In my previous post, I started discussing ways that you can begin to free up some of your life, and begin homeschooling. This post is an update to my original article, but I definitely think it deserves an update in the midst of the Coronavirus/COVID-19 outbreak. So today, I’d like to touch on some easy best practices that you could implement if you:
are in a situation where your child must remain in school due to your work-life or because the other parent is not in agreement with homeschooling when students are called to return to school
you want to try doing what you can, but are not ready to make the full commitment at this point
So Coronavirus/COVID-19 has you and your child quarantined. So why don’t we discuss the future, and discuss the challenges and discussions that often go on between parents when both or one has to teach your child at home. As always, I want to ask you to be rather introspective.
Are YOU really ready to homeschool your child?
Is YOUR life set up to teach your child?
Sorry, but now is no time to talk about whether you think your kid can handle it or whether your school system will rescue you and come up with a solution. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, and why are you so trusting that their solution is the proper one? I want you to sit back and really think about whether you really want to make this commitment.
Exercise is a part of my life and no matter when, where and how much I have worked over the last 25 years, I made time to exercise. That meant training at 4am, 5pm (which is absolutely the worst time to train in any gym) or 11pm. It was a priority for me and to not exercise was far worst than whatever less than optimal conditions I had to train in.
This is the kind of commitment I want you to make with homeschooling your kids. If you have done so, let’s begin working on some strategies to get you ready now that you and/or your child are at home.
First, start with you exercising your freedom working from home.
My daughter decides to play teacher to her siblings during one of our museum visits
The school week is about to start, but the kids are home due to the Coronavirus/COVID-19, so what should you do now? Should you view this as you would spring break? Should you give them some work to do? Should you contact the teacher to see if they have any work for them to do during this time?
I spend a great deal of time in the gym and at my age, injuries from squatting or deadlifting always seem just one more rep away when I’m really pushing hard in a power phase. Every so often, a minor injury does occur, but I rarely stop training all together.
Detraining can occur as quickly as two weeks and I never take that much time away from the steel. Since I workout with weights consistently four days per week, all year around, for 20+ years, a small “injury break” is a good reminder that the supporting muscles need to grow to support the prime movers that might need a well-deserved rest.
Now, I want to evaluate using the same approach with your child. If your kid(s) have been running at 90 mph since Christmas break, due to an hour of homework after school, sports practice and other activities, a break may be in order. If the schools remain shut down for more than two weeks, we can transition to other strategies (as you’ll see below), but for now, if they are exhausted and never have a chance to just play, now may be the time to allow them to play and explore the outside world. The younger they are, the more this is applicable.
But let us assume that either this extends beyond two weeks or you desire your kids to not get detrained mentally at all from the closings, I want you to start Monday morning or whatever the next day is prepared. First, remember that you are now acting as the “supporting muscle” to what the school or “prime mover or muscle” has been likely doing for years. Determining when your child gets up, eats, goes to the restroom, works, plays and goes home. Side note, if that sounds like the prison or military, there’s a reason for that and another reason why I do not send my children to school, but I digress. Overall, now that’s your job because those big muscles are taking a break and there is nothing you can do about their decision.
First, and this is a good evaluation for you, what are your kids learning in school and do you know where they are at in terms of development, interests and goals? I can tell you, I don’t think my parents ever had a clue about what I was learning in school. They knew what grade I was in and that was likely it. As long as my report said I was a solid A or B student, all was well. Conversely, I often have to think about what grade my kids are supposed to be in, but I know exactly what they are doing and what they are capable of producing. How about you?
If you do not, now is the time to ask and get acquainted with their progress so you know where they are strong and where they are weak. Just because your son can hook up the Xbox to the TV or play Call of Duty with four monitors he hooked up, doesn’t mean he’s “good at and likes computers”. Find out what they are studying in school and find ways to now supplement those subjects at home. Sure, higher levels of math may need to wait, but even then, I’m sure places like Khan Academy and YouTube have you covered. If you really want to jump off into this, I highly recommend my kids math teacher (no, it’s not me). Now, for other topics you can supplement, begin to brainstorm how to do so.
If they are in elementary school, that should be rather easy so I will not take up space now to go into details. But please let me know in the comments below if you would like some tips for that age. But for perhaps, 7-12th grades, let the fun begin! First, start with their favorite topic outside of school. Next, find out what their favorite class is in school right now. Then, and keeping it simple, develop a writing assignment that requires reading, some research and maybe even some data analysis. You can do this for 2-3 other topics that they enjoy as well. Again, depending on age, you can start with a 500-word essay, or bump it up to five page assignment. It is entirely up to you. Let me warn you, you may be surprised at your child’s skill level, as it could definitely be far worse than you think or (hopefully) far better.
Sound too simple? Think about this then, if you were pursuing your Master’s degree or definitely your Ph.D in a particular field, when you are preparing for your dissertation, are you in class every day? No, you are out there doing research! You do not have time to be in class gaining instruction, that time has passed, now it is time for you to take all of what you have learned and use your new found expertise to produce something noteworthy in your field of study and prove what you have learned. I would like you to ask your child to do the same.
I am giving you just one example as I know you may be saying, “But that is not enough work for them to be doing.” Why do you think that, because school has always been about being shuffled from class to class and filling up an eight hour or so day? Again, your home isn’t school so you don’t have to have such a rigid schedule resembling boot camp or prison. When your company forces you to work from home (as many are doing at this time), I hope you find that you can be far more productive at home (assuming you have an office type job of course) than you can at your desk. After working from home for nearly five years, I find that I can get much more done in less time. If I cannot, and many employees cannot, it would be due to my/our own lack of discipline. So if your kid cannot focus for a few hours on a topic they enjoy, then welcome to their teacher’s world! Because I’m willing to bet that they do not focus too well in class either with hours spent on topics they often could care less about. I mean, why was I, a Black child, learning about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in school, and do you think I cared? That stint in English class almost killed my love of books and reading! I certainly did not feel comfortable listening to “Nigger Jim” in a class full of White students that’s for sure. So, I’m sure you can do better and create more enthusiasm for your child at home during this time.
Now, once the topics are chosen, what books do you have in your house to support the work? This is another good evaluation as to whether you have a good learning environment in your home. Remember, these are topics that your kids enjoy. Therefore, I hope there are materials in your home currently that they are interested in reading. If you do not have the books at home, Amazon is your friend, and you now have your first outside activity, assuming that the libraries are still open.
Side note: Speaking of Amazon, order physical books and not audio or online versions. If anything, instead of hoarding toilet paper for some insane reason during this time, become a physical book hoarder. After all, what kind of world are we creating where our knowledge could mostly be wiped out with the push of a button or loss of power? The movie, The Book of Eli should have showed us something there…
Perhaps the libraries are closed and your child loves history. Again, online research and documentaries make this an easy one. But the one activity I love far more that I have my kids do all the time is to have them interview family members. We often forget that the greatest link to history isn’t a book, but the living eyewitness accounts of those that lived during that era that we can talk to and hear their voice, the emotions in their stories, etc.! So calling grandparents and other relatives that lived during a particular time period is extremely rewarding. First, they get to connect, which is something we all probably should have done more of with our elders when we were younger (remember the dead air when you called grandma to thank her for the gifts?). Second, they learn about their own family history and pull things out of their elders that may not have even been shared or thought about for some time. Old folks, like myself, love to talk to younger folks and share their wisdom, mistakes and the lessons learned from the past. Obviously, if they want to talk about the 1500s, I doubt if granddad is still alive, even though he might seem that old to a 14-year old. In that case, try to find the history buff in your family. They can watch a documentary, perhaps even together, and then your child can interview them or tell them what they learned and get feedback and their knowledge on the topic.
So that’s all for now as there are so many options and those are just a few that I have used over the years that I think you could use for now. I wanted to get you thinking and starting to plan. When all of this blows over, I hope the evaluations that you made concerning your knowledge about your child’s education, as to whether your home is a good learning environment outside of school, and the relationship building with you and their elders, are areas that you will continue to cultivate when life goes back to normal.
After an injury, you should actually be stronger in the gym, as your supporting muscles are now stronger and the primary muscle has recovered. My desire is for you to achieve this same goal in your home. Until next time…
How did you get here? You cannot believe it can you. You have never thought about homeschooling but here you are. You’ve heard about those crazy religious, anti-social people homeschooling their kids but that’s not you. After all, the government will always be there to take care of your children right?
Are you feeling a bit hopeless?
The thought of homeschooling seems too daunting, I know. You think you can’t afford to be home or perhaps you are going to be afraid that your kids will grow up with no social skills, but now due to COVID-19 or “Coronavirus”, you may have to be home, and what about socialization? Oh no, it’s recommended that your kids even limit who they come in contact with now.
You use to wonder how would your family and friends feel about you pulling your kids out of school? Would the government come after you? How could you teach math? What if you don’t have them prepared for college? But now larger questions exist, such as, “Will my kids have to make up the days off?” “How long could this go on?” “After the first week, they need the break, but what am I going to have them study and do weeks 2, 3, 4, etc.?”
Oh yes, I have been there for a few of those questions. But regardless of COVID-19, or any other school tragedy that happens at the school of the day, my kids and I will not miss a beat. Don’t believe me, let me tell you a little about us to see if I can help you.
TTR Analysis of the Kerner Report in the Nine Areas of Human Activity by 15 year old Joshua.
His homeschooling assignment was to analyze the Kerner Report in the Nine Areas of Human Activity, which as readers know, is the main paradigm of my entire curriculum. So much more can be said about this interesting report put together at the end of the so-called Civil Rights Era, and I plan to do just that, with a narrated version.
Did you ever learn about the Kerner Report in school or home? The report is not revolutionary in thought in any real way. But what it does show from a macro level, is that the United States has always known its racial problems, and how to solve at least some of them with the Black community. Obviously, they knew what policies would even cause these problems, but more on that in future reports.
In my opinion, the reason why the Kerner Commission Report is interesting is because in my Gen-X lifetime, I’ve seen the “L.A. Riot”, “Ferguson Riot” and “Baltimore Riot”, and each time the nation conducts roundtables, reconciliation prayer meetings and worst of all, media reports/discussions all asking, “How can something like this happen and what can be done to make sure it doesn’t happen again?”
The Kerner Commission explored why these uprisings happened in the 1960s and how to prevent more uprisings in the nation’s cities in the future. It is striking to see my son answer the question, “Was the report effective?” His response, and the statistics he discovered, indicate that he believes he will see many more uprisings in his lifetime as well.
In these upcoming years, hopefully he will not be a whiny voice exclaiming, “Why?”, or “How could this happen?” Instead, he will be able to offer solutions to those who really desire to change and stay on code towards the real solution to our country’s “race problems”.
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The Four Quadrants Of Arizona – TTR Analysis
In my homeschool, I have my kids analyze geographic regions and split the states (or other geographic regions) into four areas to analyze. Take a tour with us to look at some unique Arizona cities in this presentation Joshua (Big Homie) put together.
I want to give a big thank you this Veterans Day to every Black man and woman that served in the United States military. It is ironic that patriotism and racism go together like baseball and hot dogs in the good old USA, as those who scream the loudest saying, “Support our troops!”, often care little about the domestic polices and de facto racism that keeps their “heroes” from living the very American dream that they are told to fight for and export to nations around the world.
At the time of the Civil War, Fredrick Douglass argued that the Black soldier could help the North win the war, but Abraham Lincoln did not want armed Black slaves (and you were taught in school that he wanted to free the slaves right?). He later gave in, but imagine the horrific torture that awaited a Black Union soldier that was captured by the Confederate army? The Black soldier did not receive equal pay for his fighting, and heroes like Robert Smalls proved that the Black soldier really was as smart as the White soldier, which was a common stereotype of the time as well as today (e.g. “IQ tests”). These Black soldiers would soon be placed back into second-class citizenship in the U.S., as the Union and Confederate states sought reconciliation with one another, not the men and women that it had enslaved for over 250 years. Those same Black soldiers, like other formerly enslaved Black Americans, didn’t receive their ”40 acres and a mule”. That land was given back to the very people they had just fought against just years prior.
By WWII, Black Americans still enlisted and desired to fight so-call fascism with pride. However, how embarrassing was it for the USA to be called out on its hypocrisy by none other than…Hitler. He noted that the USA’s treatment of the Negro set an example for how Germany must deal with “foreign Jews”. They returned home after WWII still subjected to Jim Crow segregation, more race riots, and once again, unequal pay, as 1.2 million soldiers were not able to take advantage of their GI Bill and be free to move into the newly formed suburbs which would soon create an even wider wealth gap through housing that remains firmly entrenched into the 21st century. The result, the Black soldier’s family could not benefit from sacrifice that he made for his country not just with housing, but because they were also unable to use the money for college tuitions or business loans. To add insult to atrocity, many were attacked by Whites as they were on their way home from the war.
How much changed by the Vietnam War for the Black soldier? I think you know the answer, as the 1960s are the one period of time most American’s did learn about in school as the “Civil Rights Era”, due to the assignation of Dr. Martin Luther King. Black Vietnam veterans, as after every other war, returned to segregated communities and “their place” in society. However, this time, the situation was in the process of changing. Some of these veterans returned home determined to now make this country live up to the promise it had been making to prior Black veterans for generations.
How will we look at the time of service for those who served in Desert Storm or the so-called Iraqi War and years of fighting the “War on Terror”? Fifty years from now, will we look back and note their time of service at the time when Black men and women were being shot and killed by police officers and the officers continuously get found “not guilty”? Will we see that they served at a time when “White Extremists” in their own country, are considered more dangerous than the terrorist they were fighting in the Middle East?
In my opinion, the Black veteran is the epitome of an American patriot. Perhaps they have never fought for what America actually was to them, but for what America always promised it would be to them and their offspring for their service.
For that, I sincerely say, thank you for your service.
Becoming an engineer, doctor, or lawyer can sound like a boring, and in the case of a doctor, disgusting job. Throughout my childhood, I have changed my mind a lot on the famous question asked to kids…what do you want to be when you grow up? The first thing I remember I wanted to be was a fireman. Because when I was little my mom took me and my siblings to the fire station on a field trip. After that, I wanted to be a doctor, but I grew out of that quickly because I can’t handle seeing people throw up.
The last thing I wanted to be for a couple of years was a veterinarian because I love animals. But after thinking about it for a while I realized that becoming a veterinarian can be just as disgusting as a doctor. Now that I’m 16, in college, and people are starting to ask me what career I want to go into in just a few years. So I ‘m on a quest to find I job that will fit my personality or talent (which is another thing I need to figure out), so I looked up the top five dream jobs that pay a good amount of money.
5. Hollywood Stunt Person
This job has fun written all over it if you like to get hurt. A Hollywood stuntman takes all of the explosions, punches, and risks while pretending to be a famous actor/actress. Stuntman work is not steady work because you need to find movie after movie to work in.
A stuntman gets paid as much as $100k for doing their stunts
Must attend a stunt training school.
4. Power Line Helicopter Pilot
If you like heights and technology then this job is perfect for you. They fly next to power lines to inspect them by cameras attached to the helicopter.
They get paid around $101k
Must get a helicopter pilot license with 2000 hours of flying.
3. Race Engineer
Race Engineers talk to the driver and tells him or her what they can do to achieve maximum performance in a race.
They can get paid around $134k
They need A-levels in math and Physics with a university degree and proven experience.
2. Ethical Hacker (a.k.a Computer Hacker)
They are hired by governments and security firms to help design ways to keep hackers out of their systems.
They can get paid around $140k
Hold a relevant qualification and meet the additional requirements of The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) check scheme.
1. Unexploded Ordnance Technician
Mitigate the threat of an unexploded object
They get paid around $150k
Professional Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) qualifications are needed to increase in rank
None of these jobs interest me so I will have to keep looking, but I learned some pretty interesting things when I did research for this blog post. I learned that ice cream tasters can get paid as much as $60k to taste ice cream and that you can get paid $32k to dress up as a Disney character. So there are a lot of fun and crazy jobs that sound really easy and you can get paid pretty well “working”.
Today Reggie took a final exam in his college Sociology class. It was obviously so hard, that the entire class had to come together just to pass.
Well, not exactly.
You see, “back in my day”, that was considered cheating. However, these days, it seems to be common practice.
Economist Peter Schiff was just telling this story with his son, on a recent podcast. As he was driving his young man to school, he was flabbergasted that this son knew the questions that were going to be on the upcoming test, had the answers, etc., all sanctioned by the teacher. Today, I know exactly how he feels.
Now, I understand that I’m not a certified teacher nor am I up on all of the latest research on the best way students learn. But I do know that one of the most fearful parts about being homeschool parent is the pressure we put on ourselves to live up the school’s standards. It may not be the current standards used in education, but those standards that we remember when we [were] in school.
Therefore, allow me to suggest a few ideas that may help you with your anxiety if you are thinking about homeschooling in the upcoming year, or feeling bad that you are not living up to a particular standard.
Teach Them Right 