Homeschooling ParentS

It seems that 90% of the time, homeschooling is a moms-only activity. Oh, Dad might take the kids on an expedition, kick the ball around and call it PE, or work with a child on an evening activity. But by and large, day by day, it's all about mom.

In our case, it may not be 50-50 proposition, but it's closer to 40-60 than most.

It's true that I'm in charge of developing and putting together most of the curriculum materials and overall concepts. But day to day, Peter and I split things up. We can do this because we're both self-employed - which means both of us are flexible, and neither of us gets time off.

The "up" side of this arrangement is that Tom has an extraordinary education. I'm the linear teacher, dedicated to building specific skills; creating logical sequences of content; ensuring that we cover all our bases; setting up tutors and field trips. Peter is the inventive, serendipitous teacher - dipping into unexpected areas of interest because they just happen to come up. He's the one who got Tom excited about building a giant marble maze; he's the one who gets hands-on with animal skeleton and such.

The "down" side of this arrangement is that neither Peter nor I get a real break - EVER. If we're not working, we're teaching. If we're not teaching, we're maintaining the house, cooking meals, shopping, going to Sara's "back to school" night, or preparing lessons for tomorrow. Of course, not all of this is a grind: homeschooling often entails tramping the woods, combing the beaches, or going swimming! Still, though, there's no option for down time until about 10 at night.

Meanwhile, there's the anxiety related to being self-employed. On the one hand- no one employer can leave us high and dry. On the other hand - any ONE of our employers can demand attention at any moment. And, of course, you never know when a contract may dry up (one biggie suddenly got put on hold, putting our schedules into a brief freaked out tizzy!).

Tom, meanwhile, sits at the eye of our hurricane. For a kid with autism, he does surprisingly well with constantly-changing teachers and schedules. But I sometimes wonder how much time he spends wondering and worrying about what's going to happen tomorrow!

Team-Teaching on the Home Front

When we decided to homeschool, my husband Peter and I planned to split the work more or less evenly. Since we're both self-employed, the idea made sense. And since I'm a "morning person" and he's an "evening person," we figured that he'd teach mornings while I worked and I'd teach afternoons while he worked.

The best made plans of mice and men ...

It sounded good. But within the first two weeks of Sara's school year we said "yes" to having two neighbor children come over at about 7:15 - so they could take the bus with Sara and avoid early care at school. This is actually a great plus: Sara is connecting with a same-age, same-gender neighbor, and Tom is actually becoming comfortable with peers (albeit younger peers).

But. It meant that my early morning work was really very hard to put into place. Accompanied by the fact that it's really a lot of fun (and good exercise) to go to the bottom of the steep hill with the kids and then climb up again. AND the fact that on beautiful days it's really a LOT more fun to walk to the harbor than it is to get to work.

Then, it became clear that video work (my husband's business) does not work around our schedules. Nor, of course, do all of my writing clients!

Sigh.

What we have learned, though, is that it's not as tough to work around one another as I thought. I'm good at "big picture" thinking, so have been putting together overall curricula; creating math worksheets and printing out printables; setting up field trips, and so forth. But Peter is great in the moment - and can help Tommy move forward on some of his ideas like "making a robot" (they made it out of cardboard and junk), engineer complicated marble mazes, and come up with innovative teaching techniques.

My idea - at least for now - is to plan each week as we go along. I do the more formal teaching (for the most part) - and Peter takes over for "science," "art," and "gym." Sometimes we switch - and then it's up to me to have specific ideas and work in place. So far, it's working out well, but it's hard to know what will happen if Peter (or I) suddenly become extremely busy.

I can only assume that we'll get very tired!