Premise and Premises

Hi,

Just in case some of you missed out on the comments posted on 21PLC, here’s a summary for you to get a feel of what’s out there in the ether :

I can see the benefits in having a ‘club house’, but think renting it may not be worth the hassle, unless it’s very cheap. Actually, a large room or out-house in someone’s house specifically put aside for this would be better. If it had access to a simple kitchen and a washroom, all the better. Then it could be used for events such as a ‘youth club’, work shops, a library, co-ops, etc.

A community room or centre has been something we have often dreamed about here in Singapore, but space is so limited here, that it hasn’t been practical. What we therefore do instead is meet at each-others houses for co-ops, study groups, playdates, workshops and talks. Apart from these, we organise outings and larger events (usually in the function rooms of members condos) for our annual events such as buy and sell day, concerts, curriculum, geography, science, history, etc. fairs.

My input : Getting a 2,000 sq ft area towards the south side of Penang island may not be too expensive, about RM1,500 empty to Rm2,000 fully furnished. If we have at least 20 children participating that works out to only Rm75 ++per child per month. Besides, not ALL 20 kids will attend one single class at the same time, 8 hours a day. Spread out, this space could be usable. 

Large property, i.e. large enough to have a large room or outhouse in Penang is an almost impossibility as most of us H/S parents are either new money or no-money. Renting a million dollar house for almost nothing is a much more likely possibility. 

A full-day co-op would look like this :

X-hour to X-hour.

30-40% of time per week is allocated for formal instruction. (Paid teachers).

30% for peer-to-peer  / parent-led / student-led learning (Paid parent). – (Project based learning, etc)

30-40%  - outdoor activities, living skills, outings, free and easy.

 

Parents coming in for part-time pay for classes and would look like this :

Click to visit Williamsburg Classical Academy site

Or click here :

https://www.homeschool-life.com/sysfiles/member/index_public.cfm?memberid=521

Since this site is only for members of that community you can use my ID to take a look at how they schedule their classes. You can also check out the classes they organized the year before. Please sign up for the workshop we Penang will be hosting as we invite our guests to fly over and share their expertise with us.

Let’s get it started

What’s your idea of homeschooling?

I think different people are going to come up with different answers so I’m just going to throw a ball out and see what comes back.

Here’s what I’m thinking and it’s not an exhaustive list and it’s very open to discussion (when we meet face to face before August is out).

Celebrating every little step.

I recently attended a fabulous seminar and among the many messages I received, one poignant one was to ask that we ”celebrate every success, even little ones.”  I didn’t realize how important it was to acknowledge ourselves and to value our efforts and contributions. It’s really about appreciation and gratitude. Not only do we take life, others and occurrences for granted we often take ourselves for granted as well.

The reason why it’s important to celebrate our successes, no matter how small, is because what (you) appreciate(s), grows. Literally! We’re not just talking about the value of real-estate or the interest rate on our mortgage! –  Let’s imagine two identical pots of the same plant being given to two different neighbors. Neighbor 1 appreciates the gift. Neighbor 2 obliges you and does not reject the gift outright – you know, to give you face and not to appear rude. Fast-forward 3 months later which plant is more likely to thrive? Which gift will grow? The one that was given to someone who appreciates it or the one who was given to someone who forgot about it the moment they received it from you?

I’d like to encourage everyone reading this to celebrate 2 successes :

1. that you have a beautiful child that chose you to be his/her parents.
2. that you have come upon the awareness that you need an alternative way of thinking about learning / that you are already involved in alternative learning.

I’d like to thank some people who showed their love and support even if it’s just over the internet for the ideas propagated over this blog. In recent days we’ve received 3 very encouraging comments, one from Mabel Ong on It Will Grow as It Grows and two more comments on More People Need to Get on Board.

All these individuals, including those of you reading this, have contributed in one way or another in attaching the idea of a homeschool co-op in Penang in the minds of a dozen people or more. If this was conception then all of you are the nucleotides of a DNA as well as all the parts that make up a cell. There’s no conception yet – just ovulation! So let’s appreciate this fact – that the co-op is in ovulation and let’s celebrate the fact that everyday we’re moving closer to that possibility of conception and birth.

Sometimes, just like conception and gestation,  it requires a period of time to elapse before we can see how our “shot in the dark” will pan out. The workshop KV and Wai Leng organized at the Lake Club some time back was such a shot in the dark.  I didn’t get any feedback on the event. Not until a few weeks ago!

Little drops fill a bucket – so let’s celebrate every small success you make in your path towards a better and more meaningful parenting and learning experience for your child.

Thank you for always taking the time to read and giving your imagination and thought vibration towards such a co-op in Penang one day – in whatever shape and form it takes.

To your parenting and life success!

It will grow as it grows.

From someone who wrote it on Penangcommunity@gmail.com

……. just out of curiosity, I saw a banner for a Homeschooling Academy on the fence of St Nicholas’ Home.  Is that in any way related to the homeschooling center that you are discussing to set up?

I’d like to take this opportunity to make it very clear that the homeschooling “center” (FYI, this center can be mobile) which discussion was initiated through this blog is a co-op and thus not an individual endeavor nor a private entity therefore I  (Sloane here) cannot be credited for planning or setting anything up.

The co-op is something that is going to come together because a bunch of parents are willing to make it happen. I’m just the messenger. And I’m only the messenger because I have a thick face and bullet-proof robe that I had borrowed off Chow Yun Fatt now that he’s no longer a monk.

But seriously, though, I’m the messenger only because at the moment I seem to be the best person to take up this unenviable task of getting people to organize themselves. First of all, I’ve spent quite a lot of time in Penang. Some of you are just returning, some of you have only been here a few years.

More people need to get on board.

I met the founders of LBS in their first meeting in years. They had taken a break from the H/s initiative because the author, Wai Leng,  had had a third child. The meeting was held at a Buddhist Center in Kota Kemuning, Shah Alam. Until today I still consider it a miracle that this Penang woman had managed to find her way to the middle of nowhere using a series of modes of public transport from Penang to Shah Alam in one single day. And we know how unreliable both Malaysian signs and public transportation systems are. The meeting was attended by less than a dozen parents. Each of us paid some money to contribute to the cost of the meeting. I forget how much. At the end of the meeting I told KV, “Look, you need to do these kinds of meetings frequently and all over Malaysia. We’ll email each other. You’re coming to Penang next and yes, bring your books. It’s hard to find them in bookstores here. More people need to get on board.”

I hosted the next meeting in Penang at my then-center which drew just over a dozen Penang people. And as KV and Wai Leng and I became more acquainted we started discussing what else can we do to support other parents like ourselves? At that time I had offered my 2,000 over square foot well-equipped learning center (library with both teaching resources and hundreds of children’s books, piano, dance studio, air-cond classrooms, pantry, bathrooms, cabinets, furniture, rows of shelves, drinks machine, etc)  to any homeschooling group in Penang for no charge. The h/s movement then was young, none of the parents that attended the meeting that day never came back.  Nobody took up the offer to use my center. (My poor PR skills….sigh.)

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Bringing our dish to the table.

This blog was begun to initiate a conversation about the setting up of an international level co-op (schoolhouse) by people who live in Penang for people who live in Penang.  The chatter about a non-sectarian, non-religious, non-political homeschool schoolhouse has been going on for more years than most homeschoolers have had children. The founders of Learning Beyond Schooling had mulled over the spectrum, shape and model with their KL counterpart, David BC  Tan (considered one of the pioneer all-out homeschooler in Malaysia, now with grown children) dropped it and then picked it up again when we became acquainted a few years back.

What I can share with all of you is that there is no model, at the moment, that Penang can adopt wholesale. I particularly liked the moral of  story that I heard at a seminar a couple of weeks back. In the story it says each of us has to bring our own dish to the party at the Global Pot-Luck Party of Life. I think that’s the same for us here in Penang. Each of us has to bring our talents, gifts, abilities in all forms and shapes and the first step is to talk to each other about what we want out of it, what others are looking for, what we can do about that.

For those not familiar with organizing a pot-luck party, here’s how it goes : The organizer (let’s say me) says, “Hey, we all need to get together, at this place, at this date, and everyone brings a dish.” Next thing that happens is that each person starts talking to their friend or the person next to them and say, “Hey, what can you make? Do you think this dish or that dish would go well?” And so the conversation goes back and forth between 2, 3, 4 people etc and the interactions multiply exponentially.

Today on the Malaysian Homeschooling Network Group on Facebook.

An expat parent living in Penang posted this today on the MHsN :

I hope this is the right place to post this. I’m about 1 to 1 1/2 years away from H/S-ing my daughter. But I’m curious about the prospects of starting a ‘Co-op’ for H/S-ers in the same area. I would love to hear what you guys think about this, + or – . How would it sit with you guys, if we were to rent a villa and make it into a hang out place for our kids? Open 5-6 days a week, may be with an employee to take care of the basic chores, may be not. A place with a nice yard, 3-4 rooms, a kitchen, broadband connection, some furniture… etc, what ever comes to mind. A place where the kids can socialize and learn from each other. we could all pay something towards the rent and other expenses. The left over could be used for buying stuff, taking field trips, food, taking the kids out to movies, etc. Is that something that anyone would be interested in? Is it something that’s already happening and I don’t know about? Would love to hear your opinions. Thanks

 

I would like to hear what the rest of you think.

By the way, I’m about to post new updates on the visiting Williamsburg Classical Academy. We will be having a 5-day learning camp again in December, this time with the homeschoolers that are flying all the way from the US to join us and share their experiences as teachers, students and part of a community network.

Until then, hope to hear your comments on this post.

- Sloane Mak

Preparing for the first meeting.

Hi,

The focus of 21PLC is not to teach you how to homeschool but to become a collective effort on setting up a co-op of international standards, staffed with competent teachers with actual strategies for exit exams into formal tertiary education if that be the choice of a family.

However, 21PLC can serve as a resource to point to people, networks, who can supply you with the information to make informed choices about each family’s homeschooling design and model and what works for each, how and why.  21PLC can also serve to organize workshops, talks, gatherings, support, etc.

21PLC is not a religious-based entity but religion as a subject can be organized by groups of parents with the same faith.  For clarification, this is the first inclusive, non-sectarian, non-profit, non-prescription, non-politically motivated, homeschooling / unschooling group in Penang with the focus on, “Ask not what your country can do for your children, ask what you can do for your children while being in this country”.

All other so-called “homeschooling centers” are for-profit, tuition type schools with a completely different academic standard and vigor than what 21PLC hopes to achieve.  (Whether or not the for-profits make profit depend entirely on how well they’ve marketed themselves.) All other so-called homeschooling centers in Penang are Alpha-Omega franchises. While there is nothing wrong with them 21PLC will exist to fill the need of the community for higher, more diverse standards and quality of learning.

21PLC is a co-op, which means standards are agreed upon by parents, costs is shared and thus lowered and work is equally shared in the spirit of community.  Parents can get involved from 10% – 100%. .

21PLC also serves to mention the needs of special education and highlight the inclusion of special education / intervention learning with regular / gifted learners in the long run.

As such a 3-part conversation will be held during this school holidays to garner the opinions of stakeholders.

(1) Please RSVP name, ages of children, contact number, by emailing : Penangcommunity@gmail.com

(2) Please prepare a list of questions. The conversations need some kind of structure.

(3) Please bring material to make notes and note future questions.

 

Penang Homeschooling Meeting : 21PLC

Penang Homeschool meeting :

Part 1 : Tuesday, 11am to 3pm.

Part 2 : Thursday, 11am – 3pm.

Part 3 : Friday  : time pending.

Venue : Tanjung Bungah / Gelugor.

Venue : please email penangcommunity@gmail.comBy invitation only. All Malaysian Homeschool Network, 21PLC members and their friends welcome.

Children and maid allowed at venue. Please bring food / snacks / toys.

Charges by donation / co-op. Share cost of rental of house.