New Choice

Happy New Year! I hope you’ve had a good time and are raring to go. Sometimes, when January arrived I could be less than raring to go – more hungover from the indulgences and laziness of the season. So if you’re feeling a little like that here’s a little story.

When my daughter used to teach Drama classes she told me of a warm up activity she did with the students to get them thinking and responding and working beyond the ideas they first thought of. It was called New Choice.

The idea was that she would start them off with a scenario to improvise; like choosing a pet from a pet shop for example and choosing the way they acted it out, what stood in their way, who took what role, etc. After a while, when they were settling into their roles, she would call out ‘new choice’ and they would have to abandon their original plan and think up something completely new. Like, for example, what to do if the pet shop was shut, of if they’d taken the role of the shop keeper, they’d have to switch and play another role, or twist the plot to a different scenario, create a different atmosphere perhaps. It certainly developed a plasticity of thinking – something we could all do with!

Being me, as soon as she told me about it I couldn’t help but relate it to life – and education. For isn’t that just what happens; you just get settled into a routine and the universe ups and shouts ‘New Choice’ at you and you have to think again. Parenting is certainly like that.

I also thought, what a wonderful set of skills for youngsters to build, especially within the current climate of learning, work, economy, politics, society, etc. For this activity, whether in drama classes or in life, pushes you to develop the essential skills of adaptability, flexibility, problem solving, resilience through change and crisis, and the ability to invent strategies that enable you to keep going however up-skittled you are by what’s thrown at you. It forces you to look for the positive possibilities, how to let go of the old and forge new pathways. Just think – if our kids could do that, they’d be set up for life.

Many home educators have, of course, already experienced this. They have had to abandon the school approach to learning because of failing, unhappy or unwell children, have had this ‘new choice’ forced upon them. Most are making good. And in the end it’ll probably reap personal dividends you may not have originally thought about as relevant to education.

Education is obviously all about learning and development. But how to learn and develop is as important as what to learn. Personal skills as vital as academic skills; if you’re going to put your academic skills to good use in an unstable world. Many people fail to recognise this part of educating in their blinkered quest for ‘results’.

The thing is; results are never wholly predictable and life is as unpredictable as the weather. As is progress, employment, budget, climate, all of it, it shifts all the time. What our kids will need in order to manage this instability are the skills required for adjustment, versatility, the ability to create new pathways, to visualise new choices they may not have spotted before, and the courage to take risks associated with thinking beyond what they first thought of.

Life = and learning – is as unpredictable as the weather. Build the skills to cope with that.

January is as good a time as any to perhaps reflect on your home educating approaches, whether you’re stuck in a box, whether your children and young people are building those personal skills as a result of your approaches and whether it’s time to shout ‘New Choice’ and be bold enough to go for it.

Happy new choice!

Happy new home educating year!

A perfectly imperfect approach to your Home Education

Happy New Year, and a happy new start to your home education!

As a fresh approach to it, which we were always ready for when we got back down to it again, how about adopting the philosophy of Wabi Sabi?

What is that, I hear you ask?

Well, I’m not going to be able to give you a clear definitive answer, basically because there isn’t one. I’ve read it’s as difficult to define as love; we all have ideas about love but to express what it is in words is almost impossible. It’s more a matter of feel than of definitions.

And it’s the same with Wabi Sabi.

Wabi Sabi is a Japanese approach to life which holds within it lessons about letting go of trying to make everything perfect, of letting go the idea that life can only be happy if we meet our expectations of perfectionism – many blasted at us through social media, and of accepting and appreciating things as they are in order to get the best from life. Acceptance of the fact that things don’t have to be perfect in order to be good.

If you’re anything like I was you’ll probably be worrying about making your home education perfect. You feel the responsibility of living up to this decision you’ve made to do it, of making it better than school, along with the inevitable comparisons and weight that subsequently brings. Worrying over the judgements made about you if you’re not getting on perfectly. Heavy weights indeed.

Having been through all this my advice to you would be to stop that immediately. All that will do is create tension and anxiety, stress and conflict none of which will be good. Certainly isn’t helpful in making a good learning environment.

Far better instead is to approach it with the wisdom this concept of imperfection brings. Understanding that imperfections are still experiences and all experiences teach us something; often show us the way forward, even when they’re the wrong ones!

And understand this about the educational process:

• It doesn’t have to be perfect to be valid
• Learning approaches don’t have to be perfect to be worthwhile
• Each day doesn’t have to be perfect in order to usefully contribute to the overall development and progress of your youngster
• Becoming educated is a diverse, sometimes messy, varied and experiential journey that has as many imperfections, as life does, and which never ends.
• There is no perfect time frame, no perfect approach, no perfect outcome, no perfect strategy, no perfect answer.
• But a perfectly imperfect education still works!

Many of your days at home will be less than perfect. Many days at school will be less than perfect. We wouldn’t actually expect them to be so, so why put that pressure on your home educating days?

And of course, children are not perfect either. Thank goodness for that, for all our diverse idiosyncrasies. Diversity is essential for our perpetuation. Accept your children as they are, where they are; they will change. Wabi Sabi embraces the concepts of impermanence, imperfection and incompleteness. As things are in all nature; as are we – children particularly!

So go gently with your days. Ditch any ideas about making them perfect.

Enjoy the good days. Accept and move on from the difficult ones. Take each day as it comes.

And allow imperfections to be naturally part of the rich pattern of home education.

Wishing you a happy new home educating year

(The book I read was ‘WABI SABI Japanese wisdom for a perfectly imperfect life’ by Beth Kempton)

Happy Christmas!

I have such pangs of guilt making and sending cards. Guilt for the environment and its resources. It’s so hard to change habits. And I love making.

I’ve tried to compensate in many other ways. Cut down enormously on buying stuff – especially that single use crap none of us need. By keeping the card design simple and even, heart-rendingly, given up using glitter glue on them, which I so love; but glitter makes the cards non-recyclable.

And my love for the earth tops even that!

As does my desire to wish all of you here, my faithful readers, followers, messengers, likers and tweeters whose support has also meant so much, a VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS. And THANK YOU. You make it worth the while.

So this is my wishes to you for a Christmas filled with love and blessings in all different guises.

Have a happy one!

Fresh new year – fresh ways of seeing

Happy New Year!

I love a new start. New opportunities to learn, new things to do, new ways of being.

But I’ve been thinking about the last – inevitably! And how I’ve enjoyed doing Instagram over the past year; recording my daily being with the natural world. It’s a great change from always working with words under the laptop! And it had other benefits as well which I didn’t spot at first.

The beauty of frosted nettles – when seen with fresh eyes

For a start, it’s made me find something more positive in the sometimes challenging winter days when I tend to keep my chin on my chest and my spirits in my boots. It’s made me look up, lift up, which generally raises the spirits as well as the eyes.

Secondly, it’s made me really look. As I take my daily walk it’s quite hard to be inspired by what you think is the same old…same old… Except it’s not the same old…not if you really put those observational skills to good use. I can nearly always see something different. But the trick is not only to look, but to see with fresh eyes.

And mind.

It’s made me change my mind on many things.

Sometimes we can’t see with fresh eyes because we’re looking with old mind sets.

This could happen when the kids were growing up, when we were home educating. I could get stuck in parenting routines, and former assumptions that had become out of date.

It’s so easy to forget the simple fact that kids grow and change constantly and we need to as well.

To allow them to be different we need to refresh our view of them just as constantly. We need to see our kids with fresh eyes and minds. When things got tricky in the household it was very often the result of me looking at the children – and consequently behaving towards them – in ways that were out-of-date and which failed to allow them to grow into fresh ways of being.

As well as encouraging our youngsters to practise their own observational skills, we should remember to practise our own! And not keep them stuck by reacting to them through the lens of what they were, and not what they are becoming!

Fresh eyes and fresh minds allow children – and parents – to be who they need to be! And is a great way to start the new year.

May you have a happy one to come.

Wishing you Happy New Year energy!

One for me – a landscape to look at on those wintry days when I can’t get out

I get sick of words sometimes! Yea – I know I’m a writer but everyone gets tired of their job!

I often spend ages looking for the right ones, sometimes it takes a whole mile of tramping out in the wild to rustle up enough inspiration to even think when writing so depletes it. Let’s face it any work depletes it!

And finding the right words to express yourself is extremely difficult. Even great philosophers have a problem with language, because some concepts are so intangible and difficult to express the language can limit what you mean. It can be a barrier to pure thought. Certainly hard to write what we mean at times.

And we expect kids to do it?!

Anyway, sick of the linear form and released from the writing treadmill (yep – it can be as much a treadmill as any other job), I’ve been taking some time over the holiday to try and restore some creative energy, so turned my hand to more practical, hands on and visual forms of representing the things I love, or expressing love to others through making them gifts.

Several bags and cushions later I feel much refreshed. And practising some of the other ideas I’ve preached here throughout the year I bought nothing, just reused stuff we had, some of the fabrics dating right back to when the children were here and we’d collected materials from the recycling centre. So glad I didn’t pass them on as I threatened to do on several occasions I felt over cluttered!

And I was able to express my love for others, my love of textile, and my love of the land, in a different way from words, even if I did write this blog to tell you – the experience turning me back to writing and thus being just the refresher I needed.

I hope you were able to refresh over Christmas among all the other demands and now face the new year nicely rejuvenated.

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all my wonderful readers whose support means so much words still fail to do justice to it!