The huge momentum behind homeschooling today is mostly fueled by the huge disappointment of public school. Academic research shows estimates that homeschooling in the US growing at up to 15% a year. Increasingly, competent parents see conventional education as an antique practice designed only to get kids out of the house. Read more
In my career coaching life I have noticed many patterns that come up over and over again.
Now that I’ve been coaching people about how to start homeschooling, I’ve noticed a pattern there as well. And it surprises me: The most common struggle with homeschoolers is money. Specifically, many people I coach are a two-income family and would have to change to one income so one parent (mostly) could homeschool. Read more
As a career coach I’m constantly stunned by how unprepared kids are for the workforce. Teachers and parents spend tons of time telling kids to get good grades and get into a good school, but no one mentions that good grades actually have little correlation to workplace success. Read more
I have let my kids run wild all over our farm, doing whatever they want, even in the almost-dark of early autumn evenings.
We have a lot of land. They have a lot of choices. Read more
Donalyn Miller is a reading expert who also writes a blog. I took a look at her site today and the first post I read was about how the reading curriculum does not encourage reading. You already know the arguments, but one interesting one Miller added is that she read three picture books with her granddaughter but the books did not count as reading because there are no words.
I have been reading tributes to Joan Rivers for the last three days. Some, like this sign my friend saw in London, are very funny. Nearly all of the tributes acknowledge how Joan Rivers was groundbreaking in comedy. Read more
I want to tell my friends who send their kids to school to STOP STOP STOP this is crazy. Ours will be the last generation of educated parents to send their kids to public school. How will you explain to your kids that you didn’t see that school is a waste of time? Will you say everyone else was doing it? Really? STOP STOP STOP!!! Read more
If you have a decent sized blog you get tons of pitches from public relations people. And somewhere in the PR rule book it says that you do better with pitches that are tied to current events.
And as we all know, thanks to the industrial revolution, fall is no longer a time for harvest: back to school is the event of fall! Read more
We have about 4000 books in our house. This is because I threw out so many over the years. At one point I was moving from Chicago to LA to Boston to LA and on and on with nothing but 80 boxes of books. Read more
As a society we believe that kids should save some things for later in life.
The easiest example of this is sex. We don’t think it benefits kids to do it early. Even though for centuries older people have forced kids to have sex with impunity, we do not accept that in our society. It’s statutory rape until the youngest of the two people is 16 or so. Read more