By The Green Parent

15th December 2021

I never imagined Home Educating my children, in the time before they arrived says Kate Stuart. Here she explains why it's the right choice for her family. This is a Highly Commended entry in our 2021 Writing Competition.

By The Green Parent

15th December 2021

By The Green Parent

15th December 2021

We gathered in the woods today, with our barefooted children, around a fire burning bright and warm in the centre of a circle of stones, by a rushing burn, under trees breathing out the first crisp scents of Autumn. The air was filled with the sounds of children exploring, connecting, calculating risks, feeling bare toes out into nature. Wild children, reminding their Mamas that even in these strange times, education is to be had everywhere, in everything, all the time and absolutely doesn’t need to look like school. Out in the woods, where everything is growing, changing, renewing, breathing, there is a real reverence to our time there, where our children can be free in a world that belongs to them.

Life Altering Revelation

I could never have imagined Home Educating my children, in the time before they arrived. Education, in its very formal, conventional sense, was hugely important in our family growing up. Mum was a primary teacher in inner city London schools, and Dad’s two favourite stories were the recount of how many schools he had been to before he was 15 when he ran away to join the Navy, and the one about the teacher in a tiny one-room village school that had brought him the gift of literacy and made them all hot chocolate over the classroom stove in the depths of once particularly harsh Highland winter. That story had enough of an effect on me that when it came to University I chose education over art, feeling strongly then that teachers can bring us inspiration, knowledge, power to carry through our lives, and wanting to bring that to as many small lives as I could. But four years in teaching college and a degree in education left me feeling that much was missing from the education system, and it wasn’t anything I could change from inside it. Despite being self-taught in several creative areas that interested me, never once did it occur to me that education could look like anything other than school. Even knowing as I did that a lot of what we were being taught was as much classroom management as how best to impart meaningful, useful knowledge, I didn’t look beyond the four walls of every classroom I stepped into for another way. When, more than 20 years later, we were deregistering our eldest daughter from Primary school, discovering that education can look like anything you want it to, was a mind blowing, life altering revelation.

Recreating School at Home

Most of us, when we step into the world of Home Education, start off with the belief that all education ought really to look like our own education experience. Maybe a bit more organised, timetabled, colour coded. Workshops, worksheets, highlighter pens and ALL the resources. We think about what the Local Authority may have to say about our provision, and sometimes, in the early days when the weight of our decision is heavy, and we doubt our ability to support our children in their learning journeys, we forget that it is our young person who will eventually be the judge of their educational experience, and no-one else. And that they will, if given the opportunity, shape it to fit them just fine.

There is no Average Day!

One of the most frequently asked questions in our local home ed groups by brand new home educating families is “what does your average home ed day look like”, to the great chorus of “there isn’t an average day” because all days bring unique learning opportunities when you understand that there is learning to be had in everything, everywhere, all the time. The hardest part of our journey was acknowledging that the child centric model of education, where the interests of the child are followed and supported and parents are facilitators of education, not teachers, is hugely more successful in nurturing a lifelong love of learning, than attempting to replicate the four walls of a classroom, however inspiring the classroom manager happens to be. One size fits all education was a great experiment, but as we evolve and grow as a human collective, recognising the changing needs of our societies and the importance of wellbeing and mental health over academic “achievement” is a vitally important conversation. Priorities are shifting, as well they should. What cost is a life lived under pressure to be the best, or better, to hit attainment targets and be constantly compared with others, against a life where there is time to explore interests, to develop passions, to have autonomy over mind and body, and where the only person you need compare yourself with, is you.

Barefoot and Joyful Education

Seven years in, as a single parent of two home educated children, it is still a wonder and a joy and a privilege to me I get to step out in their journey with them, supporting them to explore, to find the things they love and want to put energy to, to see them bloom as they find their place in the wonderful wild world. And whether they are exploring the treasures of a museum, climbing the highest hills with their friends, chatting with volunteers at the zoo or running, sure footed, bare toed, through Autumn woods, our Home Educated children have the educational freedom that we should always seek to gather up, to honour, and to protect.

If you are thinking of stepping out of Mainstream education and into the wonderful world of Home education, reach out to your local groups for support, ask questions, and know from one who has been there, that the hardest part of the journey will be unravelling your own beliefs about what education should look like, and that once you start to follow your child’s interests, you’ll find your way. Maybe we’ll see you, barefoot and joyful, in the woods one day soon?

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