Moderation

 In almost 18 years of home educating, I’ve had a lot of moderators.  

When we lived in Scotland, and we home educated for a few months, we were planning to leave, so we didn’t bother with any of their system.  We started 2006 home educating Willow in class 1 in a Steiner method with a curriculum from a Queensland Steiner school, with the idea that this would be helpful for returning to Australian schooling by 2007.  April 2006 we made our way to London, and from there we headed to Paris where we spent two months life learning and using our Steiner curriculum, until we returned to Adelaide mid 2006.  The remainder of 2006 saw us home educating and looking at schools for Willow.

Willow drawing at Musee d’Orsay

Gabriel drawing at Musee d’Orsay

In 2007 Willow attended two schools, Trinity Gardens, in class 2, in their Steiner stream, and then Kiranari, a small community school.  After six months, approx, we had enough of the schooling systems in Adelaide, and we registered to home educate.

Our first moderator was called Sally, and she ran the home education department in Adelaide, and she was lovely.  She was an ex-homeschooler and she made it quite clear that the department was not on my side and was not there to support me.  She did supply a few ideas for contacts, but again it was made clear that this was not her primary role.  Her role was to assess my ability to provide an education.

Vaccswim at Glenelg

For our approximately five years home educating in Adelaide,  I became accustomed to writing up my notes on our experiences, and reviewing our year, and reading the learning outcomes and connecting our curriculum to the learning outcomes.  I grew to find the experience quite useful and it helped me a lot to understand the progress my children were making over the year. 

Every year in Adelaide, we had a different moderator who was generally an ex-principal with no interest in home education, who the department was “retiring”.  For six months they would cause havoc in the community and then they would work out how home education worked.  Generally we were lucky to have our review in the second half of the year.  Plus Damien and I had the advantage of knowing how to work the system. By our final year in Adelaide, after a few dramas, including discussing the dramas the Department of education were creating with the education minister, we were assigned a moderator who was to be our new permanent moderator.  By then, after five different moderators, we were off to Perth.

Arden working on Geometry

In Perth, in total, over approximately 12 years we’ve had three different moderators.  Our first was very supportive and indicated that that was part of her role, which was quite a foreign idea to me.  The longer we got to know her, the more we enjoyed her visits, and the better she understood our family’s learning style and goals.  During our time with her as moderator we shifted from having learning outcomes to report on, to having the WA national curriculum to report on.  (I was less than impressed with this, when we lived in the UK the media was constantly reporting on how the national curriculum was failing our children, and it was one of the main reasons we decided to send Willow to the Glasgow Steiner school.)

Willow and Irving hanging out together whilst Willow busks.

At an exhibition of historic pianos.

Our next moderator, was a mixed bag, sometimes he would be ok, and other times he was trying to catch me out, which made the experience somewhat unpleasant.  It was like I was misbehaving in school and he knew it!, and if he just saw me it the right moment or time he could reprimand me.  After two years of  having him as our moderator, I sent him our notes, a week in advance, and this did help quite a lot.  Sadly I never really found a rapport like our first moderator here.

Arden working on some art.

Our current moderator came with a reputation for being difficult, so I made a few amendments to how I wrote up my report.  Instead of hand writing I typed it, and for each learning area bar english and maths, I added either a photo or screen shot as evidence of progress.  This seemed to make all the difference, and our first meeting with her was a pleasure, and a huge improvement on our last moderator!

Term 2, Lockdown and Winter Solstice.

Co-vid lockdown saw us enjoying the restfulness of the city and some of the littler things, such as quiet displays for Autumn.

As Irving was a little confused about our “home school” also turning into “home office” signs were placed on doors, so that he could work out if Dad and Willow (DD20) were free for a chat.  Eventually he worked out their daily flow, and the signs became unnecessary.

Lockdown cooking with Irving- potato scones.

And some German biscuits known as railway tracks.

Me having some fun with decorating my coffee.  🙂

Robin Hood with the boys.  Reading together is still one of my favourite family activities.

Working my way gradually through modern history.

Learning about Saints with Irving.

And Arden’s rabbit.

Arden has moved onto doing more complex geometry this year, and Irving loves joining in.

Irving working on woven stars.

Arden’s star.

Me working with Arden and Irving.

Arden’s floral pattern.

The underlying structure for the above design.

Irving having some fun.

Looking at various polyhedrons and the 12 division of the circle.

24 division of a circle.

Preparations for a spiral.

Making progress on perspective.

 Hexa-flexagon’s thanks to Vi Hart.

And borromean rings also thanks to Vi Hart.  (Irving made heaps of these, and then later moved onto paper chains.)

Arden finally finished knitting his socks, and since I was required to knit at his pace for this project;so did I.  He was not a fan of knitting the whole way through (we kept having chats about he never needed to knit again if he dislike it, but this skill would enable him to fix his knitted clothes for the rest of his life) and finally after doing the whole thing quite slowly but very competently, he declared knitting was ok and knit a strawberry!

Arden’s knitted and wet felted strawberry.

Socks finished for Irving.

Irving’s knitting for bilby.

Arden and I started pattern grading these slippers for him- though progress has been a little slow.

Arden working on a bag for his harmonica- he did both machine and hand sewing for this projects.

And he was very pleased when I finally finished this blanket for him.  🙂

Hard waste find being re-newed.

Working on string games.

Arden (and I) have been learning Latin using the Lingua Latina series.  (We’ve also picked up “The Gruffalo” in Latin and Harry Potter- though we’re a way off reading them yet!  :D)

Celebrating winter solstice with a fire, sunrise and damper baked in the ashes.

Our Kodaly music teacher suggested this book- so with the help of Willow, who studied at WAAPA (Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts) Irving, Arden and I are working through this.  Both boys have been self-teaching piano with the help of youtube, and this is give some extra structure to their progress.

Finally just because in lockdown all these little moments in nature were so appreciated.  Walking past the bird sanctuary at Alfred Cove at sunset.

Vision for Life

How did we get here?  I must admit as a first time parent in my mid 20s there was no way that I ever would have envisioned that my eldest child would have been home educated for all but a couple of years of school.

Damien and I started out parenthood with the idea that our family unit was important, and that being connected and supported in our relationship was important and that supporting each other and our child(ren) was our priority.
Our main priority for ourselves when we met, was happiness and to have a happy relationship.  This was our vision for our future, and this has been the motivator for many of our decisions.

We started home education, because it seemed convenient for relocating back to Australia.  We stopped home education because Willow needed more social contact.  We returned to home education because Willow’s happiness and our own family harmony were more important to us than the schooling system. 

With Willow being in school (in Scotland), home educated in Scotland, France and Adelaide, and back in school (in Adelaide) it became clearer to Damien and I that some of our own problems as young adults were purely to do with school and its systemisation.  We could see some of this appearing in some of the kids in Willow’s school in Adelaide, certain behaviours that the 7yr olds were developing to cope with being in the system, that parents explained away as a stage, and that Damien and I with our new perspective could see was the kids finding ways to cope with have too few adults to spend time with, be supported by and to model grown-up behaviour from.

Within a very short time of removing Willow from school the anti-social behaviours that she was displaying at home vanished, and when on further questioning on my part, about how much happier she seemed, 7yr old Willow declared, “I don’t have to act any more Mummy.”

So this formed the basis for our decisions around education, these transformative experiences, started us on this wonderful and at times challenging but always inspiring journey that has lead us towards a usually contented home life based around education and learning.  This has meant that only Willow attended school, and that Gabriel and Arden have never been, and that Irving is heading towards being registered for home education next year.  For the littler ones in particular this experience has been all encompassing and nurturing, being surrounded by their family that loves them most of the time, and having an understanding that learning is inspiring and interesting and exciting. 

When they go out into the world, they transition into being independant, and they are not rudely and sharply separated from their family, and the feeling of safety that that offers them.  The separation that happens does so gently over the years: time at classes with parents present, time at classes without parents present, time with friends, time at home alone, time walking to the shop,etc.  Each skill is built up gradually and gently and each separation is partly encouraged by Damien and I, and by our child.  In the early years, this can feel very slow, but in a larger family there are so many other activities happening that the later years of school travel past quite quickly and all of a sudden, home education is coming to an end, and new experiences past school are being planned and created.

One final note, in our family, one of the main occurrences during the years to keeping life happy and content, is to always resolve emotional disturbances and disharmonies on the spot.  Some days this has meant at home learning has gone out the window, as we sit and work out and sometimes have a good cry, about life and what has been going on.  But these times of disharmony, have always worked out in our favour, as we as a family, have learnt about emotions together and have language and skills to problem solve our feelings, and the problems that they can create.  For me pre-children this was the path that I was starting that lead us to this place, the path towards being able to find and create happiness, and be content most of the time.

So my question to anyone starting home education is…What is your goal for your family?

Some of our moments…
Coffee mornings with Damien have become a thing around here, after him missing us all in the mornings!  (We tend to be later risers) 

Hanging out at the playground with everyone…so nice to have teens that have fun with everyone, that like to chat with people, and to have a family of people that look out for each other.  (Little one has a way to go with this obviously!)

Things to do whilst waiting for your older siblings….”pop”…umbrella fun!

One of Arden’s latest passions, photography.  Hot chocolate on a cold day!

History of Education in Australia

Came across this article yesterday, when I was looking at one of my preferred home education magazine’s “Otherways“.  I was very interested to discover (and not surprised) that the segregation of families in Australia was deliberate due to the settlements being convict based. 

They also refer to South Australia in the article, in terms of absenteeisms, however I would be interested to know how the education philosophies varied there, as South Australia was the only part of Australia that was never a penal colony (interestingly many people outside of SA seem not to know this part of Australian history).  Certainly our experience of home education in South Australia and Western Australia has been significantly different.  With the SA community focusing on natural learning, and WA focusing on structured class opportunities.  Personally I’m in favour of a blend, but the focus needs to be on learning with the family, rather than being out every day at a class, at least til the children move into a more outward experience of the world, in my opinion.

It does seem to me that many of the local people (there are a significant amount of foreigners here) lack the inward confidence to be authorities in their own lives, and believe in the school system and what it offers, much more than the people we know from home educating in South Australia.  This has resulted in, what seems to me, an enormous range of organised class opportunities for home schoolers.  This  can be very positive, numerous opportunities to learn, with people with expertise, and surrounded by other home schoolers.  However this can turn into another form of school, where kids are dropped off to activities and parents are not involved in their child’s education, and the children end up with the same issues of schooled kids (not looking adults in the eye, believing adults don’t see them, not choosing to mix with kids outside their age range).  Of course schooled kids don’t need to be like this either (it all really comes down to parent involvement.)  Since living in Perth we’ve met many home schooled young people with these school type issues, and it simply seems to me that their parent’s are not raising them to be the authorities in their own lives, and maybe this history of convicts and education explains it a little.  After all, our stories create our cultures.

What If?

You can do it!
http://www.karenpmorrison.com/blog/when-you-should-homeschool-even-if-you-dont-want-to
Because none of us knew that we *could* home educate until we did.  Some days were rubbish.  Some days were great, and then eventually it became life!  It became what I do.  Now we have come to our 11th year, and I love it.  We have so much diversity in what happens around here, and it’s part of the reason that our family is close. It was probably the first time through about grade 4 that this change happened, when I stopped thinking about “how could I do high school?” and just started thinking about the year I was doing, and the year that would follow on.  After that the whole process became less daunting.  What other job do people live that far in the future?  So that helped me remove the fear of the experience, and since then I’ve only ever looked a year ahead.  I changed my view from what if we fail (people would ask when I was doing yr 2,3 etc what about high school- as if that was relevant!?!) to what if we succeed?  What if doing this the whole way through is better for our family?