Observing Without Interfering

Reporting Self-Directed Education to School Officials

It’s that time of the year again for those who let their children learn at home and in their communities: Time to write your annual evaluation (in states that require them—not all do!). For families that practice unschooling, homeschooling, or whatever you want to call living and learning in real-time—not school-time—gathering, organizing, and presenting your children’s “work products” for school officials can be daunting. But as this mom writes, “This report … was submitted as an official report … But it went beyond the bounds of the assignment and was truly done for me.”

Putting notes and examples of all your child’s learning activities into a box or folders during the year to be used later to create their learning portfolio can be time-consuming and annoying, but as Wendy Martyna notes below, it can be a valuable exercise for parents just for themselves.

Photo by NHN on Unsplash

Photo by Sash Bo on Unsplash

Finding Things Out (originally published in Growing Without Schooling 78)

Wendy Martyna of California sent us the “Home School Report” she’d written at the end of the year. Some excerpts:

We often play what we call “The Question Game,” where one of us poses a question (usually of central philosophical importance) that the others each get to answer in any way they like. Examples: “What is truth?” “Why do people not know that the Earth is alive, and hurt her?” “What is time?” The other day, 7-year-old Miles’ question was, “What is smart?” and our answers reflected a deep sense that knowledge is only part of smartness. Bryn (10) said that some people think smart is knowing lots of things, like things you memorize or learn in school. We all agreed that smart is knowing how to find out things, and knowing what you do not know, and being willing to not know. I recently read parts of a book by Richard Saul Wurman, Information Anxiety, which assesses the overwhelming quality of the information we are confronted with daily, and defines “Information Anxiety” as the gap between what we know and what we think we should know. He says his father taught him not that he should know everything in the encyclopedia, but that he should know how to find it. When I observe Bryn’s and Miles· learning process, I see no anxiety about what they do not know (except in the momentary frustration of trying to solve an immediate problem before them), and I see great skill in finding out what they need or want to know.

I also see an intense commitment to learning, and an individual sense of timing that guides them. Miles can spend an hour or more immersed in reading a TinTin adventure book, and not even hear us calling him. The next day, he may spend that same intense hour experimenting with a mylar dancing ribbon on a stick, watching and controlling the many patterns and motions it can make (and telling me about it as he does). Both of them follow their heart when it comes to learning—which may mean wanting to do a math workbook in the car on Sunday when we’re driving somewhere. You never know. What you can count on is that they are doing, most of the time, what they want to be doing, for their own reasons, and finding meaning—a sense of internal purpose—in doing it. ...

Both the children like to have assignments when they ask for them, or when I offer them and they agree. They do not resist structure or evaluation, but rather are free to enjoy its pleasures, because it comes purely, without strings. When I made up a worksheet for them—one on TinTin books, one on Madeleine L’Engle—they couldn’t wait till they were printed off the computer to start on them. ...

When we are watering the garden, weeding the strawberries, bemoaning the gophers’ holes, studying the rebirth and unfolding of a calla lily, we are often taken afield (or “agarden”) into other discussions or experiments. And we end up learning quite a bit, learning in a way that might take us back into a book, or a drawing. But that was not the point, or even the purpose. The point was to water the garden, or weed the strawberries. The learning, ultimately, is not extractable from the unfolding of the experience, so that to tell about it is different than it was.

But to tell about it in these other ways also carries a truth. It is a truth that belongs to reflection afterwards (as when one, at 38, comes to understand in quite a different way what one was doing at 19). This is why we don’t hear ourselves saying, “Well, now we are having a lesson in physics” with that “Let’s turn to chapter 3” tone of voice, but rather find ourselves looking well into the learning itself, as it emerges out of the truth of the moment. Looking back and reflecting on it, the lesson may well have much beyond physics in it—what might be called literature, and philosophy, and biology, and much more. That doesn’t mean that the children—or Bill or I—wouldn’t hear ourselves saying (in wonder, sometimes, or just as a comment on the situation), “Well, here we are talking about geography now!” But it wouldn’t be that sneaky kind of creeping up and pouncing on “the teachable moment,” still assuming that learning needs to take a specified form and be caught in the act before it can be said to have occurred. In fact, the phrase “the teachable moment” seems to imply that some moments are not teachable; or worse, that teaching is something that needs to be added to the moment, rather than discovered within it. ...

Retention. Comprehension. These things become natural byproducts of the kind of learning they experience. I was reading a book aloud to both of them, and Miles had read to himself another of the books in that series. I had wondered if that book was too difficult for him to read, but he sat and read it right through. I wondered if he had retained it, but I found out without asking or testing. As I read the other book aloud, he continually told us all that had happened to each of those characters in the other book, and his opinion on what had happened. And Bryn recounts plots in compelling ways, when she is done with or even midway through her books. And Miles is the master of TinTin detail—if we play “21 Questions” about a TinTin fact, Miles is the acknowledged master of us all.

TinTin reminds me of something that’s also fundamentally important to our homeschooling process. That is the role that Bill and I play, as teachers and learners and parents and companions. A mix of roles that alters according to mood and context, but that reduces down to a deep sense we both have that we are privileged to all be on this journey together. When I found myself wondering what Miles was seeing in these many TinTin books, what was absorbing him so, and found also that I was worried about the racial stereotypes in the books and the occasional use of violence, I did some research. Of course, we talked about the racial stereotypes and that became a chance to recognize them when they occur, especially in subtle form, and in historical context. But there was more I wanted to know, that he was not interested in explaining (why he liked them was not interesting to him at the time, only that he liked them). In the library reference room I looked up the author and xeroxed pages of biographical information, and then found about twenty pages of critical essays concerning TinTin in the Book Review Index. In reading these, I learned a lot, and what I learned deepened my understanding of the mythic quality of the TinTin adventure, and helped to answer my questions, to stimulate my reflections, not Miles’. It was to satisfy my need to know, not his.

Because we try to keep that view in mind—that it is our questions and our learning that are also involved in homeschooling—we help ourselves avoid the trap of feeling self-sacrificing, given the enormous commitment required. We try to keep the sense of privilege alive. It is the same as with being parents—cultivating not a sense that we are “doing all this for you,” or even the opposite, that they are doing it all for us, that we are only awed witnesses of the magic that children offer. It is, rather, something integrated, something inseparable.

From a later letter Wendy wrote us:

You asked me to tell you exactly what the “Home School Report” was written for. Our Independent Home Study Program is affiliated with the Loma Prieta School District. They require that we submit monthly or quarterly reports, and these need to include the things the children have been doing or working on in science, math, language, etc. I have always listed events and activities in a long list under each category (always struggling to reconstruct what I should have kept more careful track of), and then felt so much was missing from that kind of report. So, last June, I was working with some writing I was doing about our lives, and decided to submit that along with the lists. This report, then, was submitted as an official report, and occurred in response to that assignment. But it went beyond the bounds of the assignment and was truly done for me.

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Written in 1991, Wendy’s comment, “always struggling to reconstruct what I should have kept more careful track of,” reminds me of the time and effort we would spend creating our portfolio evaluations when our children were unschooled. I recently contacted the co-founder of the Agile Learning Centers, Tomis Parker, who has created Prism, a unique way to document authentic assessments that make learning visible for the reader, instead of summarizing education as a series of standardized test scores, grades, and education jargon. Tomis notes, “We built Prism because we needed it. After decades in alternative education, we knew the problem intimately. Scattered photos. Invisible learning. Documentation that never added up to anything. So we built the tool we wished we’d had all along.”

He created Prism to be used at any alternative school or family focused on children’s developing interests and individual growth. I think it can be a useful tool for unschoolers, in particular, and homeschoolers in general because it helps you document in real-time, via any device that takes photos, what your child is doing. In Prism you can add notes to the events recorded and when it comes time to create your quarterly or annual portfolio evaluation its AI features can summarize the notes and learning documented in Prism.

You can try Prism for a month for free and after that it is $8 per child per month. Tomis has volume discounts for homeschool coops, learning pods, and other alternatives to conventional school. If any readers decide to use Prism I am interested in how you use it and if you find it valuable.

DISCLAIMER: I am not being paid in any way for mentioning and linking to Prism.