A big reason conversations about our school choices often turn controversial is that education and money are closely related. And money has replaced sex as the topic we most like to keep secret from our friends. So a lot of the education decisions we make based on money are not topics we will freely discuss in the world. Read more
Individualized learning is the idea that we don’t all learn the same way, and each kid should be able to learn the way they learn best. Read more
There are so many comments on this blog about how difficult homeschooling is for a single parent. My first recommendation would be to get enough child support and alimony to make it work. But of course, not every ex-spouse is responsible. So if there is no extra money coming from an extra spouse, what can you do in order to homeschool? Read more
I fired our writing teacher.
I was hesitant to fire her because she is the only black person my son has ever talked to outside of a store setting. But once I started thinking like that, I knew I had to fire her. Read more
At the end of the course I have titled How to Write about Your Life I offer to edit people’s writing for six months. I charge $600 to edit anything they write during that period.
One of the people who signed up was Erin Wetzel. Read more
Kids in poverty are behind before they get to school, which means the problems we need to fix are not problems with school. Read more
This ad for McDonald’s stuck with me because I realized my kids are speaking a language I don’t really speak. My younger son texts his friends and their hours-long conversations sometimes have no words. Only emojis. Read more
School is full of situations where we are expecting much more of kids than we expect of ourselves, as adults. Successful adults are successful at least partially because they have learned to avoid what is difficult or unpleasant for them. Yet, so many adults tell kids they need to learn to do things they hate. Read more
I have a lot of ideas for saving money. A lot of them don’t work. I had this idea for wallpapering my dining with the pages of Moby Dick. I got the idea from an Anthropologie store. Read more
It used to be that the key to being a smart kid in school was to memorize everything. But now that we have the Internet, memorizing is not such a useful skill. On the other hand, the ability to search is an incredibly useful skill. But what does that skill look like for homeschoolers? Read more