Welp, we are already sliding into the end of week four and finally finding a bit of a rhythm. Spending one week in a place seems to be about right. For now. Since I last wrote, we spent a week in Ohio outside of Cleveland and a week in Upstate New York near Niagara Falls, and I can say I finally feel like everything is put away where it belongs; the girls’ bedtime routine is coming together, and this road schooling thing is taking shape. (Okay, bedtime has gone well for three nights. But I am counting that).
I have been getting questions about roadschooling. Am I following a curriculum? How do I know what to teach? How do I structure our days? How will I ensure they don’t fall behind? My answers are always pretty breezy and confident. I was a teacher after all. I have been an educator for more than 20 years. I know what I am doing, right? But in truth, this homeschool thing is an unfamiliar wilderness and every day is an experiment.
I did some research before we hit the road, and there are many ways to “homeschool.” There are some organized homeschool collectives and online schools that homeschoolers utilize, and homeschool resources abound. In addition, there are a ton of different approaches–everything from “school-at-home” which mimics brick-and-mortar style schooling, just, you know, at home, to unit studies, to something called the “Charlotte Mason Method,” which prioritizes learning through stories, and on and on. There seem to be just as many homeschool approaches as traditional school approaches. I had no idea!
There are plenty of pre-written curriculum resources out there for sale. The majority of them seem to be Christian faith-based. We are not Christian, so these resources are out.
There are some other great secular resources out there, and I have looked at them for sure, but honestly, I didn’t want to be locked into someone else’s curriculum. We are out here exploring and uncovering together and going through a step-by-step curriculum–seriously? We aren’t traveling in an RV around this country, so they can go through someone’s worksheets. (Besides, I have to be honest. I was never great at sticking to the curriculum when I was teaching. I modified the hell out of everything that was given to me).
On the extreme other end of any formal homeschool curriculum or approach, there is something called “Unschooling.” The broadest definition of this would be “no curriculum at all.” You can Google this term and find all sorts of articles and TikToks about wackadoodle parents who say, “Hey man, I don’t teach my kids anything. The world is their teacher.” However, I wouldn’t suggest Googling that unless you have time to go down a deep, winding, gasp-inducing rabbit hole. Prepare yourself. Get yourself a nice cold beverage before you do.
And maybe there is some merit to “unschooling” on some levels, as in–letting your kids explore and find their passions and interests. But to me, that is more inquiry-based education or student-led learning. I still feel like there needs to be a “guide on the side.” They still need someone to help introduce new ideas, guide them as they practice implementing and practicing their learning, and some way to process their learning so that they aren’t 15 years old and still learning how to write the word “cat” with a crayon.
I’ll be honest. Some days I may be tempted to “unschool” but that is just me being tired af.
So we fall somewhere in the middle. Not running with a formal curriculum but not running completley amok. I think we fall into the “eclectic” category (that’s a real category of homeschooling. I didn’t just make that up even though it definitely sounds like I did).
I mean, listen. I am a teacher. So, of course, I printed out all of the state standards for 4th grade and put them in a binder. And, of course, I am carefully checking to ensure we have a scope and sequence that would somehow cover all these things this year. But for the most part, we are just out here exploring our world, asking a ton of questions, and finding the answers together.
The best thing about our approach is that I don’t have to do all of the teaching! This is good because I was a high school English teacher, and I have no idea how to teach 4th grade. And they sure never taught me a thing about homeschooling in teacher school.
Lucky for me, there are a ton of resources everywhere we go. Not only are there junior ranger programs at all of the National Park sites, but at every museum we visit, every point of interest, including the ones that aren’t part of the National Park Service, there are experts everywhere around us willing to share their knowledge and experiences with us. (Did you know that Lake Sturgeon can live to be 100 years old? I didn’t! But the lake ecologist at the Niagara Aquarium did, so now my kids do!)
And this is so important to me. I am highly suspicious of any homeschooling parent who only exposes their child to their personal ideas and insights. (Side rant. Those parents tend to be the ones who withdrew their children from traditional school because they were being “indoctrinated.” Which always makes me think of The Princess Bride. “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”) Besides, I certainly don’t know everything and am learning as much as they are.
So what do our days look like?
Well, we start with a scheduled morning. Eva likes structure and wants to feel like she’s “in school.” And this also helps me track what we are covering in the standards. So we have an agenda that includes a Morning Meeting, journaling, Social-emotional learning, math, literacy, and Choice Time. That usually takes 2-3 hours with lots of movement breaks—and mental health breaks for me. I quickly learned that the 4th-grade pace is far different from the 11th-grade pace. I had to make adjustments after that first week. What was I thinking? Anyway, we go at their pace.
Fortunately for all of us, we are still in contact with our school, St. Paul School of Northern Lights. The girls are enrolled, and we are technically "distance learning." I am responsible for creating and delivering all curricula, but we call in weekly, talk to our classmates, and keep in touch with the teacher. The girls benefit from keeping in touch with their friends, and I get to know where their class is in the scope and sequence of core content. That helps immensely. It is highly unusual for homeschooled students to be enrolled in a traditional school, and it is an incredible gift. I am so grateful for this connection.
Our literacy curriculum includes lots of writing about what they are experiencing and learning, writing fiction, poetry, and comics, writing letters to friends, doing a novel study with Mathilda by Roald Dahl, and reading non-fiction information about where we are going and what we see.
We use math manipulatives, solve problems together, and use real-world math, and I also lean a bit on IXL, an online math platform (because, let’s be honest–high school English teacher, remember–so this is my weak spot).
Also, Trav is passionate about math and spends time with them in the evenings, talking about all things fractions, multiplication, angles, and geometry. His architect mind is great at finding real-world math, for example, embedding acute, right, and obtuse angles into lessons on how to read a compass while they are searching for Toronto on the other side of Lake Ontario from our campground.
Our afternoons are spent exploring, which where science and social studies are embedded. About three days a week, we get out into the area we are staying in. This might be a trip into the national park we are near. Or a local museum or aquarium. Or even just a nature center or park nearby.
The national park sites have a junior ranger program, which is fantastic as their activities cover geology, biology, ecology, cultural, social, and sometimes political history of wherever we are, and much more. Where we are visiting a place where there isn’t a curriculum, we often start exploring a museum or site by asking, “What can we learn from our visit? What stories does this place want to tell us?”
At Cuyahoga Valley National Park, we got to ride a train! The train took us through the valley, and the volunteer conductors pointed out natural points of interest and historical sites.
We explored the CVNP Boston Mills Visitor Center for an entire day, and the girls learned about the Indigenous people, the area's settlement, the Cuyahoga River's pollution problem, and the clean-up efforts that brought back some of the threatened animal populations, such as osprey and river otters. All of this was new information for me as well!
In Niagara Falls, we visited the Underground Railroad Heritage Center. I had no idea this area was an important stop on the Underground Railroad. So, we spent some time reading about the area and its significance as the last stop before crossing into Canada.
We visited a statue in Lewiston called The Freedom Crossing, a monument commemorating the folks who worked as Station Masters and Conductors on the Underground Railroad in this area and who ushered enslaved people across the Niagra River to freedom.
We then went to the Underground Railroad Heritage Center. We read and listened to primary accounts from people who worked to help enslaved people escape to freedom and from formerly enslaved people who made it to Canada.
This led to a very long and emotional conversation at the dinner table about the institution of slavery and the ugly history of enslavement in our country. We have had conversations about racism and the history of slavery in our country before, but this was the first time I think it sank in for the girls that people endured oppression on such a scale in our country.
As white children, it is easy for them to read about these things in books and for racism and slavery to exist in their minds as something abstract and conceptual.
But then they stood on the banks of the river at the very spot where enslaved folks and the folks who helped them risked their lives. They heard their words spoken out loud. These things made this abstract concept concrete. This is so important and would not have happened in a classroom.
There are places in this country that have important stories to tell and are home to voices that need to be heard. This is one of them.
In the past four weeks, many abstract concepts have become concrete—simple things like landforms and water bodies. The girls have now seen the Great Lakes, dunes, and valleys. They understand the difference between a river and a lake and how a lake can feed a river or how a river can feed a lake. They understand how water moves from Lake Superior to Lake Ontario and then through the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean.
Throughout our time in the Great Lakes region, we have been asking questions and adding to our understanding of the importance of the lakes. These questions have evolved over the past four weeks into what we in education call “guiding questions” or “essential questions.” These questions bring the learning together and create a larger understanding of how the land here has shaped our history and how our history has impacted the land.
Questions like Who lives near the Great Lakes? Who were the first people to live there, and who lives there now? Why do people live by the lakes? Why have they built cities/towns/villages there? How do people affect (harm or help) the lakes? How do the lakes help people? How can people and the lakes live in harmony?
These questions have given us a greater understanding of this area, and as we prepare to depart this region, they have given me ideas for questions to ask about New England as we move forward.
Amidst all this, the girls find things they are interested in and take the initiative to create their passion projects. Eva is doing an extended research project on carnivorous plants after spending time in Michigan. Aela has been collecting leaves and trying to identify the trees from which they come. She is predicting how the trees might change as we move around the country. Both girls are making videos starring tiny figurines they bought at the Niagara Aquarium.
The best thing about our days is that we have time for these things. They can put effort and time into what they are interested in.
It isn’t always perfect. Aela has a hard time in the mornings with structure and always wants to get outside and do her own thing. I have been working on my teaching style to modify my approach to meet her learning style. I had her take her journal entry and create a comic book yesterday. She likes to make videos so we might try to have her work on documentary films about where we are visiting. I still need her to practice her writing, but I can be flexible and responsive to her restlessness, and when she starts rolling around on the floor, I can switch tactics.
And exploration is not always awesome. One day I made the disastrous mistake of trying to turn our grocery run into an “exploration time” and all three of us regretted that immensely. I didn’t know this store so I was lost and it took twice as long to find things. They were fighting and hitting each other with the cart, and they kept zeroing out their calculators and then freaking out about that. They were not paying attention as they pushed the cart along, so they veered into other people. I had to take over pushing the cart. You’d think I have never taken them out in public before. And I take them shopping with me nearly every time.
Finally, I told them to put down the calculators and estimate. That gave them room to start singing and fighting some more. We were a shambles at checkout and I vowed never to force “real world math” into a chore I already despise to begin with again.
Also, I have to work on finding cheaper exploration options. We can’t go to places with entry fees every single day, or we will burn through our savings before we finish the East Coast. I have to get better at finding free things.
Also, exploration is, frankly, exhausting. I am drained at the end of the day because it is a lot to go out and constantly navigate new areas with a massive long-bed truck through unfamiliar streets into often small parking lots, all the while trying to create rich new learning experiences for my kids, who tend to get cranky and whiny when they are overstimulated, hungry, and tired. (I’m really selling this lifestyle, aren’t I?)
And let’s be real. They are my kids. And no one can push your buttons like your own kids. So you can be sure I lose my patience sometimes when I am asking them for the 4,678th time to stop touching each other or fighting (Holy Hannah, it is stressful when your kids fight in an RV park. Everyone can hear them and any minute now, I am sure the local law enforcement or CPS will show up).
But luckily, the girls are incredibly patient with me. And I am getting to know them in ways I didn’t know them before! I get to see them as students, not just as my kids. I get to see what lights them up when they are learning. I get to see how they process new ideas and information. I get to watch them grow.
I am noticing how different they are and how each of them learns. Eva systematically proceeds through an exhibit, writing down things she notices or speaking voice notes into my phone. Aela tends to ping-pong from exhibit to exhibit, exclaiming, “Whoah! Look at this!” And by the time I catch up, she is already off to another spot. Ultimately, they both process their learning by talking about what they discovered. Two very different learning styles. Both absorb a ton of information as we go. I am learning how to respond to both styles at once.
So yeah, it’s coming together. I’m sure this whole roadschool thing will morph and change as we go along. If I were my own instructional coach, I would tell myself that if we are still doing things the same at the end of the road as we are now, that would be a red flag. We will most likely toss things out and add things in. I sure hope so. That is what real learning is. Growing and changing and responding to how we are growing and changing.
So we will never be done “figuring this roadschooling thing out.” I won’t be writing any books about roadschooling or patenting the “Jen Goepfert Method” homeschooling approach anytime soon. And that’s okay. We are learning a lot about the world around us and each other. Every day's an experiment, for sure. And what an absolute privilege that is.
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