My little boy is not so little any more.

Kiddo turned 7 Saturday. We had a wonderful ice-skating party at the local rink, where he takes hockey lessons. All his cousins were there and his coach even dropped in for cake and gave him a hat with the ice-rink logo on it. A wonderful time was had by all.

My mom, in her sneaky way, told his cousins to ask him if he wanted to sleep over that night. Well, hey, it's his birthday, so why not? Only after they left did I realize, the next day was Easter, and I would not be there for the Easter baskets. I missed getting the Easter Bunny picture this year, through my own stupidity and the fact that someone broke my car window and it took it all week to get repaired. And now I missed seeing him get his Easter Bunny basket, too.

Ted reminded me that it's not that big a deal, after all, it's not Christmas. Of course he's right, but still . . . . Kiddo is growing up so fast. Who knows if next year he will even believe in the Easter Bunny? Or Santa Claus, for that matter. It's only a matter of time. I felt as if I had something stolen from me.

Of course, it's not just this one incident that has got me all bent out of shape. A year ago, I would have been fine with this arrangement, because I would have felt that there were plenty more Bunny-enriched Easter mornings left for future years. Kiddo has matured so much in the past year of so. He is much less a little boy, and much more a young man. He thinks differently now, and he questions everything, and it is only a matter of time until he works out that the world is not quite as magical as we have let him believe.

Only a matter of time.

Sometimes I feel like I have started this long, slow countdown clock, ticking away the moments until the magic ends. Only, I don't know where the stopping point is. Unlike a kitchen timer, which will tell you the exact number of minutes or even seconds until your casserole is done, this timer never reveals its end point. I only know that, every time I make it though a major event like Christmas or Easter or a Lost Tooth, and it seems like Santa or the Bunny or the Tooth Fairies have survived, I breathe a sigh of relief and figure I still have time until the next event. Whenever I field a question like, "How exactly do reindeer fly?" I notice that the clock is ticking, and am reminded that it will one day run out.

That's one more reason to home school. It helps me maximize the childhood time, this magic time.

PS: My friend Heather at My Supernatural Life has a little girl who shares a birthday with my boy. Heather wrote the most lovely post in honor of her daughter Riley turning 5. Be sure to check her out.

Endless Summer Vacaation

Today I went to my son's school and watched him get his Kindergarten Diploma. Then I got to join him for a picnic outdoors. And now I am waiting--counting the minutes really--until I can go get him from school FOR THE LAST TIME.

I was so excited I could not sleep last night. I could have gone back to bed after he left but . . . Nope! Too excited!

I am done with getting up every morning at 6 am, especially in the winter time. (Although it was kind of nice seeing the sunrise on a daily basis. ) I am done with running out to the convenience store at 3 am because I am out of bread or peanut butter. I am done trying to figure out how to pack things in a lunch that will not spoil by lunch time.

No longer will every morning be a race to get ready before the bus comes. No more threats of "Eat your breakfast or go to school hungry!"

We will relax and take it easy. We will get up when we please. I will once again have my hour of morning quiet time during which I can drink coffee, exercise, blog, or veg out. We will take trips as the whim strikes us, and go to the museums during the week when they are not crowded. We will hit the beach after Labor Day and and go sledding when the snow is fresh.

I still plan to cover all the bases of proper education. We will of course work on reading, penmanship, math, and so on. But we will be doing it our way. We will be reading real books we enjoy, not some processed textbook crap. Science class is going to consist of planting things and making a nature notebook, and it will over lap with drawing. Drawing will over lap with history, which is going to start with prehistoric animals. Which of course over laps with science.

Can I tell you how excited I am right now? When I was a kid, summer vacation meant lots of free time, but it also meant wonderful trips with my family, children's theater, carnivals and circuses and nature hikes and girl scout camp and lots of educational activities. I always joined the summer reading club at the library and spent countless hours up a tree with a book. I devoted God-knows-how-many hours to my hobbies and 4-H projects. When I was 15, I volunteered to help out with my church youth group, and wound up running the office. Summer was not just a time to relax, but a time to indulge all my hobbies and interests.

I am now thinking of this moment as the start of an endless summer vacation.

Let's kick it off with some ice cream.

Things I will not miss

Only 2 more weeks of school. Then I will bring my little boy home for a good long while. Maybe even for good.

I have been walking around my house singing the tune "One More Day" from Les Miserables. I realize that, in the play, the song is the harbinger of personal disaster and failed revolution, but the spirit of it matches my feelings right now. Part of the song is about hope and courage and conviction on the eve of a rebellion that the young students hope will become a revolution.

One day to a new beginning. . . .
Raise the flag of freedom high! . . .
Every man will be a king . . . .
There's a new world for the winning . . . .
There's a new world to be won!

Tomorrow we'll discover
What our God in Heaven has in store!
One more dawn
One more day
One day more!

Here are some things I absolutely will not miss:

• Getting up at 6 am so my son can be in a classroom by 8:30.
• Getting up at 6 am no matter how late I worked last night or how horrible I feel. (I am certain this is going to put me in an early grave.)
• Breaking my neck to have my kid dressed before the bus comes. I don't even know the bus driver. Why am I letting her run my life?
• Starting into the cabinet in the morning trying to figure out what the hell I can pack into a lunch.
• Hearing my little boy telling the cats "You are a stinky booty-butt. Kiss my butt" and other gems he learned at school.
• Seeing my kid for 20 minutes in the morning, and then not seeing him until the next morning because I have a long work night.
• Having my son's teacher send home weekly reports that my son is fidgeting and daydreaming, not learning, when she and I have just heard from a team of experts that he apparently learns BEST when he is fidgeting and daydreaming.

Bring on the revolution!

My personal reasons to homeschool

So there are probably as many reasons to home school as there are parents and students who are doing it. At this point in time, I am trying to get my head around some of the core issues involved in my decision to educate my son. One of the biggies is why the hell I am doing it.

• I think I understand my son better than anybody else. This is being born out by his current school experience. He is bored senseless, and instead of challenging him, the teacher gives him pointless busywork to do. I have been to the school, asking for challenging work for him, and it gets me nowhere. I have become such a thorn in the teachers side, I am no longer invited to volunteer in the classroom.
  
• I care about my son more than anybody else. I love my son more than anything or any one else on this earth. I don't care how much a teacher loves "children" in a collective sense or how committed she is to her work. She doesn't love all those kids like she loves her own kid. Or like I love mine.
  
• I believe education should be rigorous, challenging, interesting, and inspiring. Mine was none of these things. I know I can do better.
  
• I have been to the public schools. I taught as a cadre sub in the Chicago School System for over a year. I tutored Biology 101, Anatomy and Physiology, and some 3rd grade kids for extra credit when I was in college. What I saw was
  
• 
  
• Nursing students who could not reason deductively
  
• college freshmen who could not do simple fractions or measure with a ruler,
  
• High school sophomores who were reading at a 6th grade level,
  
• 6th graders who needed a calculator for 6+4,
  
• 3rd graders who could not answer a reading question that began with "why do you think . . ." because all they could do was search for the answer in the reading selection.
  
• Textbooks are being progressively "dumbed down" and this is no lie. The difference between the book I had for Bio 101 and a later addition of the same book was just . . . astounding.
  
• I can't afford the peer pressure. My mom was the only one I knew who didn't work, and I wished she did. All my friends had cool stuff and designer clothes. I felt horribly self-conscious about not having all that same stuff, and envious of my friends, to boot. They say it's different for boys, but I'm not so sure. Kiddo wore my runners singlet to school for purple day (the first week of school when they were learning their colors) and got teased for wearing a dress. How is it going to get any better? I work, but I choose to spend my money on things we can all benefit from: books, travel, and family activities and outings. I don't want to choose between the things I love doing with my guys, and designer duds for my kid. Besides, it is going to be a cold day in hell when my son dresses better than I do.
  
• I wish I had had a classical education. And now we are BOTH going to get one, by George.
  
• I love learning new things and I want to pass that on to my son. What better way to do it that to give him hands on, everyday experience of his mother having a blast learning new things?
  
• Kids are only young once and this is likely the only one I will ever have. I want to enjoy every minute I can with him.
  
• Morals and values are very hard to teach. It will probably take me all day . . . every day.
  
• My work schedule puts me at odds with any school schedule. As it is, I have to work half shifts or else not see my son at night. Money for dancers is always tight in the winter months, so I had to work 4-5 days a week (as opposed to 3 during the good months) and as a result got to see my son awake only one hour a day--from 6:30 to 7:30 a. m. That is arguably the WORST part of the day, since we were rushed and neither one of us is really a morning person. Every day before he goes to school my son wants to know if I am working that night,and if I will be home for bedtime. Before he started kindergarten, I got to see my son EVERY morning and spend a lot of time with him before I left for work.
  
• I am just a do-it-yourself kind of person. I am usually convinced that there is no job I can't do, if only I have a book and the right tools.
  

And my number one, best reason for wanting to home-educate my child:

A customized, personal curriculum in a private setting just has to trump a noisy, crowded classroom with 30 kids to one teacher. It just has to. Anyone could do the math . . . I would hope.

What is Classical Education?

This is a "classic" view of classical education. The woman who wrote it was home schooled by her mother, and is now teaching her 4 kids. She and her mother wrote one of the most fameous lbooks in the classical ed world, in fact probably in the homeschool world, called The Well-Trained Mind. Next to Les Miserables, it is probably me favorite book ever. At least, it is one of the few I have read more than twice. I consider TWTM my home-school Bible.

What is Classical Education?

by Susan Wise Bauer

Classical education depends on a three-part process of training the mind. The early years of school are spent in absorbing facts, systematically laying the foundations for advanced study. In the middle grades, students learn to think through arguments. In the high school years, they learn to express themselves. This classical pattern is called the trivium.

To resd the rest of Susan's excellent article, click here.

Lost tools of Learning, By Dorothy Sayers

This is an oldie, but a goody. It explains/justifies the classical learning model. I love it. It was part of my inspiration when I decided to home school and specifically when I settled on classical education.
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The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy Sayers That I, whose experience of teaching is extremely limited, should presume to discuss education is a matter, surely, that calls for no apology. It is a kind of behavior to which the present climate of opinion is wholly favorable. Bishops air their opinions about economics; biologists, about metaphysics; inorganic chemists, about theology; the most irrelevant people are appointed to highly technical ministries; and plain, blunt men write to the papers to say that Epstein and Picasso do not know how to draw. Up to a certain point, and provided that the criticisms are made with a reasonable modesty, these activities are commendable. Too much specialization is not a good thing. There is also one excellent reason why the veriest amateur may feel entitled to have an opinion about education. For if we are not all professional teachers, we have all, at some time or another, been taught. Even if we learned nothing—perhaps in particular if we learned nothing—our contribution to the discussion may have a potential value. However, it is in the highest degree improbable that the reforms I propose will ever be carried into effect. Neither the parents, nor the training colleges, nor the examination boards, nor the boards of governors, nor the ministries of education, would countenance them for a moment. For they amount to this: that if we are to produce a society of educated people, fitted to preserve their intellectual freedom amid the complex pressures of our modern society, we must turn back the wheel of progress some four or five hundred years, to the point at which education began to lose sight of its true object, towards the end of the Middle Ages. Before you dismiss me with the appropriate phrase—reactionary, romantic, mediaevalist, laudatory temporis acti (praiser of times past), or whatever tag comes first to hand—I will ask you to consider one or two miscellaneous questions that hang about at the back, perhaps, of all our minds, and occasionally pop out to worry us.

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To read the rest of this article, click here.

John Taylor Gotto Essay

How public education cripples

our kids, and why

By John Taylor Gatto

John Taylor Gatto is a former New York State and New York City Teacher of the

Year and the author, most recently, of The Underground History of American

Education. He was a participant in the Harper's Magazine forum "School on a Hill,"

which appeared in the September 2003 issue.

I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn't seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren't interested in learning more. And the kids were right: their teachers were every bit as bored as they were.

Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teachers' lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there. When asked why they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect. Who wouldn't get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed upon the children. Who, then, is to blame?

To read more of this article, click here.

This is an old post I wrote for my MySpace blog. It's relevant here, so I decided to put it up.

Every morning when I put my son on the bus, a little piece of my heart breaks off and tries to follow him. But of course it can't, so before the bus has even passed my property line, the little heart-piece comes crashing down by the roadside, where it shatters into tiny shards, which get pounded into dust by the huge semi-trailers that were lined up behind the bus waiting for my son to get on.

I doesn't help that he tells me every day how much he hates school and makes up excuses to stay home. I don't think he really hates it as much as he says he does; he always has something exciting to tell me and he treasures every worksheet he brings home as if it is an original copy of the Magna Carta.

Every morning we go through the same routine. He doesn't want to get up. (Neither do I!) Then ts breakfast, getting dressed, checking homework, and I give him a reading lesson. Brush teeth, read from a science book until the bus comes.

Then the bus driver honks, I get a kiss, and my little guy races out the door. I wave to the bus driver as my son takes his seat—always the same seat, on the side facing our house, where he can see me. For one short moment, the entire word has come to a halt so my child can board his bus safely. As the bus pulls away, I can see that tiny little hand waving goodbye to me. I stand on the front porch in my bathrobe and watch until the bus goes around the curve, even though it is about 10 degrees outside. The long line of trucks that has stopped slowly grinds back into action. I think of that country song, "There goes my life; there goes my everything."

I turn around slowly and walk back into the house.