Most validating conversation that I've had about homeschooling? It happened this weekend at a baby shower.
To set the stage: three women around me 1. A mom with a kid at a progressive public school here in the city that works hard to create a positive social/emotional environment, but has a reputation for being academically mediocre 2. An incredibly gracious woman who works for the DOE who kept an understanding and open-minded smile on her face throughout the conversation and 3. One of the most articulate, sharp women I've met -- she heads up a not for profit in DC. We were all balancing plates of brunchy food on our laps.
It all started when I asked the mom what she thought of the school her child is at. As she outlined some of her concerns, I slighted the DOE. At this point I didn't know that the gal to my left worked for the DOE. I love moments like that. This started us on a path where I pointed out some of my concerns about the public school system: space/over-crowding issues being murderous; money usage being slippery (this was connected to charter school issues); and from a misguided attempt to create accountability, school funding/teacher advancement (or job security) being based on test scores, thus creating a disproportionate amount of emphasis being placed on tests, ergo creating a stale, even damaging environment. I wrote that smart-alec entry the other night about "gifted" kids when I was feeling particularly cranky, and it's been bugging me because it's wrong... If I had let my idea bake a bit further I might have pinpointed my gripe to being not that "gifted" kids are bored, but that they seem to have unfairly swiped the monopoly on that excuse. Everybody is bored at public school. Bored, but stressed. And that is a suck-tastic place to be.
I can track my most inspiring school moments to creative strategies that my teachers were allowed to try out. Instead of the bulk of our time being machine-like precision and memorizing formulas/key words we explored ideas and units as a class community, and that sense of adventure helped us feel like everybody belonged, and most of the time it motivated us (hard to quantify, I know). If an idea sparked something the lesson plan was left behind and we ripped out huge rolls of paper and started creating, or the teacher set his lesson plans down, perched on his desk and engaged in an authentic conversation until it ran its course. We were like Wendy, John, and Michael; Bilbo and the dwarves; Ron, Hermione, Harry, and the rest of the Hogwarts students; August and John Will; James and the enormous insects; kids of the Mysterious Benedict society; Dorothy, the Scarecrow, et. al... (Note: fiction's place in school, in fact authentic library time/time to explore literature, is dwindling, dwindling... though once all the homework is done every night, the kids are given the prescription to "read for 20 minutes -- books at your level only, please!").
Anyway, when it's an adventure you have a role and an innate understanding that the PROCESS is as valuable as the goal, so you are motivated to keep moving forward through all the obstacles -- be they giant spiders, or books that are a level beyond your current ability, or dyslexia -- because if you are moving forward you're still earning the process part... even when the goal part feels kind of unattainable. And you fail, but because you keep moving forward you also have small successes... and sometimes they can't be quantified. And sometimes they can, and should. And at the end of your adventure you realize that the kid who doesn't read as well as the next kid was the most polite and encouraging, and the kid who bombs every spelling test is the most clever with strategy -- and all of these attributes are valuable. All of them. Let me write that again: ALL of them. If kids are at school, or about school for most of their waking hours shouldn't kindness and integrity and compassion and cleverness and sense of humor and pizzazz and ingenuity factor in somewhere? We can say it does, but when the bulk of the day is standardized for the sole purpose of a number on a spreadsheet it's just a long march forward -- not an adventure. Kids know what we value by how much time we give to it.
And our leaders. Our leaders... They weren't bored and stressed. They weren't regulated into keeping the marchers in line and moving forward toward the horizon. They were treated like LEADERS, and they were passionate. And we felt it. The teachers now are having to work so blasted hard to fit in their passions and creativity while also jumping through hoops. If we want stellar teachers, why don't we pay them more and give them better benefits, so the basic theory of supply and demand (because so many bright people will want that pay-off) will enable us to choose the best of the best. Now somebody is going to mention the union component -- how hard it is to rid a school of a slovenly teacher... I know. It's a mess. There aren't easy answers. I'm not trying to imply that there are easy answers. But because I am a product of those brilliant schools, I believe that we can, and should keep moving forward to find some answers...
I'm really not positing that the system in it's entirety is equivalent to the meat grinder from The Wall. There are talented, inventive, sensitive people working to make a difference. Teachers who are figuring out how to fulfill all the requirements while still creating thriving little villages of learners. Smarter people than I are trying to address the need to create a balance of accountability and consistency while also empowering teachers so they can inspire our kids. I know this. This gives me hope, and so, while I didn't ramble on at the baby shower like I just did here for those last three paragraphs, I did say:
"Hopefully, the pendulum is about to swing back again. The system will more or less right itself..."
And that is when the brilliant not for profit woman came into play. Apparently, she is very concerned with the way things are going, and she doesn't feel like the arc is finished with its treacherous curvature. And won't be in time to help our children. She thinks people need to step up and fight for a change. She even suggested that by homeschooling this year I was one of those stepper-uppers. She said that by choosing to withdraw from one of the basic tenets of society I demonstrated my belief that the system is egregiously flawed.
We talked about how there are many that are dissatisfied, but because of time, resources, etc. they don't have an option to show their extreme dissatisfaction. Like any good leader, she talked about the need for an ongoing dialogue -- between those who choose homeschooling, and those who choose private, and those who are involved in public school. In short, there needs to be thoughtful, inclusive, creative education reform.
It was then that I mentioned those great teachers that I had. And guess what? I wasn't blowing nostalgic smoke, she had the same experience! And guess what? She had that experience in an affluent neighborhood... and mine, ummm... wasn't. This is huge. So much of the excuses for the problems in the school system are blamed on the differences between the two ends of the economic spectrum... And yet, we saw a glimmer: we were speaking the same language though we had come from very different backgrounds. Maybe there really can be equitable answers that service the entire spectrum. Maybe there are basic truths that can, when not suffocated by politics or special-interests, be freed.
Maybe I'm a stepper-upper.
At a baby shower, where the atmosphere is charged with hope and excitement for the future, I was inspired. Maybe there are answers -- the creative kind that spark further adventures, not the standardized kind -- and maybe our little pull away from the grid has helped the movement toward those answers.
...There is a life about to start... la-tah-da-da-da-da-da-dah (Do you hear the people sing?)
Our family is excited for Les Mis to open... Can you see me standing on the barricade waving my tattered flag? (Ha. Those of you who know me well, perhaps even remember me as a clumsy cheerleader, just saw me topple off the barricade after hitting myself in the head with the flag pole...)
