When I pulled Tuna out of public school last year, she was educationally broken, jaded, and scared to be wrong. She would take no risks, either in math or in writing. The idea of math made her cry, and her writing was simplistic, formulaic, and boring. She would complain of hand cramps after just two or three short sentences, and she cried frequently.
This was not what I wanted learning to look like for my daughter.
We stopped everything. We did no lessons. Had no structure. We played. We read. We explored our environment. We became unschoolers by necessity. It was exactly what we needed to do. Tuna opened back up to me. Her creativity blossomed. She declared on a regular basis how lucky she was to be homeschooled.
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| visiting Colmar and Eguisheim, France, on weekdays, of course |
It was working. But it was time to add in some structure to our days. Tuna was even asking for it! She wanted to have more school-like structure in her day, so I set about the task of finding the right balance, knowing that school-at-home wouldn't ever work for us.
I sought out interesting, gentle, curricula, that would stimulate her mind without hardening her heart. That's when I found Brave Writer.
Brave Writer, who asks me to watch movies on Thursdays, and drink tea and eat cookies on Tuesdays, and go for nature walks, and play board games, and make art, and view art, and write for my daughter when her hands tire, and to produce my own writing alongside her...Could this really work? Could it possibly be so simple?
You bet.
But I wasn't always a firm believer. I was a little nervous to not teach writing like a public schooler. I trusted the process enough to try. I agreed (with myself) to give Brave Writer a go for two years.
Here we are, four months into our first school year using Brave Writer, and I've got exciting news. Yesterday, on the way to our geology class, Tuna wrote her teachers a letter. She wrote a full page letter, expressing her thanks, telling what she's learned so far, and encouraging the teachers to start additional classes. It was well-written, heart-felt, and showed what she has learned. It flowed nicely, used great words, and touched the hearts of the instructors (who I've asked to scan and email me a copy, and I'll post it here as soon as I get it).
It was writing. It was a long piece of writing. It was a long piece of writing that I didn't ask her to produce, didn't help her write, and didn't ask her if I could read before she passed it over.
And she was proud of it.
She got a great reaction to her writing. The instructor teared up over the letter, and Tuna felt great for making her feel so happy.
On the way home, Tuna composed quite a few short limericks, shared them aloud, and then revised them, asking for help with word choice and rhythm.
In short, my daughter was a brave writer. Reading aloud everyday from great books, sharing poetry over tea and cake, cuddling together to enjoy fun movies, walking through the woods, visiting art museums and creating art had all helped bring us to this moment.
And it took only a few short months of trusting and waiting and biting my tongue.
I love the Brave Writer program. I really can't say enough good things about it, but I think my daughter's transformation is proof enough that it works.
So if you have a reluctant writer, a child who's come out of the school system writing formulaic paragraphs grudgingly, or you just don't know where to begin, give Brave Writer a try. It's gentle and effective, and self-empowering. It really does work.
