The Year of Learning Dangerously Giveaway and Interview with Quinn Cummings

Natural Moms Talk Radio

Several months ago I got a copy of The Year of Learning Dangerously: Adventures in Homeschooling.

It was the funniest book I read this year. As in, laugh out loud and spit your coffee funny. As is Quinn’s blog. (Her VOGUE commentaries are not to be missed! They’re spit coffee at your laptop funny.)

If Quinn looks familiar, it’s because she was an actress in a former life. In fact, when I was about the age of my oldest daughter, my mother sat me down to watch “one of her favorite movies”, The Goodbye Girl. Quinn played the witty and precocious Lucy.

And now I’m reading her book, blog and interviewing her. Which is kind of a weird full-circle moment for me.

I’m giving away a copy of Quinn’s book, which describes her experiences and anxieties during the first year homeschooling her daughter. (My favorite part of it was Quinn’s description of her quest to find a homeschooling “tribe”.)

More on the giveaway after the interview.

Carrie: Choosing curriculum is stressful for many parents new to homeschooling because the choices are overwhelming.

How did you go about choosing curriculum?

Quinn: The first year we used Singapore Math because it looked stinking hard and then it was (oh, how grateful was I for the answer keys), Story of the World for History because I thought the Bauers did a superb job of keeping different parts of the world equally weighted and interesting, and science through an online class. I decided English class could be the occasional book report on what she was reading and Latin and Greek roots and prefixes, because words are not where the challenge lies for my family. I didn’t have a specific art program, but Alice did classes at the local museums.

(Note from Carrie: We also use Singapore Math and Story of the World. More about my curriculum choices here.)

Carrie: What would you say is your biggest challenge as a homeschooling parent? Conversely, what do you enjoy the most? (For me, it’s learning cool stuff alongside my kids!)

Quinn: The most challenging part is how days can pass where I’m never not Mom. I mean, we’re all parents all the time anyway, but homeschoolers are usually actively on the job every waking hour.

Then I’ll sign her up for some afternoon program, so we can have some healthy space, and what’s the first thing any team or youth group asks before you’ve even finished writing them a check? “Can we count on you to volunteer?” And then I feel guilty for wanting to scream “NO! GO AWAY!” because, after all, I do have that time, right? Because I have that extra hour she’s in class where I was just going to sit someplace and bask in the quiet and who wants that? This is when I sign up for the bake sale. It would appear I like being around my child.

Which leads to what I like most about this nutty life. I get to see my daughter not know something, then know it a little bit, and then I get to see the light go on; after four years of homeschooling, that hasn’t grown old. The time we spend together as a family also means we have the space to really know one another; for better or worse, I am not an enigma to my kid. But there’s a possibility she thinks I like working bake sales.

Learning cool stuff is endlessly fascinating. The kid gets MUSE magazine, and we have four years’ worth of back issues, because she might have them all memorized, but I don’t yet.

Carrie: A lot of homeschooling parents think they need special qualifications to teach their kids. How do you handle it when your daughter needs or wants to study a subject that you struggle with or don’t know well?

Quinn: Three words; Outsource, outsource, outsource. She’s taking Chinese online this year; after hearing me try to imitate her, Alice has asked me not to speak to any actual Chinese people, for fear of inciting an international incident. She’s taking Music Theory, also online. She’s loving the class and, apparently, doing well in it. I’m very pleased for her. I have no idea what Music Theory is.

Isn’t the point of homeschooling to let our children follow passions? Unless we birth clones, eventually their passion is going to be something which mystifies or baffles their parents. Luckily, the Internet is teeming with tools and classes for learning nearly anything (I shudder to think of answering many of Alice’s questions had Khan Academy not been invented.) If paying for a class doesn’t work, I know people who are getting tutors for their children on the barter system. Someone, somewhere, knows what your child wants to learn.

Carrie: What would your daughter say is her favorite thing about homeschooling? (When I ask my kids, they say, “The food!” Guess I should take that as a compliment

Quinn: You should, and know that my daughter is packing her bags to come live with you. No family member of mine will ever laud the food around here; to put it kindly, I’m a slightly below-average cook. I think that right now what she likes best of all is not having to get up and race out the door. She hears about friends of hers who have to be in their classroom, dressed and breakfasted, at 7:48, after a twenty-minute trip to get to school, and she shudders in horror.

I’d like to think years from now she’ll look back fondly on a day like today, where she read Anne Bradstreet poems for an hour or so, just because they pleased her. But right now? It’s about the not-getting-up-when-it’s-dark.

Carrie: I ask this from the perspective of a busy homeschooling mom who also loves to write.

How do you find time/space for your writing – how do you meet your own needs for alone time and personal hobbies/interests with your daughter’s homeschooling (and just general parenting and other family duties)?

Quinn: Check my blog and note how remiss I’ve been about keeping it up this summer. I am currently not a model of multitasking, but have hopes for the fall. Perhaps I’ll get a sinus infection, as that gives me something to write about and forces me to rest for a couple of days.

Right now, the only “Quinn alone time” thing which happens on a regular basis is that I try to walk around the reservoir at least three mornings a week. Usually, I take the dog, so I don’t feel completely hedonistic; hey, not just taking me-time but also getting the dog in shape! But nothing else is purely for me right now and, now that I think about it, this is probably related to how I can’t think of anything to write. If the tank isn’t getting refilled, guess what? You have an empty tank. I need to work on that.

Wait, no. I do have at least an hour to myself every day right now, but I’m not sure if insomnia counts. And, frankly, I rarely do anything really interesting with that time. Although, thanks to Hulu, I can now say I have watched all of “Lost.”

Thanks Quinn for answering my questions!

Now for the giveaway!

Just leave a comment below letting me know what one of your “first year of homeschooling”  concerns were. I’ll pick one commenter on Monday, October 22nd at NOON Eastern time as the winner.

Natural Moms Talk Radio