The Power of Interest-Based Pursuits and Meaningful Work for Homeschooled Teens

The teenage years are actually the most rewarding of the homeschooling years. That’s what we’ve found with our four homeschooled kids, and that’s what I was told by many of the 110 families I interviewed for my book Free Range Learning: How Homeschooling Changes Everything.

Families in Ireland, Australia, India, and the U.S. described coming to this realization in similar ways. Their concerns about helping a young child master the basics or their struggles to find the right homeschooling style gradually resolved. Parents grew to trust the process of learning much more completely and, perhaps as a result, they saw their children mature into capable and self-directed young people.

Homeschooling isn’t by any means the cure-all for a culture that barely recognizes a young person’s need for identity and meaning. However, homeschooled teens are not limited to the strictures of same-aged peer culture, nor are they weighed down by a test-heavy form of education. They also have more time. This provides ample opportunity to stretch and explore in ways that can benefit them for life.

Adolescence has several pivotal elements. Two significant ones are the pursuit of interests and meaningful work. These factors are just as important for teens in school as for those who are homeschooling. But homeschoolers are freer to fill their time with what’s significant to them, and that can make all the difference.

Interest-based pursuits

Interests lead to transformative learning journeys across disciplines

In my family, we’ve noticed that interest-based learning builds competence across a wide range of seemingly unrelated fields. For example, as a preteen, one of my sons put together a few rubber-band-powered airplanes at a picnic. When they broke, he tried fashioning the pieces into other workable flying machines, which got him interested in flight.

He eagerly learned more through library books, documentaries, museum visits, and YouTube. Soon, he was explaining Bernoulli’s principle to us, expounding on the changing features of planes over the last century, and discussing the effect of flight on society.

He designed increasingly sophisticated custom models, read biographies of test pilots, inventors, and industrialists, won a state award for one of his planes through 4H, and got a family friend to take him for a ride in a small plane.

What he picked up, largely on his own, advanced his understanding in fields including math, history, engineering, and physics. It was all inspired by learning that felt like fun.

This particular passion didn’t last, but he continued to pursue his interests. He built spud guns with friends, played bagpipes in a highland band, bred tarantulas, repaired recording equipment, and tried his hand at woodworking. He wasn’t always at full tilt (never missing a chance to sleep in). Now a college student, he’s surprised that his fellow students are so turned off by learning.

Interests lead to exploring capabilities

Interests engaged him, as they do each one of us, in the pleasure of exploring and building our capabilities. They teach us to take risks, make mistakes, and persist despite disappointment as we work toward mastery. Making sure that a young person pursues interests for his or her own reasons, not those of their parents, keeps motivation alive and passion genuine. Research backs this up. Pursuing our interests builds character traits that benefit us for life.

Long-term homeschooling families know that self-directed young people really take off in their teen years. Comfortable with their ability to find out what they need to know, they often challenge themselves in their own ways. Some add ambitious schedules to previously unstructured days, others seek out heavy doses of academic work to meet their own goals, still others don’t appear to be remotely interested in conventional educational attainment but instead create new pathways for themselves.

Children, as well as teens, tend to have lengthy pauses between interests. A boy may not want to act in any more plays despite the promise he’s shown, a girl may not choose to sign up again for the fencing team just when she was starting to win most of her matches.

During these slack times, they incorporate gains made in maturity and understanding before charging ahead, often toward totally new interests. The hiatus may be lengthy. They need time to process, daydream, create, and grow from within. They need to be bored and resolve their own boredom.

Interests nurture innate potential

Decades ago, educational researcher Benjamin Bloom wondered how innate potential could best be nurtured. He was convinced that test-based education wasn’t bringing out the best in each child’s ability, so he studied adults who were highly successful in areas such as mathematics, sports, neurology, and music. These adults, as well as people significant to them (teachers, family, and others), were interviewed to determine what factors led to such high levels of accomplishment.

In nearly every case, it was found that these successful people had been encouraged by their families to follow their own interests as children. Adults in their lives believed time invested in interests was time well spent. Due to their interests, these individuals developed a strong achievement ethic and a drive to learn for mastery.

This makes sense. We recognize that young people gain immeasurably as they pursue their interests. And not only in terms of success.

Interests lead to a strong sense of self

When caring adults support a teen who loves to play baseball, study sea turtles, and draw comics, he’s likely to recognize, “I’m okay for who I am.” The interests well up from within him and are reinforced by those around him, so there’s coherence between his interior life and exterior persona. This reinforces a strong sense of self.

All of us need sturdy selfhood to hold us in good stead while so many forces around us emphasize unhealthy and negative behaviors.

Interests have a great deal to do with promoting a young person’s feelings of worthiness. There’s an enhanced quality of life, a sense of being completely present that’s hard to name but recognized by those who “find” themselves within a compelling pursuit.

A girl may love speed skating, writing short stories or designing websites. When she’s engaged in her interests, she knows herself to be profoundly alive. That feeling doesn’t go away, even when she has to deal with other tasks that are not as entrancing. Everyone needs to belong, contribute, and feel significant.

The teen who knows that his or her interests provide fulfillment is already aware that self-worth doesn’t come from popularity or possessions.

Meaningful work

Meaningful work results in engagement in community

A group of homeschoolers touring a rural historical society noticed that storage areas were stuffed with uncataloged documents, some crumbling from age. They offered to digitally scan and reference these materials with the museum’s coordinator.

Several other teens researched the requirements for a dog park in their suburb. Working with a group of interested citizens, they petitioned the city council for a permit and eventually won a grant to construct the dog park.

Another teen started a business fixing and modifying bicycles. He also earns revenue from videos of his mods. These examples from my book indicate how young people eagerly take on challenges and the accompanying responsibilities.

Meaningful work is less common in today's world

Throughout human history, teens have fully participated in the work necessary to help their families and communities flourish. They were needed for their energy as well as their fresh perspective, and they built valuable skills in the process. Working alongside adults helped motivate them to become fully contributing adults themselves.

Most of today’s young people are separated from this kind of meaningful work. They have fewer opportunities to encounter inspiring people of all ages who show them how to run a business or foster a strong community.

Now that teens aren’t needed to run a farm or shop, they also don’t get as many real-world lessons in taking initiative, practicing cooperation, deferring gratification, and working toward a goal.

Ideally, young people have taken part in real work from an early age. Many studies bear out the wisdom of giving children responsibility starting in their earliest years. In fact, having consistent chores starting in early childhood is a predictive factor for adult stability.

Meaningful work responds to real-world challenges

Although work is largely valued for monetary reasons in our society, the kind of meaningful work I’m talking about has inherent worth. Chances are it is unpaid. Through this work, young people learn that it’s the attitude brought to any task, whether shoveling manure or performing a sonata, that elevates its meaning.

Often an endeavor that’s inspiring doesn’t always feel like work. It may include establishing an informal apprenticeship, developing a small business, traveling independently, or volunteering with a non-profit.

What is meaningful work may be different for each person. A homeschooled teen may put up a shed for a neighbor, make a documentary with fellow parkour enthusiasts, perform puppet shows at a nearby daycare, help a zither club record their music, become a volunteer firefighter, assist an equine therapy program, coach a kids’ chess team, tend beehives, walk puppies at a dog shelter, or help a chemist in the lab.

Through such work, they tend to get more involved in their communities and connect with inspiring role models.

Meaningful work exposes the intrinsic value of sustained effort

Meaningful work may not always be interesting, let alone fun. It has to do with putting in sustained effort to get results, even when the hours become long and the endeavor doesn’t feel rewarding. Through this work, young people gain direct experience in making a valuable contribution. They know their efforts make a difference. That’s a powerfully rewarding experience at any age.

Learning of the highest value extends well beyond measurable dimensions. It can’t be fit into any curriculum or evaluated by any test.

It is activated by experiences that develop our humanity, such as finding meaning, expressing moral courage, building lasting relationships, channeling anger into purposeful action, recognizing one’s place in nature, and acting out of love. This leads to comprehension that includes and transcends knowledge. It teaches us to be our best selves.