Home. School? Life.

 

"Tips, tricks and techniques are not at the heart of education-fire is...Not merely the facts, not merely the theories, but a deep knowing of what it means to kindle the gift of life in ourselves, in others, and in the world.

-Paker J Palmer in "Radical Presence" By Mary Rose O'Reilly

"It's time that I have a say in how I am educated and it's NOT Waldorf. Maybe when I was in kindergarten but I'm not a baby anymore and it's bullshit."

My nine year old son and I are in the hammock together in our backyard, the hot July sun is pouring through our fruit trees and piercing us through the dappled shade. His blue eyes convey a deep and earnest truth, that school as he has known it has never ever been something that he has enjoyed. It took us three open houses to get him into the the Waldorf kindergarten room when he was five. He hid behind trees on the beautiful, 13 acre campus, sobbing and full of anxiety. When we landed in the classroom, with it's beautiful draped silks and nature altar, wooden toys and cozy rugs, I fell in love. Waldorf kindergarten is very seductive. As the year progressed I fell more in love with it and began to delve into Rudolph Steiner's philosophies. It was a soft landing into the realm of school for a highly sensitive child and love story for me, my spiritual nature and hippie leanings. My husband just shrugged and seemed content it wasn't public school, a place where his brother fell through the cracks and he holds many harsh criticisms of after his own experiences there.

First grade at the same school seemed the natural next step and Max went reluctantly, with a bit more ease since he had friends going with him. The first week of school he lamented that they say "God" in morning verse. Waldorf education is full of ritual, they bless their meals and say a prayer type verse before class. While not overtly religious, Steiner was a Christian and they do say God in many of the verses. Max was furious. He seems to have an inexplicable hatred toward organized religion that I can only guess comes from a past life as we are not a religious household. I pray and have an altar and he has witnessed my spiritual practice, but in this life he has not been indoctrinated into any religion.

"Why do they make us SAY that?!? I hate it!! I hate school!!"

Time marched on, Covid came knocking and school was shut down completely in March of his first grade year. Waldorf does not lend itself to distance learning. I felt panicked and unsure of what to do with the material his teacher was sending us each week. Max dressed up in a three piece suit for the first day of home learning, sat down at his desk and said:

"You can't make this like Waldorf school, my teacher is a maniac and I hate morning verse. Make it like public school, give me a test right away."

I was flummoxed and floundered through the rest of the school year at home grateful that he was already literate and unsure of the next steps to take. The world was shutting down and the collective fear was palpable. We made the decision to keep him home for second grade and my priority was not academic study  but instead to have as much outside time as possible and time with other children. I bought a math curriculum as that is where my own blocks are and as always, we were immersed in literature (we teach best that which we love). 

To my surprise, the year at home brought deeper connection between us without the battle of waking him up and getting him to school every morning. There was a loose structure but nature ruled and we spent a huge portion of our days outside. When summer came to an end we made the decision to send him back to his sweet Waldorf school for third grade. In Waldorf the students have the same teacher for 1-8 grades, so he was going back to what was familiar. I had to face my own bias against masking children in the classroom as my shy child liked masks as they served as a role of social barrier and protection. The masks came off in the spring to my relief and by then, to his as well. 

Every school morning was a battle. I would wake him up two hours before we had to leave and still,  his anxiety and resistance and rage was full on. He hated it. His anxiety would inhibit him from expressing himself in the classroom and he would absolutely fall apart when I picked him up. Raging against his teacher, the structure and any slight he felt too shy to advocate for himself.  Towards the end of the year while we were making the 9 mile morning commute to school he remarked

"Who in this society decided that it was a good idea for parents to drive their children AWAY from their home for HOURS every day away from their parents? It's not natural."

I pondered this...and it made me think about how much of our modern society is an acceptance and acquiescence to the unnatural pace of modernity. Leaving our children in the care of strangers starting at six weeks old so we can afford to feed them and pay the bills. Sending them off to school for often the same reasons and also because we have been indoctrinated to think of education as looking a certain way.

As spring progressed, his resistance to going stayed exactly the same. One morning at the breakfast table, he held up the Chinese herbal capsule I had placed by his oatmeal. He was lamenting the fact that it was a school morning.

"I feel like this capsule at school. I am contained and I want to be free" and he broke it open on the kitchen table, it's pungent powder drifted onto the wood while I sat staring at it and pondering my child's potent metaphor.

Having the same teacher every single year of your pre high school years is not ideal when you don't like your teacher. Max's anxiety and prominent Scorpio placements placed his teacher in the very black and white role of villain. To convince him that he had it pretty good at his school when he had absolutely no comparison for his experience seemed an impossible task. He wanted out and I began questioning why we were spending hundreds of dollars a month to send him to a school he has basically loathed since kindergarten . His main complaints were that he felt contained and couldn't learn about what interested him. I also know that a big part of it is his very high levels of social anxiety, deep sensitivity and feeling like an outcast. "I feel like a background character" he told me. "I'm never a main character. No one listens to me.”

 

“What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children's growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools, but that it isn't a school at all.”

― John Holt

Some people know that they want to homeschool from the beginning of their parenting journey. This was not me. I find myself here after listening to my child and how I feel being here depends on the day. After scrolling through the homeschooling hashtag on Instagram, I fall somewhere between inspired and overwhelmed. So many homeschoolers are doing it because of a clear philosophical and or religious calling. The unschoolers are keen to tell you all about the short comings of the school system and honestly I could care less. I want help, ideas and inspiration, not convincing. I don't think homeschooling is better it's just an option, a path that some people choose and some don't. There are a million different ways that it can look and I am in the process of figuring out how it will look for us. I give thanks that I found Julie Bogart, author of "The Brave Leaner" and a veteran homeschooler who educated her five kids and is president of the Homeschooling Alliance. Her book is not trying to convince anyone or rail against any particular school system, it's written to inspire and she has SO many helpful things to share.

Something that I learned during our year of second grade homeschooling was that a lot of what is required to have a connected and fulfilling experience is to let go of my own notions of what education looks like. Those notions run deep as we are all raised in a culture where school looks a certain way. We send our children off, they sit in a classroom at a desk, the teacher teaches them through a process called rote learning defined as: "the memorization of information based on repetition." If we attended school, no matter how alternative, this was the model. This is therefore what we think education is, when in fact LEARNING and education often don't go together. The iconic scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off  comes to mind, when Ben Stein's monotone voice fails to pierce the veils of  the 1000 yard stares of dozens of disconnected students. I realize there are thousands, millions of talented teachers in the world. I was raised by one. I am not one. I am a mom raising an intense, precocious child who wants nothing to do with school and am tasked with the challenge of "educating" him in a culture where that is seen as being one way.

Luckily, homeschooling in the greater Portland area means there are lots of resources. We have a math tutor and will be taking science classes at OMSI. I am looking at a language arts curriculum to help teach grammar and through it all I have no idea how "successful" any of these will be. I recently had Max's chart read by a friend who is deeply psychic.

"You need to let him educate himself" she said, "He's an artist. Whatever he does, it will be artistic and you cannot get in his way."

She told me her brother educated himself. I’m not sure if this will be true for Max. Then again, it could be spot on. It's the not knowing that is excruciating. It's the surrender to that not knowing which is the forever dance of my life.

Then there are state tests for homeschoolers, registering him with the state, adhering to rules I think are bullshit and also know are necessary to live in the world. As someone who was raised by hippies and did not get my birth certificate until I was 3 because my dad "didn't want the government to keep track of me" I know first hand what a pain the ass it was to navigate the system when I began to come of age (getting a passport for instance).

I don't know what this will look like for us and there is bigger part of me that knows I don't need to know. There is an immense amount of presence and discipline that is being asked of me and in many ways I feel grateful for that challenge and opportunity. My intention is to stay open and curious and flexible, to find community and lean into it and to treat every day like an adventure. My husband is going to build Max an art table land work on turning our downstairs area into a a school room (that will take some time). 

I brace myself for criticism and opinions and remember that the ones I need to navigate more than any other are my own. This might not work out, then again it just might. Words of encouragement are welcome and any resources are gladly accepted. If you have homeschooled, TALK TO ME. I am open, tender and humbled beyond comprehension at the task ahead of me.

Life is journey and here I am, heart slowly opening, walking it. One step at a time.

Thanks for reading.

“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.”

― Terence McKenna