The Afterschooler

I previously discussed creating an art nook and using it to enrich history learning and to learn about art history at the same time.  Today, it's time for music. Music history is one of those areas easily ignored or given short shrift, but given how sticky music is for minds, it need not be. And listening to music has demonstrable positive effects on mood, memory, and brain function . (The more involved a person is with the music, the greater the effect; so, inattentive listening may not produce more than a mood boost, where playing an instrument boosts executive function , among other things.) Short of committing to a serious music program, one may still curate a musical curriculum that will begin to familiarize you and your children with new music. The more exposure a person has to music, the more likely she will be to engage with music more fully in life. So I see this as a sort of initial step, a necessary condition of music literacy. The good news: it's as simple as playi...

 One type of teaching that easily gets lost in afterschooling is project-based learning. It's something that takes effort on the part of both teacher and student, and as such, it tends to feel trickier than just doing your daily Duolingo or ixl.  But one of the things I loved about homeschooling full time was being able to follow my kids' interests. While I had a lot I wanted to cover, there were moments where it made a lot of sense to step back and say, "You're clearly interested in _______, so how about we do a project around that?" Full disclosure, projects take time and effort. And because of this, my tendency is to reserve projects for areas of student interest. As a teacher, you can cultivate student interest, by thinking about the sorts of things that inspire your kid, and talking to them about what you want them to learn through a lens of what attracts them.  As an example: a child inspired by art will be likely to enjoy learning about Renaissance science ...

Jump to instructions... I think this is the year that many parents may be focused on the "three Rs," because it feels like any more than that is exhausting. And that, my friends, is fair. But! I don't use exclamation points without cause.  In this year, 2020, the misery, the shame of America, the horror of remote learning, maybe it's exactly the time to re-up your arts education. God knows, with winter approaching of 2020, it feels like there's precious little beauty to be had otherwise. And because this is me, I'm not suggesting attending an art or music class (though that might be a good idea if your kid is into it). I started my campaign of art and music quite late. When we started our history lessons, it felt like enough to just get through a little extra history a week. I was not trying to make more work. And then a few years ago, we spent our "January term" (winter break, when we choose a topic to dig into a little more deeply) on music histor...

 I was a Montessori kid. My children were Montessori kids. If you have the means, Montessori is amazing. It's all the things I hoped my kids would get out of education: inspiration, rigor, independence, and deep understanding. I used a lot of Montessori principals in, e.g., how I taught my kids to read, how I set up my house, etc.  But during the year I homeschooled, I switched to a classically-inspired curriculum. At the time, I was inspired by a) the price (Montessori is expensive!) and b) how much my post-Montessori education jibed with classical education, at least at home.  Though the methodologies and focuses of classical education and Montessori are pretty different, they share a lot: Children move through stages of brain development, and education should match where the child is. While the curriculum is structured, there should be room within curriculum for the child to lead in her own choices of material. The "real" world is endlessly fascinating and is to be tre...

Maybe you've followed Donald Trump's crusade against the 1619 Project from the NY Times and the curriculum based on it. Because the guy's trying very hard to become Kim Jong Un, he naturally followed up with the (creatively named, so you can tell he's being a jerk) 1776 Commission . If you don't feel like being infected by his speech, here's the pull quote: Our mission is to defend the legacy of America's founding, the virtue of America's heroes, and the nobility of the American character. We must clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms, and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country. We want our sons and daughters to know that they are the citizens of the most exceptional nation in the history of the world. To grow up in America is to live in a land where anything is possible, where anyone can rise, and where any dream can come true — all because of the immortal principles our nation's founders inscribed nea...

TLDR: If you seriously don't want to spend a lot of time and effort teaching history or (to a lesser degree) science, or if you want to set your child up to do well in ELA, a solid home library can do incredible heavy lifting, and it can turn your child into a person who understands learning as a pleasurable, life-long activity, and may provide insight into POV, facts, and other mutable ideas. Today's conventional wisdom about reading: READ EVERYTHING! ALL READING IS GOOD ! That's probably true.. if your child is not a reader. If the reluctant reader reads, then mission accomplished. And since they are reluctant readers, they're probably only reading a minimal amount of time (let's say 20 minutes a day, thanks to the ever present Reading Log).  To those who parent kids who struggle with reading and dislike it, I say, Wimpy your kid. (Though I would suggest that even reluctant readers enjoy being read to, and so some ideas below may be pertinent.) But I think the nar...

Here's a review I wrote years ago, when my kid was actually using Montessori Words & Phonics . It remains my strong favorite. This app taught both my kids to read in about 6-8 months, to the point where they could read Level 2-3 books such as Frog and Toad are Friends or Mouse Tales. I did not intervene at all. One of them was in Chinese immersion at the time, so literally no English reading was happening elsewhere. As far as lazy parenting lifehacks, this is aces. Best $4 I ever spent.

We at Chez Mariah are doing OK with remote learning. We live in a well-funded district, my kids attend a great charter, and I'm available to them during the day. And my kids are in late elementary and middle school, so fairly independent at this point. But this isn't the way things are for many people. Medium had a pretty good article about this recently, how privatization of public utilities and lack of plan over the summer led us where we are. Add to this failure to figure out and fund childcare for those who need it, which is most of us.  It has me wondering what I would be doing if I were in a worse situation, and whether principals of afterschooling could be useful to those families who are hurting so badly in the current situation.  Absent fundamental systemic change, there's not much I can contribute to the problem of childcare for families without a parent at home during the day. The same is true of internet access. Those are problems beyond my scope.  But as to ...

  This was my bookstore haul today! All but one is a comic book, which is something I'd never have imagined happening 10 years ago. I was not one of those kids, the kids who loved comic books. My parents had a library full of old books, so I grew up on a steady diet of 19th century ladies' novels. (Wonderfully big R Romantic by the way. I particularly loved the nature crones of Gene Stratton Porter.) SO when I began with my two boys, I was very snobby about comic books. They read early, they read often, so why bother with "books" meant for boys who hated reading? I made some concessions; Calvin & Hobbes is genuinely witty, the vocabulary interesting, and the themes occasionally philosophical.  And, I believed fully in the Classical education idea of learning through text. And I still believe that textual learning is a critical skill. And if I was fully homeschooling, I would still be emphasizing text.  But! My kids are learning through text at school. They are get...

This is in no way comprehensive, just some suggestions to get you started. I'll be updating over time (I'm starting with history), and please do make suggestions in the comments. AUDIOBOOKS History audiobooks Story of the World - World history for elementary students, told through narrative Ordinary People Change the World series - biographies for quite young kids Kids' History on Learnoutloud , Kids' Biography on Learnoutloud  - Clearinghouse of titles, be aware some titles may be from older text which will be outdated or have a very Western perspective.  Newbery Award winners  on Audible - This list is primarily fiction, but many winners have been historical fiction, which is a wonderful way to reinforce history. Historical titles include: Dead End in Norvelt, Moon Over Manifest, Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!, Criss Cross, Kira Kira, Crispin: the Cross of Lead, A Single Shard, A Year Down Yonder, Bud, Not Buddy, Out of the Dust, The Midwife's Apprentice, Number th...

One of the books I loved as a kid was Cheaper by the Dozen , a book about a family of twelve and their efficiency-expert parents, written by Ernestine, one of the twelve.  Lillian and Frank Gilbreth, the parents, are OG afterschoolers. Frank, ever the numbers guy, teaches the kids to do mental math, multiplying big numbers. He teaches them touch typing. And appreciating the value of acquiring a second language, he has the kids play foreign language records while they bathe. "You don't have to listen to them consciously," he says, "Just play them, and they'll finally make an impression." For ten years, every morning and every evening, you could hear French and German coming out of the bathroom. Whatever grumbling the kids might have done about it, all of them could speak French and German by the time they were grown.  It's meant to be a funny story, like the rest of the book, but it occurs to me that much of what I do with my kids is very much in the spir...

Getting ready to begin teaching, especially in this crazy year 2020, feels overwhelming, but right now, before my kids have started school, I'm still in the doldrums of August. And yes, I'm gathering homeschool materials oand trying to join a learning pod and getting school supplies. One thing that I think many parents overlook during this time is domestic organization . I am no particular fan of domesticity. I'm messy, I hate cooking, mail piles up. But every August, I spend a week or so trying to front load some organization so that the school year itself is not so difficult. This is a habit that started when I was about to have my second kid. The one thing I recalled from being a new parent was how any domestic process that had not been organized ... it failed. So we set up our bills to auto-pay. We started grocery delivery, and I pre-loaded lists that would cover our usual items. I made a month of meals. I put alerts on my phone for things like sorting mail or paying pr...

My kids started remote classes in March. Their classes, which had been rigorous and sound for the most part, became a shadow of themselves. Their teachers were working hard to teach, but the difficulty of remote learning seemed insurmountable.  What had been five classes a week of immersion Spanish reduced to once a week. Reading Midsummer Night's Dream and writing about it became merely watching the movie. And so on. With another year of remote learning on the horizon, I decided: it's time to share about afterschooling. The pandemic did not begin my afterschooling journey; I started years ago when my children were very young. What began as a way to improve a subpar history curriculum became a more organized, multi-year project. In fact, I had taken time off to begin writing this blog about general afterschooling when the pandemic happened.  For those reading in 2020 anticipating a half-baked academic year, these are my main ideas: Passive v. active education: I limit the need...

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: 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? 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.) Think about how much homework your child has, on average. How much time do you feel you can commit per week to formal instruction? Include both your time commi...