In 2010, my wheels began turning. I’d met a women named Melanie, she seemed cool. She didn’t advertise it, but she was a homeschool mom. It was the first time I’d seen homeschooling as a legitimate possibility. People do this. Admirable, normal, city-dwelling people. I started reading.
After months of research and brainstorming, months of exhilaration and anxiety whirl-winded together, and after a Spring Break trial week, we did it: we withdrew Noah from his high-performing, so-fortunate-we-got-in charter school. We said good-bye to bright classrooms and gifted teachers. We were homeschooling. We were on our own, by choice.
Why?
Teachers. They know what they’re doing. They’re organized and researched. They offer things I can maybe do, but with the confidence of experience. Or they offer things I cannot, such as violin lessons, P.E., and theater productions.
Administrators. They pull it together with tested techniques and curriculum. At the KIPP Academy, they do what works. It’s passion-invested, praise-worthy, brilliant.
Peers. Children need peers to develop well. Childhood spats builds character muscles, in the long run. Kids need friendships.
Yet we’d hit a point where it was undeniable. We had to do this. For Noah. For our family. We couldn’t even wait politely to end the school year. We had caught vision for what could be; and we were reacting to a reality of tension and chaos.
I could talk about reading. Or diet. Or rest, physical health, character growth. They were all situational problems that required parental solution. The main point, though, is that we were no longer raising our son. Where I saw Noah having an actual need, or our family unit having an immediate need, I had to first answer to the school system. It was a huge burden, and a conflict to our home. So often, my maternal instincts clashed with the organizational demands of the school. I started to see the school, the excellent school, as a surrogate family: great for children who don’t have a mom available; imposing for a child whose mom wants access to her role.
It’s important to me that I know my child, and that he knows me. I was trying to stuff our relationship into Saturday pockets, un-doing and re-shaping the values he had picked up from the playground the prior week. We didn’t have much time together, and much less did Noah spend with his dad and brother. We were tired, cranky, frequently sick. Noah became despondent at home and school. I attributed that to fatigue, and most importantly, how as parents, we had imposed constant discipline (mostly in the form of “Hurry up”s) without the balance of affection. I’ve heard that for children, love is spelled t-i-m-e. We weren’t investing in him as parents whose love is realized — but we pushed him to keep the pace up, because we couldn’t afford to slow it down.
So that was our Spring Break Revolution. It’s been a year. We’ve learned a lot. It’s working.
I’ve lost the handy gauge that comes from teacher expectation and peer level. But I know Noah’s progressing. I know he’s comprehending our lessons, piecing the components together. As a home-educator, I’m learning about programs to introduce to maximize the flexibility we have here. History, grammar, math, reading, scripture… playgroup, choir, possibly a co-op next year. I don’t want to pull Noah away from the world. If anything, I want him to go into the world, being involved and helpful. We’re simply figuring out how to get from A to B, assessing where to place our steps so we can meet the goal.
A lady I admire, about my mom’s age, recently advised me that homeschooling is okay since my kids are young, but that high school is an important experience. It was hard for me to relate to that. Then I realized: our starting ground is drastically different. This lady’s experience of high school, perhaps even her daughter’s, is nowhere close to mine. The context is all off. I was a senior the year of Columbine. Some of my teachers were invested, some of them were careless. My family fell apart, and I crumbled under the weight of it, nearly not graduating.
My values, hardly a coincidence, are:
- Struggles are important for learning to navigate, and that experience builds character. But too often for students, too often, crises don’t just callous; they impair. Strain builds muscle — unless the strain overwhelms, and the spirit collapses underneath it. Who among us has not observed this in the present generation??
- There is perhaps nothing so important for a child as having a home base. A place to retreat, to be built up, to make sense of things, and to gear up for the next day. In Song of Solomon, this is metaphorically called En Gedi. I think children need an En Gedi, too.
- School, as a building and a culture, is not always a safe place. Physically, sexually, emotionally, and on a different thought, ideologically. School is often a safe place. But parents cannot risk the gamble of assuming that everything will be fine because their imaginations want it to be fine. To be a parent is to be the responsible party. At least for your duration, and to the boundaries of common sense. I am over-protective, my mother has said. So be it. I will not close my eyes to my child.
None of these values say that homeschooling is the right way (not everyone could, should, or would want to). They just call for vigilance. My and Jared’s vigilance, which is hardly a virtue, it’s so reactively instilled, told us we had to do this. There’s been an increase of peace since then. If impatience is synonymous with intolerance, than I became impatient with our previous family system. And not as my credit, but as my treasure, patience is easier to find now.
