A Successful Evernote Homeschool Registration Visit

 If you listened to last week’s podcast you’ll know I recently had to apply for another period of homeschool registration for my girls. You’ll also know I promised to report back when the visit was over.

 Yesterday Sophie asked, “What if we fail our homeschool visit? What if the AP (Authorised Person) doesn’t like your Evernote records? What will you tell everyone?”

 “I suppose it could be embarrassing if we fail,” I said. “I might have to confess I led everyone astray with my Evernote idea.”

 But we didn’t fail. No need for me to get embarrassed. Our homeschool registration visit couldn’t have gone better!

 For the past two years, we’ve been unschooling in our own way, enjoying our life immensely, doing exactly what we want as far as education goes, (despite living in a state which has rather strict homeschooling requirements). And now we’ll be able to continue in the same way for another two years.

 When our AP arrived this morning, I placed my computer in front of her and said, “I’ve done something different this time. I’ve been using Evernote to keep our homeschooling records.”

 Our AP hadn’t seen Evernote before, but she was very interested to see what I’d been doing. As she scrolled through my records she kept saying, “Amazing!” I think she might have been impressed. Before our visit ended, she took out her notebook and jotted down a few details about Evernote. She intends to find out more.

 It was obvious from our records, the girls are learning. I even managed to satisfy our AP that their learning matches up with the school syllabus. (This is a requirement in NSW, Australia where we live.) I didn’t provide a plan for future learning. I had another idea which I shared with her and which was acceptable.

I was going to write down all the details of the visit and tell you about the notebooks which I presented to the AP, but I think it would be much better if I showed you in a screen capture video. I can explain how I’m using Evernote, while showing you my actual notebooks. I’ll also tell you more about our registration visit and how I satisfied the requirements. So if you’re interested, please watch out for a new video. I’ll make it as soon as I can. In the meantime, you could watch my other Evernote videos which are on Youtube, or read my Evernote blog posts.

 I might also talk about our registration visit in my next podcast. There’s lots to say so please look out for that too.

 Before our AP left she asked, “How do you keep so enthusiastic after 23 years of homeschooling? Don’t you ever get fed up?”

 I guess if we weren’t unschooling, I might have got fed up long ago. Can you imagine teaching the same things year after year, over and over again, to 7 different children? (And what if you had to convince them to learn it?) Yes, I probably would be glad when my last child finished homeschooling.

 “It’s easy to be enthusiastic, when I’m also learning,” I said. “Learning’s a family affair. It’s not just something our kids do.” And then I added, “I’m also continually learning more about the process of learning… How kids learn best. That’s exciting.”

 Rereading this last paragraph, I think I talked about unschooling and showed evidence it works without ever mentioning the word ‘unschooling’. Do you think our AP suspected we are unschoolers?

 “I wonder what you’ll have discovered by the time I next visit,” she said.

 I wonder!

 “Two more years of registration!” I shouted to the girls as the AP drove off. They cheered. I cheered.  And we smiled. I don’t think we’ve stopped smiling all day!