Week 52 - a year in review

This week marks a year of our homeschooling effort. So here is an attempt to summarize my experience of the past year:

- Everyone homeschools for their own reason and all the reasons are right
- Intellect and persistence are over-rated; curiosity and patience are more important
- Uncertainty is a part and parcel of our lives - you can plan for everything but then some curve-ball will change the circumstances and you have to improvise on-the-fly
- Things will work out eventually - just keep the faith!

For the coming year, there are a few things that we did not follow up in the last year that I am keen on pursuing now:

- Asking questions daily - encouraging him to maintain a blog around being curious
- Keeping a journal - the ability to document things
- Developing a plan to respond to the next "black swan" event better as a family

It has been an amazing journey, with its ups and downs, and I am thankful to everybody who helped us in different ways, known and unknown, throughout this year. I continue to look forward to your cooperation and help as always this year too.

Week 51

Covid-19 has become huge and we are all stuck at home. Lockdown has been implemented across the world. And what that means for us - return of the introvert. As a homeschooler, my son has not been as social as some of his other friends. Now that we are all locked down, it is business as usual for us with only some extra precautions in place.

A bigger challenge will be to understand the changes in business models across everything and explain that to the kids. They will become comfortable with a lot more technological tools, will need to dig deeper into themselves to keep engaged and keep learning new things.

Week 50

I heard something that I do not know how to react to "You had foresight to homeschool your child. With the Covid-19 shutting down schools and colleges, we have to learn it too". Yes, this pandemic is going to change the way a few industries operate - expediting the introduction of online courses and tuitions, for one, but I guess it was only going to be a matter of time any way.
But more importantly, this self-quarantine being observed in many areas is a good opportunity to really connect with your family in a less-distracted manner. The kids are home and with limited opportunities to mingle with other friends, are more likely to engage with you. Take this opportunity to inculcate some basic family ideals in them as you might not be getting another chance of such distraction-free engagement soon enough.

Week 49

We are at the grandparents' house and his cousin has come over. So it is a lot of fun time and the one thing that grandpa has been insisting is to show patience with the kids. We tend to get aggressive with them as we are not in control of our own emotions - the need to control is high and anything that seems out of control brings out the worst in us. But honestly, patience is needed in all walks of life and is necessary for us to do well.

Week 48

This week was dominated by Covid-19 (Wuhan coronavirus). The stock markets around us crashed, people became worried about its impact and it became evident that no one knows what to do when a pandemic is ravaging the globe. In a connected world, these kind of things will become the real brakes to the global economy and growth, rather than physical wars. Whatever biology does not achieve, technology will - the same kind of connectedness ensures that any digital outbreaks will also cause big mayhem - viruses all around. So one of the subjects our kids need to know is handling viruses!