“Don’t worry. The Force will guide us.” - Qui-Gon Jinn, Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace
Bookkeeping would probably have been a perfect fit for me. I like column A and column B to line up in neat little rows, with matching totals at the end. I enjoy doing our taxes. Planning our annual budget is relaxing for me. Here’s the total minimum income. Here’s the annualized, regular expenses. Here’s what we can reasonably expect to spend in the following categories, based on the past several years’ average. Here’s what we must put away in various savings categories. And the rest is gravy (sometimes a pretty watery gravy, but still gravy). Ta Da. I stand with arms upraised in victory and all around me cheer.
Then again, when I travel or have time to just relax on a weekend, I like to go into things only minimally planned. I hope we do these things this weekend. We should try to see that while we’re here. There’s so many interesting things in this town, I wonder what’s close to our hotel?
Unfortunately, I sometimes try to force a bookkeeping mentality too firmly onto our homeschooling journey. Give me an annual planning book and a dozen, sharp No. 2 pencils and I become a methodical, planning machine. The Schedule, developed in late spring, decends into a mathematical formula. There are 129 lessons and 31 quizzes; that’s 3.7 math lessons and 1 quiz a week to finish on time. One group of vocab words a week to finish on time. Forty-five pages a day in Robinson Crusoe to finish on time. One drawing lesson, three times a week, to finish on time.
On time, on time, on time. It is a haunting refrain that begins to lull me to sleep each fall. I become the White Rabbit who appears muttering, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” The Schedule is in ever present danger of dominating our homeschool life. It’s written down on orderly blocks in My Planner. It’s The Schedule. Of course we must finish this lesson today, it’s on The Schedule!
Yes, I struggle with my natural planner personality and have to actively remember not to only have “output-focused” days. How many pages were written? How many problems worked out? How many minutes practiced? The Schedule gremlins whisper cloyingly.
Hurry up.
Get this done.
Move onto those.
Finish before lunch.
Don’t bother with that, it’ll take too much time.
Put it away.
Stand up.
Sit down.
Fight, fight, fight.
I’m making myself let go, albeit slowly, of the “and onto the next thing” mentality. I am striving to maintain the real goal of a few things done well each day, rather than several things marginally. What’s that line about “the sins of the fathers”? I’m sure any theologian worth his salt would say that it applies to mothers too. What’s a secular equivalent? Monkey see, monkey do? That sure is what it seems like right now. Padawan Learner has developed a real clock focus since we started back up this fall, to the detriment of his enjoyment and (sometimes) his actual learning of the material he’s using. Thankfully, I’m getting better at catching myself and at noticing when he starts to put The Schedule ahead of actually learning anything too.
Maybe, instead of playing music, my alarm clock should say, “Your planner is a great tool, but it’s only a tool.” No public or private school teacher, nor any homeschooling mom or dad, has ever stayed perfectly on schedule. Kids get sick. Adults get sick. Mishaps happen. Relatives arrive. Stuff comes up. Learning is slower than you thought it would be. Learning is faster than you ever thought possible. The materials you spent so much time researching are wholly over their heads, despised or woefully inadequate. The project you just knew was going to be hit holds less enthusiasm than a teenage girl’s, “What.ev.er.” Life happens whether we plan for it or not.
Ultimately, I believe that simply by lovingly and consistantly doing whatever I can to help Padawan Learner learn and love to learn, he will still learn more than if he was one of 25 kids in a classroom dictated by everyone else’s pace, a few kids needs and high-stakes testing. I believe that would be the case even if I chucked it all and returned to complete and total child-led unschooling. Play. Build. Read aloud as long as he’ll let us. He would still learn a ton, but probably not sentence diagramming or Latin.
Where’d you go?
We’re still keeping on’, keeping on’. We’re just not watching the clock so closely while we do it. If math takes 3 hours, and his brain isn’t getting fried from working on it that long, then it takes 3 hours and something else will get set aside that day. We’ve unofficially tiered things as to importance.