Son Learning Astrometry Now

True to form the homeschool year goes differently in real life then what was planned on paper. A perfect example is that my older son (age 13, grade 8) was invited to participate in an astrometry class for homeschoolers. That was never in this year's plans, but he's doing it. Why? Because I'm seizing the opportunity.

I never even knew what the term meant, to be honest. I went to public school and have a liberal arts bachelor's degree but astrometry was nothing I was ever taught. Astronomy, okay, but what is astrometry? Briefly, astrometry is the process of finding asteroids and tracking them as they move across the sky for data collection purposes.

Many homeschooling parents worry about gaps in knowledge, if not all of us, at least at some point in time. I have worried of this in the past. My older son's experience taking various astronomy courses with outside instructors combined with informal learning by watching documentaries and reading books for pleasure has helped him learn more than I probably know right now. (He is finishing the Uncle Albert trilogy now, for example.)

This teacher of the astrometry class developed the class for this specific group of homeschoolers out of his own desire to share a passion with these students. He knows them because he's the teacher who we hired to teach some astronomy and physics classes at one of the homeschool co-ops we attend. This teacher spends many hours a week at an observatory. They are using the observatory in this class. An extra bonus is the teacher is teaching the kids free of charge just because he wants to teach them this subject.

This is an example of how sometimes one thing homeschoolers do leads the family down a rabbit trail. This opportunity was too good to pass up. It's a unique thing. So here I am driving my son to and from this class once a week this winter.

How can homeschooling be different than schooling?

For one thing, homeschoolers learn in different ways than school kids in a class. Sometimes we take more time to learn deeply. We may choose to not focus on testing and studying and memorization in order to prove the kids are learning or to track progress or to track failure.

Secondly, sometimes the homeschool kids get exposed to unique people like this teacher who then winds up offering something different and rare like astrometry. We didn't seek him out to teach the astrometry, it happened organically out of something else we'd arranged.

How many 8th and 9th grade school kids do you know who are learning astrometry and are using computers and equipment at an observatory? I don't know many.

However I am not saying that all homeschooled kids are doing advanced work or that they are necessarily doing above grade level work in all subject areas. Even in cases where one may show evidence that the homeschooled kid is working "on grade level" there is a good chance that other experiences they are doing with their time is helping shape them into a unique, different person than a same-aged peer who goes to their town's public school. These other and different experiences must do something, some good must be coming of them, even if it is not being tested and shown in numbers on paper that the experience taught them something.

So wouldn't you say that our story of this astrometry class experience is another example of great learning that can be done by a homeschooler that kids in school don't get to do? This happened only because homeschool parents sought an outside expert to hire to teach their kids to learn one thing and this connection was made that led to a different learning experience, something above and beyond what high schoolers usually do. If we'd not branched out from homeschooling lessons at the kitchen table taught by  me to try this homeschool co-op than this good thing would not have happened.

These things that homeschool parents do, the effort it takes to look around and find ways to make certain kinds of learning happen is another example of the very different experience than parents of schooled kids who are supposed to oversee that their child does their homework and studies for tests. It is above and beyond the situation of a parent of a schooled child who hires a private tutor to help learn content as mandated by the school. The experience of being a homeschool parent and a parent of a schooled child can be like comparing apples to oranges. It takes work, sometimes really hard work, for homeschooling parents to find subject matter experts or teachers who are willing to teach small groups of homeschoolers.

I think homeschooling parents achieve more when working together, when homeschooling parents put their heads together to brainstorm ideas and to hire subject matter experts to teach small classes of our children (if for no other reason than we all can't afford $40-$110 an hour for these teachers all by ourselves) but I'll say that learning in small groups has benefits beyond what may happen with that same teacher working 1:1 with our child in our own homes. Good things sometimes come from small group learning with other kids. Enthusiasm breeds motivation and excitement for learning can be contagious and spread through the kids, which is great to see when it does happen (such as with some of these homeschool co-op experiences we've had).

This is not to say that working with groups is all easy, it is work. Some bad comes with the good, there are challenges with interpersonal relations and communication every time teams of people work together (especially when we don't always know the other parents that well). Sometimes the homeschooling community can be a bit tricky to navigate, or it can be politicial. I left office politics behind but soon thereafter was involved with people politics in volunteer organizations and now with the homeschooling community. I guess whenever we work with people we deal with what most would call "office politics". This work is necessary and it's not always easy. I see this as one of the harder parts of the homeschool mom journey and of the homeschooling process.

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I think the unique nature of homeschooling is still its major draw. Not all homeschooled kid's experiences will be the same unless the homeschool parent intentionally chooses to by using a cookie cutter approach. With homeschooled kids you can't duplicate exactly the experience of one child with the next even within the same family (unless they are very close in age and have been taught side by side nearly all the time).

Perhaps what keeps colleges open-minded about accepting homeschooled students is they have some inkling that they are not cookie cutter kids having gone through the schools and they are not even cookie cutter kid when compared against other homeschoolers.

These homeschooled kids are one of a kind!