What the heck just happened?

Suddenly, I find myself the mother of three children in school.  How exactly did that happen?

Sometimes these things happen when life just flows- opportunities come along that seem too good to pass up.  I had looked at the Montessori Kindergarten at a private preschool, that was originally going to be affiliated with the Charter school, in April.  I decided that it wouldn't be a good fit based on the teachers and Justin's learning style, which didn't seem to fit into their way of doing things.  So when the kids got into the lottery, I didn't bother to register.

Well, over the summer a few things happened with the Board of Directors and a new Principal/Director was hired as well as all of the teachers.  I know two people on the board and kept up with the goings-on at the school.  Everything seemed to be falling into place for the school so in August we decided to look at the school for Elle, because we felt she needed to be around more kids every day her own age, and because she needed some formal instruction in math.  We were falling further and further behind in the curriculum because it didn't fit her.


Justin I was on the fence about.  Over the summer he basically became a hermit, got tired of going places and doing things, and developed panic attacks whenever we were out and there was a thunderstorm.  I looked into a few things that didn't seem to fit, and resigned myself to homeschooling once I looked at the waiting lists for a few schools, and eliminated schools that weren't going to work for him.  I had bought all the curriculum at the homeschool convention over Memorial day weekend, so I had all the materials, just not the motivation to teach them.

I knew that I was looking at an upstream, uphill climb until Eric changes jobs and gains a better schedule.  I need to be alone so that I can think during the day, and plan and organize.  I had stopped being able to stay up late at night because I was so exhausted from taking care of three kids all day I just had to go to bed.  Eric was equally exhausted from working at the biggest hotel in the company, impressing his bosses with his hard work.

It's not that I don't get homeschooling.  I get it.  I understand fully now why people do it.  It has completely changed my life and the way I look at things.  Having three sparkly, full of life kids in the house broadened my horizons in ways I could never have anticipated.  The world looks totally different through a child's eyes.  Everything is new.  Curious children discover magic in the mundane things that adults take for granted and forget to look at every day, like a family of sandhill cranes in our driveway, or a snake in the pool, or a sunset.

I have been "interviewing" homeschoolers for a very long time.  Talking about curriculum, how they do what they do all day... being involved in La Leche League puts you in touch with homeschoolers from the first meeting.  My co-Leader in New Orleans was a homeschooler of seven children.  The closeness of her family always amazed me, how the bigger kids just took care of the little ones.  I have tried to cultivate that in our family, Elle and Justin play very well together, and Miles was starting to take part in pretending.

So I guess you could say I have always looked at it as an option for us.  What I don't think people get is the point of homeschooling.  The point is not the curriculum you use, which I finally figured out is supposed to be tailored to each child.  My friends would look at me like I had three heads when I asked what I should use for my kids, because it is individual to each child.  What works for your kid may not work for someone else's, or even for your child's sibling.

The point of homeschooling is family unity in an increasingly isolationist world.

Back to that in a moment.  We enrolled Elle in the Charter school in the beginning of August.  We found out Justin had a spot as a sibling the day before school started.  I had told the director that he has issues with transitions, but I think he underestimated what I was talking about.  Just getting him to school is a battle, and the first week he had a very hard time.  By Friday though he had adjusted to the routine, and this week he did very well.  Miles started preschool too, so I now have a lot of time to think, sleep, and read, and decide what my next move is.

What is disconcerting to me is the immediate breakdown of our family unity.  Drop two kids here, one kid there, and I am thrust back into the adult world, which now seems terribly boring.  The kids are in separate classrooms.  Montessori does a good job of promoting multi-age classrooms, but with homeschooling, kids are exposed to all ages, babies on up to the elderly.  Homeschoolers live in the community and learn through their interactions with all ages.  They learn through living out in the world.

Now that I have done it, it's much like what happened to me in Iowa after I read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma.  I never looked at an Iowa cornfield the same way again, and I was surprised when I would see a farm with free range animals on it.  Now, when I look at a school, I see kids behind a fence.  Lots of kids, playing only with kids around their age.  Kids stuck in a building most of the day, learning from textbooks.  Homeschoolers learn through all of their senses and through experiences out in the world.

When I first heard homeschoolers' rhetoric, it would make me laugh.  First, freedom to learn whatever you want, not what the government tells you to learn.  Well, that's true.  Once your kids go to school, you lose the ability to influence lesson plans.  If the school wants to teach your child Death Ed. when she is five, they can (yes, that happened in Iowa).  If the school wants to teach your child Creationism and the Big Bang theory on the same day, they can (last week at the Charter school).

Second, when kids are separated out from society, they lose a chance to meet and work with mentors.  Homeschoolers long for the days when children were an active part of society, working as apprentices in fields they were interested in, learning from the wisdom of adults and elderly people.  Homeschoolers believe that everyone loses when large segments of the population are invisible.  Right now, children and elderly people are shut away from the rest of us in schools and nursing homes, and the only active members of society are young adults, parents, and grandparents.

Finally, kids are too young to be separated from their parents.  I'm starting to believe this is true too.  At age seven, Elle is ready to be at school and can handle the pressures from her friends and remembers her "bubble" when people are mean to her- she "just lets it bounce off".  That's a lesson in boundaries I taught her in November last year.  I feel much more confident that she has a good character base to draw from now than I did when she was five.  I think Scandinavian countries have it right starting kids at full time school at age seven.

Some, not all, five year olds who are separated from their parents are angry about it.  I feel that five year olds need lots and lots of guidance from their parents in order to learn to get along well with others, and when they miss those lessons and rely on their peers at school, they don't always learn the best ways to cope.  Schools have a paternalistic attitude toward parents now, which doesn't help.  Talking to the teachers during drop off and pick up is frowned upon because it is such a busy time.  I find it a little ridiculous that an appointment has to be made to talk to the person my child spends his best hours with.

Many parents just accept the reality of school and live with it.  The reality today is that parents are supposed to just drop their kids off at a school, and trust that the teachers there are going to do their jobs, because communication is almost non-existent. The teachers at the charter school are wonderful people and I understand better now the challenges they face every day.  Some children will slip through the cracks though, and some just won't fit the curriculum being taught.  The problem with many schools is that sometimes you don't find out that your child has slipped through until conferences, or the end of the year.

I'm not sure what our next move is.  For now the kids are happy at the Montessori Charter school and we are going to supplement their learning as much as possible.  Eric and I both agree though that homeschooling is the best way to educate our children, especially if we keep moving.  It is the best way we have found to keep our little family unified over the long haul.  Making it work will be a challenge, I just wonder how soon we'll be in a new situation where we will be able start over and try it again.