I was delighted to be interviewed by Mari Buckroth for School Choice Week, hosted by www.seahomeschoolers.com and sponsored by the National Alliance of Secular Homeschoolers.
Here’s a link to the archived podcast of the interview. (You can download it for listening offline – I like Download Helper to save audio and video for when we don’t have internet access.)
Here’s a link to my blog post on Secular, Eclectic, Academic Homeschoolers called “Unschool When You Can, Teach When You Must.”
Interview Questions
If you don’t have a full hour and twenty minutes to listen to the podcast, you can start the audio, and then skip ahead to the bits that interest you most:
Introduction
00:00:00 Introduction from Mari Buckroth; information about my book Homeschool Teacher.
00:01:10 Classical Education Model / Unschooling Model / what we do
Homeschool Styles
00:04:05 What does one of your days homeschooling look like? How do you balance the Classical Education vs. Unschooling [Discussion of unschooling reading; reading stamina; science; math]
Reading
00:09:13 What if you have a reluctant reader? In early elementary? Middle school? High school? [Dyslexia; testing; never too late; audio books; digital books; encouraging reading; finding good books]
00:15:28 Does instruction take away from the joy of reading [Students who like to read vs. students who hate to read; it doesn’t matter what genre they’re reading; don’t teach the Classics too soon]
Preparing for College
00:19:07 High schoolers and college? How has the mix changed in high school? [Becoming more traditional; thinking about college; high school literature]
00:22:30 What if you haven’t read all the Classics? What if you can’t answer questions? In Middle School and High School? [You don’t have to know it all; students are first-time readers; writing about literature to enhance reading not find pre-set answers]
00:29:17 Pursuit of knowledge, learning, not what Spark Notes says? [Symbolism hunting]
Writing
00:31:00 Writing: Service writing, Draft and a Half, Invested Writing [Definitions; summaries; process vs. product]
00:39:02 Invested writing number per year
Motivating Students
00:40:25 Is it necessary to find programs that are relevant to your students?
00:47:08 How do you motivate children in a subject that they aren’t interested in? [Teaching history]
00:53:00 If there’s nothing that your child has an interest in, how do you unschool? / Would you limit the amount of electronics / television in order to unschool?
Short-Term Homeschooling
00:58:02 Homeschooling because you need to vs. philosophical reasons? Short-term homeschooling vs. long-term.
01:05:45 Online virtual public schooling? [short term homeschooling in high school]
Reflections on Homeschooling
01:11:23 If there were one thing you could go back and do differently, what would it be?
01:14:30 Did you always know you were going to homeschool?
01:15:40 Are you glad you homeschooled?
Like what you heard?
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Homeschool Teacher 