Homeschooler Mindset
Building a resilient mind set is essential to enjoying – and coping with – the emotional journey of being a successful home schooler. Learning at home means taking risks and managing the momentum generated by success but also managing the “I will do that tomorrow” feeling. It requires learning a wide variety of new skills quickly and becoming a effective home learner – you’re going to push yourself out of your comfort zone!
Here are some practical steps to build homeschool resiliences:
1. Your mind set is the attitudes and beliefs that impact how successful your learning will be.
2. You need to invest time building your self-belief and nurturing your love of learning if you’re going to achieve your goals.
3. Enjoy the road to achieving them and celebrating the challenges in your learning journey
Learning does not need to be tough, it should be fun and interesting. As home schoolers, we can follow our own interests and enjoy what we learn.
However, there are somethings we need to learn to be part of the conversation, there is some stuff we absolute need to know to be a fully functional human being and basically there are some topics of learning that don’t come naturally to us.
How you approach these challenges can have a big impact on how difficult they are to solve.
This goes for challenges that come from inside and outside the us.
The reason why your home schooling may be very negative be it: bulling and the school not able to keep you safe, discrimination: where you belong to a minority within the school population and people just see you as different. Or the school has failed to accommodate the dyslexia, the autism or your mental health. In other words, something happened in school and now your home schooled.
It was all about mind set. Sometimes when you have something really negative or people putting you down or not being the best people around you, sometimes you can turn that into a positive. Home schooling can be just what you need and it helps to break down the challenges into the much smaller steps that you solve them.
Just like climbing a mountain is a formidable task. What do you need to look back every now and again and see just how far along the route you have come?
Ask yourself: What challenges could I think about differently?
Building Your Self-belief
Everyone can learn! Anyone who has the capability to home school is amazing – you’re already in the minority and doing something most students of your age dream of but do not do.
The problem is that home schoolers often struggle to realise how amazing they are and don’t take time to celebrate each milestone they reach. Past school and main stream education experiences often leads to self-criticism; success is never enough. And it is all too easy to compare yourselves to your friends or study buddies and see them as more successful people and beat yourself up about the progress you’ve making – you just need to remember you are on your own personal journey – this is unique to you.
Creating short and medium-term goals help with this.
Celebrate when you reach your target, whether it’s having a better understanding of how fractions work or reading to the very end of the book.
Surrounding yourself with study buddies who can reinforce your self-belief has a big impact too.
The Importance of Being Part of The Orchard Training Tribe
After a negative school experience, we can all fear rejection or criticism Taking that first step to in to learning at home can be terrifying. Your parents are worried about how to do it and your worried about being lonely. However, homeschooling with Orchard Training couldn't have been further from the truth.
It’s important to have a daily, weekly and monthly opportunity to share what you’re going through. This helps ensure negative thoughts and concerns don’t linger, provides a sounding board and builds confidence.
Together we have built up a network of home schoolers, studying together, meeting up and taking part in events (details found in the upcoming events) this gives you an opportunity to discuss challenges and support each other.
Why not embarked on a year of saying 'yes' to as many opportunities as possible, the more your confidence and belief in yourself will grow.
Understanding Your ‘How’ - Don’t Fixate on the ‘Why’
Mind sets are built from our view of the world. It’s crucial to know why you’re learning something and what motivates you?
There are moments in life that prompt you to examine your beliefs. I became a carer is the ‘why’ I set up Orchard Training. Someone in my family desperately needed my help when they became really ill. At the time, it was a very challenging time for both myself and my family. It wasn’t difficult to make the choice to take care of my relative, I think it took me less than a second. However, it did mean I crashed out of the classroom. One day, I was a full-time teacher and the next I was not. It was a shock and a thought-provoking experience. I walked away from a steady wage, a career and a role I really loved. When I look back, I don’t regret the choice I had to make. I have had time to think about what education truly means, what do you actually need to know and how do people best learn when they are not interested in what is being taught.
More importantly, there are lots of reasons to start examining the ‘how’ behind your home schooling.
· It helps to build a routine and basically getting down to it.
· Letting friends and family know ‘I am studying - please do not disturb!’
· Putting your phone away.
· Exercising regularly.
· Completing your work on time for marking.
· Taking pride in what your present.
· Chatting to a parent, friend or study buddy once or twice a month to examine and celebrate why you’re working so hard on something.
So far, some of you have gone on to university and gained first class degrees. Many of you have returned back in to full time education healthier and are much happier, that you go on to succeed far beyond what your old school predicted. Last year, one of you even left a local college “Student of the Year” after you had been written off as unable to learn by your school but not by us!
Those moments also provide a platform to challenge yourself and ask whether this is something you want to continue to work on; it’s okay to stop if it’s not right for you anymore. If you are ready to return to full time main stream education then we can help you look for avenues to do so, knowing that you will know different stuff from your peers but that stuff will be of equally valuable.
Developing Your Skills
Having a clear vision of what you want you want to achieve. It’s a big factor in your mind set.
The biggest obstacle we have to overcome is our self-doubt. After crashing out of school that mind set can be somewhat bashed. Success at home schooling starts with an emotion – of self-belief. You have to feel it in your senses, your body and mind that it’s a possibility. When you have a vision that’s utterly compelling and ridiculously magnetic, you will avoid the distractions that take you away from where you want to be. Home schooling is not for you if your social life is getting in the way of your education.
Take a moment to reflect on a vision of where you want to be. How could you create a stronger emotional bond with it? Thinking through what that end goal will look like. What would people be saying to you? What would you be saying to yourself? What impact are you having? And how amazing does it feel to be where you want to be?
Plan B in The Resilience Mind Set of Home Schoolers
In life - things happen and often don't go as you plan, expect, anticipate or hope when you're learning at home. Having a Plan B is all part and parcel of home schooling. For example: the local Water Company digs up your internet line by accident and you are without Wi-Fi for a few days while they fix it. Get ahead with your reading, work on the theme paperwork, do a project, be more active, cook a meal for the freezer, help out in the garden, help mum out with the housework, help your granddad sweep up all the leaves. Don’t set there looking at the screen thinking when will it get back on – be proactive!
Fallen behind on your work load due then it's time to get back on track.
To get back on track and stay on track you must do the following and keep doing it.
Plan of Action and Strategy
1. Review – make a list of what needs to be done!
2. Identify – what is on a time dead line? Do that first!
3. Decide what changes need to be made - agree the changes with both parents and teacher. Prioritise the most important changes.
4. Implement the changes - make sure everyone is involved, engaged and committed. A successful outcome depends on everyone being on board and pulling in the same direction.
5. Measure - Measure the results. Are the changes achieving the improvement you are looking for or do they need adjusting?
How to look after your mental health and build resilience – check out our Health and Wellbeing page for learners.
