I have more than one family member who doesn't seem to understand homeschooling as anything other than school at home. Or at least, didn't. The last straw (so to speak) with my MIL came about two weeks ago, when she sent me a packet of interesting unit-study type stuff for the kidlets and "slipped in" a several-page piece on classroom management. I hadn't realized until that point just how badly she didn't get it. I wonder if there was a picture in her mind of me setting Girliness down at the table, fending off the younger two, and filling her head with the all-powerful schooly-type KNOWLEDGE day after day.
So I went a-searching for stuff to counter that (because what I SAY never seems to really sink in...oh, she is great about not challenging us, but it is like she doesn't REALLY believe it until it comes from somewhere else too). Wound up with Dumbing Us Down and Teach Your Own. Broke as I am, I borrowed them from the library and passed them off to MIL with attempted sensitivity "I don't think we're thinking of the same thing when we think of homeschooling - I brought these over so you can take a look and maybe we will be speaking the same language in the future. Take a look, you can return them at your library when you're done, let me know if you'd like more than 3 weeks, blah blah blah."
And much to my surprise, a few days later she wrote back with happy reviews, told me about how she's seen some of this in the classrooms when she subs, and is purchasing these books and a few others to add to her own collection. This is simply beyond my expectation (I was merely hoping for a little reprieve from the school-at-home mindset).
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1 comment:
That's awesome!
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