Teaching English at Home

When I was in grade school, I used to sit by myself with a pencil and a notebook making up stories. This, I imagine, qualified me nicely for a future career as either a writer or a sociopath, or both if you go with the stereotype. I also remember endless six-sentence essays, diagramming sentences in seventh grade, and being spat on by a tenth grade teacher showing off his ability to speak Old English. Now, teaching my children at home, I’ve been forced to think what to make of all this, and to come up with what I consider an essential “English” curriculum.

After two years, ironically, we’ve logged zero hours in “English” in my nifty Edutrack software. We get our composition and grammar through our history and spelling curricula, and my kids spend too much time reading for me to bother logging it. Everything ends up being connected, and if I double or triple-counted everything, we’d end up with a gerbillion hours home schooling, most of which I’d be spending figuring out what to call everything. Much of what we do is tied together by narration, an idea popularized by Charlotte Mason, an influential British educator in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Children’s compositional ability, she said, usually exceeds their writing ability until they’re at least 10.

For history, we read aloud a chapter of “Story of the World,” at the beginning of the week and then on another day I grab a pen and paper and sit my son down to narrate back to me what happened in the chapter. I do the writing, so that he can focus on organizing his thoughts instead of lamenting his handwriting. Because I’m a harsh editor, and because I’m doing all the writing, I’ve imposed on him a sense of brevity and clarity of thought. I’m not going to write down “Hello, my name is Wiley and I’m going to tell you all about the Normans” or write down some long rant that has no beginning or end. He does remarkably well considering that if someone sat me down first thing in the morning and said “tell me about the Ostrogoths in six sentences or less” my head would explode. I was particularly proud when he came up with “The barbarians were a savage people who only liked war.”

In our spelling curriculum, the words build logically upon each other (i.e., in, pin, begin, inning, beginning) so the words used are often not words traditionally found in grade level texts. We frequently get onto tangents like why the British put a u in the word mouldering, the difference between “did” and “have done,” what slandering means. We’ve talked about things like tense, alliteration, homonyms, as they come up (and it really isn’t worth putting that 30-second lesson into Edutrack). When we discuss these things in a normal conversation, I can tell that my kids are interested and understand the concept.

Mason pioneered the concept of a “living” education for children, one in which the environment engages the heart of the child and the choice of books should be the best-written, most inspiring and high-quality books available. We don’t do abridged books, or “grade-level” distillations, and I often read aloud if something is particularly difficult or full of good language. Even my two-year-old will sit still for myths and fairy tales, or middle-ages history filled with fighting and weaponry. Kids can’t help but internalize the English language when exposed to real literature and asked to retell, or narrate back, things in their own words.

Writing is about communication and the organization of ideas. I want my kids to be passionate about this, and I want them to care enough about what they think to speak and write as best they can. Why spend the time doing exercises just for the sake of teaching skills when no one, including me, is interested in the material? It’s much more fun reading things we can both learn from (and it’s rather amazing how much I’ve learned). When it comes time for them to put pen to paper and learn how to write an essay, they’ll already have had practice and will look for the words inside them, rather than trying to fill up the paper.

These days my kids often get to see me writing. I’ve been working on a novel, and I’m now wrangling the third revision. They see me fussing and deleting, and lining the guinea pig cage with old drafts. This shows them how writers often end up being sociopaths, but also gives them a view into the creative process, the magic that makes everything worth while. I don’t necessarily work in order, and had to try to explain to my son what my outline was for when I was starting on Chapter 6. I’m not sure he bought my answer, but he did respond with a charming economic insight: “you’ll sell your book for $20, but then after a few months it will only sell for $12.” Hopefully he’ll have better luck.

Published in the Groton Herald, Wednesday March 24, 2006