Bountiful Educating

(Jonathan and Jared with their new dogs Molly and Baxter)

The grandmother has spoken...her request? How are you involved with the boys' homeschooling? So here's my response (with plenty of backstory, of course). Jared and Jonathan are in 6th and 8th grades, respectively. They were accepted into an American school here, but there were no openings available, so they had to go a different route. They are using the K12 iCademy online program (I copied that shamelessly from their family's blog). Basically, all the work my mom did planning out our lessons for us is already posted online for them and laid out daily. Unfortunately for these guys, there are no semester breaks in this curriculum, so they're having to complete a whole year's worth of classes before the end of June (technically before the end of August...but who wants to work all through the summer?). This program has an office that's about 10 minutes from where we live (the boys' family's villa is a 5-10 minute walk from our house! Through the alleyway, past the mosque, around the corner and through the gate!), and they are assigned a teacher who looks over a sample of their work every month or so and is available for live web chats if they need some extra help. The boys' mom, Leslie, and I serve as their "learning coaches"... i.e. we check their work, motivate them to keep working, explain things to them (the whole time double-checking with each other to make sure we're correctly remembering different parts of speech and mathematical functions, etc.). So there's the backstory...now, on to what I do....

A "typical" day* at their house might involve any (or many) of the following: checking Jared's or Jonathan's worksheets (we finally discovered the Teacher Keys, so that task is tons easier than it used to be!), tearing out worksheets for both boys and putting them in their weekly folders (if they don't complete their daily assignments, the online schedule just moves all the lessons in that subject back a day...therefore, their ending date keeps getting moved back...we're hoping that by having the worksheets in a folder, they'll be better able to keep track of what they should be doing each day), cracking a lame joke or two to lighten some history (the bane of Jonathan's existence) or science (not really something Jared enjoys) or literature (neither particularly cares for this...me either actually) frustrations...and then encouraging them (sometimes nicely, sometimes not so much) to get back to it. 

Jared really seems to like the homeschooling...maybe he just doesn't heave great sighs in front of me, but he really likes school and is flying through it...similar to my sister Rebecca, I think. Here's a picture of us sitting at his "desk"...the Arab couch (quite comfy arrangement of different sized/shaped cushions on the floor...very brilliant!)...although usually most of his tutoring with me occurs at my "desk" (the leather couch in the middle of the living room).

Now Jonathan...he's taking me back to my middle school years...only this time I'm seeing it more from my mom's point of view (it's kinda weird)! Jonathan is less of a fan of school...he's smart, but I know he misses the social aspects of "real school". That being said, I feel like we completely connect with history...it's the worst subject ever (for all you history buffs out there, I apologize...but you probably don't enjoy dissecting flowers or memorizing the taxonomy of animals like I do, so...so there!)! I now appreciate my mom SO much more for wading through ALL that horrid history information with me (although it is a tad more fun to learn when you know you won't be tested on it...so you don't really have to learn it well)! Here's a picture of Jonathan studying up on some Renaissance art...yes, that's Michelangelo's David...and yes, that's a post-it note that Jonathan snagged from me...I told him to look for an answer to one of his worksheet questions on that page, at which point he gave me that "seriously?!?" look (I, of course, responded with a "teacher look") and when I walked back over to him...well...he'd improvised. :) (I told you he was smart!)

So, there's how I'm involved with the boys' homeschooling...hopefully this has been a suitable answer to that question (there was no answer key, so I can't really check my work very well). I'll save describing what I do with the girls for another time, but I do very much love what I'm doing here. For those of you who know me, you know I LOVE being a big sister...to anyone younger than me...whether they want a big sister or not! I don't know for sure whether any of these five kids here that I'm working with view me as that, but I definitely see them as younger siblings and am enjoying laughing with them and sympathizing with them and joking with them and loving on them and pouring into their lives academically and otherwise! 

* For the past seven or eight years, my least favorite question has been "What are you going to do after ____?____?" Now my least favorite question is "What does a typical day look like for you?". I still haven't figured it out for sure! Flexibility is key! Usually, my weekdays will consist of some work with the boys and then a Bible class or two with the girls, but other than that, there are relatively few guarantees...but this spontaneity is really turning out to be a lot more fun than I ever thought it would be!