The first two weeks

As part of my new job as Academy Coordinator at Natomas Charter's PACT Academy, I spent some time speaking this week about our program to new families. We had a hugely successful orientation with more than 50 new parents, returning parent buddies, staff and teachers. We talked about the legalities, the logistics and the paperwork. But the most common question, by far, was "I don't have my books yet, what do I do the first two weeks?"

I have thought a lot about this over the last week. What should you do the first two weeks? Well I can speak to what you should not do very clearly. You should not lay all your books out on the kitchen table and systematically begin assigning pages to read and fill in blanks (done that, it doesn't work.) You should not take your kid to a curriculum store and ask them to pick out some stuff (yep, done that too-fail!) And you should definitely not begin the first day by getting in a fight and threatening to return your child to the closest public school available (who me? Yeah, ok, did that once too.)

If you're brand new to homeschooling and your child has been in traditional school before, maybe someone has mentioned deschooling to you.  If not, it may be something you want to consider, particularly if your child had a difficult experience in traditional school. For us, deschooling didn't really work in the way it's supposed to. It wasn't a detox and it certainly didn't help the kid free his mind to begin homeschooling in a new perspective. He wanted a system, structure and the comfort of not being weird. Every year, we hit the books right away, even that very first year. The idea of seeing all his traditional school friends with new backpacks and lunchbags and marching off to new adventures while he was stuck in the same monotony made him feel left behind. So we jump right back in and right back to school.

But that doesn't mean our school looks like theirs, nor should it. If nothing else, I want to recommend to all the new homeschooling families and those who finished last year grumpy and annoyed, that you take time to figure out what your school should look like. Experiment the first two weeks. Does the day start better with a walk? Perhaps some of the kids need more freedom to arrange lessons at a different time? Maybe a read-aloud first will kick off the day right, followed by the hard stuff right after lunch? Each family is different, each child has a different approach.

So these first two weeks, find a system that works for now. Spend time figuring out how your child learns best, how you like to teach best and what the rhythm of the day will look like when it's all in sync.