March-April 2009 Selected Content

It was June 1988, the first official day of our new homeschool. Homeschooling was Michaels choice and we were all a bit nervous. I had been teaching in Montessori schools, children from age 2 to 13, since 1971 and had plenty of lessons and materials ready for our 5-year-old to choose from. I started explaining the exciting and interesting lessons in several areas; then I felt his body stiffen next to mine and saw that he was staring at me with a look of horror on his face! He said, and I shall never forget it, If I had wanted to do all these things I would have stayed in school!

I backed off. Thank goodness I already had a full-time job at home, reviewing and selecting products, and creating the catalogue, for our family business, an educational toy and bookstore.

Michael had attended a Montessori school from ages 2 to 5.5. For the last year or so, we had been talking about the homeschoolers who came into our store. We appreciated the way they talked with their parents about what to buy, what they were interested in, what they wanted to explore. It was so nice to see the respectful communication between parents and the children. Michael had enjoyed a lot about his Montessori preschool, but he thought homeschooling sounded even better. He talked us into it.

This was new ground. As parents we constantly wavered back and forth over the years, from This is the best thing we could ever do for our child to Oh dear, are we ruining our childs life? For 17 years we experimented, studying how others were doing it, and in the beginning received a lot of personal encouragement from Helen Hegener of Home Education Magazine, and from speakers at the few homeschooling conferences we attended. But we found that there was no recipe and in the end, every family has to create its own homeschooling life.

Here are some examples of various subjects we discussed with other homeschoolers over the years.

Schedule
We kept no homeschool hours. Even though I had loved my years of teaching Montessori, there was something pretty wonderful about waking up naturally, without the rush of eating and getting ready to leave the house. With no TV in the house (and no internet back then), plenty of good books and educational materials, and by including Michael in the family work, everything was considered valuable education. Officially homeschooling occurred any time, day or night, seven days a week. It was just living.

Once a week for about an hour, Michael and I talked about what the state required at his particular grade level. This is exactly what I had done with each student, individually, in Montessori 6-12 classes. Together we studied the list from the previous week, and made a new list for the following week. The purpose was to keep academic areas balanced. There were, however, no rewards or punishments connected to doing everything on the list, no tests or grades, just respectful dialogue. As I look back, I think this was one of the best preparations for real life, time management and planning, that we gave Michael.

Study Subjects and Methods

There are two Montessori sayings that are relevant here. The first is The teacher is in charge of the minimum and the student the maximum. That means that in our planning, I helped Michael be aware of a very small number of things he should learn in order to keep up with his peers in school, but he was free then to go to the limit in researching anything that he became interested in. His father and I watched carefully to determine these interests and to help him find library books, or guides and teachers, public lectures or performances, and so forth, to learn as much as possible in the passion of the moment. The subject wasnt important, but the feeding curiosity, looking for answers to his questions, learning the research tools, the search for primary sources, interviewing people as witnesses, personal experience, the joy of sharing the information with others, the pleasure taken in the hard workthese were the valuable elements.

The second saying is Children remember what they enjoy learning. We learned early on that anything a child is forced to learn, or manipulated into learning by means of threats or rewards, is usually soon forgotten. But things learned in an enjoyable way, study that provides answers to a childs questions, instead of being required or imposed by someone else, are remembered; they are truly learned.

I will never forget one day when Michael said, a bit grumpily, that he had not learned anything about animals in a long time and there were no animals around to study. I suggested he go out in to the yard and place his face a few inches from the grassy earth and see if he could find anything. Later I looked out the window and saw that he was lying face down, his face almost touching the earth, motionless. He did this for a long time, and then came running in with a long and exciting monologue about the interplay he had observed between two different communities of tiny insects living on a few square inched of his own yard! Neither of us has forgotten what he learned that day.

Math

There is a large group of homeschoolers in this area and an unofficial school for homeschoolers, called Mistwood where Michael went one day a week. He learned much of his math there or from his father. We had no daily-required math work. During the high school years, he took two math classes with his dad at the university. Of course there was practical math. He developed an intricate and involved budgeting system for the money he earned as a music teacher. He even earned enough to build a music studio with his dad. Neither of them had ever built anything, so it was a wonderful project. They read books, watched videos, consulted experts, hired help for the foundation, wiring, and sheet rocking, but did almost everything else themselves.

Language
Family reading before bed was such an important part of our lives that it was the subject of the what do you miss most about home paper required during Michaels freshman year at college. Often we would begin a book, something by Charles Dickens for example, and Michael just couldnt wait till the next nights reading so he would continue on his own. Then we would have to start a new book since his parents were behind in the book we had started the night before. We read fiction, great literature, but also history and other non-fiction.

Writing was another story. Michael hated writing and steadfastly refused to do it. To prepare for the 15-minute essay on the SAT II test, he had to practice actually moving a pencil across the paper for 15 whole minutes, writing something like I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. He studied a few essays and practiced breaking subjects I selected into the essay format, but he did not enjoy it. His first real paper was written in college. But by law school he was editor of the Law Review, and his student job was helping a professor edit a law book he was writing. This reinforces the belief that the timing of learning is vital.

Volunteer Work
Care of others and the environment is an important part of Montessori curriculum. Michael tried many avenues of volunteer work, from cleaning up the beaches with friends, or playing piano at the Alzheimers center, to helping disabled children learn to ride horses. He went with his dad on his own hospice volunteer work, and once a week, took dinner to a neighborhood man who could no longer drive.

Socialization
As we all know, this is often the first question people ask of homeschoolers. Michaels society was his parents, his grown sisters and their friends, the babies I worked with, the children and adults he taught Suzuki piano, guitar, and violin, the retired music professor he took dinner each Friday evening, and the members of the various music ensembles, bands, and orchestras he played with over the years. If this isnt socialization in the real world, I dont know what is.

High school
At age 15 Michael passed the CHISPE (California High School Proficiency Exam) officially earning a high school diploma. Then he was free to take classes at the local university and to earn his Suzuki piano teachers diploma in Calgary, Canada.

When his high school-attending friends talked about their biology or American history classes he felt ignorant, even when we pointed out that he probably knew more about the areas he had researched than anyone we knew. He knew about WWII, the emperors of Rome, volcanoes, the Indian epic Mahabharata, the Bible, the history of the Maya, archeology, and many subjects that were never covered in such depth in school.

SAT/ACT
Michael had taken a test at the end of sixth grade, given by a homeschool mother who tutored homeschoolers. Now he had to think about college entrance tests. He knew he wanted to be able to choose any kind of a career and that college was a good idea, but he had not in any way studied to the test.

We got some books with practice tests. The top SAT I and II scores were still 800, and with the first practice tests, he scored between 100 and 300 on most of them. So he studied for just over two months and brought his scores up to around 700. This was something that we never forgot. When we hear about children having to begin preparing for SAT tests as early as third grade, and then see that it is possible, when one loves learning and can schedule his time and work hard, to catch up in a couple of months, it boggles our minds.

College
At that time there was a counselor at Stanford University especially for homeschooled applicants. He has us bring a very long list taken from the annual work records of what Michael had done during high school years. He helped us put it into an application format which was accepted almost everywhere Michael applied.

In the homeschooling world, Montessori seems to be mostly known for the materials, the Montessori manipulatives, especially in math. But in my opinion these things are not at all as important as respecting and following the childs choice of what to study and not interrupting his concentration. The Montessori elementary curriculum is a rough guide, an overview that opens up the worlds of history, geography, cultures of the world, the sciences and arts. But then the child is in charge of what to research and study.

A Few Words About Montessori
Montessori philosophy is based on intense and continuous study of the child in what is called the four planes of development: Birth to 6 years, 6-12, 12-18, and 18-24. By the end of the 24th year we look for these markers of successful development:

The Montessori Promise
the Young Adult - Resilient - Sense of mission - Sense of control - Self-Confidence - Inner Harmony - A love of study and achievement in preparation for future work in society.

By age 24, Michael had adjusted to traditional education, receiving a needs-based scholarship to Brown University where he was a teaching assistant in the music department his sophomore year, graduated in ethnomusicology, traveled around the world, volunteered in a Mother Teresa orphanage and at an environmental NGO in India, and entered law school where he worked as a public defender in Oregon. He now works for a law firm in Portland, Oregon, plays music with several groups, composes music, and teaches music. Homeschooling helped him achieve a balanced life.

Montessori Resources
www.montessori.edu - Information on Montessori schools, materials, teacher training, conferences, and other information of interest to homeschoolers.

www.michaelolaf.net - The Michael Olaf Montessori Company was started in 1983 by two teenage girls and named after their new baby brother, Michael Olaf Stephenson. The Stephenson family has homeschooled since 1988, and included a Montessori overview that was rewritten each year based on questions from homeschoolers and Montessori teachers. They carry educational books and materials used by homeschoolers around the world. The site also contains reprints of articles on education and other interesting information.

www.montessori-ami.org - The main site for the Association Montessori Internationale, founded in 1929 by Dr. Maria Montessori, the first woman in Italy to receive a degree in medicine.

© 2009, Susan Mayclin Stephenson