I do is urge my students and readers to look around, to realize how wonderfully rich is the built environment, even if the environment is only a lifeboat close-hauled in a chiaroscuro sea.

In his book, Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places, he suggests getting out of our everyday routines and going for a walk or a bike ride. All you need to see your local world in a different light are your eyes, your feet, and your curiosity. It's about noticing.

An online review states that Stilgoe's philosophy...

centers around the idea that simply noticing the things normally taken for granted will teach us a great deal about the human-built environment we inhabit. Everything has a lesson, from the direction and type of power lines above the streets, to the shape and maker of man-hole covers, to the direction and width of city streets. Paying attention to these lessons can help us learn how our cities took shape and what they looked like before cars and electricity and other "improvements" of modern life.

I don't think you need Stilgoe's book to slow down and notice the details (it seems to be out of print anyway) and wonder about them. But he has an interesting way of thinking about history, which makes it more immediate and relevant to our lives. It's right in front of us.

The Harvard Gazette has a video of John Stilgoe giving a tour of Harvard Yard, exposing many secrets that most people would overlook completely. (I like his bow tie.) It will give you a good idea of his approach.

And that is, get out there, look around, be curious, ask questions, wonder, and explore.

As Stilgoe says, "Exploration is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun."

Where are all the DL learners? Part II

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 16:00:00 +0000

After going back through all 69 DL School Reports (yes, we have 69 DL schools in this province), I realized that I could get some of the data I needed all by myself. It was a bit tricky in places, as many schools make errors when they enter their data for the reports. Once or twice, I had to make an informed guess about what the enrollment might be (for example, I had a hunch that the Vancouver Learning Network, through SD 39, might have around 80 kids enrolled from K to 7 based on the other data provided). Most of the hard cold facts, thankfully, were right in front of my nose.

How Many K to 9 DL Learners Are There?

As I mused in Part I, the Grades K to 9 age group is the most likely place where registration is bleeding numbers to DL. Parents who may have chosen registration in the past may now be choosing DL as it becomes the "default" choice in BC home learning culture.

All the numbers below are for K through 9 only because these are the compulsory grades for registration or enrollment. Also, kids in these grades must attend full-time in only one school, unlike grade 10. School leaving age in BC is 16, meaning that the child does not have to register or enroll the fall of the year he or she has her 16th birthday.

NOTE: The data used for the school reports, my source, is compiled from the September 30 submission of the 1701 forms (Student Data Collection). As enrollment is fluid and not fixed, these figures are projections and not final or absolute numbers.

That being said...

The total DL enrollment for 2010/2011, as of September 30, for grades K through 9 was (approximately) 7943.

Yes. 7943. Not close to 30,000 or 50,000 as the reports suggest (or even half of those numbers for this particular demographic). Instead, close to 8000.

By the way, that leaves 7,941 school-aged students who are enrolled in DL for grades 10 to 12, a population I'm not all that concerned about when comparing DL and registration (at this point).

And, here's the really interesting part, more of those kids in that K-to-9 grade range are enrolled in independent DL schools than in public DL schools. There are 3472 K-to-9 kids (approximately) enrolled in public DL programs. There are 4471 K-to-9 kids enrolled in independent DL programs.

That's a difference of 1000 home learners. 56% independent DLs, 44% public DLs. And remember, there are only 14 independent DL schools compared to 55 public DL schools. And only 12 of those independent schools cater to K to 9 compared to 44 public DLs.

The Details

It's even more interesting to look at the different schools (the main "players") and see their numbers.

Heritage Christian Online School has 1322 learners enrolled K to 9. That's almost 17% of the total DL population for this age group in the province.

SelfDesign has 1118 learners enrolled K to 9. That's over 14% of all learners in this category.

Together, these two big DLs have almost a third of the K to 9 DL enrollments for the province: 31%.

So, what about EBUS? Well, EBUS is the actually the 5th largest DL for this age category in the province at 435 enrollments or 5.5%. The two DL programs that beat EBUS out are independent: Traditional Learning Academy (Surrey) with 495 enrollments (6%) and Regent Christian Online Academy (Saanich) with 491 enrollments (6%).

The next biggest public school DL for this age group is New West's Homelearners' Program with 258 enrollments K to 9. That takes in 3% of the population.

It dwindles rapidly from there. As there are 44 public DLs in the province who cater to K to 9, sharing 3472 students, the average student enrollment in a public DL is 79.

I think it's worth noting that out of the 56 DL programs who enroll K to 9, six enroll over 52% of DL learners and four of those six are independent DL schools.

What About the Money?

Together, independent schools take in $17,537,789.

Public schools take in $27,428,722.

And the total funding is $44,966,511 for K to 9 DL in the province or 56% of all DL funding (despite representing only 28% of the DL headcount for all ages).

As you would guess, the big enrollment schools have the big money. Of course, because independent DLs only get 50% of the grant provided to their local school district, a school like EBUS doesn't come out too badly on paper. See the chart to compare total funding amounts based on the K to 9 FTE (full-time equivalent) figure, 7698, which is lower than enrollment for some reason (likely Kindergarten and this year will be the last year for that as all DLs will be required to go full-time for K).

Indep. School	Total DL Head Count	K to 9 Head Count	K to 9 FTE	2010/11 Per FTE Funding	Approx. K to 9 Funding (FTE)

Anchor Academy	470	369	354	$4,119	$1,458,126
Heritage Christian	1698	1322	1311.5	$3,655	$4,793,533
Regent Christian Online	524	491	464.5	$3,796	$1,763,242
Self Design	1342	1118	1106	$4,627	$5,117,462
Traditional Learning Academy	645	495	475	$3,657	$1,737,075

Total Indep (12 schools)	5501	4471	4363.3		$17,537,789

Public School	Total DL Head Count	K to 9 Head Count	K to 9 FTE	2010/11 Per FTE Funding	Approx. K to 9 Funding (FTE)

FVDES	1672	183	181	$7,357	$1,331,617
Surrey Connect	3878	156	155	$7,314	$1,133,670
New West Homelearners' Program	258	258	245.5	$7,307	$1,793,869
SIDES	2554	192	181.6	$7,592	$1,378,707
NIDES	2025	202	194.5	$7,681	$1,493,955
@kool	877	74	73.5	$7,918	$581,973
EBUS	843	435	426.6	$9,931	$4,236,565

Total Public (44 schools)	22061	3472	3335		$27,428,722

	TOTAL DL Head Count	K to 9 Head Count	K to 9 FTE		Approx. K to 9 Funding (FTE)
TOTAL DL (K-9)	27592	7943	7698		$44,966,511

Are You Surprised?

I was, a little.

But it doesn't make me less concerned about registration numbers. Here's why.

In 1996/97, before the MinEd put a cap on and formalized public DL programs, there were 4925 registered home learners in our province. There were no numbers for DL that year as school districts weren't yet required to separate them out from their regular enrollments. But, in 1997/98, they were and the enrollment that year, for all grades and ages, was 8362. So, let's generously say it was about that number the year before (although that may be far too generous). That gives us a split of about 37:63 for registered/DL in terms of the overall home learning population (including distance education schools).

In 2010/11, there are 2218 registered home learners and 27,597 enrolled DL students. We know that number is inflated by many young adults and adults doing high school or upgrading via DL, so even when we control for that and compare the registered number (for up to age 19) to grade K through 9 for enrolled, we get a split of 22:78 registered/DL for home learners across BC.

In 1996, at least 1 out of every 3 home learners was registered (likely closer to 1 out of 2 if we were able to correct for grades 10 to 12). In 2011, only 1 out of every 5 home learners (grades K-to-9) is registered.

If my mathematical reasoning on this is wrong, please let me know. I'm open to correction. Or if you have a better way to present the relationship, I'd like to hear about that, too.

But, for now, this shows the trend in a different sort of way.

Nope, it's not as bad as I originally thought (7:93). But it's still moving in a certain direction and will likely continue along that trajectory unless more people consider registration for their families.

And why would they want to do that? Well, perhaps that will be a little something for another post.

__________________________________

Go to these links for my sources:

http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/reporting/

http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/independentschools/is_resources/10-11_recalc_grants.pdf

Where are all the DL learners? Part I

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:14:00 +0000

As I've been looking over the numbers in the various Ministry of Education reports, one thought keeps popping up over and over again. It's this:

If there are ~30,000 dedicated Distributed Learners in BC, where are they?

In Victoria, the local support groups have a modest membership (from 100 to 200 families, depending on the group, with a lot of crossover between groups). The big Vancouver list, which has participants from all over the lower mainland, has a membership of just under 800. Other support groups around the province have relatively smaller memberships, from 20 to 100 families on average, depending on location.

Where are all these DL kids hiding?

I decided to take a closer look at the numbers to see what was happening. I created a spreadsheet listing all the Distributed Learning (DL) schools in the province. I looked at the 2010/11 Student Statistics report for each school and determined the following: the head count as of September 30, the number of school-aged children enrolled, the number of adults enrolled, the Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) number, and the Per Pupil Funding Grant as of December, 2010.

Here's what I found...

For public DL programs, as of September 30, there are more adult DL students than there are school-aged students. Yes, that's right.

When I added up the head counts of all the public DL programs, there were 11,812 adults enrolled out of a total of 22,096 DL learners. That means that as of September 30, there were only 10,419 school-aged kids (K-12) enrolled in Public DLs.

That's not all, folks. If you squish those 22,096 public DL enrollments together so that all the students taking one or two DL courses are combined to make one full-time student (eight courses for the year), then the Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) enrollment for public schools was 7447 including the adults. And that funding amount, as of September 30, added up to $59,561,254.40.

That made me curious. What would happen to that number if we took out the adult students? What would happen that number if we took out the Grades 10 to 12 kids who only take a few courses over the year?

So, I sent an email to the Education Reporting Unit to see if they could help me understand what's going on.

And, as of the writing of this post, I haven't heard back yet (so there will be a sequel - yay!).

However, a funny thing happened when I called the Distributed Learning Unit to find out how many courses registered kids 15+ years could take and not lose their registered status (which is as many as they'd like, by the way, for grades 10 to 12). I was passed along to the branch manager, Tim Winkelmans. Tim had actually seen my email so most of our conversation was spent discussing DL numbers (and he assured me that he had someone working on a response for me and that I would be given some additional links to data that I may not have seen yet).

Here are some things that Tim cleared up for me...

On the Ministry School Statistics Report, there are two DL numbers listed. These contain data from the September 30 1701 forms (what all schools submit to the MinEd for the initial head count, which affects the first batch of funding of the year). One is Headcount of Students by Facility Type (and includes both public and independent schools). That number is 27,539 for DL (which was slightly lower than the number I got from adding up all the individual school enrollments (27,597), which I thought was odd). The second number is for Students Enrolled in Programs (public and independent DL schools) and that number was 49,601.

Tim clarified that the first number was for kids who are ONLY enrolled in a DL school. The second number includes both the first number AND kids who are cross-enrolled; that is, kids who are both attending a brick and mortar school and are also taking a DL course (would likely include registered home learners who are taking a DL course or two as well). That means, that we can just forget about those additional 22,000+ kids when we are looking at DL numbers. Those kids wouldn't be registered anyway (unless they already are!).

Tim was quite surprised by my figures involving adult learners. He assured me that might be what it *looked* like as of September 30, but the reality was that DL for Grades 10 to 12 has year-round enrollment. The September 30 number greatly under-represents the total number of DL-only students from September through August for 2010-2011.

This bit here was taking from one of the reports I used for the Trends post. Click to enlarge it, but the fine print under item 3 states:

3) As students can enrol in DL courses at any time, this will under-represent the actual number of students taking courses by distributed learning in a year. The annual total DL enrolment was 33,0222 for 2006-07 and 48,491 for 2007/08. The projected enrolment for 2008/09 is 56,000. [includes both public and independent DL numbers]

I don't know what the projected enrollment is for 2010/11 unless the person compiling the report forgot to change the dates (which may be the case). However, it is important to realize that most of these additional kids are likely very part-time, just picking up a course or two. The FTE will be much lower, so the funding will be much lower. When I crunched the numbers for public DL (without cross-enrollment) using the September 30 numbers, I came up with a total public DL funding amount of $59,561,254.40. When I spoke to Tim on the phone, he suggested that number, by the end of the funding period for 2010/2011, would be closer to $75 million for public DL alone.

What about independent DL schools?

Tim doesn't have much to do with independent DLs as they are outside of the LearnNowBC mandate. The Office of the Inspector of Independent Schools (OIIS) oversees independent DLs directly.

Here's the thing that's interesting about independent DLs. Their headcount (as of September 30) closely matches their FTE. As of September 30, there were 5501 learners enrolled and the FTE was 5148.2. In addition, there were only a total of 36 adults students enrolled in independent DLs. This means that most of those 5501 enrollments are full-time K to 12 learners.

The total funding for all independent DL programs, according to the September 30 head count and the December funding amounts, is $20,567,285.40.

The Big Players

If you are insatiably curious like I am, you may be wondering which DLs have the highest enrollments (and funding). I'm happy to share that with you.

Surprisingly, although public DLs have an FTE of 7411.9 and independent DLs have an FTE of 5148.2, the *BIG* DLs are independent.

The most popular DL is Heritage Christian Online School with a headcount of 1698 and a FTE of 1656. Although their 50% funding is only $3655, they are the second highest funded DL in the province: $6,052,680.00.

The next most popular DL is SelfDesign Learning Community with a headcount of 1342 and a FTE of 1168. Their funding, with the half-district-funding landing at $4627, means that they are third highest in the province at $5,404,336.00.

So, what about EBUS Academy? The headcount as of September 30 was 843 with a FTE of 613.9. The Nechako Lakes School District was allotted funding at $9,931 per student this year, so the grand total for EBUS is $6,096,640.90. This is the highest funding amount that any DL in the province, public or independent, receives.

The Other Numbers

Students taking part-time DL courses (not cross-enrolled) over-inflate the DL numbers so that it looks like there is a lot more funding going toward DL than there actually is. Take Surrey Connect, for example. In terms of headcount alone, it's the largest DL in the province with 3878 learners. So why didn't I pick them as a big player? Because of their FTE. Their FTE is only 629.1 learners, which means that most of their enrollment is part-time and likely Grades 10 to 12. So, yes, on paper that's higher than EBUS. But... their per pupil funding grant is only $7,314, putting their total funding as $4,601,237.40.

Big, yes. But not a program that's competing with K-9 registration.

Because that was my motive for crunching these numbers.

I was trying to determine which programs were most salient to that K to 9 population who may have chosen registration over the Distance Education Schools in days of yore but who are now drawn to DL.

Looking at the trends in student enrollment since 2006 (Bill 33), here's what enrollment looks like for the DLs whose FTE closely matches the September headcount.

DL School	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
Anchor Academy	329	375	360	478	470
Heritage Christian	897	1120	1293	1577	1698
Self Design	456	682	755	974	1342
Traditional Learning Academy	313	499	547	576	645
For comparison (enrollment has higher proportion of adult and Grade 10-12 students)
Surrey Connect	620	1434	1155	2059	3878
Vancouver Learning Network	520	1008	1242	1267	653*
SIDES	615	1214	1639	2259	2554
NIDES	604	843	799	1213	2025
@kool	268	406	357	597	877
EBUS	849	857	811	992	843

*missing some data for 2010/11

Here's what registration looks like in that same time period.

This year, the registration number is 2218, another -9.5 decrease.

Someone asked me if I felt any better about the DL numbers once I had taken a closer look at them and realized that most of that 30,000-ish DL enrollment number was made up of adult or Grades 10 to 12 part-time students. I had to say, no. Not really. The trend is still the trend. More home learning families in BC are choosing DL over registration and registration numbers are falling rapidly. Both Tim Winkelmans and a home learning parent pointed out that there are simply fewer kids in the province. That's true. However, when I told Tim that registration had fallen by 9.5% each of the past two years, he was quite surprised. He indicated that was a much steeper drop-off than what would be expected based on the rate of decline of the school-aged population in BC.

Even More Numbers

For those of you who are interested, here is some of the data from above in chart format. I know it's easier for some folks (like me) to see the big picture when the data is presented like this.

Independent DL Schools

There are 14 independent DL schools in BC. Theses are only the ones that have fairly robust enrollment numbers. The total at the bottom includes data from all 14 schools.

School	SD	10/11 Head Count	School-Age	Adult	10/11 FTE	2010/11 Per FTE Funding	Approx. Total Funding (FTE)

Anchor Academy	83	470	470	0	426.5	$4,119	$1,756,754
Heritage Christian	23	1698	1689	9	1656	$3,655	$6,052,680
Regent Christian Online	63	524	524	0	487.3	$3,796	$1,849,791
Self Design	8	1342	1318	24	1168	$4,627	$5,404,336
Traditional Learning Academy	36	645	644	1	609.4	$3,657	$2,228,576
						Average
Total Indep		5501	5465	36	5148.2	$3995	$20,567,285

Public DL Schools

There are 55 public DL schools in BC. I've listed the ones with significant enrollment or FTE numbers.

School	SD	10/11 Head Count	School-Age	Adult	10/11 FTE	2010/11 Per FTE Funding	Approx. Total Funding (FTE)

FVDES	33	1672	736	936	594.3	$7,357	$4,372,265
Surrey Connect	36	3878	2138	1740	629.1	$7,314	$4,601,237
Vancouver Learning Network*	39	653	440	213	714.1	$7,513	$5,365,033
New West Homelearners' Program	40	258	258	0	245.5	$7,307	$1,793,869
SIDES	63	2554	833	1721	510.9	$7,592	$3,878,753
NIDES	71	2025	612	1413	487.7	$7,681	$3,746,024
@kool	73	877	348	529	226.1	$7,918	$1,790,260
EBUS	91	843	704	139	613.9	$9,931	$6,096,641
						Average
Total Public		22096	10419	11812	7447	$8001	$59,561,254

* Missing some of the school-aged enrollment data due to data entry error

All Together Now

	10/11 Head Count	School-Age	Adult	10/11 FTE	2010/11 Per FTE Funding	Approx. Total Funding (FTE)

Total Indep	5501	5465	36	5148.2	$3995	$20,567,285
Total Public	22061	10384	11812	7411.9	$8001	$59,305,235
					Average
Combined Total	27597	15884	11848	12595.2	$6362	$80,128,539

Please feel free to ask any questions you may have. I may not have the data at my fingertips, but now I know who to ask. Also, I'm happy to forward my complete excel spreadsheet along to anyone who asks.

Also, in advance, mea culpa. I'm sure there is likely a glitch with the numbers here and there. Although I tried to make sure the information is accurate, my fingers sometimes have a mind of their own. Please feel free to check the figures, data, and calculations yourself if something seems off -- and please let me know if I've made a mistake!

Also, it's important to know that these numbers only indicate what enrollment may have looked like this year based on September 30 projections... but they are not accurate. That data is only available at the end of the school year and is not collated nicely into the student statistics reports.

My next post will hopefully have some information about the proportion of adult students in the FTE amounts. Also, I will take the time to tabulate the numbers for grades K to 9 for each DL listed on my spread sheet, which will likely give us a more accurate number of full-time DL students in BC. This number is important because this age-group is required to be enrolled full-time in a school and cannot cross enroll. The calendar year a student turns 16, he or she is no longer required to either register or enroll in September.

____________________________________

Now you, too, can make your own obsessive spreadsheet

Go to these links for my sources:

http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/reporting/

http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/independentschools/is_resources/10-11_recalc_grants.pdf

__________________________________

Divided We Stand

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 14:38:00 +0000

The BC government's Ministry of Education has made it quite clear that there is a distinct difference between DL enrollment and s. 12 registration.

Homeschooling is an alternative method of teaching where the parent delivers an educational program to children at home. The School Act, (section 12) provides parents with the statutory right to educate their children at home.

Homeschooling is the full responsibility of the parent, is not supervised by a British Columbia certified teacher, is not required to meet provincial standards, and is not inspected by the Ministry of Education.

Distributed Learning (DL) should not be confused with Homeschooling...

It's an external division between the two types of home learning in our province based on legislation.

Most of the time, however, home learning families are just home learning families. On the surface, we are all "doing the best we can with what we know" on a day-to-day basis with our children. We all understand this and we often attend the same activities and classes and events. And everyone gets along most of the time. No one cares who registers or enrolls or why. It's just not that important most of the time.

But when this topic comes up, about the deeper differences between registration and enrollment, it can be quite polarizing. We can find ourselves divided from within as well.

On one side, s. 12 registered homeschoolers are saying, "Folks! We get why you enroll. But can't you see the threat here? Can't you understand that we really really badly need you to walk away from the funding and stand with the ranks of those of us who want to be, as one parent eloquently wrote, "counted as a family wanting the rights and freedoms to homeschool".

On the other side, DL-enrolled families are saying, "Guys! We like what we are getting from DLs, even if it's just "the money". We like the resources, the extra classes, the contact with the online teacher, the events organized in our local community, etc. Don't rock our boat! We can live with the current impositions. We are happy!"

Inevitably, people's feelings get hurt. And it's because this conversation is not about some theoretical issue. It's because it's about a parenting decision. And that means it's about our kids.

And that's deeply personal.

So, how can we find a way to talk about the difference between registration and enrollment and the larger ramifications of our choices without hurting each other's feelings? I believe that it's important for everyone to have all the facts in hand about our options in order to make a truly informed choice. But how do we do that without dividing our home learning communities? How do we do that without the taint of judgment?

Perhaps the way around this is to focus on what the two "brands" of home learning families have in common.

We all care deeply about our children, enough to want them with us 24/7.

We have all chosen a form of education where we parents are facilitating the learning experiences of our children according to our independently chosen philosophies of education.

We are all able to monitor our children's well-being from close up, helping them successfully navigate the different experiences and challenges of life because we are beside them.

We are all able to customize our children's learning experiences so that our children's needs are being supported and our children are able to shine in their areas of strength and interest.

We all have chosen the road less travelled and while we appreciate the huge difference that has made in our lives, we share many of the same struggles and concerns along the way.

And most of us would prefer the least amount of outside interference in terms of our children's learning and lives.

Does any of this change the fact that there are important differences between registration and enrollment? No. But it may change the lens so that we are able to see each other's concerns more clearly, without feeling defensive or frustrated.

And the blunt truth of it is that we actually need each other to maintain our current choices.

DL enrollees need the registration option to thrive if DL schools are to continue to work hard to meet the needs of learners and families. Registration is everyone's back door and all the schools are aware of this.

Registered families need DL families to back them if sections 12 and 13 ever come under threat, either due to decreasing numbers or a pending change in legislation or policy.

The home learning "community" is an interdependent, symbiotic system. Home learners are mutually beneficial to one another. We need each other.

Does this mean that registered families will stop seeing DL as the main reason for declining registration numbers? Does it mean that enrolled families will stop being annoyed that the term "homeschooling" is reserved for s. 12 registration?

Probably not. But it does mean this.

Divided we stand. But only if the division ends at our decision to register or enroll.

Hugs to you all,

Rebecca

__________________________________

The Importance of Happiness

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 15:04:00 +0000

One of the most exciting things to happen in the field of psychology in the past 12 years is the rise of the Positive Psychology movement. Martin Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness and past president of the American Psychological Association, began his research career studying learned helplessness in an attempt to learn more about depression. Yes, brilliant graduate student that he was, he was the guy who put dogs in cages and gave them electric shocks in both escapable and non-escapable situations. The dogs given non-escapable shocks eventually just gave up.

When studying learned helplessness in humans, researchers began to realize that not all human reacted the same way. Explanatory style (optimism, pessimism) were identified as key factors in developing "learned helplessness". Seligman (likely feeling a bit guilty about those poor dogs) decided to turn his attention to the study of learned optimism, writing several popular books about the topic (Learned Optimism, The Optimistic Child, What You Can Change and What You Can't).

He realized that most of psychology was about studying people who were already unwell and the focus of all psychology was on what wasn't working or what was wrong with people. He decided he wanted to flip that and look for health and for what was working. He wanted to know how to help people created more fulfilling lives. He termed this new "branch" of psychology, Positive Psychology. He was joined in his quest by researchers like Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, author of Flow and Creativity.

In 2000, Seligman and Csikszentmihaly (pronounced "Cheeks-send-me-high") published an article in the periodical American Psychologist titled, "Positive Psychology: An Introduction." In it, they stated:

We believe that a psychology of positive human functioning will arise that achieves a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving in individuals, families, and communities.

Since that statement in 2000, the positive psychology movement has gained great momentum. It has become central to the psychology departments at several Ivy League universities, such as Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania (where Seligman continues to research and teach). If you'd like to hear Seligman talk about Positive Psychology, here is the link to his TED Talk.

I was thrilled to watch the following talk by Harvard researcher Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage. It's worth the 20 minutes or so it takes to listen to the whole thing, as the "how to" is given in the last three minutes. Achor is an engaging presenter and tells some charming stories and shares some compelling information. Besides, there's an anecdote about a unicorn (if you weren't already convinced).

Achor clearly says that the goal is not to be happy all the time (even Seligman admits there is a purpose for pessimism and that pessimists tend to be more realistic and practical than optimists). However, it is possible to raise your baseline for happiness and create a more positive "new normal".

Here's how:

Gratitudes: every morning, write down five things you are grateful for.
Journaling: write about a positive experience for three minutes once a day
Simplify vs. multitask: "you are happier if you do more things by doing one thing at a time"
Utilizing strengths: find out what your strengths are and use them
Exercise: provides the same relief from depression as medication
Meditation: focus on your breathing. "You are breathing anyway, you might as well watch it."

For each of these points, Achor explains how the research has shown how these simple actions physically change our brain as well as redirect our behaviour.

Of course, all of these things have tremendous applications in terms of learning. It is so important, for example, to help our children find their strengths and use them as their primary mode for learning as there truly is a ripple effect in terms of supporting areas of weakness without direct intervention. Also, if people are happy before doing a task, their performance goes up by 50%. This implies that we really need to pay more attention to creating a positive and happy learning environment for our kids than implementing curriculum or worrying about skill development.

There are many more gems in this talk that are so fantastic, so worth knowing about, it will be 20 minutes well-spent just to be able to bring this information into our daily interactions with our kids, our partners, and the world around us.

Never Too Late

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 03:37:00 +0000

When it comes to learning about music, our culture has an "early is better than later" mentality. This works well for some children. And not so well for others. And adults who never had musical training as children are sometimes left holding a whole lot of wistful regret.

Unfortunately, we tend to hone in on the performance aspect of music rather than celebrating that we are, in fact, all musical beings. Music is a birthright, one of the marvelous side effects to being human. It's a gift we all share. Some of my favourite musical memories as a child are from times my whole family sung together, often in 4-part harmony, formally and informally. Surprisingly, piano recitals were always a bit of a low point.

I love stories about musicians who "started late". I mentioned Austin Scott in this post on The Importance of Autonomy, who started on the penny whistle as a teen and became a professional flautist along the way. Another high profile local musician apparently did not begin to play the piano until in his late teens, and now he's an expert on opera and will often coach professional opera singers during rehearsal for Pacific Opera Victoria performances.

I know of a homeschooling child who wouldn't practice the violin at age 8 or 9. Instead of struggling over practicing, his mom told him it would be best to wait, and a year or two later, he was ready to pursue the instrument because he really wanted it and was willing to take it on himself... and ended up winning a scholarship to an prestigious music program in California in his late teens.

Then there's Irving Berlin who began his musical career busking in saloons on New York's Lower East Side. When he was 18, he started making up his own tunes without knowing how to read or write music (which was fairly common back then). He taught himself to play the piano, using mainly the black keys, which put him solidly in the key of F sharp major for most of his songs (which were later transposed by others).

I recently listened to a TED Talk where it was revealed (to my great surprise) that one of my favourite modern "classical" composers, Eric Whitacre, didn't know how to read music when he went to college. He liked music, but wanted to be a rock star. His mind was changed when a friend convinced him to join the choir as an opportunity to meet girls and travel.

During this interview, he shares about how he became hooked:

"First was sitting in my very first choral rehearsal. And they said, "Open with the Kyrie," and I didn't know what a Kyrie was. I was raised without any religion at all. And then we start the fugue from the Mozart Requiem. And that moment changed my life. I couldn't believe how beautiful and agonizing and thrilling music and counterpoint could be. And so I joined all the choirs."

Whitacre had always loved music and had fiddled around with it on his own (learning to play the piano by ear), but he never had formal training until he was a young adult (and then he went to Julliard!).

John Holt, in his book, Never Too Late, tells the story of how he learned to play the cello as an adult. In his introduction he writes,

Most people who play an musical instrument learned as children. I did not. Few adults who have never played an instrument before take one up, least of all in middle age, and least of all a bowed string instrument (supposed to be the hardest). I am one who did. Though I came from a largely nonmusical family and had almost no musical training or experience while growing up, I began to play the flute at thirty-four, and the cello at forty, which I put aside a couple of years later and took up again at fifty. Now, when home, I try to play three or four hours a day, more when I can make time for it. To become a skillful musician has become perhaps the most important task of my life.

So, how does it turn out? Well, it will be different for everyone. But pushing or even encouraging a child to start early won't guarantee their future love of or passion for music. Authentic passion and dedication to one's instrument is likely the best predictor of musical "success", which in my mind is simply being able to play or sing well enough to have a really good time, in whatever venue the musician chooses, and whenever he or she feels like it.

____________________________________________

Please check out Eric Whitacre's second "Virtual Choir" performance on YouTube. Over 2000 singers from across the globe recorded themselves singing one of eight parts from Whitacre's SATB piece, Sleep, and the combined effort has just been released.

I've been privileged to sing a few of Whitacre's compositions in local choirs and they always give me the most beautiful, spine-tingling, goose bump moments.

This is stunning. Enjoy.

Trends

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 13:38:00 +0000

click image to enlarge
from the BC Ministry of Education's Summary of Key Information report

In 2006/07, you will see a small dip in public DL enrollments and a small rise in registration numbers. This was likely due to Bill 33 and the fact that DLs could no longer write cheques directly to parents for reimbursement purposes, the exception being internet costs.

Some people, by looking at the column that compares the number of registered homeschoolers in the province to the overall number of students, may think that the decrease in registration matches the overall decrease in enrollment the province has been facing over the past 10 years: 0.6% in 2000/01 to 0.4% in 2009/10.

I'm not sure that those registration "percentages" tell the whole story. Some additional decimal points provide a clearer picture. For example, in 2009/10, it was really 0.379%, where as in 2006/07, it was 0.422%, even though both are reported as a rounded figure 0.4% of all students. For 2010/11, the figure is 0.343%.

It's also a matter of scale, which is clearly shown in the graphs. If the 2000/01 figures are included, it will be even more pronounced when the data comes out for 2010/2011 as the registration numbers are now just over 2200.

When I look at the overall numbers, yes, school enrollment for both public and independent has dropped (except for last year when it increased by 0.2%). In 2000/01, there were 692,148 students enrolled. In 2009/10, there were 640,952 enrolled: a net decrease of 42,196 or 6.1%.

click image to enlarge
from the BC Ministry of Education's Summary of Key Information report

When I look at the registration numbers in the same way, in 2000/01, there were 4134 registered children. In 2009/10, there were 2463: a net decrease of 1671 or 40%.

If you compare the rates of change (6.1% overall to 40% registered), you can see that the trend isn't quite as innocuous as 0.2% might seem on paper.

And, if you compare the rate of change to the highest level of registration ever, 1996/97, when there were 4925, to the numbers this year, 2228, then the net decrease over the past 15 years is 2697 or 55%.

This year's and last year's registration numbers are the lowest since the very first year registration became a legal option. The number of registered homeschoolers in 1989/90 (1695) was likely more a figure of compliance than a true indication of the number of homeschoolers in the province. I'm sure there were many people digging in their heels at the change as they understood that their children's education was already their responsibility under the previous School Act.

Back to numbers:

The rate of change for both last year and this year is - 9.5% for registration.

The rate of change, however, for 2009/10 for overall numbers was +0.2% and for this year it is -0.09%. I think that's significantly different than -9.5% in terms of overall change. Not that I plan to dust off my rusty statistics background to do proper calculations. I believe the numbers speak for themselves and demonstrate a trend that I suspect will continue on the same trajectory as registered learners "graduate" and fewer families with young children register.

Sources:

http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/reporting/docs/ski.pdf
http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/reports/pdfs/student_stats/prov.pdf

Note: The Summary of Key Information report for 2010/11 was not yet available on the Ministry of Education website. The link provided will take you to the new report once it has been uploaded. The raw numbers for 2010/2011, without graphs, are available in the Student Statistics Report. The Ministry uploads the new report for each year to these links, so the information provided will always be the most current.

__________________________________

Relationships

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 13:54:00 +0000

This is one I've been thinking about for some time.

I went to University for many years, exploring different fields and ending up with a few pieces of paper that make me quite employable either within a school or mental health setting, or through private practice. Once my son was nearing school-age, being home with my son, just being home with my son, felt funny. I felt guilty for not contributing to bringing home the family "bacon".

I sometimes wonder how many women choose DL over registration because of this very thing. It's not much money, but it's something.

I love this story a mom sent to me after she had read some of the conversations happening recently on homeschooling lists in BC.

I was thinking last year to enrol in a DL program since it is so popular and I know so many people doing that. My husband and I talked about it and in the end, the decision was clear. My motivation to enrol was essentially the money, not what I would get out of the DL program. However, I thought it would not be so much work for me and I knew I could do the reporting pretty easily. I think there was also a kind of gentle "social pressure" to do so too. Because I stay home instead of going back to work, I thought it would be my little part in our family budget.

Then my husband asked me: "Do you really want to do this because you think it is the best for our children? Does it fit your educational philosophy? Are you sure it will have no impact in your everyday life with them?" I had to answer no to those three questions. And, to be honest with myself, I knew that my way of spending my days and weeks would be different in a negative way as I would always had to think of what to report and how. A kind of artificial frame.

Then he said: "You could also go back to work. That way we could pay for a private school. But it is not at all what we think would be the best for our children". He continued: "Well, by registering we get no money but some family pay many thousands of dollars each year to send their children in private schools and we are not. So please, feel comfortable with the fact that we don't get any money from enrolling and enjoy that free time with our children".

It is what I am doing right now, and I know it is the best for all of us. It is not the same for everybody and I respect that. But I feel much more comfortable with our own decision now.

I love that her husband brought up some very important points that I think are all relevant to the idea of DL affecting our relationships:

relationship to ourselves: does this fit with our philosophy or do we have to bend our values to make it work?
relationship with our children: will our choice trickle down to affect our relationship with our children in any way, including subtle coercion due to the requirements or structure of the DL program?
relationship with our partner: does he or she feel that the $1000 is worth the time and effort we expend following the requirements of the program? or does he or she feel that we should be taking the money and, if we don't like DL, do we resent that?
relationship to the program itself: how do we *really* feel about the requirements and the philosophy and the oversight and our online teacher? can we be honest with ourselves about that or does the money cloud the issue?

For some families, DL can improve the relationship between parents. A hardworking out-of-the house parent may appreciate that their partner is doing something, anything, to contribute. For some families, the out-of-the-house parent may find it reassuring that the parent at home has to be accountable to a school and perhaps this is the only way they will consent to the children learning at home.

For me, DL was very hard on relationships, especially my relationship with myself. Of course, I didn't just enroll my son in the DL, I enrolled myself, too! A "part-time" job quickly turned from being something I squeezed around our schedule to a priority that I had to squeeze my son around. As with so many things in life, I started slowly and didn't notice things heating up until it was a rolling boil. Fortunately, I figured it out in time for us to leap out of the pot relatively unscathed.

None-the-less, registration has been a time of healing for our family, a time of letting go of the expectations and demands of others in order to fully assess and meet our own needs.

It's not for everyone. But looking at how DL will affect your family's relationships on many levels is likely one of those important aspects of the decision that many people don't consider except in hindsight.

Autonomy

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 15:58:00 +0000

Homeschooling is an act of liberation and an act of passion. It is an occasion to walk away from institutional images of life and to embrace a vision that is filled with personal meaning and unmistakable truths for our families. - Earl Gary Stevens

This is one of my very favourite quotes about choosing to learn at home with our children. And, since my child never went to a physical school, my main experience with "walking away from institutional images of life" was to walk away from DL enrollment.

Here are the things I feel that my family has gained through registering under Section 12 of the BC School Act:

complete ownership of our learning-at-home philosophy without reference to anyone else's view about education or child development
total control over my time as a parent; no worries about when I'm going to get to reporting this week
freedom from the artificial structure of a learning year... labour day weekend is just labour day weekend
record keeping is a matter of collecting our favourite projects and things and storing them as mementoes of my son's childhood rather than as "evidence of learning"
ability to hatch plots and make plans to have grand adventures and do fabulous things without having them translated into edu-speak and put into my son's school file
total honouring of my son's unique learning pace and style without having to compare it to artificial normative data about what kids are expected to do and when (and how)
complete freedom for my son to study anything he likes, whenever he likes, without feeling that it will be ignored in his student file because it's outside of the Learning Outcomes for his grade level
anything I write about my son's learning is truly a reflection of my delight in his growth and development as a person and I can write it whenever I feel like it (no obligations attached) and can do so while respecting my son's right to privacy about his life
and I can write whenever I want to, if I want to, and how I want to (without reference to institutionalized language about learning, which is based on out-dated theories that I don't agree with)
ability to choose to keep the "home" in homeschooling as we focus our activities on exactly what my son wants to do without worrying about outside perception or judgement
deeper trust in my own knowledge of my child and my own "expertise" as his parent
knowledge that my son won't be receiving "marks" on his student record that are based on a flawed (in my opinion) system of assessment
ability to make a decision about FSA participation without worrying about letting down someone else
no sense of accountability or responsibility to anyone except my own family, which means less stress all around

I admit, it was hard to walk away from DL. Really hard. Being enrolled had changed our lifestyle. It was tangible. And I regret that I let it happen. Somehow, in my concern to make sure we had enough to report on and did enough to cover off the LOs (even though I didn't "care" about them), we recreated school through community activities. And we became acclimatized to the hustle and bustle, dependent on the additional funding to make it happen.

We paid a price. I saw, very quickly, that most of the folks teaching classes did not share my values when it came to how children (not just my own) should be treated as learners. In effect, I subjected my child to the very attitudes that I had wished to avoid by keeping him out of school. We also became tired and grumpy. All of us. We were out of the house 6 days a week, often more than once a day. And that's when he was 5 and 6.

Registration gave me the freedom to walk away from my own "institutional images of life" in a way that I would never have dreamed possible. Having my child learn at home through a DL wasn't enough for me... I needed a more definitive break from "the system" in order to fully break with expectations anchored in my past experience.

The qualitative improvement in our lives is astounding.

Not everyone reacts to DL like I did: there are folks who are able to shield themselves from any heavy feelings of obligation or accountability. Not everyone will appreciate or enjoy the freedom available to them through Registration: they may feel better knowing that a school and a certified teacher will guide and direct what they do at home with their children.

But, for our family, it's so nice to be back into our own skins again.

Community

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 07:33:00 +0000

Change is inevitable, it seems, and personally, I find it important to not become too attached to things looking a certain way or I become perpetually frustrated. Because change can be good, right? It's important to adjust accordingly, right? To be flexible? Open? Optimistic?

Right! But change can also alter the quality of a thing to the point where it no longer resembles what it once was.

In many communities throughout BC, Distributed Learning (DL) has changed the way connection between home learning families happens. Grass-roots support groups are folding in some communities as they are no longer needed. In some rural areas of BC, the only support available is through the local DL. There simply are no community support groups because the local DL is the "it" place to go for activities and connection. If people don't belong to that DL, then they don't get to join in with organized home learning activities in their community: all activities are organized, facilitated and paid for by the DL school. Support has become "institutionalized".

Sandy Keane writes:

"When our kids were young in the mid 90s, if someone was interested in a certain activity, we would poll the members of our support group to find out if anyone had any knowledge to share and went ahead and arranged it for ourselves and made it happen. We shared information and skills and only rarely hired anybody. Shakespeare workshops were a notable exception, but the space, choosing of the mentor, and other arrangements were all done by the parents of the kids who wanted the classes. Now the majority of group activities are arranged by paid staff through the DLs. Parents look through a list of things to do and choose from what is offered. I'm not saying that I think this is wrong, but I do feel there is something lost when kids don't grow up being part of, or at least witness to the process of making things happen."

And the effect of DL on community doesn't even have to be that dramatic. I have personally witnessed the slow decline of community field trips as posted on a local "hotline" since I first joined in 2003. People used to take advantage of group rates and set up field trips more often when they didn't have the money. Now, they can use school funds to pay for their field trips, so they aren't as reliant on the group to help stretch their budgets. Personally, I'm not a fan of organized field trips so that's never bothered me, but it does mean that people new to a group have a more difficult time finding activities where they can jump in and become involved and find their tribe. They used to be able to join. Now they have to initiate.

Diana Sandburg writes:

"As a very long time participant and observer of the local homeschooling scene, the one thing I've noticed above all over the last few years is the fragmentation of the community. With very few exceptions (I'm pretty sure I could find one or two if I looked hard), we all began this journey with trepidation, with an awareness of our ignorance (always, btw, an excellent way to begin an enterprise), and frightened of messing up something so important as our children's future. For me, and for many others in the past, we got support from those who were already on the journey; we saw what ordinary homeschoolers were like, what their kids were like, and how they managed to do this thing. And our courage and independence were bolstered. What I see now is new families approaching homeschooling with the same fears, but instead of finding independence, they are immediately engulfed in The System and told what to do, when and how. I can see how that feels like support when you're new and afraid, but it's only support in the way that a girdle is support, when what you need is situps to build your own internal support."

Not that every parent will continue in that dynamic (if they even engage in it in the first place!). I know many parents who were unsure at first, participated in a DL, and became home learning dynamos in their communities. But I also wonder if DL sometimes foster a sense of dependency that would not be there otherwise.

Marty Layne writes:

"I started homeschooling in 1982. There was no support group in Victoria at that time for secular homeschoolers. We knew each other and just did our thing. Within 3-5 years there was a huge increase in the number of families who were homeschooling in the Victoria area.

"Over the years I watched as more and more families became homeschooling families. I wrote my book about my experiences of homeschooling (Learning At Home: A Mother's Guide To Homeschooling) in part to answer the many questions I'd get asked about what I was doing and how it worked.

"In the last 10 years, I have found that the nature of the questions have changed - So tell me, how do I homeschool? Tell me what curriculum I should buy and tell me what I should do next.

"A DL program answers those questions. As more and more programs have sprung up and more and more people sign up, then DL programs begin to define what homeschooling is to those enrolled and others who are thinking about the kind of education they want to provide for their children."

It's easy to slip into nostalgia when reading the reminiscences of these veteran homeschoolers. But we can take heart. There are local support groups that continue to thrive and to provide opportunity for real connection between community members. And there is nothing stopping other support groups from taking stock and stepping up connection within their geographical community, outside of any DL affiliation.

So, perhaps being aware of the trend and taking small actions, like putting energy into our local groups and finding time to reach out to new home learning parents, will be enough to continue to build a strong home learning community in BC outside of the "girdle" support inherent in many DL programs.

________________________________

A big thank you to Diana, Marty, and Sandy for letting me share their words in this post.

John Holt: The Wholeness of Learning

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 20:13:00 +0000

"Let me sum up what I have been saying about learning. I believe that we learn best when we, not others, are deciding what we are going to try to learn, and when, and how, and for what reasons or purposes; when we, not others, are in the end choosing the people, materials, experiences from which and with which we will be learning; when we, not others, are judging how easily and quickly or well we are learning; and when we have learned enough; and above all when we feel the wholeness and openness of the world around us, and our own freedom and power and competence in it."

John Holt, from What Do I Do Monday?

Skip Those Teachable Moments

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 14:29:00 +0000

One of the ideas brewing in the recesses of my brain is to write a book that pulls together and succinctly summarizes all the recent research on how humans learn so that those of us who homeschool (and especially those of us who unschool) can have the pedagogical arguments we need literally at our fingertips. I'd also hope that putting all this great information into people's hands in an accessible way might have some positive impact on how schools operate.

What keeps tripping me up, though, is that every time I think, "Okay, there's enough out there for me to start," something else truly amazing pops up and I'd be heart broken not to have included it. Since I think there really is only one book inside of me to do with current learning theory and how that relates to pedagogical practice, I think it's best I wait and just keep putting things up on this blog instead. At this rate, the book might never get written and, to be honest, I'm okay with that (because I'm secretly hoping someone else will do it if I put it off long enough).

In the meantime, this post is really about this article: Why Preschool Shouldn't Be Like School by Alison Gopnik, a researcher from UC-Berkley. She discusses the recent research out of both her lab and MIT that demonstrates that children who are handed a novel object are much more willing to explore it and interact with it and will figure out how it works (and will do so more deeply and efficiently) than children who are explicitly taught how to use it.

In fact, the MIT study goes as far as to be titled, "The double edge sword of pedagogy: Instruction limits spontaneous exploration and discovery." What the MIT authors state in their abstract (because as much as I love you all, I'm not going to purchase the article for $41.95 just yet) is that when a teacher demonstrates the use of an object, because of children's previous experience with teachers, they assume that's all that object will do and tend not to explore further once they can replicate what the teacher did. Children who are simply presented with the object may take a bit longer to determine the function of the object, but then they go on and find other functions that taught children don't. The MIT researchers conclude: "...pedagogy promotes efficient learning but at a cost: children are less likely to perform potentially irrelevant actions but also less likely to discover novel information."

The UC-Berkley study looked at imitation. Children who are deliberately taught, by a "teacher", a sequence of actions in order to get the desired outcome tend to do all those steps as shown, a strategy the researchers labelled "overimitation". Children who are not taught but are shown what the object can do by a "naive" person who looks to be just exploring the object tend to figure out short-cuts and other ways to get the desired outcome. In this case, it's the perception of being "taught" that limits the children's ability to think outside the procedure being shown.

Alison Gopnik limits her article to pre-school aged children (the age of the subjects in both studies), but I suspect that this research will generalize to human beings of all ages. And, for me, the crux of this research is that the perception of being "taught", that there is someone who is an expert and who is showing you the correct way to do something or to think about something, is what limits learning... and exploration, creativity, discovery. The other thing that is clear is that if there is something to be discovered, humans will discover it--as long as they don't assume that they've already been shown all there is to know about it.

And how does this relate to those tempting little teachable moments? Usually those moments present when our kids are in the thick of discovery and exploration, knee-deep in true learning. When an adult jumps in to show or teach, as soon as we say or do what we are compelled to say or do we have neatly (and often unintentionally) told our kids that the expert is on the scene, this is what you are supposed to get out of this situation or experience, and the job is done. Go home folks, there's nothing more to see here. And kids do. Go. And we parents often are left wondering what it is about us that turns our kids off.

It's not us. It's just the way it works.

When we wrap something up with a bow (and an agenda attached), when we hand kids something as a fait accompli, then that will be the end of it.

If we are careful and skillful facilitators, however, allowing ourselves to not be the "experts" but simply participants, then we can explore along side our children, opening and supporting their experiences by our own on-the-side curiosity and desire to understand (as long as our enthusiasm doesn't co-opt the situation).

There is nothing wrong with direct teaching for certain things. As per a recent conversation, yes, I want to know that my surgeon has been shown how to properly use a scalpel and how to stitch everything back up. But learning (and growing and developing) is so much more than learning specific skills to do specific tasks. And kids will often ask to be shown how to do something if they really want to know how. But most of the time, they'll be learning in spite of us... as long as we don't get in their way.

Salman Kahn: Using Video to Reinvent Education

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:49:00 +0000

Salman Khan just did a TED Talk on his amazing Khan Academy and the idea of using video to reinvent education.

Nurture Shock

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 16:05:00 +0000

I’m not a big fan of most parenting books. Not the “how-to-fix-your-kid-in-10-easy-steps” kind, anyway. Each family situation is so unique to the people and personalities within it that a book can hardly begin to touch the dynamics at play. What often happens, after reading these kinds of books, is that parents are left holding a methodology that doesn’t quite fit their situation and doesn’t quite work (if at all) and they end up feeling like bad or incompetent parents as a result.

There are a few exceptions. Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn is one I quite like but that might be because it is in alignment with my personal values about how to be with children. Another book I really like is Playful Parenting by Lawrence Cohen.

But there is one book that I think all parents should read. Yes, I said “should”.

It’s Nurture Shock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. It’s brilliant.

It’s not a how-to-parent book. It’s a book, however, that will challenge our societal assumptions about children and will help build our understanding about why kids do what they do. It might even change our minds.

The authors have taken topics that concern all parents at some point and got to the research (good research) to find out what’s really going on. And what’s really going on may surprise you. It did me.

Chapters include:

The Inverse Power of Praise
The Lost Hour (on the developmental importance of sleep)
Why White Parents Don’t Talk about Race (very interesting research about racism)
Why Kids Lie
The Search for Intelligent Life in Kindergarten (why we need to wait before determining “giftedness”)
The Sibling Effect (why siblings really fight)
The Science of Teen Rebellion (apparently, arguing is a sign of respect – who knew?)
Can Self-Control be Taught?
Plays Well With Others
Why Hannah Talks and Alyssa Doesn’t (the scoop on “jump-starting” language skills)

The book is well written and very engaging. 5 stars, two-thumbs-up, definitely a “must read” for reflective parents (or anyone who works with or interacts with children and families).

Inspiring Quotes

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 15:11:00 +0000

________________

"Birds fly, fish swim, man thinks and learns. Therefore, we do not need to “motivate” children into learning, by wheedling, bribing, or bullying. We do not need to keep picking away at their minds to make sure they are learning. What we need to do, and all we need to do is bring as much of the world as we can into [their lives]; give children as much help and guidance as they need and ask for; listen respectfully when they feel like talking; and then get out of the way. We can trust them to do the rest."

- John Holt

________________

"One of the problems for education is that it's based on principles of mass production. There's a big emphasis on conformity and standardizing. And all that makes some superficial sense; but the problem is that educating young people is not like making motor cars. At all. One key difference is that motor cars have no interest in how they are made. Young people do...

"You cannot make a plant grow. If you are trying to grow things, you don't stick the roots on and paint it and attach the petals. It grows itself. That's the nature of organic development and we are organic beings. What gardeners know is that there are certain conditions under which that will happen. If the conditions aren't right, nothing will grow. If the conditions are good, everything grows."

- Sir Ken Robinson

________________

"There is another way to immerse ourselves pleasurably in a challenge. It is a matter of aesthetic curiosity. It is what makes me stop and gaze upon the sunset. It is what detains me, lost in my contemplation of the speed and elegance with which the clouds move across the blue depth of the sky. It is what touches me when faced with a work of art that centers me in beauty."

- Paulo Freire

________________

"For thousands of years, in thousands of places, families educated their own. This tradition changed not because a better method was found but because economic conditions required it. To work one had to leave one's children; one's children, furthermore, had to be trained for tasks no-one in their purview could be seen doing. For these reasons institutionalised schooling was invented and while it adequately addressed a set of economic problems it inspired a new set of human ones that are psychological, emotional, and even spiritual in nature."

- David Guterson

________________

"Homeschooling is an act of liberation and an act of passion. It is an occasion to walk away from institutional images of life and to embrace a vision that is filled with personal meaning and unmistakable truths for our families."

- Earl Gary Stevens

________________

"I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must taught to think. Whereas if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less slowly. Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table while a sweet-voiced teacher suggest that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of colored paper, or plant straw trees in flower pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences."

- Anne Sullivan

________________

"I say above all else don't let your home become [a] miniture copy of the school. no lesson plans, no quizzes, no tests, no report cards! even leaving your child alone would be better; at least they would figure out some things on their own. Live together as well as you can; enjoy life together as much as you can."

- John Holt

________________

"I think children can be very cruel especially in adolescence and if you are slow, and I was (I was in a school which was quite competitive), you do get a lot of slamming about from the other kids. I don't know about girls, but I know that boys are very cruel and very tough. It built up a tremendous resentment in me because I was also bad at sport and athletics and all I could do was play the piano. So I always got the sense in my adolescent years that 'Oh, Hopkins, you know he's, well he's not worth much, or he's a failure.'"

- Anthony Hopkins

_________________

"Why do people take or keep their children out of school? Mostly for three reasons: they think that raising their children is their business not the government’s; they enjoy being with their children and watching and helping them learn, and don’t want to give that up to others; they want to keep them from being hurt, mentally, physically, and spiritually."

- John Holt

_________________

"I sometimes ask myself how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time. These are things which he has thought about as a child. But my intellectual development was retarded, as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up."

- Albert Einstein

________________

"It seems to me that anything that can be taught to another is relatively inconsequential, and has little or no significant influence on behavior. I realise increasingly that I am only interested in learnings which significantly influence behavior. I have come to feel that the only learning which significantly influences behavior is self-discovered, self-appropriated learning. Such self-discovered learning, truth that has been personally appropriated and assimilated in experience, cannot be directly communicated to another. As a consequence of the above, I realize that I have lost interest in being a teacher."

- Carl Rogers

________________

"School was the unhappiest time of my life and the worst trick it ever played on me was to pretend that it was the world in miniature. For it hindered me from discovering how lovely and delightful and kind the world can be, and how much of it is intelligible."

- E.M. Forster

________________

"Nothing enrages me more than when people criticize my criticism of school by telling me that schools are not just places to learn maths and spelling, they are places where children learn a vaguely defined thing called socialization. I know. I think schools generally do an effective and terribly damaging job of teaching children to be infantile, dependent, intellectually dishonest, passive and disrespectful to their own developmental capacities."

- Seymour Papert

________________

"My kids only come around once in my lifetime, and they (hopefully) won’t be with me forever. I chose to have them, and I choose, freely, to make them and my family a priority in my life. This stage of life won’t last forever. While it does, I’ve climbed on for the ride."

- David Albert

________________

"Love is the only emotion that expands intelligence."

- Humberto Maturano

________________

"Learning can only happen when a child is interested. If he's not interested, it's like throwing marshmallows at his head and calling it eating."

- Katrina Gutleben

________________

Celebrating (and Dealing with) Children's Art

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 15:13:00 +0000

When your child is a prolific artist, your home can soon be overwhelmed by piles and mounds of sketches and paintings and sculptures and projects that he or she produces.

Most children enjoy the process of art and will continue producing because they are immersed in the "doing" and not necessarily the "perfecting" (although this varies from child to child).

And most of what a child produces feels, to him or her, like an extension of him/herself. These works of art are precious and meaningful and often difficult to let go of.

I don't think there is ever a foolproof method of balancing your needs for tidiness with a child's need to keep and protect her creations (if there is, please tell me because I don't have it figured out), but here are a few things that have worked for us:

Make Your Home an Art Gallery

If you go to an art store (such as Opus), you'll notice that they have a good selection frames (including glass) available that aren't too expensive. Buy several of different sizes (based on the size of paper your child usually uses) and find a wall in your home upon which to create your child's gallery. You can buy pre-cut framing mats if you want but it's not necessary (although it does add a "professional" feeling to the framing).

This "gallery" doesn't have to be built in a day! You can add pieces slowly over time and you can also switch out pieces, like a real gallery, based on decisions you and your child curator make together. There are special frames available that make it easy to do just that.

You can also create ribbon or string or curtain rod (won't sag) galleries by stretching them across a wall expanse and clipping children's art to them. As per this photo. Or you can get even more creative by using things like tree branches artfully displayed, as in this photo.

Some parents archive their children's work by taking digital photos of pieces and then displaying the art in a photo album. Blurb is a great place to do this or if you have a Mac, you can do it through iPhoto.

Of course, the fridge door always makes a wonderful temporary gallery space, although it's always a bit risky as to whether or not the piece will survive being exposed to a busy kitchen.

I also have a bulletin board designated for my son's use only. He can put little works of art and projects up there that may not work in a frame or hanging from a string. He has full curator control of this mini-gallery and he likes it that way.

Displaying your children's art sends a really important message to them about how much we value what they do. If a child is uncomfortable with having something displayed, don't insist (even if you love it). Just preserve it and try again when they are older or in a different space about their art.

More good ideas for displaying art can be found here.

Use a Sketchbook for "Everyday" Drawing

Sketchbooks are self-contained portfolios of drawing material. Younger children may go through a sketchbook very quickly while they enjoy putting their mark on the world. Older children may savour the drawing experience and the sketchbook will last longer. What's great about sketchbooks is that they are easy to store and the decision about what to do with them can be left up to your child when he or she is much older.

Purchase a Portfolio

For larger or favourite pieces, having a portfolio is a great way to keep completed art safe and tidy. They do take up space, but fit nicely into the back of a closet or beside a shelving unit.

Use a Storage Bin

I keep a large file storage bin in my office closet for anything my son makes during the week. This includes writing, drawing, paper craft, etc. At least once a week, with his knowledge and blessing, I help tidy up his workspace and put the pile in this bin (which also has hanging folders). Things that may not fit go up on the top shelf if he's finished with it for now. This keeps the paper "drift" from happening too badly and also gives him a place to find things when he wants to revisit something.

Waiting and Sorting

Once a year (or more often, depending on how much he's produced) we go through the portfolio and storage bin, culling the truly meaningful things from the "I don't care so much" things. A few months makes a tremendous difference in terms of his attachment and he's much more objective. Hm. Sounds a bit like me!

What's left goes to a special location in our storage room and when he's teen or a young adult, he can keep anything he may want and get rid of the rest. Or throw it all out. It's his decision.

(Although I'm personally not much of a "pack rat", I must confess that I have a few "special" art projects left over from my childhood that my mom kept and I haven't yet thrown out.)

On Throwing Things Out

One thing I always like to keep in mind, especially as my parents are now in their 80s, is that one day, my son may be involved in deciding what I can keep and what I have to let go of. I guess the Golden Rule is what first pops into my head: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Or, put slightly differently: Don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you.

As I'm not a pack rat and I'm great at culling my own belongings, I do have to take extreme care that I don't force my son to release things he's not yet ready to release. That includes his art.

I stumbled on this New York Times article a couple of days ago while I was researching gallery ideas.

Mom, You're One Tough Art Critic

I don't agree with everything in the article as there seems to be a cavalier and controlling attitude towards children's art that pokes through and that does bother me. As does the sense that children's art is an inconvenience for parents (especially if glitter is involved). But it was still interesting to read through and figure out where I stood on the issue, especially in light of how other parents respond to their kids' art.

This stood out: "When Dad de-accessions a new finger painting overnight, Dr. Burton said, 'the child quickly learns that this art that they’re making is very ephemeral.' In other words, worthless."

I'd love to hear what you think about it.

Approaching Art at Home

noreply@blogger.com (ipsa) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 16:48:00 +0000

This post is not a detailed how-to post... I'd have to write a book and better qualified people than I have already done that several times over. But I will provide you with information about helpful materials for each area of visual art and point you in the direction of our favourite resources for art ideas.

Art Ideas and Skills

There are so many different books out there about children and art and how to do it, it's a bit overwhelming.

I have three books that I find indispensable for giving us ideas about materials and different techniques we may want to explore: Usborne's Art Ideas, Art Projects, and Art Skills. These books are also available in one complete volume, which may be all you ever need to have a satisfying art-at-home experience. These books are a wonderful starting point for exploring the different media out there, especially in drawing and painting. And they aren't just for "littles". Teens (and parents) will find lots of great ideas and inspiration in these books as well. There are other Usborne books on drawing and papercraft that are worth looking at as well.

If you and your child want to duplicate the project suggested, you can. Or you can used the idea to branch off into your own project, using the book as a resource to help sort out technique and materials rather than a "how to". What I find works for us is I start to use materials as suggested in the book myself and see if my child is inspired to join in with his own ideas.

Children who tend to perfectionism may find it discouraging if their product doesn't match what they see in a book (and will often brush off the whole "age and experience" rationale). If you have one of those kids, keep the books to yourself and simply provide the materials and model the techniques in your own work and let your child decide where to take it. The now out-of-print Doing Art Together by Muriel Silberstein-Storfer might provide you with some ideas about how to approach this with your child (look for it at the library or on AbeBooks).

For older students (or for yourself), DK has a wonderful book titled The DK Art School: An Introduction to Art Techniques. This hefty volume is a great place to begin to explore different materials and techniques available to artists.

Learning How to Draw

Drawing really does form the foundation for so many art forms, so it deserves a special nod in terms of books. In addition to the many "how to" books out there, there are a number of classic books that have stood the test of time in terms of helping people "learn to see".

Drawing with Children: A creative method for adult beginners, too by Mona Brookes
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards
The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicolaides

These aren't books for children to use but for you, as the adult in a child's life, to use to support and encourage your child's drawing... and your own! Especially your own. Also, only offer this if your child is ready and willing to go there. Many children like to draw what they draw without formalizing the process. Tailor the experience to your child (rather than feeling you have to follow the advice of a book).

The Importance of Paper

In the days of the old computer printers, when paper had those perforated strips down the sides with all those holes so the paper could feed through, I knew many parents who would bring home this paper for their children to draw on. Often, it would have things printed on the other side and although I admired the parents' frugality and "reuse" sensibility, I wondered about the message the children were receiving about their art.

Using "already used" paper may be emotionally interpreted as an unspoken evaluation of a child's art. That is, "your art is not all that important so this partly-used paper will do for you."

It's a tricky area because kids can go through an awful lot of paper in a very short time. So, what do we do?

Our family buys recycled (post-consumer) bond paper for our printer and I always put aside one ream of it for my son's everyday drawing needs. It's not nearly as expensive as true art paper but it's a nice, crisp, and clean paper that holds graphite, crayon and marker equally well.

I buy pads of special drawing and painting paper, explaining the cost difference to my child and that these are for projects he considers "special" or where he needs a larger size of paper. I wasn't as concerned about that when he was younger. I had pads of newsprint for his art easel for most of the big drawing projects he wanted to do and pulled out the art paper from time to time just for fun. As he gets older, we do talk about conservation and making sure the paper size and type is appropriate for the project (i.e. we don't use big sheets of bristol board to make something tiny to cut out and we don't use watercolour paper to draw on unless we plan to use watercolour material on it as well). And I do try to make sure he has the kind of paper he needs to do all sorts of different projects.

I truly believe that something as seemingly inconsequential as the type of paper we provide speaks oodles to our children in terms of how we value their art and their creativity.

Types of Paper

Buying art paper, if you are not experienced, can be very confusing. And, to be honest, this is often why I go to the pads of paper, which are also easier to handle and store. Most pads of paper indicate the type of paper, the weight, the media best used with it, and even the content. (I consider them Art Paper for Dummies). Pads tend to be more expensive, though, and you can likely stay within budget better if you buy paper as separate sheets that can be cut to a smaller size.

Many types of art paper are made with cotton instead of wood pulp and this is why it costs more. Paper that is made with wood pulp is treated to be "acid free" or "archival" (which means your paper won't yellow and decay over time like those paperback novels from your youth). Art paper, due to its composition and thickness, also interacts differently with the materials we use and creates a more pleasing product. It is important to use a drawing paper for graphite and inks, a slightly textured paper for chalks and pastels, a heavier paper for print-making and painting, and a watercolour paper for watercolour painting.

When you are looking for construction paper, try to find some with a bite to it... we usually want construction paper to be able to fold and stand and be firm, while retaining its colour (unlike most construction paper available for kids). You can find pads of coloured art paper at the art store that are sometimes good. Scrapbook stores also tend to have archival quality paper that is a good weight and has good longevity in terms of colour retention. Mercurius supplies some wonderfully coloured paper (and has great tissue paper as well) in different weights depending on your art needs.

If you go to a proper art store during a week day, you may find a staff member who would be willing to walk you through your choices and who may point out their favourite papers. Or, like me, you could just find a pad of paper to go along with your medium of choice until you feel comfortable enough to pull your own paper off the shelves.

More about art paper here.

Art Materials

These are the art materials that are fun to explore at some point or another in a child's artistic development. They certainly don't need to be provided all at once, but can be purchased over the years as your child's interest dictates. As with so many other things, tailor your offerings to your particular child and let go of your expectations about how they will choose to use things.

And, as one of my kind commenters mentioned, you don't need all this fancy stuff in order to create art and over-focussing on materials could, potentially, overwhelm or shut-down process. If this might be the case in your home, bring in a few lovely materials at a time for your children to explore and leave things (process, product) wide open.

Note: Brand recommendations reflect only my personal preferences and may not be suitable for your family. There are many alternatives out there so you will be able to find products that you like after a little poking around. Places to find art supplies are listed in this post: Finding Materials, Creating Space.

Safety Announcement

Look for "Conforms to ASTM D-4236" or the Certified Product (CP) or Approved Product (AP) seal of the Arts and Creative Materials Institute as these statements indicate that the materials have been approved by a toxicologist.

Although these products are considered safe and "non-toxic", caution still needs to be exercised and there are no guarantees. There are still many things we don't yet know about the relationship of certain chemicals to the development of disease in humans. Also, kids are not predictable in their use of materials. If you are suspicious or concerned about a material but choose to use it anyway, you may want to supervise your children to make sure that their use of it doesn't slip into the realm of "unusual" or "unsafe".

I prefer to purchase materials made in Europe for European markets as their safety standards are often more stringent than North American standards. You'll see my bias in my brand suggestions. Everyone needs to sort out their own comfort level with this sort of thing, so please feel free to do what works best for you and your kids.

A great book to consider reviewing is Michael McCann's Health Hazards Manual for Artists, 6th Edition. He's also written the now out-of-print Artist Beware, which has a chapter devoted to children and art materials. Both of these books may be available at your local library.

General Supplies

Every developing artist requires a few basis supplies to round out his studio experience. When choosing these supplies, think about the age of your child. Your child may still require blunt ended scissors and plastic rulers and that's okay!

Ruler: clear plastic (for younger children) or an18 inch stainless steel ruler (with cork backing) for older children
Scissors: quality scissors for children (Fiskars), blunt ended when appropriate; larger-size quality scissors for parents and older children
Glue: glue sticks are great; have several on hand
Tape: magic tape, two-sided tape, book tape
Pencils: HB for the beginning artist
White Eraser: cleans up graphite better than coloured erasers; find one without PVC for younger children
Pencil Crayons: Younger children - Stockmar or Lyra pencils (even older children will love these); Prismacolour "Scholar" Pencils for the older artist (lovely pigments, easy to blend)
Wax Crayons: Stockmar beeswax crayons (blocks, sticks)

Markers: Both thin and thick line markers of different colours (including black)

Sketchbook: coil back using good quality art paper

Paper: newsprint, white bond, bristol board (pads)
Art Apron or Lab Coat or an old shirt of dad's
Exacto Knife and Cutting Mat: optional--for parental use until child is old enough to handle the sharp blades safely

Drawing and Illustration

As a child develops her appetite for drawing, then some of these additional drawing supplies will come in handy:

Kneaded eraser
Artist quality markers (Staedtler)
Drawing Pens (Pilot)
Drawing Pencils: In a variety of hardness 2H (hard), HB, 2B, 4B, 6B (soft) (Derwent)
Blending Stumps (so you don't have to use your finger)
Watercolour Pencils (Caran D'Ache)
Pastel Pencils: less messy than pastel crayons
Art Sticks (Prismacolor)
Drawing Paper: different textures
Drawing Board and Masking Tape: mobile work surface, protects and secures drawing

I'm not a big fan of the chunky oil pastel and I find that chalk pastels generate a lot of dust. I enjoy using a good quality pencil pastel or a product like the Prismacolor Art Stix and that may work for your house, too. If your child gets into pastels, then that would be the time to invest in an artist-quality oil or chalk pastel set.

Painting

These are basic, high quality painting supplies. As children become more advanced in their art, they will be able to explore the local art store themselves for more sophisticated (and not as safe) watercolour, acrylic, oil and gouache offerings.

Watercolour Crayons: Caran D'Ache make a wonderful, soft watercolour crayon. People often use them for face paints - don't! They aren't intended for prolonged contact with our skin. There are European companies that make skin-appropriate crayons for facepainting that are safe for children (Kryolan, Lyra)
Watercolour Pencils
Stockmar Watercolour Paints (liquid form)
Natural Sponges
Watercolour Painting Board (not necessary but helpful)

Liquid Tempera Paint (Chromatemp) - I prefer this to powdered or blocked tempera because the colour on the finished product is so bright and satisfying. It also has a nice viscosity (that is, it isn't runny). Plus, there is no messy mixing required. Tip: add a dash of liquid dish soap to the paint to make clean up easier.

Acrylic Paint: When children are ready to paint on canvas, a student grade acrylic paint is a good choice. Liquitex makes a lovely series called Basics that is easy to use right out of the tube (you don't have to add an acrylic medium to extend them). NOTE: Do not dispose of excess acrylic paint down your drain. It's not good for either the environment or your plumbing. Use a paper towel or disposable rag to clean the excess off your palette, brushes, and palette knife before washing these items. Acrylic paint is a plastic and is only water soluble while in its liquid state.

Things to paint on: Appropriate weight and absorbency paper, pre-stretched canvas, paint boards (available for all types of paint media), pieces of wood, etc. -- as long as it works with the type of paint you are using.

Brushes: When buying paintbrushes, ensure that the type you buy works for the medium you have on hand. Different paints require different brushes. Quality is always important (to avoid losing bristles in a work) and check to see if the paint on the handles is lead-free, especially for younger children. If you're not sure which brushes to select, ask for help at your local art store. Clean your brushes immediately after use in cool water, using a bit of dishsoap if necessary. Do not soak your brushes or you will ruin them.

Palettes and Jars: A glass palette for acrylic paints; glass jars or special palettes for watercolour and tempera.

Palette Knives: For working with acrylic paints.

Butcher or Masking Tape: To mask the edges of your paper and secure it to a board during painting process.

Sculpture

A child can make a sculpture from just about anything. And, until your child gets into welding or stone masonry, there really isn't much you need in terms of "special" material or supplies. Here are some ideas about media that works well for sculpture.

Wooden blocks: Not a permanent work but the process is the same (Kapla blocks are great for this)

Large sheets of cardboard: Can use an appliance box or buy the large sheet from Opus

Cardboard boxes, tubes, and flat pieces

Paper: For paper-folding or Origami; also, you can make cool sculpture out of strips and pieces of construction paper.

Drinking Straws and Thread: My brother once made me a giant, intricate star out of straws and thread

Bass Wood: Light and easy to use. Can buy in strips, planks or blocks.

Wire: You can buy wire for sculpting purposes. You can also use pipe cleaners or waxed strings

Paper Mache: With balloons, chicken wire, newsprint and glue/water/flour, you can do all sorts of cool things.

Modeling Clay or Beeswax: We prefer the beeswax at our house because it smells great and feels better on our fingers, although, we must admit, it's not as good for stop-motion animation (limbs fall off).

Homemade Play Dough: This is a great substitution for modeling clay (and you can use unsweetened Kool-Aid crystals to colour it). You can use all sorts of tools (like rollers, extruders, garlic presses, etc.) to play with it at home.

A note about polymer clays (Fimo, Sculpey): These "clays" are really soft plastics and contain polyvinyl chloride and liquid plasticizers. Children who use them may be exposed to substances such as phthalates esters, which are known endocrine disruptors. In 2009, California put a ban on phthalates in toys for children under the age of three and, as a result, some of these clays are being reformulated. Fortunately, in the meantime, there are alternatives such as Stockmar Beeswax or Baker's Clay.

Printmaking

Printmaking is so fun and so easy to do with children. You can carve shapes into potatoes halves (or firm sponges), dip them in a high quality tempera paint, and go to it, stamping them all over a large sheet of paper. You can use smooth styrofoam to carve images into, use a brayer (or rubber roller) to cover the surface (without getting into the cuts) and then apply it to paper. Or, with the older learner, you can get a bit more complicated, using brayers and trays and lino blocks and cutting tools and special inks. Or, when you get really brave, you can explore screen printing, etching, intaglio, and lithography in a studio space that contains all the tools and equipment you'll need.

Photography

In the age of digital photography, it's so easy to support a child's interest in photography. Simply buy them a camera and let them use it. Let them have access to the computer so they can edit and refine their photos and, when they have chosen their favourites, help them create (and print) an album of their work.

Photography used to be so much more, though, than just taking photos. There is an art to developing photos and most of us don't have access to dark rooms anymore.

Enter light sensitive paper: Sunprints. You can create photograms by arranging materials to suit your sense of aesthetics and then placing them directly on the paper. You can make a photogram in a real darkroom and develop the result just like regular black and white photographs. Sunprints paper allows you do the same thing but using the great outdoors as your darkroom. The website shows you how it works.

Ceramics

Go to a studio: clay is one art material I would not recommend using at home (unless you are a ceramic artist and already have a studio set up). Here's why.

Silica Dust. When unfired-clay dries, it breaks down very easily. It's important to not use friction when dealing with dried clay, such as sweeping or brushing. This releases the silica in the air where we can breathe it into our lungs, which could lead, eventually, to silicosis. If you do use clay in your home, always wet clean it. Mop the area as part of the post-project clean-up (don't vacuum) and wipe down any surfaces containing clay residue with a wet sponge.

Another reason, however, to use clay in a studio setting is your plumbing. Clay studios have specially formulated drains with "clay traps" built in. Clay is heavy and will settle into your u-bends, trapping other crud with it and causing epic blockage issues.

You also need access to a kiln. And you will want some instruction on how to wedge the clay before using it so you can release trapped air bubbles that may explode in the kiln and wreck everything in it.

Pottery studios also have places to dump the sludge (which will eventually be recycled) and they have mops, etc. on hand for easy and proper wet clean up.

* ** *** ** *

The most important thing about art isn't that you have the right materials lined up. Honest. The above are just ideas if you are looking. There is no "right" or "wrong" when it comes to art materals--just personal preferences.

The most important thing about art is that it's fun and satisfying. Sometimes materials help create feelings of satisfaction and it's often fun to use them. But more often, it's our own attitudes that set the stage for how fun the process is for both our kids and ourselves.

Enjoy art with your children and it will all come out right, regardless of what supplies you have squirreled away in your art cupboard.