Truth in Glam Rock (#8)

Have you seen The Race to Nowhere?  Do.  It’s your homework. 

My kids sat in school from 8:30 am to 3:10 five days a week.  They had one recess that was 20 minutes tops (yes, mothers stand behind trees and time the recesses… a topic for another time).  They had gym once a week... 

“Mom, can we go to the park?”  

“Not today – we should get going with your homework.”  

(Because otherwise when are we supposed to a) bathe b) have dinner together as a family c) practice piano d) read books e) do a flippin' chore f) play with toys to wind down...?  Riddle me that.)

Kids should not have homework before middle school – and then it should be minimal, preparatory for legitimate (but reasonable) homework in high school. 

Tell me to read with them, have them write letters to pen-pals, suggest math games, whatever… but homework?  Dumb.  In the inspired words of the oft-quoted Twisted Sister – we’re not gonna take it.

Number eight on the list: NO FREAKIN’ HOMEWORK. 

(I took the picture above when I was volunteering in the kids’ library last year.  Made me giggle.)

Easy Process -- Like Cheese in Plastic (#9)

Having now provided the solid beginning of a libel suit by spewing about the DOE (disclaimer: it was my lowly opinion only!), I will say this: the Office of Home Schooling has been nothing but brilliant; it is the smirking magical jackalope that most mere mortals never catch a glimpse of in the land of the DOE.

My calls have been promptly returned, the director of the department is kind when I speak to him, everything is efficient/redundancy is avoided, the paperwork is straightforward and easy, and the handwriting on the envelopes is wedding-invitation-beautiful (true).

Number nine on my top ten list of reasons to home school is: because the process is simple.

Beginning of Top Ten Reasons for Home Schooling (#10)

Our family appreciates the public school that The Boy and The Girl have been going to. They have made sweet friends.  The teachers have been smart and professional and kind.  The principal and vice principal are savvy and tenderhearted. There are parents that volunteer their guts out.  There isn’t a scrap of hyperbole when I say that it was hard to walk away from the school.  We are hoping that next year when we start back there will be spots, but NYC is a crazy-mean beast when it comes to public school placements.  Knowing that there is a chance that the offspring will have to go to a new school when we get to the other side of this is the hardest part of the decision.  

I did speak to somebody at the Department of Education (DOE) in the Office of Enrollment and asked if my kids could return to their current school and the answer was optimistic, but non-committal.  When parents have asked me if that worries me I answer that I made the call to the DOE as a matter of course, I didn’t really expect to feel helped.  Guffaw.

As a parent active in the Parent Association for our school I have received emails, attended public hearings, and participated in meetings that have left me a trembling shell of a woman.  The NYC Department of Education's service to the community is about as valuable of a service as snake oil.  

Surely there are creative, hard-working, and ethical individuals associated with the DOE (if corporations can be people, surely the DOE… actually, no… I can’t even make a joke about it).  However, the overall DOE experience makes you want to scream: HUCKSTER at the top of your voice and strike out with your handbag swinging.

Number ten on the list is having a break from The Institution.  

The Hobbit says, "Yes," to Home Schooling

“Let’s go to lunch.” 

An invitation.  I think that’s usually how things hatch. 

A quick flashback that I think illustrates a lot:  I’m about done with graduate school and in a bar (Sprite for me – has to be said – I can never blame my poor performances on being inebriated).  We are a party of three – myself, a friend, and our 20^th-Century British Literature professor whom I respect a great deal.  We are celebrating/mourning the conclusion of our final semester.  A homeless man staggers in.  Stumbles into a table; knocks down a couple of chairs.  His hands are wrapped in long, trailing dirty bandages (hand to heaven – can’t make this stuff up), and he’s carrying an enormous bunch of gladiolas.  He looks around.  He walks over to our table and holds the flowers – stems tangled with his bandages – out to me.  My friend’s face across from me – the disgust I see there adds to my embarrassment? confusion?  own disgust?  There’s a nothingness while I sit mutely with one hand on my empty glass.  Our professor touches me on the arm and says softly, “Say, ‘Thank you.’”  I reach out and take the offered flowers and say too loudly, too crispy, “Thank you.”  He turns and walks back out the door.  I sit there with a pile of flowers on my lap and my professor concludes the most important lesson she ever taught me, “Always say, ‘Yes.’  Every great story exists because something is presented, and the protagonist says, ‘Yes.’”  

My style of acceptance is often about as fierce and/or elegant as Bilbo Baggins, but I have tried to remember what she taught me.

Of course it was easy to say yes to a lunch invitation. It ended up being the first of many such outings with a lovely, insightful, smart mom at my kids’ school.  What was our central topic?  Home schooling.  We had different viewpoints, but unbeknownst to each other we both had had these little eggs forming.  Note: it’s important to mention that watching somebody else’s egg form does a lot to form your own egg. 

From those meetings came my concrete reasons for home schooling.  

End of Phase 1 -- The Forming of the Egg

(And thus concludes our end of phase one.  I'm a blog-neophyte, but it seems that inherent to blogs is a linear, chronological style.  A day unfolds, an event happens, a new skill or secret is discovered, and it is documented and shared immediately.  And then a new entry is born and that old one effortlessly slides into the regions of yesterday. Once our school year starts, that is a formula that will work.

But before our school year starts, before the blog becomes a machine, I wanted to somehow show how we arrived on this threshold.  I wanted to explore the organic chaos that existed first.  

And so these first five entries were attempts at reconstructing the beginning of my decision-process, before I even realized that a decision was on the horizon.  With rambling sketches, an attempt to recreate the randomness, the self-analysis, the themes that looped back around, the what if moments, the rationalizing, the encounters, the phrases that people said that felt true, the self-centeredness that buoyed me into thinking that I have something unique to pass on, the dark pathos that comes to muck up such elation, and the hope that any mistake can maybe be unmade, because organic things usually just change -- they don't break.    

Before there’s an egg, there are just the elements – proteins and minerals that line up, that come together.

What came first?  The chicken or the egg?  The answer I heard that I appreciate for its succinctness is that it had to be the chicken, as an egg is just a probable chicken.  Something realized is worth discussing, while probabilities… well, there are just too many of them that float around in the soup of our existence to give them much thought or energy.

So a little egg formed, was even decorated... and it very well might have stayed as a lovely little "maybe someday...," but when held up to the light we saw that there was something alive in there... so hatch it did... On to phase two.)

Lockstep

“Boys, you must strive to find your own voice.  Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all.  Thoreau said, ‘Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.’  Don’t be resigned to that.  Break out!”  (From Dead Poets Society)

We visited St. Andrews in Delaware about a month before our kids were out of school.  We were on a road trip and The Dad mentioned that we were not too far from it, and so we stopped.  It was serene and every bit as beautiful as it is in the movie Dead Poets Society. 

I don’t often like to wander around places when it’s not clear whether or not it’s permitted. I don’t particularly like that about myself, and I’m sad that I seem to have passed that on to my offspring.  The Boy kept asking if we were going to get in trouble and The Girl was hesitant to stray too far from our car.  I have indeed instilled in them a respect for rules.  And I often wonder if that’s what I really want.

“Run,” I told them when we got to the courtyard where the lockstep scene takes place.  “Run. Jump.”  They were happy to obey, but then I realized that even though they were laughing, they were still obeying. 

“Actually.  Just do what you want.  Okay?  Do what feels right.”  

One Year

It started with Pale Male the red-tailed hawk (please use that link I just provided – for the love of all that’s decent don’t just randomly do a Google-search using those words… I’ve made that mistake – and by golly-golly if I’m going to be subjected to those types of pictures, I sure as heck don’t want “pale” to be part of the equation).  Some friends of ours invited us to go to the Conservatory Water in Central Park where, with binoculars, one can watch Pale Male in his nest. 

We were hooked.  From then on we cheered when we spotted a pair of mourning doves in Prospect Park, high-fived when American Coots came to The Lake, and could have been pushed over with a feather when we spotted a Black-Crowned Night Heron a few yards from us one day when walking home from school.  And let's just say that my mom at a Paul Anka concert had nothing on me when we actually saw Pale Male up close.  I’m somewhat blasé about celebrity sightings in this city, but when the photographer confirmed what The Boy and I guessed (Pale Male!  On a low branch right over The Boy’s head!), I gasped and grasped the forearm of the photographer to keep my swoon from becoming a concussion.  We had become birders.  Not particularly good birders, but enthusiastic and grateful birders.

We joined an Owl Prowl in Queens, and it prepared us for the lows that come with the highs and the need for constant vigilance (The Mom and The Dad saw the owl, but the kiddos were too busy stamping their boots in the snow in an effort to keep warm.  I think they learned the necessary lesson: poor blood circulation cannot trump devotion to the watch).  

We educated ourselves at Belvedere Castle.

We attended EagleFest at Croton Point Park along the Hudson River and learned more than our noodles could contain about birds of prey.  While standing in line for one of the presentations I chatted briefly with a charming boy. I totally cringe every time I’m that adult from The Little Prince, and yet nine times out of ten when I'm talking to kids their protective lenses drop over their eyes and they mentally make their escape as I start in with the lame adult questions.  So, yes, I asked the boy where he went to school.  He shrugged and said, “Places like this.” Another rare bird spotted – a home schooler. 

                                                                                                  ********

We also watched the movie: The Big Year.  I’m not sure what movie critics had to say, but our family enjoyed it.  A big year: you make spotting birds your top priority for one year and see how many species you can find (on the honor system)… and in the process discover what your life priorities are. 

How many birds, how many adventures, how many insights can be found in one year when your school is everywhere?