Joe:

I have the opportunity to interview Mary & Michael and they took the time to share their views with us on the homeschooling movement and a bit about their personal life with their children. We are also featuring a very nice excerpt from their book which is entitled, What Kind of Learner is Your Child which I hope everyone gets a chance to look at closely and use this information to help you in your homeschool program. They are very frank and their answers and the excerpt are easy to read.

Mary & Michael:
First, it includes over $1,000 worth of coupons for useful publications and products. The new homeschooler can take advantage of the coupons to receive a free copy of each of the major homeschool publications and see what each one offers without having to decide upon a home-teaching philosophy first. The family that purchases the Almanac will make back the cover price of the book by using only a few of the available coupons. We have also included coupons for other fine products that any homeschool family can value. Some of the companies listed, and also offering coupons, were previously well-known suppliers to schools and professional teachers but were unknown to homeschool families at large. We wanted to bring these companies and their great products to the attention of any family who wishes to make use of such information.

Secondly, the Almanac can be used by a family that has been homeschooling for 10 years or is just starting out because we have included eight interviews with parents (and one student) from all different walks of homeschooling. Mary conducted the interviews in such a relaxed fashion that it gives the reader an uninhibited view inside the life of many different homeschooling families. For example, we have an interview with Day Farenga (wife of Pat Farenga, publisher of Growing Without Schooling) discussing the ramifications of sending her never-institutionally-schooled children to school for a year. We have an excellent interview with homeschooling pioneer and thinker David Colfax. In this interview we began with the question: "What exactly did you and wife, Micki, do with your kids every day?" David picked up the ball and took us on a tour of their daily (and overall) experience in raising their four boys. We also include a very insightful interview with Janelle Orsi, a 20-year-old Pomona College student who was homeschooled from 4th grade on. Following Janelle's interview, we have included the home-made transcript she submitted to various colleges. For any parents or children concerned about the transition to college, Janelle's interview and transcript are must-reading.

We also included 50 of the Most FAQs which are sprinkled throughout the book and answer the parents' questions we have been asked most often in doing our newspaper and conferences. We believe that virtually every possible pertinent question is addressed.

Mary & Michael:
While we were pregnant with our son, Lennon (1987), we began researching the dangers of vaccines and vaccinations and concluded that we would not be vaccinating him. We were erroneously informed that he could not attend public school in California if he were not vaccinated. Mary went to the local library to research school laws and part of the computer search yielded books under the heading of "homeschooling." Mary brought home a few volumes on teaching one's own children, such as books by John Holt and also Summerhill School founder A.S. Neill. The more we learned about teaching our son the more we liked the idea of accepting 100% responsibility for raising him and educating him.

Michael, who grew up in the 50s and early 60s, realized that in his own very conservative, expensive, 12-year parochial schooling experience in the Chicago area, he had only two teachers who were truly exemplary instructors who brought themselves to the instructional process -- the rest simply relied upon the materials and curriculum they were told to use by the administrators and moved the class through the school year on schedule. This sort of teaching could be duplicated by virtually anyone who could read and comprehend what is read, so we decided it would be much more fulfilling to us and better for our son and his social, emotional and intellectual life.

We have never doubted our decision and for us homeschooling is more of a way of life than merely an academic choice.

Mary & Michael:
We consider hands-on, loving, informed parenting to be the most important occupation a mom or dad can practice. If each of us as parents knows the mechanical processes of our children as well as we know the mechanical processes of whatever we do for a living -- imagine what the results will be as our children mature and become parents and follow suit!

Sounds like a great way to build a good world to us. By knowing and understanding how we adults and our children learn best, we all improve our lives and our selves. We have both learned much about each other by studying Learning Styles research. This knowledge has changed how we deal with each other as well as how we approach teaching & guiding Lennon.

In answer to the second question, regarding ADD, based upon our experience in producing the Link newspaper for four years, the Link conference in Los Angeles for three years and subsequently speaking with many, many experts on the subject, our lay opinion is that there is NEARLY no such thing as ADD or ADHD except as a means of "convenient" labeling. There are children whose brains process information in a different way than, the majority of their age group. For commercial convenience, institutional schools have taken to calling this minority ADD or ADHD or possibly some other title. This is understandable because the institutional school's job is to move whole classes of students through time. However, parents do not have to have this same mass focus and they can recognize that a child who say, learns best by hearing material read to him (rather than reading it silently to himself) is not defective, but merely possesses a different mental processor than most other children. We feel this is an important awareness to have -- your "different" child is not less than good or lower on an imaginary ladder of skill than Billy, the boy next door or Chuckie, the first cousin who can read to himself for hours on end and gets A's in school, etc., etc. In our own son's case, he learns some things better by having them read to him or by listening to a tape and he learns other things better by reading them to himself. He is a "mixie" and as long as we know this and don't become frustrated and inappropriately judgmental over it, there is no issue -- no problem, no sticking point, no negative drag on him or us. This insight into him is a direct result of our listening to Mariaemma Pelullo-Willis' and Victoria Kindle-Hodson's workshops, research and writings.

We would recommend their excellent new book on this topic, by the way, for anyone interested in the entire subject of learning styles -- especially the parent's! It is very beneficial for anyone still learning anything.

One of the main things we've learned from them and from homeschooling in general is the broader view that not everyone is supposed to be everything. Not everyone is supposed to be great at math, reading, drawing, etc. Each person is unique and has skills in different areas.

We view the term "gifted" as the same type of convenient labeling as ADHD is, only at the other end of the spectrum. A "gifted" child possesses a desirable label. But to homeschooling parents, the term "gifted" has no meaning. When you have your children with you at home all of the time, you learn much more about them and you see all of their skills and talents in terms of overall balance, a complete person. With this perspective, one skill is not given more value than another. Lastly, but probably most importantly, these labels ADHD, ADD and/or "gifted" provide more Daily Attendance monies to most school systems in the United States. It doesn't take much analysis to see a deliberate, commercial process here. In Chicago, we call this "a skam."

Mary & Michael:
At the present, we have one son, Lennon. He is 12-years-old, very gifted musically as a vocalist, pianist and fledgling composer. Thanks to homeschooling, he has the opportunity to practice and improvise for hours each day -- which he usually does. We are very conservative in our belief in the Three Rs as essential, so we insist on covering math, cursive handwriting and the language arts of reading, spelling, grammar, etc.

Lennon's primary interest is music which we let him spend most of his time pursuing. However, we feel that no matter what Lennon does for a living when he grows up, he still must know how to read well, write well and perform basic math functions.

We consider part of Lennon's education to be having an integral part in our business, which is The Link Homeschool Newspaper and the homeschooling conferences that we produce each year. We also consider the ability to reason, critically analyze and think to be at the top of our list of priorities.

We use Critical Thinking books to help us reach that end along with family discussions about just about everything including Madison Avenue, political media manipulations and so forth.

We are fans of old books. We occasionally use a book by Emma Serl for all sorts of language skills. It is an old fashioned book, reprinted from the early 1900s and it has the solid approach to knowledge that our grandmothers and great-grandmothers knew. We feel that this is very important to impart to children. However, we agree with the Trivium approach in not teaching young children a lot of hard information they will forget in a short time. The Trivium philosophy suggests reading to children until about the age of 10 or 11 and then begin really teaching them with their active involvement.
Without intending to do so, we have done this to a great extent and are comfortable with it. The wisdom of doing this is apparent especially in math. We have had numerous math teachers say that junior high math is a review of elementary school math and early high school math being a review of junior high math. We feel that there is no reason to teach the same material 3 times. We are much more in favor of casual math play in younger children and then real skill building at about the age of 10 or so. Daily drills and so on can take place with the older child and finding intelligent ways to use the skill in daily life -- calculating mileage for trips or flights to the planets, even, makes math useful. In our case, we can discuss math use in musical notation -- measuring equal bars on manuscript paper before writing, for instance or in calculating ad space for the newspaper. These activities provide an insight into the actual value of simple math ability. Once Lennon understands the value of such things it becomes a LITTLE easier to prompt him to do them. But often, it takes much work on our part to get the "job" accomplished. Lest we misinform that this homeschooling task is easy -- it is not, but it is worth it and that is the point.

One thing worth mentioning, is that we use some fantastic books, such as "Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?" by Richard Mayberry to learn about economics. Michael read it aloud to Lennon so that he could learn about it too and they both shared the experience and could intelligently explain it to Mary as they worked through it. This is classic family learning, from our viewpoint and the perfect way to homeschool. We are now reading Mayberry's "Whatever Happened to Justice?" It is a much more dense topic than economics and the book is taking much longer to grasp and move through. But Lennon is very inquisitive about government and the judicial system and we want him to have his questions answered.

We use Saxon math and also a number of other math materials for drills, etc. We use about 3 different spelling books, and are always open to more. We use the Emma Serl book for grammar and some materials from Calvert School.

Currently Lennon is involved in a children's choir that meets once a week and performs on a regular basis. Because of the flexibility in homeschooling he is able to take advantage of many opportunities that come his way. For example, his Choir Director, who is also his piano and voice teacher, recognized that he had the ability to be an accompanist. She asked him to become her assistant for a younger children's choir which he has been doing for four months. She also recently gave him the opportunity to become an
assistant accompanist for a public-school choir she directs. In addition to studying voice and piano, Lennon has recently taken up drums in a homeschool band that meets once a week. He is also involved in a production of the play "Little Women" which rehearses weekly. He has a small acting part and he is responsible for the play's music. We do other academic work about two hours per day, three to four times per week. Lennon plays in a roller hockey league and has recently taken up ice hockey skating. He loves Legos, kittens, Boomerang, Jim Weiss and Star Wars. He is a happy, healthy, homeschooled boy.

Joe:
Thank you Mary & Michael for taking your time with us to share your thoughts and your family with us today.
We will now move on to an excerpt from your book which you have graciously allowed us to reprint here which focuses on the different learning styles that we all possess. I hope that everyone get a chance to stop by our discussion group to ask questions and be a part of our community.

Homeschooling Almanac 2002-2003
by Mary and Michael Leppert
FREE excerpt Chap 3:
What Type of Learner is Your Child
Pgs. 51- 59

Finding out what type of "learner" your child is can make mean treading on foreign ground for most parents.
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