For years I have immersed myself in the world of homeschooling. I read the works of Dr. Peter Gray and Alfie Kohn. I joined all the local homeschooling groups. I befriended many homeschooling families and met home educated children. As a former educator in the public school system and a mom, I have pretty strong feelings about how I believe children learn.
I was pretty convinced that I would follow this path and homeschool my own children when the time came.
But that didn’t happen.
Last January when the emails started pouring in about school registrations and when my friends began touring the schools around our homes, I joined in and began researching the schools in our area.
I was tired. At the time my boys were 5, 3.5, and 1 years old.
I really didn’t think that I could stay home and offer what I would ideally like to offer, if I were to homeschool my boys. I started to believe that my oldest, who would be entering kindergarten, would be better off once I send him away.
He would get to be with other children all day, every day.
He would have access to so many materials and resources.
He would go on field trips.
Furthermore, the schools around us are pretty great schools. I feel privileged to be not only in an area with so many high achieving schools, but also with the opportunity that I can school choice and attempt to get the school I like the most.
And the tours… well they did their job. I was sold.
So I enrolled him.
He happened to get in, by lottery, to the magnet STEM school in our district. Everyone kept telling me how lucky I was, how great the school was.
So for 6 months I kept telling myself that.
Meanwhile there was a pit in my stomach growing. I was feeling anxious as the days crept on. I knew in my heart that I didn’t believe this was the best decision for us. But I kept on because I was afraid.
The fear of homeschooling.
The fear of being tired with 3 little ones all the time.
The fear of failure.
The fear of judgement if I chose to homeschool.
The fear of my family’s reactions.
Fear of the unknown. School is known. I went to public school. My husband went to public school. I taught at a public school. I KNOW what that looks like. Alternative learning… that is completely new to us.
Fear.
And if you have read some of my other posts you will know that fear based parenting stems from how we view children, and the inability to innately trust these unique little individuals.
Fast forward to this fall and school starting. Franky was entering his 3rd week of kindergarten and each day brought more and more doubts. I understood this was a new transition for him. He went from 6 years of having almost complete freedom of choice for where we went, how he played, how he moved his body, when he ate, etc. to a pretty rigid schedule. We had to go to school every day from 8:00am to 1:30pm. The bell rang and he had to wait in line. He was told to be quiet several times throughout his day. He was told to sit a certain way, and write a certain way. Even play with blocks a specific way.
To my son who was given a lot of freedom, this was incredibly jarring.
And I understood that this transition would be hard. I also trusted that he had the tools to master this transition. He wouldn’t always be tearful at drop off. He wouldn’t always look relieved to be coming home. He wouldn’t always have a full lunch box when coming home because he chose to play instead of eating. These things would pass the more we went and the more we got used to this new state of our lives.
My mentor teacher was telling me that he could master this situation and he could adapt. She told me even though his body is reluctant to enjoy this new situation, that he does have the resilience to persevere. He is testing the waters and seeing “who am I in this new place”. He will rise to the occasion.
He will own this new experience.
But that was just it.
I realized that I don’t WANT him to get used to this.
I don’t want my son to master this situation. I don’t want him to adapt. I don’t believe this is the best environment to cultivate learning.
So I pulled him out.
And now I sit and write this out to the world because I want others to see the tornado of emotions that can accompany a situation like this. I want others to know its ok to make a decision and then change your mind.
There are no big mistakes.
I know now that maybe I needed to send him to school, and to sit in as a parent volunteer in his class, and to sift through emails about homework and chromebooks… maybe I needed to have all this happen to lead me down this path of final awareness and clarity of what I want for our family.
I have stumbled and fumbled toward this path and I am excited to see where it leads. I am hoping to use this platform, one that I previously used to spread my understanding of the RIE approach to respectful parenting, to now spread my understanding of experiential learning.
What will my days look like with self directed education?
What am I hoping for in terms of my family?
Stay tuned…