I was reading at the Sonlight forums this morning, and a mom posted about this very topic trying to work it out in her own mind (I think, I didn't really read all the replies) She compared her homeschooling to her husband giong to work every day. A lot of things she said really made me stop and think, and I thought it may be an interesting thing to discuss here.
My husband works 10-15 hours a day, depending on the time of year. Some weeks he even works on Saturdays. He's been at his job for 15 years, and he's not entirely thrilled with it. He likes the work itself, but HATES the people he works for. However, he started at the ground level and worked himself up into a position that normally requires an engineering degree, so getting a job elsewhere is not an option at this point in time for him. He spends all week looking forward to friday night when he clocks out, and then Sunday he spends moping around because he has to go back Monday morning. When he has a vacation week coming up, he starts counting down 4 weeks beforehand and is in heaven the last week before his week off. Then the last 2 days of his vacation he starts moping because he has to go back.
His work record is pretty good. He doesn't call off normally unless he is seriously ill, and he has a strong work record at his job for low breakage and high quality output (he cuts eyeglass lenses) He is good at what he does, and everyone there knows it. Management also knows that he is the sole source of income for our family with 4 children, and they use that to their advantage. Mandatory overtime, treating him badly, and holding him to different rules from other employees are just a few things he goes through.
If he were to call off every time he didn't want to go to work, he'd have been unemployed YEARS ago. If he didn't do as much as he was supposed to at work daily, he would be fired. So why is it that when I don't feel like sitting down and doing lessons with the girls, I just take the day off?
Homeschooling is just as demanding as most jobs out there. I'm juggling multiple tasks, managing others to be sure they stay on task, training people in skills they don't know, and trying to maintain high standards with what we do all on top of keeping things fairly neat and tidy at the same time. I am officially teaching 2 children, while casually working with 2 little ones at the same time. I don't WANT to do lessons at this time of year, it is so beautiful outside and we want to spend that time in the yard, playing and doing yardwork. I find myself giving in to this desire too much lately, playing instead of working. We spend our time playing in the yard and tearing out old nasty garden stuff and cleaning up debris from the people who owned this house before us (yes I'm STILL finding broken pieces of clay pots all over the yard) but we neglect history and science on occassion.
What kind of example am I giving my children by doing this? I have no excuse for allowing this, other than a lack of self-control. Its that simple. I like doing what I LIKE instead of what I need to do. This is one area that I've always struggled with. I lack motivation when it is something that I'm not in the mood to do right then. If I don't feel like getting up when the kids do, I turn on the tv and go back to sleep. If I don't want to clean up the living room when its messy (which is a constant) then I don't. I find other stuff to do instead of the tasks that I need to do. This includes sitting down and doing lessons with my girls. If I am frustrated and not feeling like continuing to try and explain 2 digit addition to Melissa (the current struggle for her) then I will find other stuff to do instead so I can avoid the frustration.
I admit it. I am a lazy person. I don't like doing some things, and I do whatever possible to avoid doing them. Here I am, a homeschooling mom, and I don't want to do lessons at some times of the year. When it gets too hot for me (June-ish most likely) then I'll be more motivated to do lessons because I don't like to sweat. I like sitting in air conditioning in the summer, looking out the window and seeing the pretty world around me. This is one of the times that I'm most likely to read to my girls and spend time doing activities and experiments with them. Then in late September when it cools off again we spend time outside until late October or so instead of doing schoolwork. I'm a seasonal schooler, which allows me the chance to enjoy the beautiful temperatures that I like without worrying about formal lessons. I don't know if that's really FAIR for the kids, but it works for us.
If I am to consider homeschooling to be my JOB though, just as Scott goes off to the optical lab every day, then I need to suck it up and do lessons with the girls even during those times that we would rather be out in the world. We need to do our math and science instead of being on the swingset in the mornings, and doing phonics and history in the afternoons instead of digging in the gardens. Every bit of my being fights that though, and when we attempt to do this kind of schooling we don't learn anything and we are miserable. So while homeschooling is my JOB, I still get vacation times like everyone else. Teachers get the summer off, so I take an equivilant time off at different times of the year that tend to work better for us. We don't take off inservice days and any holidays where Scott is at work anyway, so it allows us more flexibility than traditional schooling. If I want to take from Thanksgiving until a week after Christmas off lessons, I can do that because we don't take the smaller holidays (like the day before thanksgiving, the second week after christmas for break, spring break, etc) But I don't follow a formal schedule.
This may buck the system as far as what others think a homeschool family schedule should look like, but then I don't keep a daily schedule either. LOL I only insist that lunch be around noon and that bedtime is around 8-9pm depending on how the kids are acting and if there's something on tv that they want to watch and have earned the priviledge of watching by good behavior, attitudes, and getting chores and any schoolwork done. I don't have anything set in stone, although I do have a schedule posted on the wall in my home for anyone who is watching the kids so they can take over if needed (the kids do well with schedules if I'm not the one caring for them)
I consider my homeschooling to be my real job, even if it doesn't even REMOTELY resemble what others would consider a job. And I do darn well with it too I think, even if there are times that we take off that others think we should be doing lessons LOL So I guess I have my own particularly interesting view of what a "real job" entails. And if you ask Scott, I have a feeling he'd agree with how I do our schooling because he has seen how much the kids have grown over this school year.
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