Homeschooling Teenagers

For the first time that I know of, homeschooling feels popular. Parents are realizing that they were doing a lot of work at the end of the spring semester and they are seeing that they can probably handle all of the work. While I wouldn’t want to discredit teachers for the education they have and the work they do, because they do provide an important service that I would hate to see disappear, I actually think that many parents are going to be just fine striking out on their own. They just needed a push (and some uncomfortably forced free time).

For my part, I will be homeschooling the twins, who are to be eighth graders, but remote-schooling the two elementary kiddos with hopes of being able to send them into the classroom when that becomes safer. I have no experience homeschooling middle schoolers. My kids were homeschooled when I started my bachelors degree in 2014, and I continued to educate some or all of them while I took classes, for a few years.

For me, elementary education came naturally. We grew stuff in the garden, went for nature walks, baked and cooked and sewed together, and occasionally did worksheets to encourage basic writing, spelling and math concepts. They were also in group activities like gymnastics and swimming lessons or on a soccer team. The twins took guitar lessons for a time. At that age, the education they need is everywhere. I don’t really know how to do middle school.

I also don’t know how to homeschool some, but not all, of my kids. I will have to manage the twins’ education on my own, which has already required a lot of planning and building strategies, trajectories and stores of materials, while also navigating the complexities of cooperating with the younger kids’ school. The Montessori has responded to feedback from parents who participated in remote schooling at the end of last year by adding more live video sessions with teachers and, supposedly, reducing the amount of time spent doing actual school work on a screen. They also said that, in response to the frustrations expressed by parents, they’re going to try to devise a schedule which avoids multiple students living in the same home being involved in live sessions at the same time. Which, for me, just means I’ll be busy with live sessions twice as often as a parent with only one Montessori kid. When am I working with the twins?

On top of that, I was planning on trying to work together with our best friend family, who are also homeschooling this year. We thought we would get together a few times a week to have our similarly aged kids work in groups on things, and play a table top role playing game for social skills and math practice on Fridays. But it takes about half an hour to drive to their place, and the two elementary-aged kids are expected to each have multiple live video sessions throughout the day. Each one should be about 15 minutes, and I don’t know how many (they just said multiple) or when, only that the school is trying to avoid overlaps within households. So, if I end up with two 15-minute live sessions (one per kid) to shepherd every hour, when am I driving?

It is known: I panic, especially when trying to plan for unknowns. I suppose I ought to just wait and see how it all falls together (or apart?). But the Montessori kids are supposed to start in a week and I still don’t know what that’s going to mean for our family. So, I feel like it is not unreasonable to be a little panicked. I can’t schedule appointments or plan our homeschool time slots. I’m trying to wait patiently, because I know the school has a lot to untangle, but I feel like I can’t start on any of my untangling until they finish theirs.

I do like the Montessori the kids belong to. It’s bilingual, and thoughtful, and they have been extremely helpful and supportive throughout our adventures with ADHD and ASD. It’s a charter school, and I don’t want to lose their spots there. At the moment, though… I wish I was just homeschooling all of them. It would be easier to navigate.

Damnit, COVID!