Giving Up?
(I wrote this post back in July, but only just now published it.)
Funny how giving it up seems so hard. The hours of tedious research. The aching and wondering if I was good enough — a good enough mother and a good enough teacher. It should be so easy to remove that burden.
We decided to homeschool our daughter two years ago because I know in my heart that no one can teach her as well as we can teach her. I still believe that is true.
I wanted something better for her — something better than the factory-like schools that churn out relatively similar and mediocre test-takers. I wanted her to be able to play and dream and run outside any time she wanted to. I wanted her to question and argue and be commended for it. I wanted her to wake up each day after sleeping as much as her little growing body needed and feel refreshed and eager for the day.
When she attended public school for kindergarten and first grade, she was just a baby. It was hard to wake that warm, snuggle baby every morning when the sky was dark and cold and tell her she had to get up and GO and follow directions for 6 hours. Not only that, but she wasn’t learning anything. She already knew it all. She was forced to sit and endure the boredom of waiting for other people to learn to read. And when she did get interested in a topic, she was told when she had to stop studying it, no matter how much she wanted to continue — to go to the next thing on the schedule. The incorrigible schedule. The clock that ticks and heaves and whispers away moments of opportunity.
The clock moves so fast these first years of life. Childhood is so precious and fleeting; why do we expect our children to behave as robots so early?
Here I am now, faced with the thought that I am going to have to put her back in school, just when we seemed to be hitting our stride. Yes, the last semester was hard. My workload suddenly quadrupled and I was reeling with how to run a business well while homeschooling her well at the same time. I couldn’t be so spontaneous any more. She had to wait for me to get to a stopping point before I could help her with a question she had. She was frustrated that we couldn’t read the history lessons together any more.
Then, the work grew even bigger. I couldn’t turn it down — we didn’t really need the money, but I’ve learned that you don’t always know for certain when you will and won’t really need the money. We could save it — or use some of it to put her into a great private school that would appreciate her uniqueness…
But, now, here I am, facing the actual worst case scenario. Our dreams of a private school evaporated in the midst of religious tests and wait pools. Homeschooling co-ops are more trouble than they are actually worth. Putting the amount of effort it takes to take part in a co-op would be better spent toward actually homeschooling at home.
I cringe at the thought of putting her back in public school. Not because the school we are zoned for is bad — on the contrary, it is quite good and many friends we know who go there are mostly happy with it. It “performs” well compared to other schools when it comes to those tests and rankings.
But, I know in my heart that this school is not right FOR HER. She needs creativity and ingenuity; sensitivity and delight. She needs excellence.
I know that I can’t give her all excellence all the time. But I CAN give her a sense of self-creation and exploration.
We tried tests a few times during homeschool. They made her nervous and unsure and caused her to second-guess herself. She knew the material, but would falter on the test questions. She disliked the idea of answering questions “wrong”.
But when we were just discussing topics — having a free and natural conversation about how things worked or how they appeared — her assumptions weren’t knocked down as “wrong”… they were merely explained away with the logic of the topic at hand. When her science experiment hypotheses “failed”, she wasn’t crushed at having been wrong; she was fascinated and intrigued by what reality showed her.
I stopped giving her formal tests on a regular basis. I just assessed her as we moved along, making sure she understood the concepts.
At the end of this past year, I decided to have her take the 3rd grade SAT. My thought was that she needed to at least have been exposed to a standardized test at least once, so she’d have an understanding of how to take one. But I made sure to emphasize over and over that there were no right or wrong answers and that it wasn’t pass or fail. I couched it in terms of “assessment”.
She wasn’t nervous when she took the test. She scored 99th percentile in language and reading and 91st percentile in math and science.
She is smart.
She will be fine, won’t she? No matter where she goes to learn?
She told me at age 6 — in first grade — that she hated school. HATED. How can a school do that to a child so young, when learning is naturally a joy?
Can I work full time and give her the attention she needs? I don’t know unless I try.
Can going to public school give her the attention SHE needs? I can say with almost certainty: no.
She is outside and beyond the status quo. I want to try to keep her there.
