Week 39

This week my son had a Karate Camp and this involved traveling to a slightly remote place. I took my kids and my mother-in-law to a nearby higher flat area for stargazing and her comment stuck with me "This is not new, we used to see far more stars in our village growing up". I think my grandchildren are going to say the same about driving cars or watching 2D movies in a theatre. They are going to be in awe that such simple things can also bring a lot of joy to a lot of people.
If we can get our kids to retain a sense of curiosity and wonder throughout their lives, hopefully, it will help them become happier too.

Week 38

When you go looking for something, you tend to just see that or similar things only = selective attention, I guess. For me, that is homeschooling :-). There were 2 pieces of news that really helped strengthen my belief - 1) a group of boys from an elite school discussing ways to rate and torture their girl classmates before being found out and acted upon, and 2) the experiences of a young girl who has moved countries and has not been accepted at school, bullied and hurt by her classmates, whose parents have not intervened even after being implored.
Our kids need resilience in the face of an "aggressive" society, and part of my decision to slow them down is also to help them enjoy life in the longer run and not become adrenaline-junkies. Homeschooling has helped quite a bit in that, even though the pressure on all the adults around is immense. Routine questioning around "impact on their future" cannot be answered with confidence that does not sound like bravado in large parts.

Week 37

With his grandmother at home, my son's learning has picked up some pace. She instills a certain discipline and forces him to sit and study in the afternoon. He has now been reading Hindi, writing translations in English, studying science and social science. However, I am still struggling to give her the belief that she is the best teacher he can get. She feels she has studied nearly half-a-century ago and so cannot be teaching him correctly. I keep telling her that the basics do not change... and if something has survived for 50 years, then only it is worthy of teaching.
I came across an interesting book called Ultralearning by Scott H Young. The book gives out some helpful tips in order to increase the speed of learning new and difficult things. I hope to be able to use it some time with him to help him learn better.

Week 36

It has been a hectic week for me as I was traveling for work. And then my cousin came over. It meant the load of teaching him fell entirely on my wife (not that I do anything anyways ;-) ) and she did mathematics with him primarily. Meanwhile, something that has really attracted him is news. A friend had started an initiative to make the kids in the complex more aware about current affairs, and he seems to be loving it. He loves to know more about random things, mostly superficial but he seems to be very keen on knowing more about cricket and the Indian space programme. We will wait to see how much of an interest he retains in these 2 domains.

Week 35

This week was fun spent in a remote beach location with very little connectivity. Lots of fun trying board surfing, building sand castles, fishing and playing video games including virtual golf. The benefit of leaving for a holiday at will finally realised!

Week 34

The highlight of the week was a birthday party. I met someone who tore into me because I was homeschooling my kids and without provocation, explained to me that I was where I was in life because of my conventional education and I should be thankful for it rather than trying to change the conventions. On my argument that the world has changed in the last 30 years, it was met by the argument that the sun/moon are the same and we were far ahead of our parents, so our kids would be ahead of us as well - that is no change. I was overwhelmed by the vehemence and was left wondering what provoked it especially when I had not even tried to justify our choices.

Week 33

This week passed by too quickly. My son went for woodworking class and my wife wanted him to make a cupboard. He and his guide obviously did not think that was a smart thing to do and that caused some consternation with her. They want him to develop some new skills with some other tools and she thinks that the class should be useful in some way for her too - after all she is the one taking the trouble to take him around. I agree with both sides - it is important for him to learn and I appreciate the fact that she wants him to make useful things!! I highlight this because this tussle is at the heart of our homeschooling vs regular schooling too. We want him to learn things that are directly helpful but sometimes it is important to do things that build skills too.. what is the right balance for both these things? More importantly, is there one? Will find out only afterwards.

Week 32

It was a good week overall. There was peace, and my son went about his classes and did his practice as would be satisfactory to a parent. My daughter goes for a school interview tomorrow and my wife and I are wondering about our reaction to the whole thing. We are trying to be indifferent, but a conversation around her getting an admission becoming an ego issue has happened. It is difficult to not get affected when the crowd around you wants you to act in a particular way.

Week 31

Days pass and weeks merge. His friends have been celebrating Diwali vacations and so he has been going out and playing with them. His cousins came over and he had a good time playing video games with them. His classes continue intermittently and I continue to hope that he is learning something valuable. Origami is something he had been keen about at the start of the journey, but has not picked up for some time. I guess I need to push him to pick it up again. And therein lies a conundrum I have not been able to resolve - should I push him?

Week 30

It is Diwali today. And time to have fun! And to sell some cookies. His friends and he sold cookies in the local apartment block a couple of days back. Two things they did well - 1) sold "seconds" (slightly burnt cookies) with add-on (cinnamon sugar coated) at a discount (one-third off) managing to get rid of the kitchen disaster that they had initially created, and 2) they announced a "good cause" for holding this "bake sale" to each of their prospective clients - the proceeds were going to an orphanage to help them celebrate Diwali. Both these things came naturally to these kids and allowed them to make a decent collection. It was a good learning experience for them and allowed me to explain these two concepts of marketing to him in a way he is likely to remember longer than just reading them from books.

Festive season greetings of joy, health and prosperity to all of you!

Week 29

Week-after-week I wonder what to write. And sometimes, I wonder if I need to write at all. Life has settled into a rhythm of relaxed living (read, sleeping hours depending on each one's personalities with little external pressures), less education (he does what he wants to do, with an occasional yell from me or my wife to do something leading to some output) and freedom (mom-in-law is worried he will become lazy, wife has accepted it as inevitable and holding me responsible for the whole mess, I am ambivalent).
I started homeschooling him because I wanted to slow him down. I also thought I would not compare him to others. But both these things take an emotional toll more on me than either him or my wife. I sometimes feel I fail him more than anyone else. But I am hopeful that I will learn better and come around to being comfortable with what I wanted for him.

Week 28

The festive season is on in full swing and a mix of holidays and cultural programmes is the flavor of the season. One birthday party my son attended was really fun. He was part of a team that was competing in the marshmallows-and-pasta-tower-making competition. In that half an hour, he had to use Collaborative Creativity as far as he could - a great lesson overall. Thanks Kiran!

It will be useful to get into more such exercises at different occasions to help build out this important critical aspect of his education as I had written here. If this can be done in a birthday party, why not in a period at school once every week at least? We really need to rethink the way we teach our kids!

Week 27

A festive weekend as we enjoy Durga Puja celebrations. A good time to bond with friends and family with the tangible learning being how to play different video games.
We continue to focus on the ability to write by himself, though progress is relative slow. Creativity is a fountain that needs to be nourished continually, and this becomes more evident as you try to increase your output. But the sources need to be diverse else it becomes a rehash only.

Week 26

As I hit the mid-year mark of writing this blog, I look back at the emotional journey that individually all of us have gone through and realize what some senior folks on this path had told me - it will get progressively easier as you start accepting a few things.

There is much yet to be done, but am happy to note that things are not as bad as I had feared myself. There have been things that he has done that he would not have otherwise, and a lot of things that he would have learnt at school that he is now behind in. But overall, I am happy to note that he has slept well along with all of us as an alarm has been eliminated from our lives. The challenge is to find a way to inculcate discipline in ourselves without any external force, and I have failed so far to do it for both myself and him. I really need to find a way, just like for everything else!

Week 25

This week was interesting as we got a reject from the first school that we applied for our daughter. It was a bit disappointing because we had been honest in our responses and not getting an option to even interact with the management came as a bit of shock. Nevertheless, some soul-searching later, the only consensus that my wife and I reached was that we are "misfits" and therefore, we might be making things difficult for our kids.

The second interesting thing came from my mom-in-law. In an emotional outburst, she confided that she felt worried about our kids as they were not up-to-the-mark when compared to the grandchildren of her friends. It is an eye-opener that I had not considered second-degree social impacts of my decision to homeschool my kids and in general, slow them down in their information gathering and focus more on improved understanding of whatever little they know.

Learning over and beyond just education for me continues!

Week 24

Another week passed by and I was left wondering at the speed at which it passes when there is a lack of structure. I know it is not true, but it feels like that. He spent more time in the company of friends this week while doing some work in Hindi reading and writing. His grandmother got some textbooks from a cousin and has started introducing science and social studies to him.

Week 23

A week spent with grandparents in Jaipur. The presence of elders ensures a certain level of comfort and indulgence. Grandpa made him write in a 4-lined notebook everyday to improve his handwriting. Homeschooling is about educating through a crowd where your teachers are everybody you interact with, rather than designated individuals only. It is fun to see avenues of learning all around you.

Week 22

This week was unremarkable again. Makes me realise how much of homeschooling is about just getting used to things and accepting them for what they are. People ask questions like what we do, whether it is working or not and the truthful answer is that I don't know, but hopefully will find out sooner rather than later. It has clearly been an emotional journey with mostly lows interspersed with a few highs but I have not lost hope yet.

Week 21

Another week flew by. My son spent time with a senior from school to build a project - he is happy and that is all that matters. His woodworking and music lessons continue to keep him busy. I found a lot of good stuff from Ray Dalio that I am now using (https://economicprinciples.org and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKz095P7LdU&list=PLykIL_1_MFWkWDDgvdZ6L7rsvKCKl-39j&index=1).

Week 20

Not much was achieved this week as my sister and my nephew are in town and my son is having a good time playing with them. However, an interesting thing I heard from an old-time homeschooler; she said and I paraphrase Leo Tolstoy here: "All schooling families are alike; each homeschooling family homeschools in its own way". Basically she meant that there was nothing right or wrong once you were on the path. You would eventually find your own groove and comfort zone over time. I hope to find that balance for my family and myself eventually.

Week 19

This blog post got delayed as I forgot that it was Sunday. This week was interesting as he learnt to use new tools in his woodworking class. And he won a medal in a karate competition - by and itself the medal should not count - but if it motivates him to practice harder, so be it.
I also filled a school form for my daughter - some interesting questions included what out of national or international languages would we like her to choose or the pros/cons of different economic classes studying together. Overall, it was a thought-provoking questionnaire and I believe that something similar should be used by most schools to at least try and align the parents to a more sensible parenting style.

Week 18

As time is rushing by, I have been stricken at times with the desire to push him as I still belong to the old school and it is really difficult to stop myself from intervening. So, this week he started guitar lessons as well as woodworking - two things that he had shown an interest in. I am supposed to make him journal things daily but both of us have not come around to developing that habit yet. While I understand the value of the same, I have not been able to impose it on him yet. Maybe in a few days!

Week 17

My learning from this week has been that you need to have "belief" in yourself and your kid to be able to homeschool him/her. Most of the trouble arises when this belief is shaky for either of the parties involved. While it is difficult for the kid to be judgmental because he does not know enough most likely, the doubts that keep creeping up in the parent(s)' minds regarding their own ability or that of their kid's, are really troublesome and need to be addressed. It is my belief that the lack of "belief" ( :-) ) can lead to a lot of heartburn and put into question the whole exercise - I think this is what most experienced homeschoolers talk about when they refer to "unschooling". You need to find that confidence in yourself, as the newness of the whole experience of walking down the unknown path is scary in and by itself, and when you know that any solution is only possible in the next academic cycle, the problem compounds itself and becomes much bigger from a psychological standpoint.

Week 16

This week was a lazy week as we did not do much. Watched the movie Coco and he tried to write the story spine of the same. His grandmother made him do some sums and puzzles. He also went to KidZania and had fun there - it is a great role-playing place. He also joined a group of kids that are planning to get together to discuss current affairs/develop quizzing skills. While I am not completely in favor of his gathering information alone for the sake of quizzing, it seems to be a good way to keep in touch with the world around in a nutshell - kind of the effect "The World This Week" had on me as a kid. We will see how this plays out!

Week 15

July 14, '19 should go down in history as Sports Day. The Wimbledon'19 final and the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 final, both in London, were 2 matches where none of the participants were actually winners or losers. Both were masterclasses in learning to hold your nerve and not give up in the most tense situations either. And my family enjoyed them both as we did not feel the need to get up early today. This flexibility is something I have come to covet about homeschooling.

This week I initiated him to LCM in Mathematics and he wrote the story spines for the Toy Story and Spiderman movies he watched. Story spines are a great way to try and ferret out the gist of any story and over time, realize that the architecture of great stories is actually quite simple. To be a good storyteller, you take a simple premise and then build layers around it thereby making it interesting but retaining the simplicity that we as humans value.

Week 14

I realize how difficult it is to maintain a routine! And when I cannot maintain it myself, it would be difficult for me to force it on my kids. Am I doing them a disfavor, I don't know yet!
This week was one of revelation - I asked my son to just play the fool on his keyboard and he came up with a tune that looked like the tune for the poem "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".. quite a happy moment for me to note that he developed some confidence in himself. In maths, I tried to teach him about HCF and changing number systems (decimal to binary). Lots of practice is further needed!
Apart from that, one of his friends still has holidays till this week, so he hangs around with her. As my wife keeps saying, the real test for us will start from next week when his friends go back to school and he has to keep himself occupied.

Week 13

Just came back from a visit and a wedding today. Both of us were busy watching the India-England cricket match and generally chilling out today. Jaipur visit was good fun to meet and build friendships with our friends' kids.

Homeschooling has given us the flexibility to enjoy events like these much better. Interacted with a few people and came away with the feeling that people are really scared and unable to take decisions, so seek safety in continuity and tradition.

I am slowly coming to the firm view that all views across all domains are valid and profitable under a certain set of circumstances. The successful people either tend to be able to better contextualize their views and make them suit the circumstances or serendipity takes care by providing the relevant set of circumstances for their view to flourish. Under this view, my decision to homeschool should also work under a certain set. Now, the challenge in front of me can be reframed as whether I can verbalize the specific set of circumstances that make homeschooling ideal for my kids! Will try to come back with my thoughts at some point during this journey.

Week 12

This blog is a couple of days late as we are visiting family and attending a wedding. Good time for him to meet his cousin and other members of the family. A big fat North Indian wedding has given him a lot of opportunity to interact with far-flung members of the family and build relationships around sports and rituals.

It has been some time that I have not been really pushing through any agenda as I came across a wonderful resource - www.self-directed.org .. a lot of the ideas there resonate with my thought process and so I am trying to let him learn more organically.. will review our status at the end of the next month.

Week 11

An emotional rollercoaster is what encounters the parents more than the child. It is difficult to let go and years of being driven by others do not allow us to feel confident about our own decisions that easily. Fear about the unknown combined with knowledge of people who have not done too well as per our definitions, drives us to frustration and maybe unreasonable expectations.

A homeschooling is more than mere learning in a different way for the child. It is the process of unlearning of the parent more it seems today even before the learning begins. And that is a big struggle! It needs a lot more than just faith in one's own abilities surely.

Week 10

This week there is a new distraction - the Cricket World Cup. I am struggling to discipline him as most Indian boys are currently involved in this wave, and so studies are taking a backseat. It is difficult to ascertain if this is the time for me to still focus on his studies, or to let him go with the flow and spend more time to understand the gentleman's games it is his interest.

This experiment is making me questions my own assumptions and I believe is making me a more perceptive person. Don't know if that is a good or bad thing.

Week 9

This week is hopefully the last week of holidays before we go back to serious work again. If there is anything that defines this week, it is motivation. Working backwards, it was difficult for me to be motivated to write this blog. It was equally difficult for my wife to keep the faith in this entire experiment as we were struggling to motivate him to keep doing stuff that we wanted him to.

During my preparation for admission examinations, the last of which was the GMAT in 2011, I have gone through this roller-coaster of emotions - starting out with a lot of enthusiasm, for it to dip precipitously after a few days to the point of almost giving up, then a silver lining appearing from somewhere to keep going, then building on the positive feeling to get some small wins, use those wins to motivate myself for larger wins till the actual exam happened.

I guess this entire exercise is going to be similar in terms of the emotional journey. I will try to keep up and not drop off this exercise of writing this blog every week.

Week 8

Yet another week of holidays essentially. He did not ask a single question :-(. His hockey camp continued and he really enjoyed it. He did follow his routine to some extent but disruptions like a play he went to watch really put him in a catch-up mode for most of the week. He did do some writing in both English and Hindi though. I hope he is able to follow his routine better next week and also ask some questions for Meenal.

Week 7

This week, my niece, Meenal started a new exercise for him - she wants him to ask 10 questions from things he does during the day. The idea is to build out his curiosity by tapping into his inquisitiveness. At the beginning itself, it became evident that it was difficult for him to ask that many questions. He has asked about 12 questions overall this week so far, but we are hopeful that he will catch up and ask more questions eventually.

This week went in a blur for him, playing hockey and tennis in the summer camp, and doing his regular soccer and chess classes. He did some sums and we were trying to work decimal places, but it needs a lot more work. May 18th is celebrated as International Museum Day, so we spent some time doing mask painting and watching the animated Hindi remake of an old classic movie by Satyajit Ray "Goopi Gayin Bagha Bayin" at the local Children's Museum.

On his mother's insistence, we have also created a timetable for the next week. Let's see how far, if at all, we can adhere to it.

Week 6

Yet another week of holidays. It means yet another week when he was busy playing with his friends or doing things that do not fit into the planned scheme of things. So far, the month of May has been a washout when it comes to the structured way I had planned to go about things. My wife's worries that he is wasting his time are getting accentuated.

But then I heard a podcast today: https://www.cnbctv18.com/buzz/why-my-daughters-dont-go-to-school-anymore-natasha-badhwar-talks-about-the-power-of-unschooling-3261471.htm
Great words stemming out of experience!!

And he suddenly decided to pick up on a project he had wanted to do but had not come around to. He wants to understand the stock market and the first step is to understand the companies that are actually listed. So he spent the day trying to find out about Maruti Suzuki - I helped by getting him a stock price movement chart but he did the rest. It is a project that will be done over some time and I hope he gets something out of it - what I am not sure though.. and that is the beauty of this experiment. It keeps surprising us with the breadth of interests and learning that can be catered to.

Week 5

The first month over! It has been a good learning about managing our own expectations. One of the big reasons to take him out of school was the fact that he needed to build out his physical abilities and I am happy that this month was all about that. He spent time playing hockey and now has started tennis. While it might be too much experimentation and it would be good to focus, the idea is to try and exercise different parts of his body hopefully.

We are in Pune for his half-yearly karate camp and then I have some work on Tuesday, so the last few days have been holidays for him. When we get back on Tuesday, I hope he will be able to pick up pace in his studies again and work more on some more written pieces. Initially we were thinking of doing some video pieces this month but I guess, we will push that for the next month and continue to focus on his writing skills for the time being.

Week 4

Another week of the summer holidays passed just like that. He gets tired after all the sports that he is playing and that is having an impact on his other lessons. I think it is all right and am not pushing him much currently.

He is keen on developing his Scratch programming skills and is looking up videos to be able to make some programs - he developed a new game this week following the instructions given. After a couple of more games, will ask him to try and develop his own logic. Scratch is a wonderful program to develop programming logic, I must say.

He has been developing an interest in following the scores of the Indian Premier League - it is a distraction that is top-of-the-mind every morning and evening for him. I guess I would be one happy parent on May 12 - once the finals are over, hopefully he will be able to focus more on other things.

Week 3

Another week testing our patience. The productivity levels went lower as he procrastinated on the development of a story and the painting to go with it. However, the fun part was learning woodworking and creating a birdhouse. The feeling of creating something with your own hands needs to be experienced and this was a great exercise.

The Easter holidays ensured that his friends were around and so that was distracting. One of the things we decided to do was to not take away that time and gave him some extra leeway. It is agonizing to decide how much is enough given that this decision has to be made by us (in the absence of the comfort of school's diktats around holiday homework and the comfort that they will make it up somewhere).

So far, it has been an agonizing journey, taking some decisions that were taken by the system! But I guess it is difficult to break away from the routine, as we are scared to face precisely this kind of dilemmas.We try to do our best given our limited information and experience, but will see it evolve.

Week 2

The beauty of learning is that it is not dependent on any one place or time. It is constantly happening and being free from the tyranny of a school routine has allowed us to follow a timeline that is extremely flexible.

He has joined the summer camp at a school that allows him to try hockey, gymnastics and dance at a beginner's level. While we do not expect him to take any of this forward in the long run, it helps that he can try different things without committing to anything yet. The drawback has been that he is too tired and not able to concentrate on his written work. However, he managed to attempt to write a play (an unmitigated disaster) and a song (lyrics of which have been borrowed from multiple songs he has heard over the past few years). He has also tried to write a daily report and a recipe in Hindi, an attempt to broaden his repertoire.

One of the reasons for taking him out of school was to focus on building out his body awareness and help improve his hand-eye coordination. These camp activities are an attempt to enhance both of these and so, are taking precedence over his written work. The monsoons would be a good time to actually catch up on things that we might miss in April/May.

Week 1

This is the first week of the experiment. With a lot of trepidation, the week started with us deciding to follow a normal school week. The good news would be that Saturday/Sunday would be holidays. Happy to report that we could follow it this week.

Now going back to what we achieved in this week. One of the driving principles of the things we want to achieve is the ability to communicate, think critically and creatively. So the activities would be divided up into these 3 categories and the rest would fall in a general basket of other activities.

So this week (as would be the theme of the month), communication focused on the written word. A report and a letter to Grandma (it was her birthday) were the two pieces. In critical reasoning, we worked on some Word Sudoku puzzles. For the creativity piece, we drew a visual timeline of a day and a pop-up card for Grandma (thank you, YouTube). One overlapping activity between communication and creativity was an attempt to write a story.

Hopefully, we can continue and build up on some of these activities and that can help us achieve our purpose of building out these key skills of the future.

Start of an experiment

We have started a new experiment at home today. I feel like a child visiting the chemistry lab for the first time, donning the white coat and mixing some liquids, feeling the excitement of doing some alchemy that would change the world, much to the amusement of the teachers and the lab assistants and others who have seen it all before. But for the child, it is the excitement that matters. And that is how it is.

I have decided to keep my son at home and work with him to improve himself. After 5 years of formal schooling, he is taking a gap year (pun intended) to fill the gaps that have been glossed over in these years as he kept learning new things while not waiting to pause and go back and correct. It is not his fault, just the way the system works. Kids move from one class to another learning newer things as there is so much to learn, but some kids need more time than the others to cope up. This year is that year for us. He will look back and compare his previous reports to see what he needs to work upon and then, use this year to catch up. Hopefully, he will be ready to join back the mainstream again better prepared from next year.

A shout-out to the catalyst for this. My wife is currently very worried that he will not be taken back by the system next year and I am playing with his life. Then there is the matter of the li'l one who is quite a handful which makes her plate overflowing. But I trust her more than I do myself and know that she has it in her to do justice to both of them. I hope to be helpful in the whole process and help her recognize her own strength better.

My son is excited by the prospect. He is a wonderful boy and I believe he can cope up with any curve-balls that will be thrown at him. I just want him to be able to score a home-run off them but for that he has to start working at the basics - learning to tie his shoelaces to start with.

However, if anything goes wrong, all responsibility will be mine alone.