The Mystery of Learning
Florida is my “adopted” state, and the only state in which I have home schooled. I began homeschooling under the supervision of the county, and then graduated to using an umbrella or private school covering. I desired more flexibility, had began to use a more “unschooling” approach and seasoned our day with many unit studies and hands on learning projects. Therefore, I desired more freedom than what I felt the county superintendent would offer.
I am a strong believer in finding your child’s core strengths and natural interests and developing them into your child’s curriculum. I know that may sound a bit odd at first, but for instance, my son Jesse was a struggling reader. I had successfully taught phonics and reading to my two oldest daughters, but Jesse just wasn’t “getting it”. He had developed a love for reptiles at an early age- you can’t escape them here in Florida- and I decided to work his reading around his natural love for reptiles. Instead of trying to force him to read through his phonics work, we read together countless factual information regarding reptiles. When he would discover a new species, we would race to the Internet to look it up. He would carefully watch me read over every word that pertained to his newly found creature. Before long, he was identifying words such as: iguana, herpetologist, and reptile, while stumbling over then and than.
I knew that I couldn’t totally ignore the basics, but I felt that since he had hit a roadblock, the best strategy would be to keep his love for words alive.
One day, he picked up an old Dick and Jane book that I had in my extensive book collection. He picked it up and read it. He was towards the end of his 8th year, which by public school standards is a “late learner”. His reading skills before that were virtually nil. Struggling with repetitive phonics charts were fruitless. It was as if, just on that day, the light switch turned on, and I really don’t know who pulled the cord.
Well, he finished Dick and Jane, and by the time he was nine, he was reading on a fourth grade reading level. What happened to the countless hours of memorizing sight words-stumbling over the words in each “beginner reader” that I had used with my two older daughters? I really have no idea what happened. It was then that I realized that homeschooling is more than “pre packaged curriculums” or the latest teaching formulas. I realized that homeschooling is about unlocking the closed doors in children’s minds to help them expand their horizons. I also learned that exposure to educational stimulation will prepare the groundwork and all I can do is lay that foundation. There is no magic power that I, or any other teacher has, that will cause a child to “get it”. It is a mystery of the human brain that only God knows and millions of scientists hope to one day understand. It is the mystery of learning.