It’s been so so long since I’ve put my thoughts into words. I look back at the monthly status reports and random logging of our homeschooling day and I wish I’d done a bit more of it past the first 2 years. Homeschooling has been a blur since then and it is so nice to read what we used to do, most of which I’d forgotten.
I used to at least post a FB or Instagram post once a day, but once we were in Taiwan and the pandemic started, I lost my mojo, despite my feeble attempts at restarting.
You know that saying by Einstein, “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.“? That’s a big part of my lack of enthusiasm for blogging.
In the last year, as the pandemic started, so many people came back to Taiwan and wrote stories of their kids learning Chinese or experiences in local schools. Whereas learning/teaching Chinese used to be this super hard thing, even for heritage speakers, it now seems so easy. You just plop a kid in, and voila, half a year to a year of hard work, and you’ve caught up to grade level coursework.
What was the point of me slaving away for years then?
Or, the fact that there are just so so so so many people with older kids who have really great Chinese level, seemingly with your typical weekend schooling and public schooling.
What was the point of me slaving away for years then?
That sounds so bitter and over-dramatic. I know it is all a willing choice on my part. And the research on how to teach and what to teach are all things I enjoy.
But I think it made me question. Was there another way, a better way, to learn/teach Chinese? Should I have taken this other route?
On top of that, the more I get to teaching, and loving the teach, the more it seems like a mysterious subject that can never be cracked, because every child is different, so how is there one method that works for all children?
And if the above two points were true, then what’s the point of writing blog posts about how I did it, when it doesn’t apply to 99% of other people who may want to read Chinese or do Montessori.
On the road of homeschooling, we took a seldom traveled path, Chinese and (when I could) Montessori. Most people don’t do what we did. We delayed much reading and writing. I didn’t actually teach Chinese as more just creating a learning environment. (Really, really, they learned 80% of their Chinese by reading.) We half assed most of our Montessori. So what help am I to anyone in my posts?
So depressing.
I consciously tried to stop reading most of FB or Instagram, binged on Harry Potter and Fuyao (OMG, it’s on Amazon Prime!) instead.
But the good thing about lows is that you come out of it! I’ve changed the look and feel of the blog to something very red, my favorite color. I wrote two posts on testing fluency and reading level! I shall ignore the negative thoughts in my head and do more brain dumping. Those thoughts need to be dumped into a pensieve.
Hi! I just found this blog and wanted to know I am enjoying it. We are keeping our 2 preschoolers at home again for the next school year and I am looking for how to do better than the last year. We are just starting our Montessori + Mandarin (+ a little Cantonese + Spanish) journey, but it has been a half-assed year. I know I can do better and am glad to see a similar perspective here. Thank you for posting your experiences and resources, so that I can find what might help us in our journey.