Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the latest flashpoint in the education wars

Posted on March 7, 2022 by Peter Watt

The Hechinger Report

Covering Innovation & Inequality in Education

Social and emotional learning is the latest flashpoint in the education wars
Educators say SEL is intended to help kids cope with problems and succeed in school,

but angry parents don’t see it that way

by KELLY FIELD February 21, 2022

When a middle school teacher resigned over their district’s social and emotional learning curriculum, Lisa Logan and Stacie Clayton wanted to understand why. So, the two moms from Sandy, Utah, spent 30 hours combing through the district’s eighth grade curriculum. What they found alarmed them.

This story also appeared in AL.com and The Seattle Times
Together, they produced a 25-page report on their conclusions, along with a petition calling for the removal of the Second Step Curricula, one of the most popular programs in schools today. After they collected 700 signatures, the Canyons School District agreed to abandon the program.

“Parents are unaware that concepts like Critical Race Theory and Comprehensive Sex Education are being taught under the guise of Social Emotional Learning programs,” Logan said in a press release sent to multiple reporters, “and that has to change.”

Some educators were dismayed by the district’s decision. Allie Teller, an elementary school counselor, said she’d seen a reduction in behavior issues and incidents in the several years since her school started using the curriculum. Cancelling it, just as schools are trying to help kids recover from the pandemic, “has left educators with fewer tools and resources when they desperately need more,” she said.

“We’ve all been through a collective traumatic event,” she said. “Kids need social-emotional support more than ever.”

“Parents are unaware that concepts like Critical Race Theory and Comprehensive Sex Education are being taught under the guise of Social Emotional Learning programs.”

Lisa Logan, a parent in the Canyons School District, Utah
Committee for Children, which produces Second Step, says the curricula does not include sex education or critical race theory, an academic framework that maintains that racism is embedded in American institutions.

The fight in Utah is one of several skirmishes roiling the field of social and emotional learning —SEL, for short — as schools spend record amounts of money on curricula, assessments and training aimed at strengthening students’ empathy and resilience.

Nationwide, school and district spending on SEL grew roughly 45 percent between November 2019 and April 2021, according to a report by Tyton Partners, an education consulting and investment firm. The increase was driven by concerns about student well-being amid a global pandemic and a national reckoning on race, and enabled by a massive infusion of federal recovery funds.

Roughly a third of local educational agencies say they plan to spend some of their federal relief money on SEL, with an average per student spend of nearly $100, according to an analysis of state spending plans by FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University.

This surge in spending has brought heightened scrutiny to the field, with parents pushing back against curricula and screeners in places as politically and geographically diverse as Brooklyn, New York, and West Bend, Wisconsin. Conservatives have accused schools of hijacking SEL to promote progressive ideas about race, gender and sexuality, while liberals have warned of threats to student privacy.

Some members of both parties say that after two years of disrupted schooling, schools should spend their time and money on academic catch-up, not on SEL. In a recent survey of parents by the Fordham Institute, close to two-thirds of Republicans and more than half of Democrats said there is not enough time in the day to teach both academics and SEL.

But fans of SEL, including many teachers, argue that tending to students’ social and emotional needs now will accelerate academic recovery, by increasing students’ capacity to cope with stress and strengthening their relationships with teachers. They say that critics who conflate SEL with CRT are misconstruing the field — sometimes willfully so.

Still, advocates for SEL say they recognize the risks that come with being the latest front in the classroom culture wars. When faced with parental and political pushback to programs, schools often scale back or eliminate them, just as the Canyons district did. If the backlash continues, it’s likely more schools will follow.

One goal of social emotional learning is to teach children skills for coping with stress — skills that proponents say are critically importan
One goal of social emotional learning is to teach children skills for coping with stress — skills that proponents say are critically important amid a pandemic. Credit: Sarah Garland/The Hechinger Report
At the heart of the fights over SEL are disagreements over the part schools should play in developing well-rounded individuals and advancing equity.

Parents of all political stripes see SEL as primarily a family responsibility, and nearly half of all parents strongly or somewhat agree that schools should focus on academics and leave SEL to parents, the Fordham survey found. Among Republican parents, that percentage rises to nearly two thirds.

Yet a majority of parents from both political parties agree with the statement that “learning life skills and social skills at school is just as important as academics,” and say they support schools teaching specific SEL skills, such as empathy, self-control and a positive mindset.

This contradiction may reflect confusion about what SEL is, as well as discomfort with the jargon. Presented with a list of a dozen potential labels for SEL, parents ranked “social and emotional learning” next to last. Their top choice was “life skills.”

“Kids need social-emotional support more than ever.”

Allie Teller, an elementary school counselor in the Canyons School District
So is the solution to the current conflict to simply rebrand SEL as “life skills?” Not so fast, said Adam Tyner, the author of a report on the Fordham survey, titled “How to Sell SEL.” While there’s overlap between the terms, they’re not synonyms; rebranding now — when the field is already in the spotlight — may strike some as evasive and dishonest, he warned.

A better option, Tyner said, is to focus on specifics of the program the school is using, so parents can evaluate it on its merits.

Aaliyah Samuel, the new president of the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL), said schools need to “clarify what SEL is” and ditch the jargon.

“When I talk to my parent community — friends with elementary-aged kids — they have not a clue what SEL is,” she said. “They’re not steeped in the educational acronyms.”

“When you talk to parents, and they understand what it is, they absolutely want it for their kids,” she said.

Related: 10 ways for schools to gain traction with social-emotional learning programs

Yet not all parents trust schools to do a good job cultivating social and emotional skills in their children, and some believe schools are actively undermining their own, often more conservative, teachings.

Their distrust has deepened in the months since CASEL updated its definition of SEL to include language about identity development, collective goal-setting and equity, and introduced a new form of SEL, “Transformative SEL,” that focuses on civic action and social change.

Under the revised definition, SEL is not just a way to develop individual competencies, but a tool to “address various forms of inequity and empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools.” “Transformative SEL” takes that idea a step further, focusing on “interrogating social norms, disrupting and resisting inequities, and co-constructing equitable and just solutions.”

To Samuel, the new emphasis on equity reflects the changing demographics of public schools, where more than half the students are kids of color, along with a recognition that the existing system isn’t serving many of these students well.

“It’s natural to take a step back and say, ‘How can we make sure the work we’re doing is meeting the needs of this generation of students?’” she said.

But Tyner said linking SEL to equity may lead some parents to lose interest in it, concluding that it’s meant for disadvantaged students, not their own children.

It also appears to be animating parents who were already suspicious of SEL. In school board meetings across the country, parents protesting SEL curricula and screeners have cited CASEL’s new definitions as proof that SEL is CRT in disguise. Conservative commentators have fueled the fire, with one calling Transformative SEL “a tool to develop little community organizers for leftist causes.”

“Forget teaching kids to play nice — today’s SEL intends to propel them into Antifa,” wrote Jane Robbins for The Federalist, a conservative online magazine.

The field of Social Emotional Learning, which teaches skills such as empathy, self-control and a positive mindset, has become the latest front in the classroom culture wars.
The field of Social Emotional Learning, which teaches skills such as empathy, self-control and a positive mindset, has become the latest front in the classroom culture wars, with parents pushing back against curricula and screeners that they say undermine their own teachings and threaten student privacy. Credit: Sara Hertwig for The Hechinger Report
The divisions over the SEL curricula in the Canyons School District began after a middle school teacher resigned, saying he was uncomfortable teaching the material. In a letter explaining his decision, the teacher said some lessons encouraged students to become activists and had “distinct anti-family undertones.”

Ultimately, though, it was not concerns about liberal indoctrination that led the district to cancel the curricula, but a link to a website with information about intimate relationships that officials concluded violated Utah’s sex education laws, which permit only abstinence-based instruction.

The Committee for Children, which produces the Second Step curricula, has since removed the link to the website, loveisrespect.org, from its materials, according to Tia Kim, vice president of education, research and impact. Kim said the company rarely includes third-party resources in its materials “because we can’t control what is going on in the content.”

Second Step is used in roughly 30,000 schools, reaching over 20 million kids a year, Kim said.

“When you talk to parents, and they understand what it is, they absolutely want it for their kids.”

Aaliyah Samuel, Collaborative on Academic, Social and Emotional Learning
A similar battle over the Second Step curricula played out recently in West Bend, Wisconsin, but with a different outcome. There, the school board voted to keep the curricula, but removed lessons encouraging collective action against bullying and harassment.

Meanwhile, at least one Florida district has purged all materials labeled “SEL” from its curricula, following guidance from the state Department of Education that called them “extraneous.”

“Social emotional learning is an unsolicited strategy that is not aligned to subject-specific standards,” the department’s press secretary wrote in an email.

Related: A school district wades through a deluge of social-emotional curricula to find one that works

Elsewhere, the controversy has centered on social-emotional “screeners” being used to guide school-wide programming and identify students who may need extra support.

In New York City, left-leaning parent groups, and some school leaders, have urged families to opt out of one such screening, calling it invasive. They warn that sensitive student information could be exposed through a data breach or sale.

“My children are not the raw material for your Edu business,” said Maud Maron, vice president of PLACE NYC, a parent group focused on accelerated education. “You don’t get to mine their mental health so you can sell us stuff.”

Aperture Education, the company that created the screener being used in New York City, said it doesn’t share data outside the school system, and is rigorous about data security. Fewer than 4 percent of students were opted out of the survey, according to Kristin Hinton, Aperture’s vice president of sales and marketing.

Delia Veve, the principal at Urban Assembly Media High School who has used the screener for six years, said it has created a “shared language” around SEL, so teachers, parents and students all know what a given competency looks like in practice.

“SEL is a big, amorphous mass that people can interpret a lot of ways, and this screener gets down to nuts and bolts,” she said.

In Fairfax, Virginia, the pushback is coming from the right, with conservatives protesting a screener that asks students how often they think about the experiences of individuals from different races and cultures and whether they’re confident that students at their school can have honest conversations about race.

Fairfax County Public Schools declined to comment, but in an online Q&A, the district wrote that the questions about race aim to address core competencies of SEL, such as social awareness and relationship skills. The district said it adopted the screener after a survey showed elevated levels of stress in students.

Social and Emotional Learning aims to instill five core competencies in students:
Social and Emotional Learning aims to instill five core competencies in students: self-awareness; self-management; social awareness; relationship skills; and responsible decision-making. Here, a student is asked how they felt about a story — positive or negative. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
It’s too soon to say if the politics surrounding SEL represent a long-term threat to the field, said Andrea Mainelli, senior advisor to Tyton Partners and the co-author of a report on the rise of social emotional learning during the pandemic.

“It’s a disruption, there’s no doubt about it,” she said.

City districts have been much more likely than their rural counterparts to set aside Covid relief funds for SEL, a FutureEd analysis found — yet another example of the rural-urban divide.

Gwinnett County, Georgia, outside Atlanta, is using $28 million to hire 19 additional social workers and to staff a new office focused squarely on SEL.

“Even before Covid, there was an uptick in students reporting anxiety and depression,” said Tinisha Parker, executive director of student services for Gwinnett County public schools. “When the pandemic hit, we knew we had a lot of students who would need support.”

It remains to be seen if the social-emotional spending spree will continue once federal funds dry up. Most schools haven’t yet identified long-term funding streams.

To some extent, the continued growth of SEL will depend on whether districts are able to disentangle SEL from CRT and include parents — who are pushing for more curricular transparency — in the process of choosing programs. Asked if some of the current controversies might have been averted if parents had been involved up front, Samuel, the president of CASEL, says yes.

“We need to be intentional about making sure parents are at the table,” she added in a recent webinar on the state of social-emotional learning.

Schools will also need to better integrate SEL across the curricula, so it’s not seen as an “add-on” that’s crowding out academics, she said.

For now, though, the backlash shows no signs of slowing. In a video on the website for Utah Parents United, Logan, the Canyons School District mom, issued a call to action to other parents, saying, “We need to be involved and know what our children are learning.”

“If we can do it, other parent groups can too,” she said in a press release. “Reach out, and we can help you.”

This story about social and emotional learning was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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Automatic A+? Surprising study finds kids ‘instinctively know’ how to do division

Posted on March 6, 2022 by Peter Watt

BRAIN, CHILDREN, EDUCATION

Automatic A+? Surprising study finds kids ‘instinctively know’ how to do division

MARCH 2, 2022

by John Anderer STUDY FINDS

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PHILADELPHIA, Pa. — Math generally comes easier to some students than others, but could each one of us have instinctual division skills before ever opening a textbook? New research from the University of Pennsylvania indicates as much, as scientists report children likely possess intuitive arithmetic abilities long before starting formal education.

The team argues that kids’ inherent ability to understand and perform approximate calculations even applies to division – a math concept considered tougher to grasp than others. The findings may help in shaping how young students learn about math.

This research is largely based on the approximate number system (ANS), a well-known theory in scientific circles stating people (and even primates) possess an innate ability to compare and estimate large collections of objects without using language or symbols from a young age. One example is children identifying and acknowledging that a collection of 20 dots is bigger than a group of just four dots. This is true even if the four dots take up more space on a page. These approximation skills improve and sharpen as an individual grows older and enters adulthood.

Using math instincts to close the achievement gap

The study of ANS isn’t just about how people think about numbers before formal education, but also about how these mathematical instincts influence academic math outcomes later on in life. The study authors note finding new, innovative ways to take advantage of ANS in classrooms could help countless kids better understand math (and achieve higher grades). “The ANS is universal, and finding ways to harness the ANS might be one of many important avenues to closing the achievement gap,” says study co-author Dr. Elizabeth M Brannon, who leads the Developing Minds Lab at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, in a press release.

Researchers conducted several experiments in children ages six through nine, as well as in college students. The experiments measured participants’ ANS skills by asking them to perform symbolic and non-symbolic approximate division. They put together the experiments with two main objectives in mind. First, to test the general theory that young children possess intuitive math skills. Second, to determine whether these skills can be harnessed to improve mathematical learning efficiency later in the classroom. “This question is controversial because the existing data are mixed,” Dr. Brannon explains. “However, our study gives some hope for that enterprise by showing that children can flexibly divide quantities and even symbols before they learn about formal division.”

One experiment entailed both kids and college students performing a series of non-symbolic and symbolic math problems by watching dots or numerals (the dividend) at the top of a computer screen fall onto a flower with various numbers of petals (the divisor). Their task was simple enough: Determine which quantity was greater—the dots or numbers divided among the flower’s petals on one side of the screen or a single petal with a new, different amount of dots/numbers on the other side of the screen.

Children showed high accuracy in solving division problems

The kids answered correctly between 73 percent and 77 percent of the time. Those stats fluctuated slightly depending on whether the children received any helpful feedback while completing the task. Adults answered correctly about 90 percent of the time. Even kids who couldn’t answer verbal symbolic division problems still performed well in their experiment. This further confirms brain imaging studies showing heightened neural activity within a crucial brain region associated with “number sense.”

“We were most surprised that children who could not solve any formal verbal or written division problems – for example, what is four divided by two? – were still pretty successful at the symbolic version of our flower approximate division task,” Dr. Brannon concludes. “So, even before formal math education, we have an approximate number sense that relies on brain regions that continue to play a role in formal mathematics.”

The study is available to read in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

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What Homeschoolers Knew Before Everyone Else

Posted on March 5, 2022 by Peter Watt

NATIONAL SCHOOL CHOICE WEEK

What Homeschoolers Knew Before Everyone Else

Long before the pandemic, millions of students were completing their education at home. I was one of them.

FIONA HARRIGAN | 1.26.2022 3:45 PM REASON

(Illustration: Lex Villena; Photographerlondon, Kguzel | Dreamstime.com)

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, school kids across the country have suffered—not much from the disease itself, but from three school years that have been interrupted by pandemic mitigation measures. Though in-person public schools have suffered, home-based educational alternatives have thrived.

The families of nearly 2.6 million kids have turned to homeschooling since the pandemic began. The homeschooler population is almost double what it was before the pandemic, with 11 percent of American households now homeschooling their kids. Charter school enrollment also boomed, and home-based virtual institutions drove much of that growth in many states.

Long before the pandemic, millions of students were completing their education at home. I became one of them in 2005. From kindergarten through 10th grade, I attended a virtual charter school in Pennsylvania. I completed readings, assignments, and exams with the help of my mother at first, and independently later on. After a final two years as a traditionally homeschooled student in Utah, I finished high school having never set foot in a brick-and-mortar school.

This educational journey was far less common in the pre-pandemic years, partly due to strict regulation of alternative schooling and partly due to the perception that these options were inferior to public brick-and-mortar education. But now that an entire nation’s worth of students has been forced to experience nontraditional education, families and lawmakers are beginning to see the benefits that have always existed outside the traditional public school system.

The journey to acceptance has been a lengthy one. Homeschooling was once extremely rare, and not even legal in all 50 states until 1993.

After legalizing the practice, states enacted their own regulations for home-based education. By 2015, more than half required education in certain subjects. Twenty-three states had attendance requirements, while 13 required homeschooling parents to have certain qualifications. Kids in 24 states weren’t legally permitted to participate in extracurricular activities at their local public schools or attend those schools part time. Others required (and still require) annual achievement tests, portfolio reviews from school system representatives, and detailed attendance records. New York, which has some of the strictest homeschooling laws, dictates that a “home instruction program will be put on probation and the parent must submit a remediation plan” if “a child’s annual assessment does not comply” with state regulations.

Even so, at times different states have sought greater involvement in how parents teach their children. An unsuccessful 2004 bill in Montana would’ve banned parents from homeschooling kids with developmental disabilities. In March 2008, California ruled that parents without teaching credentials couldn’t educate their kids at home. Though reversed a few months later, the ruling put the parents of an estimated 166,000 children at risk of prosecution (as their children would have been deemed truants). Virtual home-based programs have been under fire since their launch, too—including in my home state of Pennsylvania, where a state representative in 2019 introduced a bill that would’ve required all cyber charter schools to cease operations.

Every student, to some degree, experienced home-based education—and the ones who stuck with it didn’t always fit the stereotypical mold of homeschooled students. Between April and October 2020, the percentage of black families homeschooling their kids had jumped from 3 percent to 16 percent. The percentage of homeschooling Hispanic families nearly doubled.

Families are voting with their feet, and lawmakers are paying attention. Last April, the National Conference of State Legislatures reported that at least 19 state legislatures saw bills that would roll back homeschooling regulations. Nearly half of all states had considered legislation that would launch or broaden education savings account programs, through which parents may withdraw kids from public schools and receive a deposit of public funds to use on alternative programs. Colorado, Virginia, New York, and New Jersey had all seen legislation introduced on tax credits for homeschooling families. Lawmakers in other states have put forth bills that would allow homeschoolers to participate in local public schools’ athletic programs and extracurricular activities, take Advanced Placement and college entrance exams at district brick-and-mortar schools, and access scholarship programs at in-state colleges.

These reforms are overdue and could tip the scales for families considering home-based education. Homeschooling made me an entrepreneurial learner and enabled me to pursue educational opportunities outside the four walls of a classroom. I scored well on standardized tests and was accepted to most of the four-year universities I applied to. I graduated college summa cum laude, even though I entered with no high school diploma. Lawmakers should make that path more accessible, not less.

I’m not an anomaly, despite skeptics like Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet claiming that “we have zero evidence that, on average, homeschooled students are doing well.” Students educated at home “typically score 15 to 30 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests,” according to the National Home Education Research Institute. Over three-quarters of peer-reviewed studies on academic outcomes show that homeschooled students “perform statistically significantly better than those in institutional schools.” Recognizing their unique backgrounds, many top U.S. universities actively recruit homeschoolers—including Harvard.

The U.S. became a nation of involuntary home-learners during the pandemic. Predictably, this approach didn’t suit everyone—homeschooling never has. But more families than ever before have seen the benefits of alternative, home-based education. Once-controversial instructional methods are finally entering the mainstream.

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What Is A Homeschool Co-Op & How To Make One

Posted on February 9, 2022 by Peter Watt

What Is A Home (school) Co-Op & How To Make One

BY LARISSA MARULLIPUBLISHED JAN 06, 2022 in MOMs

Homeschool co-ops are essentially when multiple homeschooling families get together and share what school work they have been learning and socialize.

Via Pexels

Homeschool co-ops are essentially when multiple homeschooling families get together and share what school work they have been learning, possibly do lessons together, and socialize. They’re small school-like settings where homeschooled kids can learn together and be around each other. Co-ops are really beneficial to homeschooled children and can make up for the social aspects missed by not going to a brick-and-mortar school with their peers.These meetings aren’t usually just unorganized playdates for kids unless that’s the type of co-op you want to start. Co-ops do aim to educate and parents bounce ideas off of each other and socialize as well. Parents will even take turns teaching subjects they’re more passionate about or more educated in themselves. They can be like mini-schools or just weekly meetings for presentations on certain subjects or just some activities. Arts and crafts can be done as well as some music time or putting on plays. A homeschool co-op is really what you make it.

What Are You Looking For?

When deciding to homeschool their kids, each family has its own goal, mindset, and mission in regards to education so finding the right co-op for you can be a challenge. That is why starting your own co-op would be one of the better ways to find an organization that works for you. That may sound really intimidating but this doesn’t need to be a complicated process or anything to make you stressed. Organized Homeschooler has started multiple co-ops of her own and shares that it should all come together easily after deciding on what is the purpose of your co-op.

Basically, the first thing you need to do is decide all of the details and what you’re looking for personally. How many times per week do you want to meet? And for how many hours? What age groups and grades should be included? Are you looking to share lessons and teach in a group? Or is this group more for fun or socialization? How many families should be included and with how many kids? Do you have a vision with the co-op or are you open to ideas from other families?

Maybe you aren’t as strong in some subjects and you’re looking for another person who is better in that area. Or maybe you have some skills you’d like to offer to trade off with other parents. Or maybe you want a small group to make a small school? Something else to consider is if you will require a parent from every family to participate in giving lessons and if co-op families should contribute a fee for either location or supplies. Whatever you want, get those ideas down on paper and get them organized. Decide on some concrete days and times so you have something to offer other families when you start looking for them.

Find A Location & Spread The Word

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to find some families to join and to secure a location. You can start scoping out a location before securing families because that may be your biggest challenge and what determines how many families you can have in the co-op and if you’ll need to charge a fee. If you don’t have the space at home or if you’re just unwilling to host, you’ll need to find somewhere to host your homeschool co-op.

Some places to look for location would be churches or libraries. Each has meeting spaces, available for free or cheap, and are usually very hospitable for groups of kids. If you can’t find a place, reach out to your local school district or the city for some ideas. When the weather is nice, feel free to meet at a park or in someone’s backyard. Sonlight advises any mom looking to start a homeschooling co-op to promise any location they’ll leave the location in even better condition than they found it.

Find other families to join you by advertising on Facebook, Instagram, or by word of mouth. Once you get some interest, host a welcome meeting to make sure all the families are on the same page. Once you have your families and location, meet as much or as little as you would like. It would be good for at least twice a week minimum for a few hours each time. This way everyone can get to know each other and the homeschool co-op can really thrive.

Starting a homeschool co-op is a great idea for any homeschool family. Kids will love learning together and you’ll love sharing this experience with other like-minded families

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Is this good? AMERICANS CHOOSING JOBS OVER COLLEGE

Posted on January 21, 2022 by Peter Watt

COLLEGE OR WORK?

More than 1 million fewer students are in college. Here’s how that impacts the economy:

January 13, 20225:02 AM ET

Heard on Morning Edition

ELISSA NADWORNY

Errata Carmona for NPR

More than 1 million fewer students are enrolled in college now than before the pandemic began. According to new data released Thursday, U.S. colleges and universities saw a drop of nearly 500,000 undergraduate students in the fall of 2021, continuing a historic decline that began the previous fall.

“It’s very frightening,” says Doug Shapiro, who leads the research center at the National Student Clearinghouse, where the new data comes from. “Far from filling the hole of [2020’s] enrollment declines, we are still digging it deeper.”

Compared with the fall of 2019, the last fall semester before the coronavirus pandemic, undergraduate enrollment has fallen a total of 6.6%. That represents the largest two-year decrease in more than 50 years, Shapiro says.

The nation’s community colleges are continuing to feel the bulk of the decline, with a 13% enrollment drop over the course of the pandemic. But the fall 2021 numbers show that bachelor’s degree-seeking students at four-year colleges are making up about half of the shrinkage in undergraduate students, a big shift from the fall of 2020, when the vast majority of the declines were among associate degree seekers.

“The phenomenon of students sitting out of college seems to be more widespread. It’s not just the community colleges anymore,” says Shapiro. “That could be the beginning of a whole generation of students rethinking the value of college itself. I think if that were the case, this is much more serious than just a temporary pandemic-related disruption.”

Graduate program enrollment, which saw an increase in the fall of 2020, declined slightly, down by nearly 11,000 in the fall of 2021.

Overall, enrollment in undergraduate and graduate programs has been trendingdownward since around 2012, but the pandemic turbocharged the declines at the undergrad level.

Fewer Students Are Going To College. Here’s Why That Matters

Many were hopeful that would-be undergraduates who chose to take a year off in 2020 would return in 2021, especially given the expanded opportunities for in-person learning. But the pandemic gap year appears to be a myth: The National Student Clearinghousefoundthat of the 2020 high school graduates who chose not to enroll in college after graduation,only 2%ended up enrolling a year later, in the fall of 2021.

“The easiest assumption is that they’re out there working,” says Shapiro. “Unemployment is down. The labor market is good. Wages are rising for workers in low-skilled jobs. So if you have a high school diploma, this seems like a pretty good time to be out there making some money.”

Wages at the bottom of the economy have increased dramatically, making minimum-wage jobs especially appealing to young people as an alternative to college. In December, for example, jobs for non-managers working in leisure and hospitalitypaid 15% more than a year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“It’s very tempting for high school graduates, but the fear is that they are trading a short-term gain for a long-term loss,” Shapiro says. “And the longer they stay away from college, you know, life starts to happen and it becomes harder and harder to start thinking about yourself going back into a classroom.”

1 million fewer students are in college

For Brian Williams, who graduated from high school early in the pandemic, the long-term plan is to go to college.

Hepostponed enrollingin 2020 because he was tired of remote learning; instead, he got a job at a Jimmy John’s sandwich store near his home in the suburbs of Houston so he could start saving up. When it was time to enroll in fall 2021 classes, he postponed again — he says he was more interested in finding a job that paid more than in giving up much of his paycheck to go to school. In August, Williams left Jimmy John’s and got a job at an Amazon warehouse; his hourly earnings jumped up by $4.50.

“I feel more secure within the money I’m getting,” he says. To get to and from his new job, he bought a car, which he’s working to pay off.

‘Losing A Generation’: Fall College Enrollment Plummets For 1st-Year Students

For Williams, enrolling in college means he’ll have to cut back on hours and earn less money, while also spendingmoremoney to pay for classes.

“It’s so hard,” he says. “I’m just like, ‘Wow, if I go to school, I’m going to take time off and I’m not going to have any money for things I need.’ ”

He had toyed with the idea of starting community college in the new year but is now thinking he’ll start next fall, to give himself another eight months to save up.

He knows he doesn’t want to work at Amazon forever.

“Even though this job does give me the money I need, it’s not enough for what I want, for what I see [for] myself or what I want for myself. So I have to put myself through college.”

The short-term benefits of a high hourly wage vs. the long-term benefits of a degree

A dramatic drop in college enrollment could spell trouble for those Americans who are opting out, as well as for their families. Research has long shown that getting even some post-secondary education leads tohigher wages, lower unemploymentand greater lifetime earnings. Inone studyfrom Georgetown University, bachelor’s degree holders were found to “earn a median of $2.8 million during their career, 75% more than if they had only a high school diploma.”

“It may be great that people are finding jobs in the short term,” says researcher Tolani Britton, “but an 18-year-old who is living at home and helping his family with the minimum wage that he’s earning — if he’s still earning that wage 15 years from now and has a family of his own to support, what are the implications in terms of socioeconomic mobility for that individual, for their children?”

LA Johnson/NPR

Many of those social benefits stem from a lifetime of higher wages and increased financial stability — long-term payoffs that can be hard to prioritize over short-term wins, like having a little more money right now.

“At the end of the day, the wages that you’re getting today are one thing, but in 10 years from now they might be really similar,” Britton explains. “There may not be the growth that you would expect when people get post-secondary education.”

But Britton also understands that it can be hard to make decisions about your future needs when you’re also trying to meet the needs of today.

“People are in hard economic situations,” she says. “The [pandemic] recovery has been extremely uneven.”

On top of that, thechallengesthatexistedbefore the pandemic for low-income students, students of color and students who are the first in their families to go to college — those challenges haven’t gone anywhere.

“Community colleges are the schools that traditionally enroll lower-income students,” Shapiro says, “so we can assume that that’s primarily who is affected and still staying away the most.”

When the National Student Clearinghouselooked at 2020 high school graduates, it found students from lower-income schools had lower college-going numbers, as did students at high-minority high schools.

“The gap in college access between higher-income and lower-income students grew wider,” Shapiro says.

The U.S. economy feels the long-term effects of fewer college graduates

When fewer people go to college, fewer people graduate with the skills, credentials and degrees necessary for a higher-paying job. And that reverberates throughout the entire U.S. economy.

“The direct loss to the economy is the workers themselves,” explains Tony Carnevale, the director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. “If they were trained and ready, they would get higher-wage jobs and they would add more to GDP, making us all richer and increasing taxes, reducing welfare costs, crime costs, on and on.”

When workers make higher wages, their local economies also benefit. Carnevale explains it this way: “When you hire the crane operator, the crane operator goes and buys groceries. So the grocery clerk has a job.”

More and more jobs in the U.S. require some post-secondary training, Carnevale says, which makes college graduates far more valuable to the economy.

Before the pandemic, the countryalready had a skills gap, with jobssitting emptybecause businesses couldn’t find workers with the proper credentials. In the past decade, community colleges have worked to close that gap, partnering with local businesses to pair training with employer needs.

But according to Carnevale, declining enrollment rates at community colleges mean that gap is going to grow — which, in turn, hurts business.

“You can’t run your business if you literally cannot find people to work in that business,” says Britton, of the University of California, Berkeley.

And when businesses struggle, she says, “that has implications for things like decreases in tax revenues, higher prices for goods and services, delays in the production of services and goods like we’ve seen during the pandemic. And many of those things will only get worse if there are fewer people to fill the jobs.”

Declines in college enrollment have a compounded impact on the economy because there are economic consequences on so many levels: the individual, the community, businesses and society as a whole.

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Set the Stage to Get Students Hooked on Shakespeare

Posted on January 20, 2022 by Peter Watt

Set the Stage to Get Students Hooked on Shakespeare

Encouraging student-led exploration and performance can help make Shakespeare’s plays accessible and fun for middle schoolers.

By Matthew James Friday

January 12, 2022

ZUMA Press Inc / Alamy Stock Photo

To enjoy Shakespeare or not to enjoy Shakespeare, that is the question. The response for middle school students is often the latter. When they open up the text for the first time, a common question is: Is this modern English? There follows a sea of comprehension troubles, anxiety, and a feeling that these old plays can’t have any meaning for them. It doesn’t have to be this way. Here’s how I introduce Shakespeare to middle school students so that they have fun cocreating and performing their own adapted versions of the Bard’s plays.

I live in Oregon and I work as a performing arts (PA) teacher, creating a brand-new curriculum for elementary and middle school students, assisted by my colleague Clayton Pearce, who has a background in drama. Grade 8 is normally the first time the students are exposed to Shakespeare in our school’s ELA lessons, and grade 9 in public school. There’s a famous Shakespeare festival in southern Oregon, but Covid-19 has interrupted the show there, so I arrived as a new teacher at the school with students who have zero grounding in the Bard’s work.

The seventh- and eighth-grade students didn’t have a choice to join my PA class, so I had to win them over. Students in sixth grade had the option to choose, and the class was oversubscribed, as I had mentioned to them at the end of grade 5 how Hamlet features ghosts, murder, sword-fighting, and pirates. When I worked in international schools around the world, I created a model that allowed students in my then-homeroom class to access Shakespeare as early as grade 4. I wanted to apply this model to my new school.

THE 7 ACTS OF GETTING STUDENTS INTERESTED IN SHAKESPEARE

1. The hook: Introduce students to story or stories (if they can choose). Shakespeare knew how to appeal to people using conflict, humor, horror, intrigue, and romance, which are relatable topics for middle school students.

2. Improv: Use improv acting games to explore and play with the plot. For example, have a summary of each scene and ask students to reenact it however they wish, using their own words. The students can get a sense of what characters they want to play and build core acting skills.

3. Auditions: Have open auditions and allow students to try multiple roles. Students observe the auditions and are encouraged to change their minds and audition for other roles. By a process of artistic osmosis, the students end up settling into roles and agreeing who should be the lead. For the big roles, I always have two students cast: two Romeos, two Hamlets, etc. They can either swap halfway through the play or take one of the two shows each.

4. Adapt the concept: Reimagine the setting and concept of the play with the students’ ideas. They usually have many, ranging from traditional settings to zombie apocalypse. Give everyone an equal vote to select the winner.

Example 1: Grade 8 moved Macbeth from Scotland to the North Pole. Macbeth, the Chief Toymaker, was bewitched by three evil reindeer, and then he murdered Santa to become the new King of Christmas.

Example 2: Grade 7 did a modern reworking of Romeo and Juliet, less a tragic love story and more the tale of first dates gone wrong. With teacher guidance, students reworked scenes of drug taking and suicide to make them non-triggering and age appropriate.

Example 3: Grade 6 kept a traditional setting for Hamlet but developed Ophelia with the agency befitting a 21st-century female character, plus adding battle scenes that developed reported events such as Fortinbras fighting King Hamlet.

5. Scriptwriting: Use the plot as the skeleton; you can flesh out scenes with a blend of famous Shakespearean lines and speeches with the students’ own language. The aim is to create a play between 30 and 45 minutes long. Give students the responsibility of writing their own lines and editing others’ so that writing the script is a collaborative process. These lines can come from earlier improv but mostly from discussions about the plot and what characters need to say.

6. The play’s the thing: Set aside enough time for rehearsals—the bulk of the work. If you have a big class, have A and B castings for the major roles. For grade 6, we had four Hamlets—two per show! During the rehearsals, have students give feedback to each other, change the script, develop the scenes, etc.

7. Showtime: After numerous dress rehearsals to in-school class audiences, do a minimum of two shows to parent audiences, after school so that parents can attend. The results are always worth all the sweat and effort.

NOT EVERYONE IS AN ACTOR: LEARNING IS THE MAIN GOAL

I never insist that every student has to act, though there is never a shortage of willing actors.

You’ll need someone to work the lights, run sound effects, be the stage manager and stage crew, design the set, make props, etc. These are all roles that students should take, so that the program’s reach is broadly accommodating to student needs. If, like me, you work in a school that integrates its curriculum across classes, then you will gain even deeper benefits from the interdisciplinary process.

We don’t have a theater at my school, just an empty lunchroom. We all had to wear masks at all times. Students were often absent, sometimes rehearsing via Zoom or standing in for each other. Remember: This is not Broadway, this is school, and learning is the goal. You also don’t need to have been an actor to teach this process.

I’m not expecting my students to become either actors or Shakespeare scholars (though some are!). I want them to look upon Shakespeare’s work as something that can be entertaining, engaging, and relevant, giving them the confidence to pick up a play in the future and know that they can enjoy it… again.

Posted in Get Students Hooked on Shakespeare | Tagged 7 ways to interest students in Shakespeare, learn about Shakespeare | Leave a comment

UK Granddad told to get rid of home-schooling caravan (trailer) outside his house

Posted on January 19, 2022 by Peter Watt

UK Granddad told to get rid of home-schooling caravan (trailer) outside his house

Kevin Hufton’s grandchildren do their homework in the caravan

Kristian JohnsonInvestigative reporter

Liv ClarkeTourism writer

10:55, 15 JAN 2022

NEWS

Enter your postcode for local news and info

A man has been told to move a home-schooling caravan from outside of his home (Image: Huddersfield Examiner)

A man who transformed a caravan (trailer) into a home school for his grandchildren outside of his house has been told to move it from the street.

Kevin Hufton, from Huddersfield, has always owned caravans and claims he has never experienced any problems with parking locations before

The 51-year-old has been issued a warning from Kirklees Council to move the caravan from Keat Street in Crosland Moor by February 4 and to remove waste from his front garden, ExaminerLive reports.

Kevin could face a fine of up to £2,500 if he does not move the caravan by the deadline and it would be towed

“I bought it in lockdown to help my grandkids with homeschooling,” Kevin said.

“I have put a desk, a chair and a printer in there for them. I have even put a map up on the wall.

“My grandson does his homework in the caravan because there is no room in the house for the kids to play.

“My other grandchild comes down and plays in there too. He is eight and has Down Syndrome.

“They are really are upset because they like playing in it.”

Kevin Hufton of Keat Street in Crosland Moor Huddersfield in the caravan parked outside his home which is used as a classroom for his grandson Charlie — Kevin’s grandchildren use the caravan to do homework (Image: Huddersfield Examiner)

Kevin, who has lived on Keat Street for 15 years, said he is puzzled about why he has been issued with the notice.

Kirklees Council said it has received “a number of issues and complaints”, but Kevin said no one has directly raised issues with him.

“None of my neighbours have complained and it’s not restricting the street,” he said. “It’s not on yellow lines. There are no parking restrictions on the street.

“I have always had a caravan. I have always parked it outside my house and I have never had any problems or complaints before.

“It is not causing anyone any problems. I don’t know why it is such an issue all of a sudden.”

Kevin Hufton of Keat Street in Crosland Moor Huddersfield, with the caravan parked outside his home — Kevin says he doesn’t understand why it needs to be moved (Image: Huddersfield Examiner)

Kevin claims the only reason the caravan has not moved since he bought it over a year ago is because he has had a number of holidays cancelled due to Covid-19.

He said: “We’ve got a holiday to Butlins coming up in August. There are a few of us going.

“We do go away in the caravan usually, but we have had three caravanning holidays cancelled because of Covid.

“I am being told that because it has not moved I can’t have it outside my house, but I haven’t been able to go away.”

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A day in the life of a homeschool student

Posted on January 8, 2022 by Peter Watt

A day in the life of a homeschool student

by NBC 10 NEWS

Tuesday, November 16th 2021

Maddalena Cirignotta and daughter Anwen. (WJAR)

Volume 90%

00:23

02:14

Maddalena Cirignotta and daughter Anwen. (WJAR)

SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. (WJAR) — “It’s an alphabet book,” Anwen Daley said.

Turning each page, the South Kingstown third grader reads proudly from her homeschool project, written entirely in Spanish.

Continuing her children’s bilingual education is extremely important to parent Maddalena Cirignotta.

“I’m a teacher,” Cirignotta said. “My husband teaches multiple subjects throughout the day to them, primarily focusing on the math, the science; I tend to do the language in the afternoon.”

Cirignotta pulled her children from school due to the school mask mandate.

“Masking was very negatively impacting them and their experience, frankly, seemed to be irrelevant,” Cirignotta said. “I was in a position to choose between their wellness and their education and I had to choose their wellness. I’m their mother, I’m their advocate.”

Cirignotta called her children “unofficial” homeschoolers, meaning they are still enrolled in South Kingstown Public Schools, but are not formally considered by the district to be homeschoolers. They could be considered truant, Cirignotta.

In Rhode Island, approval of home instruction occurs at the district level.

Cirignotta’s hope is that they can return to school without masks, but until then, she believes her three children are better off at home.

“We’ve been able to sometimes do school on the road a little bit,” Cirignotta said about day-to-day work. “We made a list of words in Spanish they didn’t know. We can do the flashcards in the car.”

Anwen, Paul and Mabel also spend time outside and socialize with friends and neighbors when they are available. Cirignotta was initially interested in a “pod” learning model, but wanted to focus on language, which could complicate the day.

While preliminary data shows the number of homeschoolers has, on average, tapered off, some districts, including Cranston, Smithfield and Johnston have nearly the same number so far, as they did for the entire 2020-2021 school year.

“I value SK’s education. I think very highly of it,” Cirignotta said. “I’m part of that district. I’m in the system. I see how excellent the education is.”

Homeschooling data is due to RIDE by November 26th, after which, NBC 10 News will release a full analysis of the first few months of the school year.

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Kansas: Homeschooling becoming more prevalent as coming out of pandemic

Posted on January 5, 2022 by Peter Watt

Homeschooling becoming more prevalent coming out of pandemic

By Suzanne Perez

KMUW. Kansas News Service

The Garden City Telegram, Garden City, KS

Across the country this fall, a record eight million students are being home-schooled.

Some parents want more flexible schedules or greater control over their children’s lessons. Others are disillusioned with the traditional model of education or worried about plummeting test scores.

WICHITA – Worried about safety, resistant to mask orders and troubled by a lack of confidence in public schools, thousands more Kansas parents are opting to teach their kids at home.

The shift comes in the wake of the pandemic that convinced those families they could handle the job.

“We just had call after call after call,” said Bert Moore, who oversees home-school registrations for the Kansas Department of Education. “And they continue to call us. This isn’t something that occurs in just August. . . . It will be May before we have the final number.”

During a normal school year, about 1,400 Kansas families newly register to home school. Last year that number more than tripled — to 5,527 — and the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing. So far this year, more than 2,250 new families have registered.

Experts say the switch to remote learning during the pandemic persuaded record numbers of families to consider home-schooling long-term. Some want more flexible schedules or greater control over their children’s lessons. Others are disillusioned with the traditional model of education or worried about plummeting test scores.

“This increase in homeschooling is something that was ratcheting up for many years prior to the pandemic, but the pandemic has certainly jump-started it and caused it to spike,” said Lance Izumi, author of “The Homeschool Boom.”

During the early stages of lockdowns, parents got front-row seats to their children’s schooling. That, Izumi said, “demystified the learning process for them.”

“You’re seeing people discovering home-schooling as something that is doable, which they thought was not prior to the pandemic,” he said.

Moore, the state education official, said it’s hard to know whether COVID-19 is causing a temporary increase in home-schooling or a larger shift that will continue after the virus is controlled.

The number of students enrolled in Kansas public and private schools in dropped by more than 15,000 in 2021 compared to 2019, according to state data. Some of those students may have moved out of the state, but many likely enrolled in virtual or homeschooling.

“It’s not going to be a momentary blip,” said Izumi, the author. “That’s the incentive for regular public schools to address those gaps in order to entice these parents to come back.”

Enrollment in Wichita, the state’s largest district, fell by 5.6% during the 2020-21 school year — much of that in pre-school and kindergarten. Officials hired two full-time staff members to visit preschools and daycare centers in an attempt to recruit them back.

Across the country this fall, a record 8 million students are being home-schooled, including a growing number of Black children. A survey by the U.S. Census Bureau showed that more than 16% of Black families were homeschooling in the fall of 2020 – up from about 3% the previous spring.

Some education advocates raise concerns about the quality of home schools, since there is little state oversight.

“There are good quality programs out there for home-schooling,” Moore said. “But I am concerned about students’ exposure to collaboration, to cooperative learning, to working in teams and having that experience of participating in the things that students in our schools get to experience.”

The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy. For more on KNS, see ksnewsservice.org.

ttps://www.theepochtimes.com/newsletter

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Murfreesboro Mama: 5 Things I Learned About Homeschooling in 2021

Posted on January 5, 2022 by Peter Watt

Murfreesboro Mama:

5 Things I Learned About Homeschooling in 2021

JAN 05, 2022 AT 11:13 AM BY LAURA BETH PAYNE

I didn’t want to homeschool. Not really.

The thing is I was homeschooled. My education-trained mother and business-degree father did a marvelous job teaching my brother and I, ensuring we received help from tutorials, mentorships, and plenty of extracurriculars. I had friends, went to jobs, and entered college with fairly little angst. All things considered it was a good experience that I was prepared to pass on to my kids. I even expected to!

Except then I had kids.

Raising kids is harder than I ever dreamed it would be, and as my daughter’s fifth birthday approached, the idea of getting some help during the day sounded really, REALLY good.

“We have fabulous schools here!” I reasoned. “My kids would be so lucky to go to any of these!”

And I would be so lucky to get seven hours a day to myself.

But then a little thing called a pandemic hit and the very thing that I was edging away from came and wrestled me into a bear hug. I realized homeschooling it would be for our family. As much as I wanted time to myself again, I wanted the early years of school to be good experiences for my kids, rather than one fraught with sickness, quarantine, and daily uncertainty. We would have that enough, but I could lessen it a little bit (and gratefully I acknowledge that my husband’s job allowed me the option.)

It hasn’t been easy. Veteran homeschool moms have gently joked with me, “So who’s learning more? You or them?”

I call a tie. We’re all learning. That’s the thing, and while I am in increasing awe of my own mother, and desperately wish I held the title of All-Knowing Teacher, I’m growing in the maxim that life-long learning is all we have– school-aged and school-graduates alike. Honestly I feel if the pandemic has taught us anything, I feel that it’s that we must always be learning.

A few things have certainly helped and are helping me along the way. So whether you’re considering homeschooling, are homschooling and need a boost, here are five things I learned about homeschooling in 2021.

1. I Don’t Have the Patience

I start by being a little facetious here, because this is what most moms tell me when I say I’m homeschooling. To which I say, “It’s okay, I don’t have the patience either.”

I knew that by sleep-deprived night TWO after I brought my daughter home.

I’m a fairly patient person on eight hours of sleep. Cut me off at less than five on a regular basis and I’m the next Disney villain. Now put with me a six year old and handwriting pages.

I’ve disappointed myself more than once this past year for my frustration while teaching my children. I’m not Mary Poppins after all. But after my first failings I’ve begun to incorporate my own learning into our curriculum. I’m teaching my kids about patience, love, grace, and starting new, and mama gets to learn those things, too.

2. I Don’t Know Enough

I have a master’s degree in English Literature so I initially felt pretty confident about teaching my 3 and 5 year old about phonics. I quickly realized that pontificating about literary theories doesn’t always prepare you to sing Little Baby Bum anthems for hours on end. I frantically realized this year I didn’t know enough about child development or leveled course work to start my kids in school. I would have to learn that along the way (as my current reading list attests).

Do you know what college courses did prepare me?

Theater. Dance. Improv. Storytelling.

This year I have mentally and emotionally mined every single arts-oriented credit I ever took to expect the unexpected, say yes more often, and create with the material I’m given. I’m learning the other things– reading books about child development, learning styles, and guided leveled work. But like every single dance class, rehearsal, and performance taught me, I know to just keep going, keep practicing, figure it out. It will eventually come together the way it should, even if it’s not quite what I expected.

3. I Need Help

I don’t like to bother people with questions, but right after I realized the above, I learned it was time to start asking for help. Specific help. Like, “My son is running around the house while I’m teaching, and my daughter is afraid of the letter S” help.

I found such support in corners like the Homeschooling in the Boro Facebook group where I’m pretty sure you can ask any question possible and at least three other people will say, “Me too!” and provide some perspective.

I realized local spots like Discovery Center, Smyrna Outdoor Adventure Center, the Rutherford County Library System, and Murfreesboro Parks and Recreation offer programs every month to help with homeschoolers and school-aged children and their caregivers, so I never have to feel alone.

My church, while not hosting an offical homeschool group, has a network of mamas only too happy to lend a hand or shoulder to cry on or a much-needed laugh. Sometimes I text a mama with a quick question, sometimes we linger on the back porch to yak about ideas. It all fuels my homeschooling style, but I had to realize I needed help and not try to lone gun this one.

4. I Need Social Media

This was a little funny for me, but just when I was about to write off social media for its many agonizing characteristics– incorrect information, useless arguing, timewasters– I would find something that helped. So I took a lot of social media sabbaticals this past year, going full days or even weeks in order to detox from the onslaught of information, but when I came back I had a better idea of what I needed social media for: encouragement, education, insight.

I followed social pages for local organizations like I mentioned above.

I drew inspiration from pages like Teach Them Dilligently that helped with education theory as well as ideas for practical application in ways that make sense to me.

I used Murfreesboro Mama to connect with other moms and organizations who want to connect better with their families and their community.

It’s a process and one I’m always reevaluating, but I’ll keep my social media apps around.

5. I Need the Outdoors

I learned a lot more this year, but I’ll end with this one: I learned that I need the outdoors more than ever. I’ve always loved it, but so much pooh-poohing on indoor gatherings reemphasized it. Having two very busy kiddos nailed it. From screen detoxing to enhancing observation skills, to lessening anxiety, to giving more purpose at home, spending time outside has become a fundamental part of our homeschooling, and few days go by that we’re not outside for 2-3 hours. The kids are calmer and more focused, I have less anxiety, and something about talking through lessons outside has helped us integrate our learning in more practical and meaningful ways than time around our school table alone.

Local pages like Bloomsbury Farms and nationwide movements like 1000 Hours Outside emphasize the role that trees, dirt, fresh air, and gardening play in making us whole people, and I’ve realized that’s what I’m most after anyway. Aren’t we all? If the past two years have taught –or at least reminded– us of anything it’s that many of our man-made systems are up for change (SUCH change). But the fundamentals remain: our relationships, our homes, our earth. When we’re learning to take care of those things, we’re learning things we can carry with us, whatever new normal comes our way, whatever the future brings.

Happy New Year, and welcome to 2022! Here’s to lifelong learning.

Laura Beth Payne is a writer and homeschool mama who lives in the Blackman community with her husband and two bouncy kiddos. She finds her me-time early in the mornings where she reads nonfiction and writes stuff. Follow what she’s up to at @murfreesboromama on Facebook and Instagram. Not on social media? Never miss a Murfreesboro Mama by signing up for the Murfreesboro Voice email on the “Newsletter” link. *************************************************************************

Did you know every year many 1,000’s of parents teach their own children to READ? Many of them have used Alpha-Phonics because they have found it can easily be used to teach their children to read. Your Kids can make a lot of headway in only a couple of weeks with this proven program. Alpha-Phonics is easy to teach, is always effective and requires no training for the Parent. It works ! And it is very inexpensive. You CAN DO it !! Follow the links below to know all about the time-tested (38 years) Alpha-Phonics program:

Posted in 5 Things I Learned About Homeschooling in 2021 | Tagged 1. I Don't Have the Patience, 2. I Don't Know Enough, 3. I Need Help, 4. I Need Social Media, 5. I Need the Outdoors | Leave a comment

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Social and emotional learning is the latest flashpoint in the education wars
Educators say SEL is intended to help kids cope with problems and succeed in school,