First Hand
What I've lived and what I went and checked. One email a day, Monday to Friday.
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Eighteen years teaching my children at home, told in scenes.
I arrived in Spain from Australia a widower, with Arjuna aged ten and Nitai eight. Spanish was their first language, but after four years in Australia we were all speaking English at home and they had lost it. I had no teaching plan, no curriculum, and no idea what I was doing.
I taught them the language with coloured sticks hidden in my fist, to see who shouted the colour first. In three months they were speaking.
What came after was eighteen years mostly outside school. They are now two adults who think for themselves.
What’s in it
The packet of cigarettes I left within their reach, and what Arjuna said in the street when the older lads offered him one.
The sweet shop where I told them to take whatever they wanted.
What I said to the head of the school about homework, and why they never went in on Mondays.
The kitchen timer I put on the table when the teenage years arrived and conversation turned into contradiction.
The afternoon we went to the post office instead of reading the lesson about the postal system. The room we painted by measuring the walls.
And at the end, the legal part, country by country, because that’s the question that stops most people before they start.
What isn’t in it
It’s not a manual and it won’t tell you what to do. There’s no method, no steps, no programme by age.
There’s no proof either. I had two sons and one life, and it can’t be run again to see whether it comes out the same. I don’t know how they would have turned out in an ordinary school, and anyone who tells you they do know is selling you something else.
What there is: scenes. What I did, when, and how it ended. With the mistakes in, and there were many.
The book
PDF and EPUB, to read wherever you like. The download starts as soon as you pay.
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If you got here from the daily card, you know how I write. If not, the card is free and is going to stay free: one every weekday, at eight in the morning, Spanish time.