blueperiod.

there is little sleep at sleep-away camp

When I was a kid I dreamed of going to sleep-away camp. That's where it all happened. Whatever monumental (or even somewhat meaningful) thing that was going to happen to you in your young life required a backdrop of  campfire sing-alongs, compulsory activities, demonstrations of athletic inferiority, and matching shirts. There seemed to be little to do with actual sleep.

I resigned myself to the fact that I would never experience such wonders. For one, it was financially and logistically impossible for my family. For another, it was hard enough for me to make it through the occasional sleep-over without becoming unbearably homesick. The reality of sleep-away camp was not for me, but the idea of it was so powerful that twenty years later I packed up my family and headed us off to the Catoctin Mountains. Four days of homeschool family sleep-away camp.

Adam called it Bike and Scooter World because with sixty children and paved paths winding through the dormitories and common spaces of the large camp, what else would it be? I like to think of it as My Flirtation with Communal Living. We shared responsibilities like cooking and cleaning. We ate together. We looked after each other's children. There were no matching shirts, no compulsory activities, and even the campfire sing-along got rained out on the last night, but the reality of sleep-away camp was better than the idea.

The food was better than I'd expected, too. Some people seemed to view their cooking night as a chance to flex their culinary muscles. The dishes were mostly vegetarian and some vegan. Our contributions, chosen for their ease of preparation and transportability, were embarrassing. The baked sweet potatoes and homegrown salad were too basic next to the vichyssoise. The vegetarian chili, which was hearty and flavorful at home on Saturday, was watery and slightly charred after defrosting and reheating on Wednesday. We like to think ourselves quite capable in the kitchen. We do not like to serve boring or unappetizing food. We avoided eye contact with anyone in the kitchen that evening.

The setting was lovely— green, tranquil (when there wasn't a kid flying past you on a scooter), with open spaces and secluded nooks. The weather was mild and fairly cooperative, except for two rainy nights and a brief hailstorm. And for those times when scooting, biking, and wandering unburdened by adult anxieties, got to be old—which was never for my children— there were scheduled activities. Some of the most memorable offerings were: sushi-rolling, rock-painting, friendship bracelet knotting, hiking, yoga, and the ever-popular "Capture the Flag."

There were some bumps and bruises, literal and figurative. Sol wiped out on his bike attempting a stunt on a course the children dubbed "The Devil's Pass." Luna disappeared for about ten minutes on the last day. We found her, after searching the entire camp, waiting in the van with her doppleganger. Adam deserted us for a wi-fi connection at a McDonald's in town so he could follow Steve Jobs's keynote address. It was our first day at camp, and I was a bit overwhelmed. And annoyed. My personal hurdle was shaking the feeling that I was someone's blind-date for a family reunion. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. They were all part of the same homeschooling group or had been participating in this camp for years. It's hard to keep that kind of intimacy from too-closely resembling exclusivity, but there was very little of that. In fact, I can't say when I've been around a more welcoming group of people.

There was the added bonus of being the only black girl at the party, which is not a new experience for me, but each time a surprise. (I am relearning my balancing techniques as I familiarize myself with the homeschooling communities around here. We belong to one support group for black families and one unschooling group that does not specify, but seems to attract mostly white families.) There is a homeschool family camp in August sponsored by African American Unschooling. I'm still exhausted from the last camp but am seriously considering it.

One of the great bonuses of "learning all the time" is that we are free to wander as far and as frequently as we choose. Sol said, "We homeschool, but we are hardly ever at home." This is true. Another recently uncovered truth: there is little sleep at sleep-away camp.

lead me, child

An interesting article on unschooling in the New York Times. I don't get why so many people have such a hard time with the concept of unschooling. I try to explain what we are doing in the simplest of terms and I still get things like, "But you are doing some sort of formal lessons, right?" or "But you're going to do real work when he's in first-grade, right?" I asked my sister why she felt it necessary to follow the school-model in her home school plan, and she said, "Because my kids will eventually go to school, and they need to be able to keep up with the other kids." This response helped to settle my own internal argument over unschooling. I didn't want to waste our time running in circles, trying to keep up. I wanted to spend our time, his time, learning that life is an education, rather than an endless race with no meaningful prize. Child-led has been our philosophy for most everything in their lives: nutrition, toilet training, sleep (although, for the sanity of the adults involved, a little extra guidance on this one,) the books we read, how we play... It just makes sense that this would carry over into their education.

let's not even use the word school

I have heard two things nearly every day for the past two weeks: 1) "I'm really happy we're homeschooling" and 2) "My brain keeps tricking me and even though we're homeschooling I keep dreaming that I have to go to school."

It's amazing to me that after only a week my son is plagued with the same anxiety dreams that I have at least once a week after 12 years of traditional schooling. So, that's how that experiment went. A bit traumatizing for the whole family. Oh, not the same kind of trauma that comes with living through war or being severely abused, but in his five-year-old world, given what it looks like, it's trauma none the less. During that first week that just became progressively worse to the point of sleepless nights, tear-filled mornings, and quiet hunger strikes, everyone told me to just wait it out. "Give it two weeks, he'll come around." Come around? You mean, after two weeks, his spirit will be sufficiently broken to the point where he'll stop begging me not to send him, stop crying and reaching for me as I drop him off in the morning, and stop silently refusing to eat his lunch?

I guess I could have waited for that, if I had magically swapped minds with some other person who was in no way invested in my children, and/or had faith in the public school system. But, you know, I couldn't do it. All I could do was follow my instincts; my intuition. What countless people described to me as typical behavior for kindergartners in the first weeks of school, was in no way typical behavior for Sol, under any circumstances. I've spent a lot of time with my children and therefore have come to understand them pretty well. I know what his anxious looks like. I know what his fearful looks like. I know how he responds to new people, places, experiences. I know about how long it takes him to come around. I know that that place was not a good place for him. And he knew it, too. And the poor guy did everything he could to tell us.

On Friday of the first week, his last day of school, I went in to observe and to eat lunch. It was just as bad as I remembered and worse than I thought it could be. I was thinking Kindergarten would be all playing and songs and read-aloud time. But I guess with the majority of children in preschool these days, that by the time they are in the big leagues, play becomes obsolete, a concept relegated to a 20-minute block called recess. Kindergarten, which used to be about transitioning from the homeworld to the schoolworld, with an emphasis on social interaction (taking turns, being part of a larger group, not biting your neighbor,) is now about acclimation. The programming period.

From what I could see in my few hours there, everything from the extended day (over 6 hours!) to the limited opportunities for socializing ("No talking") to the countless transitions (lots of standing line and walking "Quietly, hands behind your back" from one room to the other), everything is about teaching children how to be good students. And a good student is a very different thing from a good learner. Good students don't ask too many questions. Good students keep their hands and their bodies still. Good students only speak when they are permitted to. Good students do what they are told and nothing else. If you think about it being a good student is quite antithetical to learning.

Most people don't know how to respond when they learn that we are homeschooling. I've gotten lots of "That's a big decision," as if I didn't already know that. As if we haven't been learning and thinking about it for the past 6 years. There also seems to be a good deal of concern over how we will be able to teach him what he needs to know. You know, since we don't have teaching degrees, and Adam never even finished college. I just say we're not worried about it. I don't go into how all that is expected of him academically by the County School System after completion of Kindergarten is being able to count to 30 and backwards from 10 and the ability to identify individual letters. The child is reading and doing multiplication. And all this on his own, without us "teaching" him anything.

We are taking it one day it time. Learning as we go. As Sol observed the other day, "If you think about it, really, the whole family is homeschooling."

initial thoughts on school

The weather was miserable on the first day of school. We had a rain plan, just not a monsoon plan. Barrels of water emptied on us as we waded through small ponds on the sidewalk. Our pants were wet nearly up to our knees and the umbrellas we carried provided little shelter from a rain intent on saturating anything in its path. We were drenched and anxious and scared. I think it was an omen.

Things I don't like about school so far:

the fact that even after a week of hassle-free "practice" mornings, I ended up having to poke and prod and nag Sol out the door because, as Sol plainly stated, "I liked getting ready for pretend school, but when it's real, it's no fun."

the televisions in the classrooms, permanent fixtures, as opposed to the occasional rolling-cart-bound treat that they were in my day

the fact that they watched a movie during the rainy recess today (whatever happened to indoor recess?)

the fact that he was given a time-out apparently for "scowling" at another child who hit him (curiously this occured during what would have been known as recess but was actually the sit-still-and-be-quiet-for-even-longer portion of the day)

the fact that I know very little about what happened in the six hours that my child spent away from me today, because I was able to get only bits and pieces from a weary Sol

the fact that when I went to pick him up someone gave me a hard time because the last name on my license was not the same as his, even though I made a point of clarifying the name thing on one of the many forms I filled out (she reluctantly released my son to me)

Things I like about school so far:

Sol singing a song in Spanish on the walk home (of course, when I asked if that was something he learned today, he said, "No. I heard it at home.")

We said we'd give it a few weeks, but I'm seriously contemplating not sending him back tomorrow. It certainly didn't help matters that I listened to this interview with Alfie Kohn on The Diane Rehm Show this morning about the pointlessness of homework.

school, school, don't be late

We actually ran a new experiment this week. We imagined ourselves a week into the future, tethered to the toll of an unheard bell. The schoolbell, that is. We rose early and readied ourselves for the day; packed the nutritious lunch, donned the helmet, and scooted down the sidewalk. I needed to determine just how much time we will need to get ready without rushing, and its counterpart, fighting.

I cannot believe that Kindergarten is actually a part of our collective vocabulary. Preschool for us was this warm and fuzzy house nestled in the woods, with tree forts and junglegyms that fit seamlessly into the natural surroundings, where everyone knew everyone and the children were the center of the universe. In a place like that I could pretend that I was still homeschooling, and this was just one of the many resources of which we took advantage. That was a nice little story and then it came time to decide something for real. To register for kindergarten or to write our homeschooling letter. We flirted with the idea of sending him to this wonderful private school that was so progressive and expensive that they called themselves a farm. That was a short-lived dream. So, it came down to the good old neighborhood school which we walked to weekly in order to use the playground, or homeschooling.