Health, habits, habitats.
An update about my books as I reflect on home education, past and present.
It’s been 9 months since my last update.
Writing a book is like having a baby, they say.
If these books were a baby, I would be announcing a birth. But no baby for me, nor a book, yet. However, there are plenty of people having babies and publishing books around me. It’s encouraging.
To be born healthy and loved, that is never promised. More than the story of the delivery is the desire to learn about this new person.
“What did you have?” I was asked around 3am in the feeding room of my local hospital. We had listened to the 16 hours story and 3 1/2 because it’s my third story, and the 1 1/2 hours… it was like a rollercoaster ride, and someone forgot to put the safety bar down. They knew I’d had a day and a half labour, ending in a Caesarean delivery, and so they left me for last, deliberately.
Was I their dessert after three courses of stories? I didn’t want this new life in my arms to be a story of my endurance. This was their story, unwritten, brand new, and so I replied, “I had a baby.” They were disappointed at first. They gave me that awkward look of you’re a weird one aren’t ya, that I’ve only recently grown used to.
I turned to my child, who I would go through the unsaid story again in a heartbeat. Smiles started, and we talked about our children, our luck, our gratitude, our sober responsibilities.
That baby taught me how to be a parent as I instinctively followed the child.
I began writing this on the birthday of my sister-by-choice-and-chance. She supported me through the birth of my last child, over 20 years ago. 12 years later I was there when she had her own child. We have both had ‘skylight’ births and lived to tell the tale, only if we want to tell the tale. We had a heartfelt conversation and we discussed how grateful we are to be parents. Children are not promised.
Now my 23-year-old and 20-year-old are cherished friends and family. They have partners, friends and plans of their own making. While children, we enjoyed many years of learning, laughing and being grateful for our lives. We worked through hard days, too. We leaned towards asking what would love do? Learning about the world, from the world, in the world. They learned social skills in society.
Health
Diagnoses, surgeries, medication, chronic illness - health is never guaranteed. But because I didn’t co-parent with a school, we were able to roll with it and make the learning happen around less flexible aspects of our life. We travelled from the Great Barrier Reef to Blue Cow snowfields, Pax in Melbourne, Smash, Comic-Con, camping at multiple home ed camps as well.
Book update - Habits
Developmental progress has dominated. These past 9 months I’ve balanced household changes, travel o/s for my first white Christmas. I returned to Australia in the new year and finally the plague got me. I’d avoided it for long enough, apparently.
And then, my chronic illness decided to put me through extra rinse cycles. That was painful physically and mentally. I just wanted to write!
I’ve added prose to 6 of the books, fleshed out more characters, planned crossover scenes and created objects for illustrations, for 9 of the 19 books.
Year 2 of 3 is progressing.
I’ve travel because my partner is an academic, and I’m a dual citizen. I join him for conferences in Australia, and overseas. During these events, I’ve been part of wonderful conversations about the state of teaching Mathematics around the world. This has dovetailed into my post graduate training in Comparative and International Education. None of us are happy about how Mathematics is taught in schools.
Habitats
Since my last update, I’ve been able to write my books in some lovely places while I follow Col wherever he needs to attend a conference, or collaborate with colleagues. The image of the small foldout table is in Leicester, England, and it felt very Jane Austen. From Münster, Germany to my deck back in NSW, Australia the words have flowed.
I’ve certainly chosen a challenging task by taking on so many books at one time, however this is the way to do it. Home education is community based education. You can’t really appreciate it through the lens of one family or one book. We are a wildly diverse community and all home educating families begin, continue and end for different reasons.
We use a broad range of materials, choose diverse activities. It’s a ‘choose your own adventure’ style of education, by design. We are compelled to ‘meet the individual learning needs of our children’. That’s why it works!
Reflections on home education, past and present
With the influx of online programs, post-remote-learning, it’s vital that we don’t lose the option to meet our children’s learning needs through making our own plans, and finding our own resources. It would be a travesty if registering an individual plan was switched out for compulsory enrolment into online remote learning.
NESA in NSW is moving home education from their website to the NSW Government Website. It’s currently an online portal experience for registration. Before this, it was printing out a paper form that you scan and email off, or post. Before that, a form was posted in to BOSTES, as NESA was once known as. Initially they were called BOS. I’m naturally nervous about them making changes without notice, as they have back in August 2013.
We’ve gone from a phone call to send out a CD-ROM of the syllabus and two year initial registration, with alternating registrations being by documentation only, to home visits, Zoom appointments, and now back to home visits. 12 Months initial registration has been the maximum for a while. APs don’t have any home education experience, so they inevitably they fall back on their teaching experience. NSW teacher employment conditions don’t apply to parents opting out of the school system. If school worked, most would use it. It doesn’t, and so we do something else.
For example, we do not have to link outcomes to activities, however that has been the Quality School model for decades now. Sadly, APs impose their own assumptions onto new home educators who are not aware that this is not a requirement for Registered Homeschoolers. We also don’t need to sign up to expensive commercial curriculum providers, such as Euka.
Community Support
Things always change. The NSW Facebook page for our community support, Home Education NSW, has a wonderful team that has long term experience with these many years of changes. We’ve watched what has happened recently in QLD and we are keeping an eye on NESA. Meanwhile, we help parents navigate actual registration requirements.
Diversity makes us stronger
All families have their own needs and motivations, in life. We often only have ‘I’m home educating’ in common, which is lovely. After some time, you become more graceful with how you interact with other parents, because there is no comparason, competition, no concern about what rate of speed your child learns at.
Children also enjoy diversity and, ignoring ages and academic skills, they find people with similar interests to share thoughts with. As interests expand, groups get larger. Below is a photo of a group of about 8 children, aged from 4 to 14, discussing what game they could all comfortably play at a park. The other is an old photo now, but it’s a group shot of most of the children attending one of our yearly sports carnivals. Our local group has grown 10-fold since then.
Health is everything, so the saying goes. If you don’t have your health, you have nothing, is another. A bit harsh. I know many unhealthy people who are thriving, albeit intermittedly (hence your 9 month wait).
But can you home educate your children if you’re not healthy? What about if you have a chronic illness?
Families where either the children or parents are unwell often home educate very successfully, myself included. Home education affords the time and opportunities for people to prioritise their wellbeing while not neglecting their children’s education. Rather than fitting an unreliable condition to an unrelenting school schedule, families can operate on the ebb and flow of wellness and care taking. I’ve met many parents who know it saved their children’s lives.
Home education has been a solace to many. A workable solution, and a life raft in treacherous waters at a critical time in a child’s life, and a parent’s journey.
Over the past 9 months, two home educating mums exchanged glances with ‘the big C’. Nothing in life is guaranteed. Both amazing women would say, “home education was one of the best things I’ve ever done.” Both women have been celebrated and supported by our community, as well they deserve to be. We still have one, and we dearly miss the other. Many more have had health challenges.
Had I not home educated my children, I would not have met thousands of wonderful parents, and our lives would be poorer for it. We network. We weave around anyone in need of support, from personal to academic.
The social support is diverse and strong. Resourceful, humble, grassroots and free.
I want to demonstrate that, in text and images.
Illustrations
Many more miniatures to make, for the picture books. Zebra is a stand in model, great company, and I we watched a documentary about Jim Henson while sewing cushions.
I will take photographs of realistic scenes of home education life.
Enjoying life, despite my Hemiplegic Migraine disease
I’m loving the stop-motion medium. A former home ed child, now adult, is keen to make an accompanying short film, for fun, for promotion with me, when the books are ready. He is currently undertaking a Primary teaching degree after qualifying with a Diploma in film making, and we were players in a DnD game that my youngest DMed. Friendships! My health prevents me to go back into the classroom, so I applaud him.
Home education is a wonderful lifestyle.
It’s a joy to write these stories, and to discuss my journey with our community. At our local meetup, two weeks ago, I met a new home education parent. After fielding the usual 20+ questions, I was asked what I was up to now that my children have ‘aged out’. I shared the basic version of my 19 book spiel. The parent was very enthusiastic and want these stories for her children, and husband, who doesn’t get to see the day-to-day activities and bigger picture of the outcome of choosing to home educate. She quickly shooed me away to get back to writing, and I gladly obliged!
Next?
I’m heading to Lyon, France to meetup with my partner as we travel to the UK for his parent’s 50th Wedding Anniversary. Would you like me to take you along for the trip?
"I don't co-parent with a school." Excellent line! I get asked all the time about HSing as a single parent and I normally point to you for inspiration, or Hannah. But it never occurred to me that you were also a single parent with an illness. I'll point that out in future too! Good job mum.