451 | The Advantage of Discussion vs. Testing and Matching the Effort and Expectation We Place on Our Kids (Jennifer Cabrera)
Show Notes:
Ample time for discussion of knowledge and learning from elders truly invested in their future are major advantages for homeschoolers. However, most important to note is...Why your effort and interaction as homeschool parent must equal or exceed the expectations you have for your student in order to capitalize on these advantages.
About Jennifer
Jennifer Cabrera, the Hifalutin Homeschooler, is the writer of homeschool truth, humor, and inspiration. Jennifer lives in Salado, Texas with her husband and three brilliant boys. She is a licensed Physician Assistant/MPH, but set aside that career for her ultimate life's work. She is also the author of Socialize Like a Homeschooler: A Humorous Homeschool Handbook and Revolting Writing, a hilarious writing, vocabulary, and illustration journal for reluctant writers. She is a featured speaker with Great Homeschool Conventions and her memes and witty insights are widely shared on social media.
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Show Transcript:
Hello and welcome to another Hifalutin Homeschooler episode of The Homeschool Solutions Show. My name is Jennifer Cabrera and I am one of many hosts here on the podcast. Each week, we bring you an encouraging conversation, inspiration, tips, tricks, and or humor from this busy and blessed journey of educating our children at home.
Now, while the title of the show is Homeschool Solutions, we do not pretend to have the answer to every question related to homeschooling, but we do hope to keep it real through lessons we've learned and urge you toward Jesus Christ and prayer with him as the greatest parent-teacher conference available.
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Hey there. This talk is going to be about the importance of equal parental effort and feedback, and the value of discussion in education versus straight worksheets and testing. Discussion versus testing. What's the best way to figure out if your kids are learning anything? Well, I guess there's all kinds of ways to figure out whether or not they're actually listening to you, reading what you told them to, grasping the information that they need to have to move on to the next subject. Schools have to use certain ways to test the knowledge of a large group of kids to get through the day and get things done and keep moving forward, if they can move forward without waiting on the stragglers in the class and keeping up with the ones that are moving ahead faster than the others, and usually written testing is the way that they get things done.
But homeschoolers, we don't have to follow these standards of classroom education and testing and gauging where the children are. I can't stress enough how much more important and effective discussion of the topics you are studying is than completing worksheets, charts and multiple choice tests. So I'll just tell you a true story that my son brought home from college this past spring. He's majoring in professional piloting and aviation management. He learned some things about himself that first year away. He discovered where he needs some work and also a skill that he had unknowingly acquired as a homeschooler. One of his professors confirmed this general observation to the class at the beginning of the semester.
The professor said that their grades for the course would be based on a mixture of online quizzes and in-class multiple choice exams, plus a series of oral practical exams. He then told them he already knew who was likely to do better on each part. He said, "My traditional school grads are going to do well on their written exams. They know how to weed out the correct answer from word recognition and years of test practice. But my homeschoolers usually top everyone on the oral discussion examinations when put on the spot and asked to converse and explain the material in their own words." And my son said, "Well, he was right, Mom." Now, my son is a perfectionist to a fault and thus focused only on the shortcomings that he had, first and foremost. He said, "I'm not so great at multiple choice tests. I wish they'd just make them fill in the blank questions because I know I can explain my answer but sometimes their options aren't very descriptive or precise from A to D. None of them really fit the definition that I'm looking for or the answer to the question, or they use tricks that I stupidly miss and I really need to work on my testing game."
Well, then he got annoyed at me for just standing there smiling like I'd won the lottery because in my head I was hysterically laughing and watching this word bubble bounce around with the words "What about socialization?" written inside but I said, "You're right, it's a game. And there are ways to become more sharp-eyed for answers meant to trick. They teach them all the time in test prep courses for the SAT and the ACT." And maybe I failed them a little bit by not teaching them how to take a test more strongly. But that's beside the point. He had aced the oral exams. I said, "Didn't you do good on those oral exams?" And I got a humble response of, "Well, I mean... I did good, I guess. Yes. Well, that part's just so much easier, Mom." Well, herein lies one of the perks of homeschooling that I didn't realize when we first started homeschooling. I thought we were just being a family and talking about things.
And you shouldn't squander or overlook this immense importance that we have now brought to our attention, putting them out in the real world with those socialization skills they were supposed to have lacked. Kids in schools don't often get the opportunity to converse and discuss and examine information at length, one on one with a teacher who actually cares to listen and discuss back with them. But your homeschooler does. Don't squander this. Homeschoolers are more likely to have had time to gather knowledge and recall and discuss it in their own words with an adult who cares to listen and converse with them. Oral exams are simply conversation to many homeschoolers. They also aren't as trained to be suspicious of the multiple choice answers in those multiple choice questions. They aren't trained to locate and dodge the subtly wrong options from a list of sometimes inadequate responses, which could mean they lack some testing skills or game-like skills when, of course, this is how professors and high school teachers test large quantities of students quickly. Even if it is a weak, short-sighted measure, it's all they can use in the time crunch that they have with one adult teacher, 25 or more kids in high school, 100 or more kids in a college class.
And my son does need to up his game. Recognition and a discerning eye for false information are good skills to have. But in the real world, how do we find out whether or not someone has the knowledge and skills that they need for a job or a task at hand? We talk to them. We interact with them. We watch them do the task that we want them to do. We see their reasoning skills through their discussion and their approach to how they tackle these skills. Recalling information in their own words for utilization and communication are key. And I was smiling at my son that day like the Cheshire Cat because I know (and I think his professor did too) and I wanted him to realize that what we'd all value most in our pilot-in-training when boarding their plane is the ability to take information, put it into their own words and utilize it in the real world. And homeschoolers are able to do this because of the one on one discussion and interaction that they've had with the adults in their life, whether it be at home with parents, with a skilled professional friend of the family, with grandparents, or time in a small co-op or college credit class where they got more hands-on life experience than sitting in a public school classroom, reading dry textbooks and only dreaming about outside of those cement blocked walls.
So when you're worrying about giving enough tests or having enough recorded worksheet grades or whether or not you've done enough test prep for the SAT, remember that in the long run in life with success and your children's future and their career and ability to communicate with the world and interact and get their hands on things and not be afraid, discussion is eons above multiple choice testing and recording of checklists and syllabi. But speaking of scoring and comparing students' work, check, grade, correct — whatever you want to call it — all of the work that you require of them as soon as possible and then have them fix it immediately. One of the biggest problems of schooling to check boxes, tests and assign grades is that little stopgaps are created, and when each little race is over, students just accept the grade and move on. Even worse, their work isn't graded for days or weeks, and by then the teacher has moved on to the next lesson. Students rarely go back and see what they missed and why, especially if the grade is good enough for them. Graded assignments and tests become a challenge to see what students know instead of an indication of what they still need to learn.
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The advantage of homeschooling is that we do have the time and the ability to check and fix problems immediately. Assigning grades is not something we focus a lot on in homeschooling before high school. We just repeated things till they understood or they mastered it. When we need to put a grade on a transcript in high school, we can have them start practicing the study and dump for testing that they'll need to learn for college, but don't squander the opportunity to point out to your kids that grades are just a gauge. They shouldn't suggest an endpoint to learning because there's always more to learn. And no matter how far you work beyond expectations in school, you can't get higher than an A on a test. Urge them not to fall for that false endpoint because even the highest achieving students will stall their efforts once the A is achieved.
Also, give them open book tests, give them back points if they can correct their mistakes by looking for the answers. My perfectionist son would argue with me that letting him correct his work or use his notes was cheating. I told him to refuse to correct or to look up the answers was lazy, dangerous and a gamble in the real world. Don't you want your doctor, mechanic, pharmacist, engineer building that bridge you're going to drive over every day, to look up what they're not sure of? Only in educational settings and emergencies must we gamble with our best choice or guess in the moment and let it ride? When we check and correct assignments right away, we are tapping into one of the biggest perks of one on one learning because searching for the right answers, understanding their mistakes and explaining what went wrong are some of the best catalysts for learning. Do not squander them.
You have the privilege also and opportunity and mandate to make your feedback of their work equal to or beyond the effort you require of your students. What do I mean here? Did you ever work really hard on a project or essay above and beyond what was expected, beyond the other students in the class, only to see that everyone got a checkmark or a meaningless 95? Or did you wait and wait and then it was never even graded at all? My guys in college have dealt with this their first year away. In one class, my son took three exams with no grades before the final, never knowing how he was doing in the class or what he needed to study more. It was super aggravating for him and for us, especially him as a perfectionist who wanted to make an A and he had no idea where his grade point average was at this moment.
But this isn't just a school or college issue. Homeschool parents get busy and are guilty of not following through on their part. My youngest was in a year-long homeschool group course recently, and for the final he spent a week writing a ten page typed essay with work cited over the Christian influences of the founding of our nation. Now, he followed this two page, very specific grading rubric that he'd been given to the tee to ensure he included all of the requirements and then he painstakingly added extras to wow the teacher, to wow me as I edited for him, and himself when he was done. He wasn't so much psyched for a good grade from this co-op teacher as he was for the teacher's feedback, thoughtful analysis, praise and correction, acknowledgment of his effort with returned effort. The day after that he emailed this paper in, he was given a score of 100 on the grading app and told that he made a 99 for the year. Super. That was it. No feedback. Now, if you have a kid like mine, you know, he was furious. He didn't want the grade. He knew he hadn't made a perfect paper. He wanted to be heard and his work valued as much as he valued the rigorous assignment that would prove that he put some effort and understanding into this year-long course.
Of course, now the kids who want to just skirt by love this kind of passing off by teachers and parents. We sometimes get distracted or lazy and do these things. And it's good for students to learn to work for their own sense of accomplishment without praise but most kids will feel they don't need to try as hard the next time around, and they won't continue to meet the bar that you raise if you don't meet them there. You get to model for your kids what learning and parenting and reaching for more than we are today is supposed to look like. Don't expect more from them than you are willing to do yourself. Let them see you continue to learn. Appreciate knowledge and try. Your inaction speaks louder than your expectations of them. With homeschooling, parents get to reclaim their education too. Show them how it's done.
And if you went to public school like I did, like my husband did, well, you get to start filling in that Swiss cheese education that we got. I had so much fun redoing elementary school with all three of my guys out of chairs and hands on, laughing and getting messy, reading all the books that we wanted to, field trips when, where, whatever we wanted to do, getting lost in curiosity. And it's the same for middle school and high school years. I have a term for it. We call it home-squirreling. I coined this term for homeschool families where they have those days that they let the rabbit hole swallow them up, chasing one topic of curiosity to another — home-squirreling. But I've talked to so many parents who are in awe of how much they are learning right alongside their kids and enjoying more the second time around than they did with their own elementary, middle school and high school education.
But because little eyes are watching, parents are starting businesses, building things, standing up when leaders are needed in the community, learning new skills alongside their kids. All because if you say they can be anything they want to be, then you better be prepared to put your money where your mouth is and learn to groom the dog during the pandemic if you tell them they can learn anything, if they just know how to read. Yes, I am an uncertified dog groomer because of homeschooling. I also dared to publish some books, wrote for an international newspaper. I'm working this year on finally reading the Bible cover to cover, and I've hosted a podcast now for a few years. I've eaten fried crickets and I'm learning Spanish for the third or fourth... I don't know, maybe it's my fifth time and I've spoken for over seven years at homeschool conventions. Public speaking was once my biggest fear, but I dared to try because when I was asked to come talk at a convention for the first year, I knew that my children were watching to see if I'd try.
So show your kids how it's done, because they are more likely to follow your lead, not your words. And also remember that much of what they need to learn doesn't need or even come with curriculum. Life skills do not require a syllabus. If your kids aren't separated from daily life in school each day (returning home like patrons of a family hotel), well, they don't need to take a formal written course in home economics, Personal finance and budgeting, integrity and leadership, physical education, landscaping, child care, home maintenance, local community participation, volunteering, etc.. So don't throw curriculum at it. Sure, if you need to count it on a high school transcript. Home Economics — check. I feel like you've probably earned four years of home economics credits if they've been home helping to cook and clean and take care of a younger sibling.
But especially refrain from throwing curriculum between a kid and their passion. For their interests, such as computer science, woodworking, flying, music, building engines, cooking, sewing, horseback riding, care of rainforest creatures, whatever their interest is, whatever they're seeking on their own, don't get between them and that passion. And especially don't script it with checklists and worksheets and tests. Let them lead. Let them figure out things on their own. Let them tell you all about what they are learning. Even if it appears disjointed and flailing, wait for them to ask for input. Let them tinker. Let them fail. Let them discover all the while listening to their reports of educational prowess. Discuss, talk, be interested but make sure you put your phone down. Let them see your face, make eye contact, show that you are as excited about their goals as they are. Offer resources, but don't make it mandatory. As we parents have gotten older and chapters of our lives are complete, I know I've realized that the race and the struggle was often more exciting than the finish line. Don't steal that thrill of the hunt from them with unsolicited and unnecessary curriculum and checklists.
And always remember this advantage — often the most learning happens on the days that look the least like school. Don't rob them of a life of learning by stealing the joy with curriculum meant for kids who have to be held into a desk for sanity sake in a large institutional classroom. Let them live and learn. And let them learn through what excites them like I did with my middle schooler when I created Revolting Writing and Gross Out Grammar for reluctant middle school writers using topics that excites ages 9 to 13 to learn how to write essays in a fun journal-like manner with illustrations, crazy funny vocabulary, game-like grammar lessons, cursive copy work, all with hilarious prompts to follow. Check it out at highfalutinhomeschooler.com/books. End of shameless ad there.
But just remember what we've talked about today. Discussion is more important than testing. Also, when you require some kind of testing or proof of knowledge written on paper or a project that you've had them build, give feedback immediately and make your feedback equal to their effort. Don't just slap a grade on it. Also, have them fix whatever mistakes are made. Value their work. Expect of them as they will expect of you in return for their effort. Meet them at the bar that you raise. And stay weird and homeschool on.
Thank you for joining me here on the Homeschool Solutions Show again. You can find show notes and links to all the resources mentioned at homeschooling.mom. Don't forget to check out my friends at Medi-Share for healthcare you can trust. To learn more about why over 400,000 Christians have chosen Medi-share, go to greathomeschoolconventions.com/medishare.
Now, if you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast, and while you are there, leave us a review. Tell us what you love about the show, and this will help other homeschooling parents like you get connected with our community. Also, you can find us on Instagram @HomeschoolingDotMom and on Facebook at Homeschooling.mom. So let us know what you thought of today's episode. Leave us a comment. Let us know what you think.
Lastly, have you joined us at one of the Great Homeschool Conventions? The Great Homeschool Conventions are the homeschooling event of the year offering outstanding speakers, hundreds of workshops covering today's top parenting and homeschooling topics and the largest homeschool curriculum exhibit hall in the United States. Find out more at greathomeschoolconventions.com. I hope to see you in Texas.
Also, if you'd like to connect with me, you can find me at Facebook at Hifalutin Homeschooler and on Instagram @hifalutinhomeschooler. That's H-I-F-A-L-U-T-I-N Homeschooler. Also, you can email me directly with any questions, concerns, anecdotes. I love to hear stories from other homeschoolers. That's [email protected]. Until next time, stay weird and homeschool on.
