Twelve years ago, a professor stood before Amanda Ostrander’s class at Laurentian University and gave his students every reason to not teach in public schools, but to school their future kids at home instead.
The professor, seeing his own kids’ eyes shine with a love of learning as he turned a backflip on the trampoline into a physics lesson, conveyed to the class how wonderful he found homeschooling to be.
Ostrander, from Sudbury, Ont., wasn’t a mom back then, but she held her professor’s words in her heart, and tidbits from others since, to later become a homeschooling parent and consultant for thousands like her.
The feats of famous Canadians probably factored in, too. With a degree in Canadian history, Ostrander studied Henry Hudson, who was charged with navigating a path through the Arctic. “He kind of kept saying, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it,'” Ostrander told The Epoch Times, adding that he ended up following his own agenda.
Canadians, she added, always did things “the way they wanted to do it.”
And so, after Ostrander met her husband, Stéphane, in classic Canadian fashion both agreed to school their kids their way. As educators who had taught in the public school system, they weren’t hung up on whether or not they could teach.
“It’s a lot easier to teach two kids than it is to teach 30,” Ostrander said, referring to their daughters, Alexi, 9, and Zoe, 7, neither of whom has ever attended public school.
“It’s actually a lot easier than we anticipated,” she said. “It takes a lot less time. It’s a lot more calm, and it just became something that we loved.”
Ostrander, who started a YouTube channel to spread her wisdom of homeschooling in Canada to more parents, says it has also given them “the freedom of having more family time.”
As educational insiders, the Ostranders knew of the political games and inefficiencies of public schools and opted to sidestep them. They wanted to teach more arts, history, and sciences, which, Ostrander believes, are neglected in public schools because they’re less measurable than language or math.
The Ostranders' homeschooling journey brought them to Ripley's Aquarium and the Science Centre. Courtesy of Amanda Ostrander
The Ostranders at the Toronto Zoo. Courtesy of Amanda Ostrander
But the big reason to homeschool, she said, came from that memorable professor’s catchphrase from years ago: the love of learning. Ostrander hoped to instill wonder in their two girls, so she set about including them in developing curricula tailored to their learning styles and needs.
For the three Ostrander women, each school year begins and ends with tea and cookies, which sweetens the deal for Alexi and Zoe as together they hammer out what will be studied next semester. Mom keeps a working list of topics, but what’s key is keeping the girls self motivated by following their quest to learn.
That’s led them to mummify Barbie dolls in one class, complete with burial sarcophagi.
“We really enjoyed learning about ancient Egypt,” Ostrander said. “We read some great books, [like] ‘A Cat called Ra.’”
The Ostranders enjoy tea during their off-season curricula conference. Courtesy of Amanda Ostrander
There has been no shortage of field trips.
“We’ve done trips to New York,“ she said, speaking of their unit on fashion. ”We were at the Met, and they always have a designer exhibit and a history of a specific designer.”
They visited the Science Centre, walked among dinosaur skeletons at the Royal Museum, saw the razor-toothed sharks at Ripley’s Aquarium, and marvelled at a herd of elephants crossing a river while on safari.
On another trip, a few “educational moments” sprinkled on provided a great excuse to catch some sun. In Cancun, they watched a weaver make traditional blankets on an old loom. Call it home economics or social studies.
Ostrander said of the iguana, herds of adorable beach-roaming nasua, and spider monkeys: “We were at an eco-resort, so there was a lot of animals.”
The Ostrander daughters, Alexi and Zoe, partake in field trips to the Science Centre and New York. Courtesy of Amanda Ostrander
‘A Very Effective Idea’
The love of learning sounds romantic, but it’s roots are academic. In researching their curriculum, the Ostranders drew from the theory of “unschooling.” In the 1970s, teaching pioneer John Holt devised a homeschooling method wherein student self-motivation is the engine that drives learning.This became unschooling.
“We do borrow some things like the love of learning and interest-based learning from unschooling,” said Ostrander, who considers herself and Stéphane “eclectic homeschoolers,” fusing many methods.
“[Unschooling is] kind of like using their interests as a hook and something to capture their attention,” she said. “Once you have their attention, they tend to focus longer. So it’s not a complicated idea, but it is a very effective idea, especially for children.”
Alexi Ostrander shows off her literary prowess. Courtesy of Amanda Ostrander
(Left) Zoe Ostrander practices writing with a marker; (Right) Alexi Ostrander documents her observations on a field trip. Courtesy of Amanda Ostrander
Then she added what unschooling isn’t: “It’s not just they get to do whatever they want all day, like sitting playing Minecraft.”
Today, Alexi has a “voracious” appetite for books, reading at a 6th-grade level in 4th grade. Zoe hasn’t taken to literacy in the same way but is “blowing through math” at a 3rd-grader’s level while still in 2nd grade, her mom says.
One perk of this method is that the parents, who know their kids best, tailor their education. Following Alexi’s interests, they guided her toward video editing.
“You don’t always need a graphic design degree to do graphic design,” Ostrander says.
Zoe said she wants to be farmer after falling in love with the family’s backyard chickens.
Ostrander isn’t adamant about their attending college, which she says is “bloated” with unuseful material. The trades are “fantastic,” she says, and so is being an entrepreneur—“whatever is going to end up being the best choice for them and their ultimate goal.”
Not least, due to having more family time, homeschooling has helped the Ostranders bond.
