It’s always my hope that homeschooling — contrary to expectations — brings us closer to the “real world” and gives the kids more chances to do “real work.”
Of course the world of visiting grandparents or spending hours drawing is real, at least as real as the world of the desk. But what I look for is opportunities to participate in the wider world in some meaningful, uncanned way — something that hasn’t been cooked up “for kids.”
This is harder than you’d think — most people just don’t know what to do with a teenager who’s available in the middle of the day, other than ask them to babysit. (Which mine does, BTW . . .)
This was basically the overflow of the massive collection of crates.
In any case, we got a chance yesterday. Our parish has a commitment to “sacred arts,” meaning that we host multiple exhibits throughout the year. Next week the biggest one we’ve ever hosted will begin. There were crates on crates on crates to unpack, display hardware to assemble, and lots of signage to set up.
A man said “I have job for you” with some kind of European accent, handed us a screwdriver and a hex key, and put us to work. We spent two hours at the back of the church putting together signs, while a team of workmen hung giant paintings from iron bars along the sides of the sanctuary and the artist herself moved among us, giving further instructions. My daughter, who balks at unloading the dishwasher Every.Single.Day despite it being her job for the last several years, approached this fiddly task with delight and a surprising level of focus.
Sweet rewards.
I wish I had time to write the essays in my head about the impact of getting a behind the scenes look at the world of a working artist, not just for the aspiring teen artist but for non-artists who think that art just happens without skill or labor. I’d like to talk more about homeschooling as life, not just preparing for life.
But in reality I really want to avoid letting weeks go by before I post again, so that will have to keep percolating. Just take my word for it — we had an inspiring afternoon that made homeschool a teen seem a little less crazy. We fell into this little gig almost accidentally — surely there are more. I was so delighted with our good fortune and her good work that I only laughed when she told me that she “forgot” to order her massive Mint Condition Cooler as decaf. (And she bought it with her babysitting money.)
I’m doing a photo-a-day challenge with some friends on Facebook. I think the “challenge” is daily posting my crappy-ass snaps when they are posting their MoMA-worthy shots and not giving up in despair and humiliation.
I can’t make it an exercise in improving my photographic craft, which is nonexistent, but I have been trying to make it a mindfulness exercise, looking for interesting moments of each day and not try too hard to stage them. (Except the self-portrait. That gets a few do-overs before going public.)
It was in fact so bright on our ride to the lake that I was sure we’d get into an accident with a car, but we made it anyway.
Yesterday’s theme was “bright.”
After being quarantined in the house because of whooping cough and excessive heat, a bike ride in the cool of the evening was a like a dream. We stopped and took that photo before going around our lake, so we wouldn’t have to stop along the way.
I have terrible balance, or else I would have loved to snap pics of our trip, which is comfortingly predictable.
We hit the lake by walking our bikes past several large houses, some of them the most expensive real estate in the metro.But soon we’re biking past scruffy shoeless families fishing on the pier and the weird characters who hang out in their lawn chairs next to them. As we start around the south side of the lake, there’s a tiny beach where the windsurfers take off. Someone is always hauling a board off his or her car, and someone’s always sitting on the beach next to a board, staring out at the water.
We pass the parking lot for the south swimming beach, not really visible from the bike path, and soon we’re with the slackliners, ubiquitous at every park in the metro. Always there are about 4 guys and 1 girl, each of them looking like a model from an REI catalog. Always 1 girl, no matter how many guys. I like to think that she could drop kick their asses across the lake if needed, and she’s never ever slept with any of them, despite many opportunities, because, you know, eww. How do you slackline with the guys after that?
Then it’s the beach volleyball pits, with grills and lots of groups of young people practicing their setups in the grass while they wait for a court. If the slackliners are REI, the volleyball kids are Abercrombie. In high summer, the log rollers will be somewhere down there too, not far from the old mansion turned into a museum of electricity and magnets–how cool is that?
Coming up the east side there’s a soccer field, and as we round the corner towards the north beach I always think that the playground equipment looks like that cool, old equipment that’s fun but likely to lead to both tetanus and a severed femur. Across the street is one of the oldest social clubs in the city, Then the canoes, and then you can see the paddleboarders moving meditatively through the channel between the lakes. A man had a dog sitting at the end of his paddleboard. The dog looked mighty unhappy to be there, and I wondered how far from shore they’d be when the dog decided to take his chances and jump off.
The hill is next. It doesn’t look like a hill when you’re walking. I’ve learned to count how long I feel I’m really making an effort in order to get past it. 20 seconds maybe? And yet it’s 20 seconds of “oh god my lungs my legs oh crap a baby stroller is about to break any momentum I’ve gained oh am I gonna make it,” and then of course I make it because it’s 20 seconds. There has to be a metaphor about life in there, but I’m not going to reach for it right now.
After that we head back south, past the pavilion with the restaurant, which makes me feel like I live in Disneyworld because my lake is full of happy, smiling people relaxing, staring at the lake, and enjoying life with a fish taco or ice cream cone.
From there it’s the sailboat launch, our favorite swimming beach, the little kids’ playground, and the we’re watching for our exit. We stop and drink water, squint out at the sailboats and windsurfers, then push our bikes up the hill in front of the Zen center before riding home. I feel like I’ve experienced nearly everything I love about our state, town, and neighborhood in a few miles’ ride.
As we rode the last few blocks last night I was trying to calculate how much longer an evening bike ride will be feasible – not much, I know. But then the ice skating starts.
After five years of homeschooling, on my old homeschooling blog Red Sea School, I had to admit that I had made mistakes. You know those mistakes that veteran homeschoolers tell you about but you brush them off because, whatever, you’ll figure it out? Yeah, we made them. We made them good.
I made a list, one for newbies to ignore and wizened old experts to laugh at. (Of course laughing openly means you have to own being wizened and old, so laugh at your own peril.) It’s actually a pretty good list — check it out.
I meant to get around to listing 5 good things too, but life happened. As we kick off a seventh year of not going back to school in the fall, though, it seems like a good time to list 7 things I think we’ve done OK with, in no particular order.
1. Staying Close
When we started homeschooling, people who asked why we did it were in for an earful. Luckily someone in our first year modeled for us the brilliantly simple answer, “Because we like it.” And we do. We like being together, especially if being together means bumping into each other between reading books, listening to music, taking an online class, or playing at the park.
I realize now that in another five years Violet will likely be off to college — maybe even sooner. Before that she could be spending a year abroad. Yes, time with your babies is precious. Time with teens may make you question your decision to ever become a parent, but it is equally amazing and irreplaceable. Yes, you can spend time with teens without homeschooling, but doing it this way is still pretty damn cool.
2. Staying Loose
You just don’t know how the day is going to go until you get there. You don’t know if the math curriculum you bought is going to be terrible, or the schedule unworkable, or the book irresistible. I do like making a plan, but I like it because I feel it frees me up. When I see all the little blocks of activity that need to be accomplished, all mapped out, its so much easier for me to move them around in my head or even delete them when needed.
Just this morning I got up early to shepherd the girls through a more structured day of “doing school stuff.” When I came down the stairs ready to start, an eerie sound greeted me, and we spent the next half hour doing this instead:
3. Staying Young
Not me, sadly. But my kids. When my homeschooled niece, now a PhD student, was about the age of Victoria, I remember thinking that she was oddly mature and immature at the same time. Except by immature what I really meant was unsophisticated, in a good way.
As Violet begins the teen years, it makes me happy to see that she’s as good at making up pretend games and playing them as she ever was. Of course sometimes she is too cool for school, and of course she rolls her eyes at my pathetic ignorance about popular culture now and then. But by and large she finds most of pop culture “gross,” she is genuinely puzzled by the clothes sold to her age group, and she has little interest in a “boyfriend,” something kids start in 4th-5th grade around here.
No doubt this puts us in danger of wearing the socially stunted homeschooler label, but as I look at young adults like my niece and nephew, now grown up, witty, and surrounded with friends, I don’t worry.
4.Sticking Our Necks Out
Just making the choice to homeschool sometimes feels like you’ve started waving a big red flag at the Running of the Bulls. Suddenly, everyone has an opinion, and it’s hard to know just how much to share about your own views without alienating people you care about, let alone nosy strangers. Too often people think your enthusiasm for what you’re learning or doing is somehow an implicit critique. We started homeschooling after realizing that our older daughter would need to skip several grades to make traditional school palatable, or even tolerable, for her and that was something she didn’t want to do.
We needed the support of others in the same situation, but there was no way of finding those people if we stayed in our comfort zone. We don’t have to answer nearly as many questions these days, and I’ve learned when to stick to my knitting, but I’ve also tried not to be too shy about our interest homeschooling specifically as an option for profoundly gifted kids. It’s helped me meet a lot of great people and find very cool opportunities, and it’s given me the satisfaction of helping other parents and kids many times over.
5. Sticking With It
“Yes, we’re still homeschooling” is the e-mail user name of someone on a local homeschool list. There are days when I hear that question — “Still homeschooling?” — like someone else might hear, “still married?” Why wouldn’t we be? And there are days when I want to set my children on the curb for the next passing yellow bus. Sticking with it is hard. But it’s the only way to get it done. And though I have blown it and threatened the end of homeschooling a time or two, by and large I think our six-year-and-still-going commitment has made the girls feel more confident about being homeschoolers, too.
6. Playing Hooky
We are really, really good at this. I am a master of “just 15 more minutes” when there’s a juicy conversation happening at the park, assuming “master” means able to stretch 15 minutes into another 60. I love a good play at the Children’s Theatre, or a week’s vacation in the early fall, or a midday concert, or a stay-in-your-pajamas-and-make-cookies day. Homeschooling can be intense, in the way that everything in our house can be intense. Some days you need to show that schedule, and yourself, who’s really in charge.
7. Taking It One Day at a Time
Much as we love homeschooling, we never say never. There’s an arts high school in our area for just 11th and 12th grade — could that be an option for Violet? My girls are so different from each other, and from who they were last year, and last week. Beyond that, education is so different from what it was last year: who knew everyone would be talking Coursera and Udacity just 12 months ago? Where was Khan Academy when we started? We deal with what works now and trust that we can handle tomorrow when it comes.
One day at a time also means that when one day goes bad, homeschooling isn’t a failure. I admit, I could do better. But so far bad days — really, usually a bad couple of hours at most — haven’t scared us totally off. Days will try to run together, but starting fresh when the sun comes up is pretty much a requirement. Today is when we officially celebrated our “first day” of homeschool for the year, which means trying to get up a little earlier and getting some stuff done before meeting friends for an ice cream social/not-back-to-school party. But really, it’s just another day of learning and hanging out with friends — just stickier.
I also found that blogging was thing we did right in the early days, and as I said the other day, I’m hoping it will be a help again. So what surprising serendipity to see the first homeschool high school blog carnival today. It was especially fun to see some familiar names on the roster, from the years when I was so much more active in the homeschool blogging world. I’m hoping for some more good conversations to launch on the next six (or more or fewer) years.
An only child with a genius complex and a flair for solitude, I spent the time normal children used for things like fun and play filling notebooks with schemes for clubs, small businesses, and theatrical presentations that were fully realized only in my mind. One of my most detailed plans was a step-by-step DIY manual for becoming popular in 8th grade. Only now is the irony of feverishly writing in notebooks as a springboard to the homecoming court clear to me.
Of course the joke was on those fun-havers when my incredible devotion to organizing the future led to academic awards, PhDs, and any number of leadership posts for groups and institutions who seemed to share the secret motto: “Blah Blah Blah, is it time for donuts yet?”
No matter—efficiency and a smug sense of superiority are their own rewards.
Doing it all with my trusty Franklin Planner, 2 coffee mugs, a diet coke, and lots of post-it notes.
I dare say I was at the height of my powers when we decided to homeschool. Leading a large urban parish through a strategic planning process, managing the publication of several reference volumes each year, coordinating multiple subcontractors, and planning fundraisers were all tasks easily managed with a toddler on my knee and a 1st grader off to school. My trusty Franklin Planner and I could do it all.
The year was 2006 when that started to change. “How do you do it all?” people asked. “I don’t,” I would say. “I am dropping balls left and right.” Slowly I extricated myself from my many posts and activities. The homeschool world, naturally, gave me plenty of volunteer and leadership roles to substitute for my former life, but over the years I let those go as well.
This has caused me great consternation over the last several years. “When will I get it together? Where did that planner-toting powerhouse go and when will she come back?” I can only hope, at this point, that she’s gone on to a better place.
The truth is, she wouldn’t help us much now. My girls are 13 and 9, and after almost 7 years of homeschooling I can verify: you can plan your curriculum, but you can’t plan learning, and you really can’t plan life. When children are 7 and 3, every outing to the beach is a grand adventure and every sprinkle of the glitter jar is an expression of creativity. My 13 year old, however, has been doing high school work for almost 4 years now. The fairies she’s been drawing over the last 10 years have evolved: sometimes they are busty creatures with embarrassingly short skirts, other times they look like they’ve just stepped out of a bar brawl.
Just a few years ago I would have been allowed to share a fairy drawing here.
This was not my plan, and increasingly it’s not my life. I can’t organize her into a notebook any more than I could scribble my way to a prom date.
If I hadn’t learned this lesson, our attempts to “start school” this fall really drove it through my head. Violet is on track to take 2 AP exams and possibly a SAT subject test this spring—because she’s done high school work so young I feel we need some external credentials— so we needed to get started early so she’d be ready in May. Victoria has been eagerly anticipating starting an Online G3 class since last spring. But there were the houseguests to play with. And a trip to the state fair. And a lot of Doctor Who to catch up on before the season premiere. And suddenly now there is a Japanese class online. Oh, and someone, maybe several someones, turned out to have whooping cough. By the time we got to that last wrinkle, I was starting to feel a lot less irresponsible for not having the year planned. Having dinner planned was victory enough for one day.
When Homeschooling Was Adorable
As a writer I’ve never planned. When outlines were assigned I did them after the paper was finished, and no teacher was the wiser. (Actually, that was a great learning process for me and I still recommend it.) I think I’ll be approaching the second half of our homeschooling years the same way. We’ll do it, and then I’ll write it down. I’ve been inspired by semi-recent discussion of the dearth of homeschooling-high-school blogs to get back to blogging—it was a great way to connect with kindred spirits in the beginning, and though so much as has changed it may still be a good way to encourage each other to the finish line, whatever that may be.
Because so much has changed, I’m in the process of changing blogs. Which is probably a terrible mistake, but being a “successful” blogger has never been a big goal of mine. Red Sea School was so much about starting the adventure of homeschooling, finding our feet in the PG world, and raising two little girls. I don’t feel I can wrestle it into where we are now. I named the new blog “What Real World?” because it’s a question that has come up regularly in our lives: “What use is art/music/literature in the real world?” “When will you go back to work and join the real world?” “Why do you prefer a god-in-the-clouds to the real world?” and of course “How will your homeschooled children ever adjust to living in the real world?”
The Inescapable Reality of the Now
To that last question: I honestly don’t know. But I’ll try to write bits of it down as we find out.
We’re on vacation, and we watched a lovely little documentary about birds and birders in Central Park. Knowing that the film can be selective about its subjects, I still couldn’t help feeling that birders are an inherently more charming, patient, curious class of people than nonbirders. I even liked Jonathan Franzen better after seeing him here.
You would think — I would think — that New York’s Central Park is all sparrows and pigeons, but it plays host to hundreds of different species of migrating birds. As one of the birders observes early on, the birds are incredibly cooperative: a pack of a dozen birders can come upon a bird and expect it to stay there for them to observe.
The bird photography is beautiful. As one birder observed, the birds are like brightly colored ornaments in the trees. The detail on some of the feathers is astonishing.
This young birdwatcher was adorable, smart, sweet, and wise. I hope someday she rules the world — she’ll do a good job.
We watched on HBO — I don’t even understand how media access works these days, but you can at least find out more about it online.
My daughter can draw. I mean, she can really draw. We can imagine all kinds of cool things in her future: graphic novels, comic books, video game art, illustration.
But we all know what happens to kids who grow up doodling in their chemistry notebooks and dreaming of being an artist — life happens. The day job becomes the career, and art becomes a hobby or maybe just a spectator sport. While the high school football player sits on the sofa with nachos and ESPN, the high school artist goes to museums and browses the art supply store. I know how I’d rather spend the afternoon, and I can’t even draw, but still . . .
This was the story I heard, anyway, and I’m sure there is a lot of truth in it. But I also know that when you put all your energy into weaving the safety net and writing Plan B, Plan A withers a little.
So while Violet was gone we set her up a little drawing space. Apart from the practical considerations of stopping her contorting her body in weird ways to draw in really uncomfortable places, I hope it tells her that someone takes her art seriously, and that she can take it seriously too. I hope it’s one more concrete way we let her know that in this house we value creativity, art, and the love of making stuff at least as much as we value AP and SAT II exams.
Are we preparing her for the real world? In twenty years, no one will even know where to find her SAT II scores — and between us, no, she won’t remember calculus — but what she does at that table will still be with her.
After spending the morning thinking about what kind of impact I — homeschooling mother, writer of obscure things — might have on the world, if any, I found in my Facebook feed a tribute to someone who made an enormous difference for so many people.
Todd Kolod was an early childhood educator: he taught preschool, and he taught parents of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers about surviving and thriving in those first five years of parenting and beyond.
The article describes him as a legend. How does someone go from preschool teacher to legend? Or rather, how does someone stay at preschool teacher and still become a legend? I can’t imagine it happens often.
Growing up as a strong student, ambitious and motivated, and now being part of an education community, I know that growing up to have a career in preschool education isn’t legendary. Smart kids who become successful adults are professors, doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs; girls who want to be mothers become preschool teachers.
Many of the families in Todd’s classes were successful in just that way. And then again, many of them weren’t: the Rondo site where Todd taught drew from St. Paul’s poorest neighborhood and its richest. Parenting is a great leveler: no matter where you came from, you were there because you needed those other parents, and Todd made that kind of intentional community happen.
He did it over 30 years, which means he must have reached thousands of families. Some children who by now are having children of their own.
I loved finding this story, because it reminded me of those sweet years when my own children were in ECFE. They were too young to remember Todd now, but I remember those days, even though they seem far far away. And it’s a great story of someone who could have been an unsung hero.
When I think about people who’ve done “great things” with their lives, or just people who have done well-known things for which they are paid large sums of money, I’m not inspired to do great things myself. I’m inspired to get on Facebook and give up on great things, because it’s too late, or I’m not important enough, or I lack the skills.
When I remember Teacher Todd, though, there’s something about the humility and the calm he brought to every encounter, with every parent and every child, that makes me want to try harder and do better with what I’ve got.
Could it be a sign of perimenopause that just seeing that Studio
Ghibli logo in the opening credits of a movie makes me tear up?
Or is it just a symptom of the period of parenting we’re in, our girls
still childlike but obviously older, older, OLDER every day?
Not too old (never too old?) to look forward with great excitement to
The Secret World of Arrietty, another Ghibli film with a brave and
resourceful female protagonist, beautiful attention to visual detail,
and a gentle spirit from beginning to end.
There are so many things I love about earlier Ghibli films that are
present in Arrietty, which I will try not to spoil here. I love the
magical realism, the way the natural world is realized with such
loving precision that the magical elements—the little people, the cat
bus, the bath house of the spirits, the creaking house of Howl—seem
real too.
I love that there are girls at the center, that every Ghibli movie I
can think of passes the Bechdel test. I love the friendships that
don’t quite rise to the level of romance but are still true love.
I really love looking over at my girls in the dark theatre and seeing
them already looking back at me with big grins, silently communicating
“Isn’t this awesome?”
When I saw a scene in which a character moved in and out of a shaft of light, a number of times, it was like hearing a musician enjoying the opportunity to play a particularly beautiful passage, adding grace notes to the repeated sections, and I could feel my older daughter, next to me, watching.
She is nearing 13, already taller than some of my adult friends, and she sits in the movie seat with her animal hat, her Taylor Swift t-shirt, her Ugg boots, every inch a young teen. She had just told me the day before that she wanted to learn how to create light effects in video games, so I know she was watching that shaft of light doing something in that artist brain that is nearly inaccessible to me.
I wanted to go home and redecorate the attic just like this.
While she was at a sleepover later in the week, our younger daughter demanded to watch Totoro again, and soon afterwards we watched Spirited Away. We’ve always said she’s just like Mei, and she has embraced that image for herself.
In those movies too, the world is a magical place but nothing is more magical than clear water, tall trees, or a fresh ear of corn. No world is more beautiful than the natural world, but, Miyazaki seems to say, it takes a child’s eyes to see it.
Cross posted from my homeschool blog Red Sea School.
What Real World? 