Confessions of a reluctant homeschool teacher

I love my kids. I genuinely enjoy spending time with them, and I take great pleasure in watching them acquire new skills and knowledge. I really do. But I am going to be honest: some days I feel ill-equipped to be their home school teacher. Probably because I don't really know what I am doing.  And because it's hard. It is particularly challenging here in Cuenca because we are away from our home routine and supplies and because Paul is enrolled in his Spanish class, so I'm on my own. One on three.

On good days, the kids are engaged, and I am too. We are well-rested, we get up with energy and good attitudes. The amount of challenge in the material is perfect. I provide the right support. We sit down, we get the work done, and we actually have fun. 

But on bad days, it's not pretty. I lose patience; Dillon seems like he's literally working in molasses. I get annoyed; Brynna cries because I tell her the math problem was incorrect. I have poor classroom management skills; Jonah gets so distracted by his sister's escritura or math that his own work sits unattended for half the morning. 

Homeschooling is not something Paul and I normally would have chosen for our kids. We are believers in public education and in the importance of parents opting into the public school system. I feel that children learn a whole cadre of social and life skills in a school community that have little to do with math or reading but are just as important. Plus, my kids genuinely like school. We considered enrolling our kids in the local school in La Josefina for the year but decided against it for several reasons: the academic year is different; we wanted to freedom to roam without formal school commitments; and the school system in rural Ecuador is terribly under-resourced (e.g. they literally don’t have books). 

As a side note, I have friends and acquaintances who believe in the concept of unschooling -- a branch of home schooling that does not use a set curriculum but rather lets a child guide their own education by following their own interests. Another component of unschooling can be immersive life experiences (e.g. traveling, living in a new community). While I definitely believe that what we are doing in Ecuador is educational for my kids, and there is an appeal to this method, Paul and I did not feel comfortable completely foregoing formal schooling this year. In other words, we made our own bed. 

And so, we did some reading and research, I consulted with a friend (Katie) from high school who is a home school teacher, and we purchased a combined English Language Arts, social studies and science curriculum for Dillon (6th grade) and a separate accelerated math one. The ELA curriculum is called Moving Beyond the Page and is a cool literature-based curriculum, which we chose because Dillon is a lover of books and a voracious reader.  

The unit Dillon is working on now: Incas, Aztecs, and Mayas

For Jonah, we ordered a special second grade math curriculum called Beast Academy, which was recommended by my friend, Alana, whose daughter's school uses it in New Mexico. Beast Academy is a comic-based math curriculum,  created by super smart math nerds who decided someone who loves math and problem solving should write a curriculum for how little kids should be taught to love and know math. The comic characters are adorable, the guides are amazing, and it is perfect for my kid who is obsessed with graphic novels. I also spent some time talking with one of CCLA's 2nd grade teachers to understand academic goals for his Spanish language arts and writing.

A page from a Beast Academy book. They are so cute!

For Brynna, I decided  -- particularly after recently watching Jonah do online kindergarten during the pandemic -- that I had enough kindergarten materials to help her get the required reading and math skills. However, she is so envious of Jonah's Beast Academy books that our first visitors will be bringing us one for her in a few weeks.

Anything we chose, we knew, was going to be complicated by limited internet access in La Josefina. So we lugged a fair number of text books with us, and Paul soon became an expert at bulk downloading the materials Dillon needs. And we are supremely grateful to the Sonoma County Public Library and the Phoenix Public Library for their e-book selections in both English and Spanish. 

We started school at the end of July, a little earlier than Santa Rosa City Schools would normally start, in large part to give us freedom to take time off when we were traveling. The kids have been mostly amenable (Brynna was super excited to start kindergarten), and we generally follow a Monday through Friday school schedule, though sometimes we start a little late, and the littles are always done before lunch.  

A general school day schedule looks like this:

8am: wake and breakfast

8:30/9 am: start school, Jonah starts with 30 minutes of independent Spanish reading; Brynna reviews her Spanish syllables and then does guided Spanish reading with me, Dillon starts with 30 minutes Spanish literature/reading.

9:30 am: Escritura: all three do Spanish writing (leveled): Brynna draws and writes 1-2 framing sentences, Jonah draws and writes a paragraph, and Dillon works each week on a week-long essay

10:00 am BREAK

10:30 am: Brynna and Jonah do math, Dillon usually moves onto ELA and Geography

11:00 am: Mom reads in Spanish for Brynna (Jonah often joins), Jonah does some Spanish vocabulary or other grammar work

11:30: School is done for J&B, Dillon moves onto Math

12:00: LUNCH

12:30-3: Dillon finishes ELA, Math, etc. Sometimes these afternoons go painfully long for D. 

All in all, I hope that the kids are getting what they need academically (I think they are), and I hope that the schooling is worth the occasional struggles and tears. I'm not sure we will ever know. Paul is doing an excellent job of moving around geography and social sciences for Dillon to correspond with our life here in Ecuador, as well as helping Dillon do hard math. And I am trying to find the sweet spot in the challenge vs. support for my two little ones.

We met a homeschooling missionary mom yesterday at the Cuenca visa office; she was formerly an elementary teacher and principal, so definitely has more credentials than I do to be doing this. She has just one 10-year-old girl. She expressed similar frustrations about how the work can get dragged out, the tension between staying on task and giving the kids a break. The lack of clarity about how a day should really look. She admitted to being extremely rigid about staying on track because she has known other families who struggled getting behind, particularly for families who are spending years away from standard school. Who knows?! 

I am reminded of a conversation I had with my former boss, Dr. Jason Cunningham, who took his family abroad on two separate occasions, one year each time. He shared with me that during their first year in the Bahamas with his three kids, he and his wife spent a lot of time and energy on academics. The second time they went abroad, a few years later, they were much more relaxed. Here we are in our "first year", probably pretty developmentally normal to stress about it.

Like so many aspects of parenting, I don't know what is the "right" way to do this. Truth is, there are probably many different right ways. Especially since each of my kids is of different age and temperament. I guess I hope we are choosing a good version for each of them! I am even more grateful for Paul's teamwork after having a week without it, and I also honor all you amazing elementary teachers out there, who do this not for three kids, but for 25 or 30. Mil gracias! Don't you worry, my kids will be back in standard school next year. I won't lie, I am already looking forward to it.