All Is Grace

so, dear readers, i find myself in the midst of something of a dilemma.

a quandary, if you will.

i have several strategies for dealing with dilemmas and quandaries. some of them make lots of sense, are thoughtful and intelligent…involve seeking out wisdom. some of them are more…rock, paper, scissors-like.  my primary method of dealing with this particular quandary is research.

which looks something like a cross between seeking out wisdom…and rock, paper, scissors.

but maybe i should back up.

you see, my girls started high school this past fall.

if you didn’t know i am a homeschooling mom, well, now you do. we have homeschooled since they began preschool at 2- and 3-years-old, and i started them together, despite their 11-month age difference (which, in public school, would put them in successive grade levels). it made absolutely no sense to me to have one in kindergarten and the other first grade at the very same time while they were the only two students in their “class.” the skills to achieve are so similar, the “work” is the same, and there was never a need to modify. as their mom and teacher (and as they also had a younger brother and i babysat other children at the same time), this made homeschooling a more realistic venture.  i would call our homeschooling style “eclectic” if i had to choose a label for us…though, as a former public/private school teacher, i have had a  leaning toward a more classical teaching style. i believe in real literature, discovery learning, hands-on work, crafts and projects, and math facts. i was taught to teach in the time of “whole language”…you know, the five years that was popular before everyone decided that phonics, spelling, and direct instruction were sometimes actually necessary in a traditional classroom so that students…well, learned. but i learned all of that as i taught…so i maintain something of a balance. sort of. i think.

i don’t know.

what happened as i planned for this school year came as a bit of a surprise to me. i realized that my girls only have four years left of school. that the real requirements set forth by the state and our district’s department of education seemed very broad. and that words like “college ready,” “common core,” “tracking,” “regents,” “IB,” “dual enrollment,” and “SAT’s” were being thrown around like i should know what they meant to us. i watched an interview with Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs fame) talking about the shocking statistics involving kids who go to college and their debt and their unemployment and the number of jobs available to kids with real skills that don’t require college education. i read articles from homeschooling parents who had chosen NOT to shove their kids into college the moment they turned 17, but had let them figure out who they were and who they maybe wanted to be before they churned them into the student loan-assuming system…and then i started talking to my kids.

my kids who truly don’t have any clue who they want to be.

because, HELLO, they’re 13 and 14 years old, friends. did you know what you wanted to be when you were 13? jeez, i’m 40, and i still have no idea. i mean, where i’m at is exactly where i want to be, but…what do i want to be when the homeschooling is done?

i have not the foggiest idea. but i’ll figure it out.

and they will too. but it might not be on the cram-as-many-courses-into-high-school-so-i-can-get-into-college-without-having-to-take-any-first-or-second-year-courses-because-i-clepped-out-of-them-or-already-took-them-at-my-community-college-while-i-was-still-a-high-school-junior-even-though-they-have-absolutely-nothing-to-do-with-who-i-want-to-become-when-i-finish-my-education-with-a-degree-i-don’t-think-i-even-want-to-use-anymore.

actually, i’d like to avoid all of those phenomena entirely.

so what did i do when this school year started? well, the wise plan would have been to figure out what i thought prior to starting the school year. you know, make some decisions in, like, July. pursue them through the summer months. begin September with clear direction.

yeah. that didn’t happen. because, you see, the right thing to do last spring was to find the curriculum i planned to use in the fall for a great price, get it ordered and delivered by the end of the school year, and have everything in place before the stress of summer prep began. which i did. so…would you say, “screw the $700 i just spent on curriculum and the hours of searching and researching and planning and start from scratch weeks before the school year begins?”

let me tell you…i wouldn’t.

i bet you wouldn’t either.

so after a two-week break–a desperately needed two-week break–we started this new part of the school year with all of the same issues we faced prior to the break: everyone sick of school. everyone desperately wishing for the weekend. complaining about too many math assignments. when will they ever use this in real life (as an aside, that is the question that math teachers hate more than any other question ever asked. don’t ask it of them. you will regret it.)? don’t i want learning to be fun?? i have battled all of the same battles with my own children that i battled with my students in classrooms. i come up with two sadly opposing conclusions:

1) school isn’t supposed to be fun. it’s school. it’s work. you do it because you have to do it. get over it.
2) i am doing something wrong.

i didn’t start homeschooling my kids so that it would look exactly like it does in a school classroom. i didn’t keep them home so that i could avoid putting them in a classroom, either. i just thought that as their mom, as someone who was an educator before she was a mom, and with only three students in their “classroom,” i could do better for them than someone who had 25 students to work with at skill levels much different than my three. and i’m their mom. i truly love them and want what’s best for them…individually and as my family…and no school teacher could say that the way i can. i think elementary school was pretty great for my kids. but as we’ve progressed…they have gotten exactly what the school district has said they must have (plus a bunch of other random/fun/cool stuff just because we can. you can fit in stuff you like and want to learn when you only “do school” for 3 hours a day)…but it’s been pretty cut and dry. not like elementary school.

(i was a really good mom/teacher of elementary schoolers. but that’s another blog post.)

i think i got lost up there somewhere.

my dilemma: this just isn’t working.

and i’m looking at my kids and realizing that they have no idea what draws them. what compels them. what motivates them. the decision i made to become a teacher when i was in second grade…that kind of revelation has not struck any one of my children. and that’s totally ok. because you know what? i became a teacher and found out…i didn’t really like teaching.

that’s right. i taught in classrooms for four years after receiving a 4-year degree that says “Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education and Mathematics” and half of a Master’s program for Reading, and realized that teaching wasn’t something i actually saw myself ever coming back to do after having my kids. ever.

i wonder if i had explored teaching (other than the Students Action For Education program in my high school where i went into a 2nd grade class and graded papers for the teacher and walked kids to the lunch room and read books to them, all for two hours a week or something) before i decided to go to college to become a teacher…if i would have discovered that it wasn’t really for me? like…talked to teachers about their jobs. learned what courses i would have needed to take. watched a teacher prepare a lesson plan or sit through an observation or a parent/teacher conference…all things i never saw before my student teaching…you know, the last semester of my entire college education…which are huge parts of teaching…and the very things i hated about the job.

now, will everyone hate a part or two of their job, even if they love the job that they do? maybe.

maybe not.

so this is a blog post that’s going around in circles, but here’s the gist of where i’m at: something has to give. i have always avoided having the freaky homeschooled kids at every cost. i didn’t want people to be around my kids and think to themselves, “yeah, THEY’RE obviously homeschooled, antisocial, freakish little non-thinkers.” i have prided myself on the fact that though they speak more comfortably with adults than their teenage counterparts and they can do things (like organize a meal or decorate a cake or sew an entire costume or put together a simple engine or crochet a hat or figure out how to do anything without my help) better than their agemates or whatever…

nevermind. they’re freaky homeschooled kids. i guess i accept it. (they’re freaky in a cool way. no, really.)

and with that, i guess i also accept that if i decide to unschool my kids…with the clear understanding that that DOESN’T mean they  will go through the next 3-5 years doing nothing all day but staring at the television watching cartoons and eating popcorn…that people are going to think we’re freaks a little while longer. i get questioned on almost a daily basis as to why on EARTH i would homeschool my highschoolers. why not hear, “unschooling” in place of “homeschooling?” and give my kids the opportunity to not only be freaky by go-to-college-after-graduation-because-that’s-what-you-do-next-then-rack-up-$150,000-in-debt-to-earn-a-degree-that-you-have-to-extend-with-a-masters-then-probably-decide-five-years-later-that-you-hate-your-job-and-can’t-afford-to-do-what-you-figured-out-you-really-wanted-to-do-because-you-have-so-much-debt-and-can’t-start-a-family-or-find-a-job standards, but maybe have a clue what they might want out of their lives by the end of the next four years because they have been given the opportunity to pursue something other than the textbooks they are handed to learn American History and Biology?

i don’t know what i’m going to do for sure yet. but today, that’s what i’m thinking about.

so there’s lots of researching happening in my house. article after article and book after book (there’s the “seeking out wisdom” portion). tomorrow morning, the kids and i are going to have a conversation and a brainstorming session. i should probably discuss it with my husband at some point. and i’m looking for gentle words from my friends. i say gentle because you know what? i don’t agree with all of the choices you have all made where education is concerned, but…guess what? i’m not going to jump down your throat about the choices you make with your kids. that’s YOUR job. just like my kids are mine. so i want to hear your words…but i’m going to ask you to be gentle. this is a huge decision. i’m not taking it lightly. (some of this is “rock, paper, scissors.” maybe that’s the brainstorming with my kids part?) i promise.

i know. i rambled. hehe…it’s who i am.

you should know that by now. 😉