Having difficulty getting started?

Getting started with afterschooling can be tricky. It can feel overwhelming. Before I go on, I think the most critical step is just to begin. You probably know a subject you'd like to work on with your kid. Begin there! But if you'd like to do a more extensive program but don't know where to begin, here are some things to think about. 

Answer the following questions to focus on what you want to do and how you might do it:

1. What do you hope to accomplish? For example, is this an ad hoc gifted program or a way to help your child catch up? Is your child learning less due to remote learning during the pandemic?
2. Make a list of school subjects and rate your school as to how well it is meeting your child's needs in each subject. (Don't feel guilty! No school is perfect! This is especially true with remote learning.)
3. Think about how much homework your child has, on average.
4. How much time do you feel you can commit per week to formal instruction? Include both your time commitment and your child's. Think about when you imagine formal instruction happening. After school? Weekends? Over breaks and holidays?
5. What is your budget for afterschooling? 
6. Think about the academic priorities for your child. 

Reviewing your answers to the questionnaire

These are the considerations I would suggest after preparing your answers. Each number below corresponds to the question above.

1. This answer should be your guiding star for afterschooling. Keep in mind that your MO may change over time, especially as you discover new possibilities in enrichment.
2. Your assessment of which classes are meeting your child's needs may help guide what subjects you decide to cover. If the school's instruction is working well, cross it off your list. Keep in mind though that even a good program may not be meeting your child's needs. Then, rank the classes based on each class's importance to you and how well the school is meeting your needs. For example, I would rank thusly (though you may rank them differently):
1. Critical classes (math, ELA) that my kid is failing.
2. Less critical academic classes (science, history, world language) that my kid is failing or critical classes where my child is struggling.
3. Classes my kid is doing well in, but that I think should be taught very differently (e.g., no experiments in science class, no world history in Social Studies).
4. Classes my kid is doing well in, but which require more time/effort for mastery than the school day allows (e.g., world languages, typing, etc).
5. Other enrichment in subjects not offered (e.g., logic, history of science, art history, etc.).
3. If your child is doing lots of homework, you may need to consider ways to ease his or her time commitment. In grades 3 to 6, most kids are doing 30-60 minutes of homework, 3 to 5 times per week. So it may be that "afterschooling" looks more like "weekendschooling." There are opportunities on the weekdays however, which I'll get to elsewhere.
4. Once you've considered homework time, begin to think about how much time both you and your child are willing to commit. Keep in mind that not all instruction time requires a parent; something like online language classes or programs like Duolingo require you only to make sure it gets done. Similarly, there may be prep time for you as a teacher. Consider these: weekdays, weekends, summer, and holidays. Be realistic. Keep in mind that learning can happen in non-traditional spaces. Car rides are one of my favorite places for things like times table practice, listening to Spanish tapes, and of course reading. My son learned to read on the subway going back and forth to preschool.
5. Afterschooling is not free. But it doesn't have to be expensive either. If money is quite tight, it may make sense to begin with one or two subjects and look into free or cheap resources. 
6. Priorities: this is one of the most important things to consider. To get you started, I've listed my priorities over the course of our time afterschooling:
1. My child is struggling in science, and I want to get him up to speed.
2. My child is gifted in math, and I do not feel the curriculum is difficult enough.
3. My child is acing his classes, but everything seems to be a little too easy for him; I'd like him to get more depth in several subjects.
4. My child has ADHD and tends to come in and out of focus in class. I want to introduce him to subjects before he sees them in school so that he doesn't miss basic ideas.
5. The history curriculum at our school is very U.S.-focused, and I want my child to enjoy more world history so that American history exists in context.
6. Our science classes include very few experiments, and are more focused on memorizing random facts.
7. I'd like to supplement the basic curriculum with more focus on general humanities (the arts, philosophy, history of ideas).
8. My child gets one day a week of Spanish. I would like to supplement so that he has more ease with Spanish while it's still fairly easy to learn.

Chances are, more than one of these may sounds like some of your priorities. And you'll almost certainly have other interests too. Write down all of your priorities and then order them. Don't worry about accuracy; your priorities will almost certainly shift over time, as your children grow and as your school circumstances change. 

What now?

You should now have a sense of your hopes for afterschooling balanced against your commitments. Right away, I recommend getting started with your top priority subject. Do some research to find a curriculum that works for you, and then get started. But keep your answers. Once you get into the swing of things, think about adding other material. 

How could anyone accomplish that whole list of priorities? 

If I had tried to do all of this all at once, I'd have failed. The reality is that I began by teaching my children history, due to concerns over my own subpar history education and seeing my kids with the same nationalistic curriculum I had. Over time, I've added new work now and then, or left off with something that seemed less critical. Even after years of afterschooling, I still don't try to meet all of these priorities all the time. 

I do, however, try to think about when I will try to meet these priorities. Some of these I shift to summer-only. Some I do as specialty courses over holidays. Some I think about doing when the kids are older. Some I try to work in to their school coursework. And a lot of it I try to teach in passive or entertaining ways that don't feel so much like work.

How much time do my kids do? What can I expect?

Afterschooling can be as much or as little as you make it. When I began, I read to my son from a history book for 20 minutes on Saturdays and Sundays. And it grew from there.

Now:

During the schoolyear:

• 20 minutes per weekend day of Spanish + 20 minutes of Spanish-language Netflix
• 20 minutes per weekend day "reading log" time (weekday school homework) spent on literature or historical fiction for my younger son
• 20 minutes per weekend day typing practice for my older son
• 1-2 hours per weekend on an academic subject (currently history for my younger son, science for my older son)
• A lecture every few weekends on art history or music history
• Periodic extras such as K'nex-based science experiments

You'll notice all of this is weekend work. When my kids were in a unchallenging public school with, e.g., 1-2 days per week of Spanish and very little homework, they did a lot more on the weekdays. 

Winter break:

I choose a subject to focus on each year with more depth. Every day, we do 30-40 minutes of activities. In the past, we've studied history of technology, the Renaissance, the Axial Age, and trade networks (e.g., Hansa, Silk Road) and trade empires (e.g., Dutch, Phoenicians).

During the summer:

• Older son
• 20 minutes per day of Spanish plus weekly online Spanish conversation class
• 1 hour per week of typing
• 1 hour per week of science work-ahead time 
• 1 hour per week of math work-ahead time
• 1 hour per week of social skills practice
• Younger son
• 20 minutes per day of Spanish plus weekly online Spanish conversation class
• 1 hour per week of history
• 2 hour per week of competition math
• 1 hour per week meditation practice
• Both have been listening to a 20 minute art history lecture each week or two, and doing online jigsaw puzzles a few times a week based on the art we learn about.

Passive learning is harder to quantify. Our bookshelves are filled with graphic novels about literature and history and science. Periodically they want to have screen time during the weekdays, and they can choose from documentaries, information-dense youtube series such as Crash Course, video games about irrigation or doing a dig in the Middle East or  battle strategy in the Battle of Hastings, etc. When they do Spanish in the summer, they earn Spanish-language video time. 

This summer my kids have been obsessed with a manga series based on the War of the Roses. They've read Gene Yuen Lang's two-book graphic novelization on the Boxer Rebellion. They've watched Pixar movies in Spanish. My older son, after reading the graphic series Action Philosophers, wondered about the weirdness of Pythagoras. They've also been playing Happy Atoms, a game of making atoms and learning about elements and molecules and bonds. 

These are not just summer activities, they are part of our regular home life. The reason I've focused on passive learning is that I did not want to, for example, test my kids on what they've learned, or beat it into their heads. Given limited time and the importance to me of keeping the afterschooling schedule light, I've leaned on passive learning.

But really, it can be as much or as little as you want it to be.

Good teaching!