Middle School: Dreams vs. Reality
Yikes! Where did the past two years go? While I remember what has happened in the past two years, at the same time it seems surreal. Even though our schooling was not interrupted by Covid, our entire life has been turned upside down. Things have happened in the past two years that I could never have imagined. The loss of my dad and sister, having to replace all of our appliances, demolish our old house and move a new one in, the politics and division within our country, etc. And that doesn’t even include everything that is normal about life.: hockey, gymnastics, tae kwon do, middle school, taking care of our pets, home improvement projects…the list is never ending.
Now we are here…
Now we are here. Super Stuffy is in his last semester in middle school and Bear Bear is in her first year. At the beginning of this school year I received a “registration packet” from our local public school listing all of the courses necessary to graduate, to graduate with honors, etc. I took a lot of time to go through that list and figure out how I was going to get Super Stuffy everything he needed in order to graduate from high school. And then, if he was planning to go to college at all, he needs more. It was time to get serious. We even sat down together and planned how we were going to accomplish all of these goals during his high school years. I felt encouraged. I believed that we could actually do this!
Here I sit, almost halfway through February, and we haven’t made much progress since the beginning of this new year. At the beginning of this week I thought that since we have been constantly on the go with school and extra curriculars and hockey travel that we could honestly take a “mental health” day. Well, that mental health day has turned into a mental health week. We are also all suffering from what used to be just a nasty cold, but now has morphed into this “serious disease” that we are supposed to be terrified of. Granted the sore throats and fatigue are no fun, but no longer are we advised to just drink some soup and stay warm. Have we been in close contact with anyone who has Covid? Have you been tested? Should we test for Covid? Who gave us this virus? I really hate the fact that we are held captive to the fear of this virus.
I Can Handle Middle School Math…
Anyway, the one place where I feel good about my middle school homeschool is math. Super Stuffy is only a few weeks away from finishing Algebra 1, and Bear Bear is even closer to finishing her last math class before Pre Algebra. But math is easy. I have the curriculum, and there is a prescribed order and sequence for each lesson. It doesn’t take a whole lot of planning, and the kids basically do it on their own.
Everything else in middle school…
But then, there’s everything else. Literature, we’re in the middle of The Hobbit – excellent book, one that I haven’t read since I was in school. We read it together, and I have the kids look up some vocabulary words and write them down, but beyond that, we don’t do much. We enjoy the story, and we have every intention of watching the movies when we’re done. But we don’t get into a whole lot of analysis about the story or its literary elements. Am I doing enough?
Bible – I have started using Google forms for this subject.. We are studying in Amos right now, and what I do is have them read one chapter, answer the questions that I put on a Google form, and then the next day we read the same chapter together and discuss it. I know that this subject is the most important for eternity. However, I have not been very good at encouraging them to practice their memory verses, and we don’t do much more than that. Could I be doing more to teach them God’s Word?
Science – this one is probably one of my biggest frustrations. What I imagine in my head is that we would enjoy going outside all the time and studying nature. Writing what we discover in our nature journals. I imagine lovely experiments birthed from what we all desire to study. We would follow our interests down deep and discover as much about a particular science topic as we wanted. My kids would beg to keep going every day to learn more.
Reality…
Reality, on the other hand, comes nowhere near this fantasy. My great dreams of going outside and learning about nature fall prey to cold weather, wind, and just stubborn laziness. All those lovely experiments hit the reality of me not knowing what I’m doing or even being able to find the supplies we need. For that matter, I am completely scientifically illiterate when it comes to figuring out what particular brand of science we are learning: is this physics, biology, earth science?!? And then, how in the world do I quantify their science learning on a transcript? So I settle for the closest curriculum that I can find that kind of incorporates the “nature journaling” and the “lovely experiments” that I want. However, it leaves much to be desired, and my kids are not even close to eager in doing their science schoolwork.
History – HA! Beyond this particular subject being my absolute favorite subject of all, teaching history completely mystifies me. I fully realize that there is absolutely no way that I could ever come close to teaching all history – nobody can. But I am so completely excited about history that I even loved the history lectures that my junior high teachers gave. I have always imagined that my kids would love history just as much as me. I recall reading voraciously about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War on my own time, and I have my own favorite times in history that I like to study: Ancient Egypt, the Civil War, pretty much most American history, Biblical history. But unfortunately, my kids don’t have that same love for history.
What I imagine…
My ultimate homeschooling “history dream” would look like this: my kids would be just as excited about learning history as I am. We would learn together about all the exciting stories about people who have gone before us. Then, when we have learned all that we wanted, we would all make an awesome project to show other people what we had learned and to share our excitement over this particular historical time period. All three of us would be excited to do our best on the projects that we make, and we would share our learning and excitement with the world.
Every time I see this dream in my mind, I get hit head on with the brick wall of reality. Honestly, I don’t think that my kids have found anything exciting about history yet. It is important that they know the Constitution, and we studied it a little bit this fall, but when it came time for the project, it died. I have great ideas for projects, but they can’t come up with any, and even if they do, I am at a loss to know how to evaluate them. I think that I am going to settle for just requiring them to read an accurate “real” history book. That’s how I learned most of my history, maybe it will work for them.
And it’s not just academics…
Planning – I have changed the website that I use for planning twice this year. The first one worked because my kids got their own calendar to see what their assignments were. Now that they are in middle school they can do most things on their own. But that first website didn’t transfer assignments from day to day so I spent a lot of time moving assignments. So after Christmas I took a lot of time to transfer all of our assignments to the new website. It works, I like it, but it still is hard keeping track of it all.
I am also dealing with a lot of “mom guilt” because I know that I really don’t need to be with them at all times, but I still feel like I should. When I just let them go on their own, am I neglecting them? How much academics do they really need? Am I letting my kids down?
Despite my fears, homeschooling is still my best option…
All I really know is this…I am still so very glad that I have been homeschooling all this time. The relationships that we have with each other are priceless. My kids know how to learn and find out the information that they need. Of all things, that is the most important, because there is no way in the world that I could possibly teach them everything that they need to know. I know that homeschooling still terrifies me, but I will never choose any different. The benefits far outweigh my feelings of fear. Next year is high school…but we’ll all learn together.
Whether you’re in the midst of middle school or just at the beginning, what are your thoughts and fears about it? Let me know in the comments below!
My ultimate favorite middle school homeschool post:
Middle School Mania: How We’re Transitioning to Homeschooling Middle School
