Great news for the blog This Parenting Thing! To make our parenting resource even more useful and lively, a team of experts will join me in covering different and interesting parenting topics. This week, I introduce you to my friend Julie, blogger at Lily and her toes as well as LilyAcademix, for the Education column. Julie and I live nearby and met sharing common interests, as on new avenues in education. Enjoy!
By Julie R-Bordeleau.
I’ll have the chance to nurture you about education. As the word “education” has a lot of meanings, I will write more specifically about instruction, schooling, unschooling, change in education, and more.
Who am I to write about all that?
In my past life, I was a Quebec and Ontario high school science teacher. Then, I became a mom on a sunny morning of July. This change made me rethink my choices in order to give the best I can to my kids. The way of life of a worker as imposed by our society is not optimal from my point of view as a mom. So my husband and I have decided that I would stay home at least for the early years of our kids. That assures a certain regularity in the parent cell as daddy has to go away periodically for his work.
Living a stay-at-home mom lifestyle, I discovered a fascinating world: learning in family (homeschooling). The possibility to learn all sorts of things with your kids, in a completely legal way, became, for me, an option when it came to pick the right educational path for our kids. This discovery brought a strange feeling deep in my heart. So I dove into a new world that gives the opportunity to live an educational journey on an equal foot as school, but offering so much more. The liberty and the fact of being able to choose the rhythm, atmosphere, and nature of all that can be learned and discovered by the kids is a big plus of learning in family. I also discovered the infinite learning possibilities that daily experiences can foster.
Okay, this life can’t be that idyllic because it can has its own dark sides, but for me the master of the learnings is the child himself, supported, guided and equipped by the parent depending on his needs, at the very best moment he needs it. For me as an educator, getting the chance to observe my children and help them progress following their own path is the main point that made me fall in love with this lifestyle.
Because we set individual needs of our kids as a priority when it comes to big family choices, we didn’t choose to homeschool our first born when he turned 5. For him, being with kids his own age was his biggest need. So I grab every occasion I have when I am with him to exercise important learning skills such as metacognition, logic, or questioning. When he is at school, I am with my two youngest living a life toward free learning more than any other philosophy.
It’s with great excitement that I will write about the different pedagogics, educational ways of thinking and actual discussions about education.
See you soon!
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