How We Got Here, Part Two
That one time a pandemic radicalized me and turned me into a weirdo homeschooler.
I think it is safe to say that literally no one enjoyed the end of the 2020 school year. Our “homeschool preschool” had completely fallen apart, the neighbor kids were all home but no one was allowed to play with each other, and some of us were doing off the wall things like washing our groceries before we allowed them in the house (guilty as charged). Covid 19 had taken over our lives, and it seemed less and less temporary as time went on. No one was sure how it would impact school in the fall yet.
In my weekly therapy sessions (now moved to zoom) I bemoaned my lack of good options for my own child. No one was sure if schools would offer an online option in the fall yet, and if they did, what would it look like? No one was sure if schools would be able to open in person in the fall yet, and if they did, what would that look like? And a fact about me that I maybe haven’t mentioned is, I don’t have a great immune system. I had no idea how dangerous the new virus might be for me, but I did know that viruses tend to hit me harder than a lot of other people, and I was in several of the categories considered “high risk.” At the same time, my child had a complete panic response to all video calls.
It wasn’t great.
”What if instead of looking for the best option, you accepted that all the options suck?” my therapist said. “This is pretty miserable. It’s ok to admit that! What if, instead of trying to find the option that was the best you instead admitted that they’re all bad, and looked for the one that is the least bad?”
So, I tried it.
And to my endless annoyance, the option that fit the bill as “least bad” was “homeschool for another year.” But I was not going to go through what I went through for preschool, no sir! I would find a curriculum to tell me what the hell to do, follow it to the best of my ability. We would survive the year. She would learn some things… and if she didn’t, well, it was only kindergarten. I sent a message to a mom I knew who had homeschooled her own kids off and on over the years, asking if there was anything she liked for kindergarten.
She gave me three options, and again, I picked the “least bad.” It said it was “Waldorf inspired” and since we knew kids who went to the local Waldorf school and loved it, I felt fine with that. It included ideas for hands on activities and lots of time outside. So my partner and I talked it over, gasped at the price a couple of times, and pushed the “order now” button as soon as it went on sale. And when September came around, and my friends with five year olds plugged their kids into zoom for the first day of kindergarten, we began.
And to be great surprise it was… fun? Don’t get me wrong, it was exhausting at first. Just getting used to the structure of doing anything like a “lesson” every day seemed to wipe me out. And at that time, my partner and I were sharing the schooling duties! I felt I had no right to be tired, and yet I was. But over time, as we got into our rhythm, things did get easier. And then… a very funny and unexpected thing happened.
I started to look forward to our “school time” together.
Not only that, I started to look forward to my planning time.
And then, on the days when my partner was the teacher and I was supposed to be off writing, I found that I was profoundly jealous. It wanted to read the story about the letter N. I wanted to do watercolor painting. I wanted to sing songs together.
It wasn’t all rainbows and puppy dogs, we had our rough days (hey, so do puppy dogs!). Some weeks the things asked of me did feel to be too much. I started to experiment with customizing. To my surprise, it worked! As I started to feel more and more like a “real homeschooler” I started to do research. At first, I put my energy into researching unschooling, mainly because I liked the idea of giving my child as much autonomy as possible. Then, when she started to complain that I wasn’t teaching her to read, I started looking into how brains learn to read.
That winter, I think, was when I became a teacher.
I started to think of myself as an educator, and I started to take my child’s education really seriously. I stopped assuming that one day I would hand over the reigns to a “trained professional” and started looking for opportunities to grow my own abilities. And when that happened, something really incredible happened. I stopped being frustrated. I stopped being resentful. I stopped (at least for the most part) wishing that my daughter and I had less time together and started to enjoy the time we did have.
This is going to be a very cheesy metaphor and I apologize in advance.
Once I stopped looking for a finish line, being home with my daughter stopped feeling like a race. It started to feel more like a hike, and I could enjoy the scenery along the way.
Phew.
And here is what I have learned.
Public schools can be powerful. Public schools can be good! And for many many many people, public schools are the only option, so whether or not they are the best option is irrelevant. Public school teachers can be passionate and amazing educators who are working hard for the kids despite a deeply flawed system. I mean who here had an incredible teacher that changed their life growing up? I had at least three!
But public schools are also deeply flawed. The systems are often underfunded, but often in addition to that the fundamental power structures holding them up are corrupt and problematic. Most schools seem to be perpetually flying by the seat of their pants. Pandemic responses were not great! Teachers aren’t compensated fairly or given the support they need! At the same time, many teachers aren’t given the education they need to teach effectively, but are so stuck in their ways that they refuse to listen to parents, scientific research, or anything at all. Outside time dwindles, educators are forced to “teach to the test,” marginalized students are not supported, there are too many issues to list here.
I believe that free and good public schools should be available to all. I believe in pushing for that.
At the same time, I do not believe in the system we currently have, not anymore. I believe that every single child deserves to feel safe, seen, and heard. I believe that every single child deserves education that has been dismantled from earlier assumptions and recreated to actually serve them. I believe that children deserve some measure of freedom and autonomy, as well as fair and just education.
As things currently stand, we cannot make the system give that to every child. We cannot even make the system give that to some children. And so, much to my surprise, I have become a weirdo homeschooler. I have become deeply passionate about education. I may one day become a teacher of other people’s children to try to do what I can to bring a little more justice and support to more lives. But for now, I am leaning into educating this one child. Because it’s what she needs. Because it’s what I have to give.
As I finish writing this, she is on the dining room floor trying to make her own virtual reality glasses from cardboard, tape, and part of a plastic bag. She’s not sure if they will work! Today we learned about ancient Rome, practiced reading, did some work on grammar, and went for a long neighborhood walk. She made Valentine’s for a few of her friends. Some days she is half feral! She is also growing, and learning, and figuring things out.