Tag: learning
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What is an autodidact?
Recently a friend told me about a conversation she had with a great musician, a person she hoped to study with. The musician, my friend told me, advised her to spend time listening to artists she admires. My son did that when, as a teenager, he spent hours absorbing videos and recordings by his mandolin…
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Put the ‘home’ back in ‘homeschooling’
Recently I read an advice piece for homeschoolers. Sign your child up to attend a learning center or free school for a few days a week, it said, so as to provide a “home base” for your child’s homeschooling experience. I admit I was taken aback. For me and most of the homeschooling families I…
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Unschooling for life
I recently heard from a mom whose husband is on the fence about unschooling because of math. He’s a math whiz whose introduction to the subject came from school, not home. He worries that unschooling won’t offer his kids what they need to develop strong interest and proficiency in mathematics, and they’ll lose the opportunity…
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Happy Pride Day
Here in Boston, it’s Pride Day, a day to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community. Pride events are fun and joyful, but they’re also serious. They happen in June to commemorate Stonewall, a significant event in LGBTQ+ history and a reminder of the work that still needs to be done to ensure acceptance and equality for all.…
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Gimme shelter
A headline caught my eye today. Even For Homeschoolers, There Is No Happily Ever After. The writer, Linda DeMers Hummel, had a job answering phones for a curriculum company whose clients were homeschoolers. Most of the questions were about math, but then she got a call from a mother who wouldn’t let her eighth grade…
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Bathrooms and trust
Bathroom business. It’s pretty basic stuff, a part of every human being’s daily life. When my eldest daughter, after years of homeschooling, enrolled in public high school, she had to deal with the restrictions placed on all students about their bathroom use. By the time she was an upperclassman, I guess she was a little…
A Potluck Life 