revisiting: hey kid, why aren't you in school

I remember her tiny pink cheeks and brown eyes wedged between the slats of the kindergarten play yard fence.  It was ridiculous. The kid who never let me pick her clothing, locked in a school uniform. Her fists clenched around the black bars like a prisoner.  

The kid who at 5 could scale the highest rock wall at the climbing gym, swim the length of the community pool in all strokes, and could hike unassisted any mountain trail I could do. Beach the Brave, sentenced to the baby playground for her ‘own safety’. Her classmates like freed rats climbing and screaming around a plastic mountain.  

The teacher was baffled, "I have never seen a kid dislike recess. And she argues all the time about wanting to go to the big kid playground." 

But it wasn't just recess, all of Kindergarten wasn’t making the grade. It had been a rash decision to enroll her at all. We were already leaning towards home schooling when the pressure of the school bell caused me to fold. I figured let's give it try. Who knows, maybe it will work.

In my heart I think I knew it wasn't going to; not for this kid. The devil in my ear was an NPR program about author & movie critic David Gilmour who home schooled his son, after he dropped out of high school, via watching old movies together. It sounded downright heavenly to me!

In defense of NPR, the devil, & my sick idea of heaven, none of SCHOOL was making sense.  The standing in line, the waiting to stand in line, the practicing standing in line, followed by practicing your lunch number to stand in the lunch line, hand washing in the hand washing line, testing in the test taking line, and lining up in the lining up line. 

Then there was...The first day Beach threw up in the cafeteria and no one called me. The teacher's refusal to let parents volunteer in the classroom. The social pressure the teacher tried to use to force Beach to attend full day despite our right and clear preference not to. The lack of any type of individualized learning or individualized anything else.

     

Vocabulary was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Two months in I was standing in the doorway waiting for the lunch bell to ring to walk Beach home from school.  She was the only ½ kindergartner out of 60+ kids.  I watched the teacher hold up a card with the photo of a typewriter on it, then of a ‘corded’ telephone. 

The kids not responding other than a few nose pickers twitching with jack pot green bugger joy as the teacher named the objects for them. Beach’s hand slowly moving up until officially raising of the hand occurred. Begrudgingly the teacher called on her. 

“I know that those are a typewriter & a telephone but couldn’t you also categorize them relics?”  

The teacher sighed, this battle between her & Beach 2 ½ hours old, “I suppose they could, but Beach we are working on our vocabulary not grouping things together.”

“Why? Grouping would make it more fun. The chairs with the table and rug and all the animal cards together; then we could write a story with them”.

While my ADD mind was thinking you were showing my child baby flash cards when I could be teaching her chemistry and yeah, let’s write a story- sounds fun, the last straw plummeted as the teach muttered back, “But Beach that is something kids do much later in school right now we need to all learn our words.”

Beach corrected her, “But those aren’t words they are pictures and photographs.” 

The teacher smiled, “I know you can read already but none of the other kids can.  If I was holding up words no one else would be learning and that wouldn't be fair to the whole classroom.”

You could see Beach’s internal sense of justice kicking in. The same mindset that had exploded at 2 swim instructors accusing them of sending mixed signals because one said "go bigger" and the other said "go deeper" about her butterfly stroke. I had dragged her yelling from the side of the pool. In the lobby she convinced me would go back and apologize so I took her back in. But that only lasted a couple of seconds because she started again; demanding an explanation for their inconsistencies.

Beach looked her teacher square in the face and said, “Yeah-but I already know all this.”

The teacher replied, “Then Beach, please just sit quietly so the other kids can learn.” Ouch!!

“Beach would it break your heart to not go to school anymore?” I asked on the 10 minute walk home among the wild chickens of 10th West.

“No mom,” she said gathering up pieces of fallen nature, a stick, a stone, a dead flower. “It would set my heart free.”

Her last day of state schooling was the Friday before her sixth birthday when her teacher wished her happy birthday and jokingly cautioned her not to lose all her money on her b-day trip to Las Vegas.  

Beach responded, “Don’t worry I won’t. My dad taught me to count cards.”  

The teacher smiled uncomfortably at me maybe realizing for the first time that I had allowed her (extra protection of ½ day kindergarten) the faulty assumption that we were possibly polygamist. Easy mistake: overly involved mother in a skirt, father in work clothing sporting old style Van-Dike goatee, & we being white in this neighborhood.  

“She’s good at it too.”  I offered sealing the deal: school was dead. Needless to say we didn’t return to kindergarten instead I sent a letter which the teacher said she had expected.    

So what have we done? The right thing for the right kid, who calls public school ‘do this do that school’ and is thriving at home with me.

What is home schooling like for me? Like being an atheist in tap-shoes trying to tip-toe out of a church in the middle of a prayer.  I really don’t wish to offend others by my choice or view but sometimes just our existence is offensive.  Our choice in education, like our choice in gymnastic gyms, isn't a commentary on the choices of others. It is simply a statement of who we are, of what and who we believe in.  

These days I get comments like "oh you home school because of gymnastics, that makes sense..." And I would like to clarify: we did nothing of the sort. Gymnastics was a side effect of homeschooling not the other way round. One of the largest benefits to home schooling is having time to allow your child to comfortably follow their passions, whatever they may be.

What advice would you give a new home schooling parent? 
None, everything you need to know is already staring you in the face. Up until school-age everything your child has accomplished, discovered, or learned was either taught to them by you, others in their village, or they have learned it themselves.   

Bottom line: why do we home school?  Because her education belongs to her & this is what she has chosen,  because there isn’t enough science taught in school, and because (like most kids) she is a self-directed learner who could be educated by a deaf & blind Howler Monkey.

Do I ever question it? Sure I do. When I find myself doing that a thousand beautiful images flash through my mind. Images like a little blonde Beach, naked, streaking past the window chasing butterflies through the yard in the middle of a school day.    

Beach is about to turn 12 and all the reasons we left state school behind still ring true. In fact over the last 5 or 6 years the benefits & reasons for self education have doubled.  Her school year and day follows the gymnastics calendar. We don't have to fight for early out or PE exemptions. We don't rush between school, home, and gym.  We don't have to justify the value of missing school days for travel meets or family time.  

We start back to school on Monday because that is the first day of the fall gymnastics schedule. Learning is a way of life. 

"Welcome back to school! I will be your mother. What should we explore today?"