Self-Assessments: "How Am I Doing?"

Every year at the New Hampshire Homeschooling Coalition Spring Workshop, a handful of experienced homeschooling parents, serving as panelists, answer questions about homeschooling. The workshop typically begins with an overview of the NH Home Education law (RSA 193-A). Panelists are then asked about their personal experiences. Why did they choose to homeschool? How did they get started? Where do they find educational resources? How do they connect with other homeschoolers?

At some point in the middle of the workshop, there's one question that's always asked:

"What are your goals and how do you know you’re accomplishing enough?"

While (as a panelist), I realized this question was about educational goals, I couldn't answer without stating the obvious: my highest priority as a parent was my children's well-being. I wanted them to have fond memories of our time together, so I focused on how they learned—I adamantly refused to use a system of rewards and punishments to manipulate, coerce, or shame them into reaching academic milestones. If my kids didn't feel loved and respected and valued for who they were, no amount of accomplishment would ever make up for it.

If I'm honest, though, I have to admit: knowing whether we were accomplishing enough wasn't easy. Most of the time, I went through an informal process of trial and error. When my kids seemed bored, I tried to help them find more challenging work to do. If they were frustrated or stuck, I encouraged them to slow down and take things one step at a time. "Assessment" was generally something that happened dynamically and continuously as I had regular conversations with my children about how they were doing, what interested them, and where they were struggling.

More formally, I could see my kids were making progress when I helped them assemble their annual portfolios at the end of the year. Their portfolios included a written summary of the major milestones in their lives, photos, samples of work, programs from performances, and other evidence of what they'd done during the year. It was always obvious that they had accomplished much, but was it "enough"? How much was enough? That was difficult for me to evaluate without comparing what my kids had done to what other kids the same age were doing.

All of which leads me to these questions: What can an educator reasonably expect from a student? What should students—or lifelong learners—expect from themselves?

Identity, Motivation, and Purpose: An Update on Thriving in the Digital Age

In the course I'm teaching, Thriving in the Digital Age, I seem to be learning and growing as much as my students. As I listen to them struggle to articulate how they feel and think about complex topics, such as identity, motivation, and purpose, I'm often forced to re-evaluate my own assumptions regarding these subjects. It's an extraordinary opportunity: how often do we, as adults, set aside time to think deliberately about our personal and social identities, about all the ways in which various internal and external motivators influence our actions, or exactly how our unconscious values might be directing our lives? These teens, in contrast, are profoundly and constantly aware of these things, and they are helping me to become more aware of them, too.

What I would like to do here is to share some of the materials we've used so far for the course. (For a more complete listing, refer to the Weekly TED Talks and Online Resources posted on the course website.)

We began the course with the book Quiet by Susan Cain . . .



I paired Quiet with Chapter 1 ("Attention! How and Why to Control Your Mind's Most Powerful Instrument") of Net Smart by Howard Rheingold, and this seemed to work out very well. We talked about introverts, extroverts and how to deal effectively with distractions in an "always on" world. We discovered that "distractions" can be a problem for introverts as well as extroverts but not in the same way. The extroverted students sought ways to control their multitasking habits—they loved all that stimulation and found it hard to stop—so they needed help focusing their attention. Meditation was a good addition to their tool set. The introverted students weren't attracted to multitasking; they preferred to do one thing at a time. What they craved was less stimulation, fewer interruptions, so they needed to find ways to access the digital world without becoming overwhelmed by it. The tools that were most helpful to them were dashboards and filters, which controlled the flow of information, and online discussion forums, where they could take as much time as they needed to compose and share their thoughts.

Next, we moved on to Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz . . .



The logical pairing for Schulz's book was Chapter 2 ("Crap Detection) of Net Smart. We talked about why we get things wrong, how it feels to be wrong, and what can be gained from learning to embrace our fallibility. Topics of discussion included "filter bubbles" and why it's important to consult a variety of reliable sources; optical illusions, phantom limbs and other errors in perception; internet hoaxes and other scams; the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, and the ways in which changes in cultural attitudes toward error have transformed science and industry; forensic psychology and how people in general and eyewitnesses in particular sometimes get things wrong; neuroscience; cults; terminal illness and the stages of grief; and, as a recurring theme, how we feel about being wrong and why it's so hard to let go of our desire to be right.

Currently, we are reading Start with Why by Simon Sinek . . .


I'm combining this with Chapter 5 ("Social Has a Shape") of Net Smart by Howard Rheingold and selections from Connected by Dr. Nicholas Christakis. The primary themes for these four weeks of the course are leadership and social networks, but we're also exploring the connections between the two. How do good leaders participate in social networks? Or, conversely, how do our social networks—or lack thereof—influence our ability to become effective leaders?

So far, I've supplemented the primary readings with talks by:

• Drew Dudley ("Everyday Leadership"),
• Dan Pink ("Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us"),
• Mike Rowe ("Learning from Dirty Jobs"),
• Seth Godin ("The Tribes We Lead"),
• and Tony Robbins ("Why We Do What We Do")

These presenters have inspired interesting and sometimes heated discussions. For example, we've debated the differences—sometimes subtle, other times extreme—between motivation and manipulation, particularly when it comes to marketing. Is it the message, the product, or the image of ourselves that influences our choices? We've also questioned the relative merits of "vision" and pragmatism, the pros and cons of going after a dream versus doing a job that simply needs to get done. Where one student emphasized practicality and argued the importance of quality control (the HOW and WHAT of a job), another admired leaders who could articulate a higher purpose for mankind (the WHY of a movement).

I'm looking forward to continuing this course in the months ahead and plan to share in future posts more of what I'm learning from the students. 

Building a Community

When I began homeschooling, back in 1997, I had no idea what it would be like. I knew only one other person whose children did not attend school, and she lived several towns away. During the week, my neighborhood seemed quiet and empty, as all my neighbors sent their kids to local public or private institutions. I tried to ignore the nervous feeling that threatened to erode my confidence. Was I going to go crazy at home? Would my children become isolated and strange?

How were we going to meet people and make friends if there was no one around?


If my kids had attended school, their community would have been defined primarily by where they lived. In contrast, as I commuted to distant towns to meet with homeschoolers for group activities and field trips, I observed that town boundaries mattered far less to us than shared interests.

It seems we were part of a trend. A 2006 report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, "The Strength of Internet Ties," describes similar changes in the way Americans in general have begun to view their communities:

"Instead of disappearing, people’s communities are transforming: The traditional human orientation to neighborhood- and village-based groups is moving towards communities that are oriented around geographically dispersed social networks. People communicate and maneuver in these networks rather than being bound up in one solitary community."

As a home educator, I knew I was not without a community. There were thousands of homeschoolers in New Hampshire, and over a million in the United States (according to this data from the U.S. Dept. of Education). It was just that, instead of being confined to one town, my community was scattered across the state and around the world. So, how was I to get involved?