Unschooler Meets a Schedule

For twenty years of homeschooling, we looked at "school" as part of life. People read. People solve problems. People learn what they need to know. All those educational activities (the fun ones and the not-so-fun necessary ones too) just had to fit into real life. "School" was done during summer, during Christmas break, on weekends, in the evenings, just as frequently and easily and naturally as it was done during typical school-day hours.

Now Gary is working away from home during the days Monday through Friday. Now we are attending chapel each M-F morning that our congregation's academy is in session. Now the kids have schooled friends, and homeschooling friends who operate on a Sept-to-May, M-F, 8-3:00 calendar. Their free time affects our schedule. My youngest two students also need more help from me with their schoolwork, be it cracking the whip motivational encouragement or some hand-holding. So this year we are trying to be more schooly, more organized, more scheduled, etc.

I'm dyin' here.


What's really getting to me is the priorities. When there is a list of daily textbooky and workbooky school assignments, it seems that the checklist takes priority over real-life needs which are actually more important. I resent it when I feel naughty to work in the garden instead of grade a math lesson. I get cranky when I think that taking the car in for an oil change is detracting from history or logic class. Mowing and supper-prep should not be seen as "interferences" with schoolwork. I could never understand homeschool moms who didn't have time for a fieldtrip because they'd get "behind" in their schoolwork. But now, even though I know better, those illogical feelings have become my own thoughts.

Getting on a schedule and sticking to it presents its own struggles and benefits. But the part that is super-hard is how it messes with my mind, how it rearranges my whole view of what things in life are Most Important and need to be tackled as top priority each day.

And then, on top of that, I find that it almost gives us permission to unplug our brains on days the conventional schools aren't in session.

There must be a middle ground. Somewhere.

How does a person commit herself to a schedule intended to serve good ends, submitting to the schedule's demands when she doesn't feel like it, and yet not let the schedule become task-master, keeping it in its place as a mere servant to the goals?