2020 Did Shine Sometimes

You know how when a blogger shares something delicious or cool they made, they start off by making you read all of the thoughts, emotions, and memories associated with the featured information? Looking for basic food prep advice? Here! Read paragraphs about a grandma you never want to meet, just to find out how to brine a bird.

Well, I'm not going to do that today. 

Here's an old bulletin board that I beautified with a piece of fabric and a whooole lot of matte Modge-Podge. 

That's it. Tired punctured cork surface made pretty and functional with cotton and glue.  I got the idea off the internet, wondered if it'd work, tried it, and it did! The end. See ya later!

Ooh, but one thing I can't help you out with: that adorable calendar. Sure, you could buy your own. I could have bought my own. But that calendar is a gift from a dear friend, celebrating hopes and dreams, realized and unrealized. You can't just put something like this in a virtual shopping cart and click "buy now." 

But, I'm guessing if you still read blogs, you know that great friendships take time. You probably also feel like time seems in shorter supply with every passing day. As I have written before, we experience time in a relative manner. If it seems like each year passes more quickly than the year before it, well, it kind of does, as far as your brain is concerned. 

That phenomenon plus my case of late onset ambition (teachering and studenting) have made the last two years feel jam-packed; even though global pandemic resulted in the closure of most things. Usual compartments enforced by a school and work schedules once defined my time. With that structure in place, I was able to accomplish a large variety of things everyday. 

After the Utter Collapse of Everything, the names of days and hours mattered less, the walls between everything faded. All of the works in progress melted into a big urgent messy pool. Suddenly, I couldn't ever rest, because resting resulted in a gnawing feeling that something important was not being done. I went almost nowhere this year, but have been running nonstop. 

Something changed that, sometimes. Every time. 

Or, I should say, someone. 

She changes everything, that's just what she does.

She's my friend, and I've written about her before. I used to spend nearly everyday with her. 

I also used to think the disease she has would be the reason we'd hang out less. Instead, our daily shenannigans were halted by a disease I hope neither of us gets. Our last school year was cut short, and this school year felt so weird without her little hands in mine. Her tugs and pulls toward interesting people and things. Her musical magic. Her insistence on right now mattering more than anything else. 

You couldn't argue with that, and you never wanted to.

Though our Anntics were less frequent, her family and I stayed determined, and regular hangouts happened anyway. 

2020's obligations enveloped one another and crowded my mind, but my time with her felt spacious and still, even when we were raising a ruckus.

All the swirling worries stay at bay for the length of a book and a song. Guilt not only doesn't gnaw, it is nowhere to be found. 

During those startlingly peaceful moments, I know without a doubt, 

This is what I should be doing now.  

This morning, I felt all excited. 2020 has been extraordinarily difficult and is coming to an end, sure. And yeah, the Modge-Podge I smeared all over my bulletin board dried and it looked great. Works well, yada yada yada.

But what had me really looking forward to today was my new calendar. I snipped the cellophane packaging, slid it out onto my bed, flipped it open to January and marked my first appointment before pinning it up. 

2021 is off to a great start already.

(all of the beautiful photos of Anni and me are the work of Xiomara Gard, of Imago Dei Photography)

Gray Seeds

 Calendula, 

                                                In all its glory.

Right?

Well, I guess you had to be there.

By "there," I mean "a balmy afternoon, exactly one year ago." So recently returned from a two month trip to Mexico that my tongue was still burning, I was happily back at work. 

By "work," I mean "hanging out with my homegirl, my partner in crime, my charge, and my best teacher." We were at her house, for afternoon homeschooling. 

By "afternoon homeschooling," I mean "hand-in-hand strolling, rolling, digging, picking, plucking, reading, ringing, singing, and sleeping." 

Life was nice. She leaned back in an adirondack, smiling as she watched me pick anything that looked like that photo above, from the calendula growing in her garden. The breeze was not like the wind usually gets around here in the afternoon. It was soft, just enough to cool us off and rustle the leaves of the maple trees towering over us. Her smile gave my heart a leap of joy, so I started singing a song I sang to her on our first first day of school.

Ha llegado ya el momento, de decir muy bien las cosas...

She smiled more. Uh oh.

Esto que me esta pasando, no es normal ni cualquier cosa.

 As I picked what once were bright blooms, and dropped dried seeds into a zip-loc, singing to her, smiling at me, I thought, "What beauty this life holds." 

 I didn't think, "How sad. Those flowers are dead." or "How sad. She is dying." 

Those were things I knew, but did not need to look at, at exactly that moment. That beautiful moment occurred like so many beautiful moments with her: accidental, and completely wonderful, for that suspended second the mind enjoys before it remembers to feel sad about probably having to say good-bye to her far too soon. 

 Eventually, I grew to expand that moment into whole school days. That was one of them. 

September, 2019. I'd say I thought we were going to spend our last school year together, before I started student teaching in September 2020. But when you hang with my homie, you don't really think like that. You don't take the future for granted, at all. It's as present as the petals in that photo. What future?

Still, I know that as she chillaxed in that lawn chair, grinning at me like we were about to go rob a bank, I let myself luxuriate in September. Why, it's just sunflowers time! Pumpkins next month! Woo! I love fall! And you! And school! And you! And CALENDULAS! AND YOU!

Just the bright things. Just the pretty things. Just the song. Just your smile.

Just the seeds: dead, dry, still, for now. But, next year...right? Won't there always be next year?

Yeah, I know, I've seen my friends in seeds before. Now that I write about it, I realize it's the same two friends who are connected to these calendula seeds. In their original school garden, grown by Shelly Bowe, they grew orange, almost coral. Here, in Anni's garden, their recessive yellow tones danced to the front of the flower company. In my garden, where the seeds I sang over and gathered last year were planted this year, they bloomed in both colors, and everything in between. 

This year, bound to stay in the USA all summer, I have been harvesting the abundantly colorful calendula blossoms, dehydrating them to bright crispy blobs that I've been stuffing in a mason jar. Hopefully, there will be enough of me, and enough of my time, to figure out infusing them and making a balm, putting to good use the rumored soothing properties of this humble sweet relative of marigolds or daisies (depending on which website you read.)

I think I could use something soothing this fall; though I do adore autumn, am thrilled to be a new teacher, and of course, I still hang with my homie just for kicks, on the regular. She is still smiling, and I still sing to her. Those beautiful moments are as beautiful as ever. I am more grateful for them than ever.

Still, as I embark on my first September at school without her, my new classroom blurs before me. Tears fill my vision and my face buckles under my mask. This moment between bright colors offers a different view, one that hurts, but I will not look away from it. 

There is value in the lessons learned, but spinning to the sunny side of things can be a dangerous compulsion. Losing her will hurt more, later, but this moment now needs its own appreciation. 

She is dying, and I am so sad about that. No school year exploits to plan for us make the finality of it stare back at me like gray seeds.

The calendula bobs in this year's September breeze, just as gently as ever. Their sunshine hues do not need to comfort me. Their light, curled seeds don't need to soothe me with a promise of next year's colorful show. Who knows who among us will be there to enjoy that? No, today was enough. The seeds, like today's smiles and today's song, are enough. They are everything.

Speaking Freely

Don't believe what all the scientists are saying nowadays. This world of ours was hotter in the 1980's. Especially that one time, when I was nine, and had to stand in line all day at Six Flags over Texas.

But misery is not what sears one summertime amusement park line into my memory, like the hot asphalt scorching my little purple flip flops. Everything else about that white hot day, though viewed through the squint of my mind's eye, was completely ordinary to me as an Okie, temporarily living in Texas. To roast in one ride line or another was a rite of passage for modern western prairie youth: a price willingly paid for the wind-whipped centrifugal, animatronic, splash-landing reprieve to come.

No, it was the sound of Spanish, being spoken nearby, that made that line, that day, stay. I could hear the two women in front of me, unassumingly, flipping sounds around like they were supposed to sound like that. A conversation, likely about mundane family gossip, hypnotized me. Probably plans for where to eat between leaving the park and heading to the hotel, danced in my ears. Impossible music. It made no sense to me, but I could tell it made sense to someone. I longed to understand them. They were enchantresses, putting me under a spell with their casual incantations.

Surprise surprise: I was a precocious and talkative kid. Sometimes, after dropping some lengthy, bookworm-fueled chatter on a glazey-eyed grown-up, they'd smile at me stiffly and ask if I had an "OFF" button.

It was a question which elicited about as much comprehension as I enjoyed that day, listening to eleventy million hours of a Spanish at Six Flags. So many words.Those were words, right? All of them? Hearing another language sounded liberating.  Like the freedom to leap out of my small world of conversations with well-known adults and their weary attention spans. Speaking outside of the comprehension of some, yet still within the understanding others. But who? Who else talked this way? Who else understood? Could I understand it too, someday?

Can I tell you another story? Just kidding, it's my blog. No "OFF" button here, just "PUBLISH."

Ahem, Once Upon a Time, two days later, back home in Big Spring, Texas, language left me out again. Some kids from my church and I were bumping along a country road in a van, on our way to another vernal tradition of my youth: VBS. (Vacation Bible School. One week of memorizing verses, gluing popsicle sticks, drinking apple juice, and singing about that "Arky Arky." Y'all know. Don't front.)

Our church offered rides to and from VBS, in the form of a van that came to each kid's house, picking us up every morning and dropping us off in the afternoons. That day, that van ride, like the Six Flags line, was no novelty.

Had it not been for my first encounter with " the N-word," my only memory from the whole week would most likely have been the devastating victory I delivered in a contest to look up Bible verses faster than everyone else. To be fair, none of those other kids stood a chance. They could all best me at any physical game, but, like I said before, words were my domain. I was merciless, destroying kids as old as twelve who didn't even seem to know which testament they were in. An inspirational poster, mounted on a large piece of cardboard and shrink-wrapped in cellophane, was my trophy. I was certain it meant great things for my future.

Such a glorious defeat of mine enemies could have outshone the week if it weren't for a freckle-faced boy, on the ride to VBS, introducing me to the language of his people.

It began, as I imagine it often must, with the exchange of jokes. Just kids, young enough to actually heartily laugh at knock-knock jokes, but old enough to want to sound like the adults we have heard nearby. A boisterous lad with a wavy reddish shag asked everyone what he was certain would be a humorous question. His blue eyes flashed as he cheekily made an analogy between the night sky and the color of ....what? What was that word? Everyone in the van laughed. I looked around, confused. Left out. Next, another camper had a similar joke to tell. And another one. Their meanings were all alike, and elusive, though the new vocabulary differed. What were they all laughing about? Of course a better question would have been, "Who were they all laughing about?"

Their sounds made sense to someone, but who? Could I understand it? I came home, attempting to replicate the words I had just heard, hoping my parents could translate them. This was my language. I should understand it. It made everyone laugh. Ever the talkative word nerd, it unsettled me to lose out on the meaning of something. As soon as my parents heard me approximating a word salad of racial slurs, they stopped me, horrified, saying those were ugly and terrible things to say. I was never to repeat them because they disrespected people of other races.

The end, right? Except that was only the beginning.

Because this is America. 

Each pair, or van-ful, of us might only understand each other, but an individual can feel more connected to a "foreign" language than her own, here. It is the strength of a pluralistic society: one where there's no official anything: language, religion, ethnicity. It means our kids grow up with a wide array of meaning with which to communicate, seek understanding, and shape new meaning.

For all its frustrating complications, this country holds, sometimes hostage, the potential for just about anything. 

Last Day of School (from a distance)

Today was our last fourth grade Zoom class meeting, so we were asked to choose and share three words with our friends, as the year ends. When it was my turn...

Hi kids, these are my three words.

Now, this sounds great, right? But maybe a little generic? And what if you change the world by going out and kicking a puppy? Maybe it's not always such great advice.

But I didn't choose these three words as advice. They're more of a reminder, something you should know.

I want you to know your power.
I want you to know that you always have, already do, and always will

Here's a math problem:

See, I get into this sometimes when thinking about how I want to

I think, but! I want to

and make it all like I want it to be!

But I can't do that.

None of us gets to do that.

Back to the math problem.

Even though adding a dinky little 1 does not drastically alter the 1,000,000, there is no denying it. 1,000,000 and 1,000,001 are different. The 1,000,000 is no more, when it becomes 1,000,001.

It is changed.

Just like every little one of you, and every single thing you do. When you pick up your little brother to watch this Zoom class, and make him feel loved and smart, you

When I slam a door, because I feel frustrated. And it makes people in my house feel stressed out, I, unfortunately

When we all show up for each other every day and do our best, through these strange and challenging times, we

So, don't forget the power you hold. As soon as you know you have it, you can start thinking about how you already use it.

And how you want to use it, in the future.

Keep reading and have a great summer!!

Who'schooling: Mae

The following was contributed by Mae (11), when asked what she'd like to share about staying home.
 
I'm here to talk about stuff, and life, and my yard, and stuff that has happened, and is about to happen.

Zelda has become calmer, since my visits to her have become more frequent. Seeing Zelda pawing at the gate makes me want to stick my hand through the fence.

And I want to be on the other side of it because she just licks my hand, and then my hand is sticky. So, I open the gate and I hang out with Zelda and sit next to Janie. Zelda tries to get in on the fun by running up to me, and disrupting the peace that is me sitting next to Janie.
 It's sort of adorable because Zelda licks Janie's eye?

My mom gave me a tiny little patch of garden, and I plan to grow tea leaves in it. Yeah!
I just received the stevia seeds. I'm still waiting on the chamomile. It's like having control over a tiny little forest, and you decide what's in that forest.

So serene, because the garden plot is next to the fence, next to which is a pretty bush that is hanging over my garden plot.

 The forest that is not yet a forest.

Okay, next is the barrel. We used to roll on the barrels all the time when we were younger, except for me, because I was 4? 3? Recently, George and I have been playing lots of games outside with Thomas. One day, Thomas said that he wanted to roll on the barrel like we did when we were younger.

It can be pretty difficult. For one, when I first started, I wore flip flops. Now, with shoes, it's much easier. Still, you're walking backwards, while the giant blue cylinder is going forward. Keep your back straight and keep glances at your feet to a minimum!

 I climb the tree much more often now that George and I have been playing more games outside. I've made myself a new throne. It's very high up, and super comfortable.

This photo is the view that I get to see every time I climb up and sit in my throne.

Throne System: There are not many throne opportunities in the tulip tree. If there is a comfortable place in the tree that you can sit in without getting scared, and it is safe, then you can claim it. UNLESS, someone else has already claimed it. Claiming it means you basically have control over that certain area of branch. So, if you're putting on your shoes when someone else goes outside to climb the tree, you can say, "Please, don't sit in my throne."

This is my closing: Good-bye. This was Mae Laszlo. Have a nice day. Wash your hands. Good-bye. Have a nice day.

Who'schooling: George

The following was contributed by George (14), when asked about what he's learned, and what it has been like to stay in our house all the time.
  
What I learned is a bunch of new stuff about math. How to translate, on a graph. And also how to dilate and how to reflect.

That was so easy!

I love this painting, and I'm happy it's hanging in the hallway now. So, I can get a better view of it.  It's so beautiful!

(by local artist, Eric Sappington)

You don't need to paint a picture to make a painting. You only need to paint what you think of.

This took me forever to make. It took me forever to draw. There were so many small details.

I am planning to make a stop-motion animation with it. I imagined it and thought it would be a fun thing to do.

Because, 

making stuff

 is fun!

Who'schooling: Thomas hi

The following was contributed by Thomas (17), when I asked him about what's it's like to live through a historically significant event, what he's learning, and how he's managing. 

There's no way to tell how it's going to feel later, right now. Because right now, we're in the middle of the pandemic.When the future arrives, then I'll know, that's what it will have felt like like to have lived through that.
I mean, during the Dust Bowl, there wasn't really time or need for thinking about the future or the history books, just trying to do your best until the dust hits. Obviously the two time periods are nearly incomparable; but it is important to be here now so you have an experience to reminisce later in life.

There's a different perspective there, obviously. And hopefully that's what I'll be around for.

Overall, the effect of the virus has definitely subtracted a lot of structure from my life. So that's been something I've had to face myself. And that's the whole theme of the virus. I mean, it doesn't really have a theme, but its significance to us poses many obstacles. Rather than a 100m dash or something you can anticipate and train for specifically, there's more of a versatility aspect to the overcoming of these obstacles.

The whole thing is kind of a reality check. But an ongoing one: Now is a time for self discipline and versatility

Before, anytime that we weren't doing school work, or some sort of work, we felt like we should. That we don't really deserve rest, like a cloud is always hanging over you casting a shadow you can't ignore. It felt like the only time we took a rest, was to do more work.

But now everything is blending into each other, because all the walls that held everything in compartments are now gone. Everything is kind of one flavor now, so it's hard to navigate and distinguish aspects of your life.

School work has kept it together, but the school work is not that engaging, I have to say. I still make an effort to talk to the teachers and pretend that what they're doing is helpful. It is a very nice thing they're doing, and it's extremely selfless of them to put up together these classes, and adapt so quickly to the confusing in and outs of the interwebs. And that's what I respect about them, and that's why I make an effort. Because I feel like I'd be squandering that if I didn't. But, it doesn't really change the fact that it's not that engaging.

 Mae has been going after those radishes, like a beast.

Who'schooling: Mom

Once upon a time, I tried so hard. With the books, and the papers, and the pencils, and the assignments, and the sighing, and stomping, and flopping with exasperation, and the crying baby, or the morningsick me, or needing to spend the morning mowing a lawn rather than battle my son's ironclad apathy about completing worksheets at the kitchen table. I did try.

Gears ground hotly in my head as my careful plans were, at best, rejected. At worst? Done badly, barely. My integrated and exciting activities were reduced to mere hoops through which an obligatory jump was half-heartedly executed. 

And I didn't even have packets.

 I was packetless. 

I'll back up. See, homeschooling wasn't my original plan when having kids. I loved school, and couldn't wait to enroll my own li'l learners, while simultaneously getting all up in the PTC/boosters/fundraisers/whathaveyou. 

Plot twist: The oldest two did not feel like playing along with my grand delusions of someday owning one of those My Kid SuperLoves School bumper stickers. They never even liked school, showing and saying so in a number of ways. I tried to talk them out of it, volunteered at the schools, backed off, pushed in, celebrated victories, tried to appear nonchalant about victories, ignored defeats, and nearly sounded like I was threatening them when their unhappiness stubbornly flared and I'd bring up The Homeschool Option.

I never expected them to take me up on it.

But they did, and we've got the blog to prove it. No need to say much more. Messy, fun, brilliant, frustrating years followed, as we learned and lived in the same sticky spot. A spot we find ourselves in, once again. 

With packets. 

And Zoom meetings, calls with specialists, and weekly online quizzes.

Across the world, millions of parents are currently realizing what I struggled to hold in my head without shame all those years: School at home, kind of sucks. It feels like a tremendous buck with very little bang, running in several different academic directions every day, while juggling a home and raising siblings/pets/corn. 

Reading friends' Facebook memes these days gives me no satisfaction. That thing I found so difficult? Really is difficult.

We are doing that difficult thing as well as we can right now, to stay ready for the fall, whatever it brings. But, these days have me reminiscing about a time when, instead of playing school at home, we did everything else, everyday, in the space created by bowing out of civil conventions.

Staying home can be the start of something valuable, something that might not have happened otherwise. That's how we rolled, for years, literally.

It is this belief that compelled me to have a talk with the homestudents,Thomas, George, and Mae, about contributing something here, soon. This blog could use some new voices, saying stuff about things.

This week, the BU crew has an unofficial assignment of the home variety: I have asked them to fill this space with their own original posts, photos, thoughts, antics, and exploits. What they're up to, what we're up against, and what it's all about.  I'll do what I do best: set the stage, rake up the aftermath, and call the authorities if necessary. See you all between things, just doing what I do best: trying to keep up.

Brainstorms: Take Notes

Welcome to the jungle, friends.

It's a shock to the system, isn't it? Suddenly wading through the sweaty mud trails of home education? Remember way back to two weeks ago, when we all thought Spring Break would be one week, and not, you know....all of spring?


If you live with kids, chances are, like us, you were just dropped into a chaotic and steamy world.

Stick close to me though, because I know this wilderness. Exactly ten years ago, our first grader decided to drop out of school during Spring Break, bringing our home learners count to three boys and a baby girl. Ten years ago, we faced the fact that we could never really do what a school can do for our four children, so we opted for something else instead.

Acknowledgement: What is happening in the world right now is not technically"homeschooling."

 It's families of all kinds making the best of an upended school year. Losing income, juggling the logistical aspects of life in something like lockdown, worrying about supply disruptions, all while suddenly having the house full of kids who are still 12 weeks away from being done with whatever grade they were just in is not a typical homeschooling situation.

Forgive yourself right now for failing to turn your home into an enviable Pinterest project during the first week of the apocalypse.

If color-coded schedules and popsicle stick systems make you feel simultaneously motivated and defeated, take heart. You're not alone. I wrote the following to act as muddy hand-prints on the tree trunks of this bewildering path. As I stumbled through backyard education a decade ago, I may have actually learned some things, or at least left a decipherable pattern of stains with my errors. Which is basically the same thing.

Spaces and Places Need Some Thought
You know the great thing about homeschooling?
We're all home all the time!
You know the awful thing about homeschooling?
We're all home all the time!

But, homeschoolers can do day trips! ehhhhxcept right now, so...

When I say we're home all the time, my emphasis is not on the "home all the time," part, rather the "we." As in, them, me, and all of our grime.

See the problem?

There's no custodial superhero at the end of our day, piling chairs in the quiet corner of an empty room, to reset the cleanliness of the floor. No, here at the BU, live spaces and learn spaces are often the same quickly filthy spaces. And the teacher is also the cafeteria lady, secretary, bus driver, psychologist, and janitor.

My advice to you, when clearly I could use advice on this matter? Um, turn Go Get All The Cups In The House! into a math game? P.E.?

This is why I try to keep most indoor learning to this monster.

No matter how hectic things get around here, I know if I clear it, spray it, wipe it, and sweep under it, someone can use it for something.

That sounds like so little to hope for, but just you wait until you forgot why you came in the room, and two people are talking to you, and holy cow, how is it already 3 pm?  Having a clean spot where someone could do a maze, or play Mancala is a lot.

Feel the Beat of the Rhythm of the Day

This one is fill-in-the-blank. You have to ask yourself, what are my beats?

What am I motivated to make sure happens all regular and on time like? Waking, sleeping, eating, grooming, tidying up, outside time, music, exercise, games, pets, reading, watching movies/videos. Even if you do it all in stretchy pants, dividing the day's hours among the things that matter most to you can make a difference in the long run.

Do you have to play all the beats every day? Of course not, but some are part of the daily song. Who among us has not tested their kids' ability to remember a little ditty called, "When's Lunch?" Seriously, how does it get to be 3 pm so fast?

It takes intention to pry apart the daily needs, making space for activities that we need in a less immediate way. For us, music is one of those activities.

As soon as I knew we were staring down the barrel of an undetermined break from school, I made these coupons to hide from the kids.

It felt so dorky, to react to a global pandemic by cutting and gluing. It felt so important at the same time. The week's concerns threatened to overshadow all frivolous family time, unless it was fiercely defended. With homemade coupons. Sure.

When the kids discovered them throughout the week, we made a plan for that day to stop everything and play music together for an hour. Three hours, intentionally carved out of a week which had us mostly focused on survival. Priorities prioritized. Memories made. And a way to go forward, like tapping out a rhythm.

Hokey Pokegogy

Look, even if you're an actual licensed teacher, you may not be qualified to teach every subject to every kid in your house. Got a teen who loved robotics? Well, sorry kid. I can sort of DO the robot, but that's not helping anyone.

How can a well-meaning stay-at-home parent, especially one inexperienced at educating young people, cover all the standards and teach all of the things? Lemme just let you right off the hook with that one: you can't. And if you try, everyone will be miserable. So give up right now.

Instead, think of what your specific gaggle of students have in common. Here, ages range from 11 to 17. We have a variety of interests, personalities, and needs in the BU bunch.

Erryday, I'm differentiatin', so when planning, I like to implement a philosophy that groups the kids' commonalities, wherever I can find them.

I want them all to put their right hand in...

Let's get schooly! Sit down, pick up a stamp, or a paint brush, or a marker, and write or create something visual.

I want them to put their right hand out...

Next, do something that is NOT focused on using hand-eye skills. Like go outside, throw, kick, climb. Scramble about in general, while grunting, perhaps.

Left hand in...

Did you help in the kitchen today? What should we make to eat? Apples on the sandwich? Well, why not! What a great idea!

Left hand out...

I'm just going to ignore you yelling "CHEESE" at a spider under the piano right now. It looks totally ridiculous, but you were just behaving like a little grown-up, making apple sandwiches in the kitchen. Maybe this has to happen after that.

Oops, I forgot to shake it all about. I always forget that.

But really, across the board, kids are Deviators. They usually need to do something different from the thing they just did. If they were just up, offer them something down next. Or vice versa. We all had fun. That was cool. On to something completely different. Shake it all about.

Wild Card! 
When teaching, confusion can be your friend. Seriously, disequilibrium is the beginning of cognitive dissonance, which is basically the first step any of us takes in learning something new. A home can be an enriching environment, without being overly didactic, if you respect the power of huh?schooling.

Picture it, you want to do a fun, hands-on learning activity, involving dirt and water and seeds. Try this: Instead of arranging everything on your kitchen table and formally inviting everyone to listen and follow and ignore your instructions, just set everything up in a space you don't mind leaving a mess for a bit and SAY NOTHING ABOUT IT.

Let the assembled items, and the weirdness of it just sitting there do half the job of teaching, by confusing your children. Trust me, it's good for them.

It's called an Invitation, and it's an excellent way to present the unpredictable. When you're confined to your little home space, with the same little tribe, disequilibrium is harder to come by.

Plus, it's fun to see what kids do as they begin to interact with items not expressly described to them. I get ideas for what to do next, by watching what they do next.

Ignore This Blog:
The educational resources and connection to be found on the internet make it well worth the trouble, in my view; but the onlines can also easily contribute to an overwhelmed feeling of inferiority in a new-to-home-schooler.

If you see another school-homie doing something cool, it's because they took a picture and told you all about it, myself included. Enjoy the inspiration, make it your own, but don't compare your whole life to another person's prettiest display window. You don't even want to know how bad I smell right now, showing off my cute little music coupons and seed packets.

In the end, your home student is in the same boat as mine, and all of their school peers. Life just took a crazy turn and we're all riding this learning curve together. As we careen into who-knows-what -schooling, decide what matters and try to make it happen, but go easy on yourself when your kid's number one accomplishment for the day was nailing. that. ponytail.

Ignore pressure to hold together a system that just came apart. Instead, turn up your senses, trust your kids, and strive for quality, as you define it.
Modeling healthy habits during stressful times is a life lesson crash-coursing us all, like it or not.
We are all homeschoolers now. 

TIONDS: Part II: The Utter Collapse of Everything

The first thing I noticed, Monday morning, was the dirt under my nails. It's not an uncommon sight in March, but I tend to do a better job scrubbing the farmwork off of myself before starting the week of workwork, at a schoolschool.

Except Monday was not a workday, nor was it a school day, though it was a weekday.

I heard the husband downstairs in the kitchen and started to fire up the mental list of expectations: The kids, me, home all day. Garden, animals, books, online stuff, music, lunch in there somewhere. Usually. The days are a blur of laundry and Miyazaki films. Yesterday, it was the towels and Totoro. Today, kid clothes and, maybe Kiki?

Did the last six years even happen?

Am I just imagining it, or did we all spend a whole lot of a long while getting up early, putting on regular pants, and leaving the house everyday? Backpacks. I seem to remember backpacks, and living life with almost no straw in my hair.

Well, the Importance of Not Doing Something turns out to have have implications reaching way way beyond this dinky little backyard blog. Learning to curb, to self-regulate, to see the value in saying "No," to the eternally soggy-bottomed desire to sink into a habit and ignore its inherent dangers: that's what I was going after when trying to get my kids to spend less time on their screens.

But now, we all have to tell ourselves no, when it comes to just about everything. No school, no work, no public places. Stay home, stay well, and stay out of the traffic stream helping COVID-19 romp around on a global spring break.

And all the screens say,

 Okay, so maybe they are  keeping people employed, connected, informed, and literally fed.

For sure online technology is making it possible for the primary breadwinner in this house to continue working, for the aspiring teachermom to keep studying, and it will be heavily involved in our kids enjoying resources provided to them by the school district.

So, what's the point of even continuing this New Year's Resolution? Is it too late to change it to Spend MORE Time on Screens?

Last week feels like forever ago, but I have a foggy recollection of life back then. I remember wanting the kids to take a bigger role in limiting their screen time. I wanted them to learn to live better by practicing self-regulation. And they did.

 And it was awesome. The end. HAHAHAHA.

Those were quaint times, when we could concern ourselves with such frivolities. Right now, we need to flex our apocalypse readiness and turn this BU out.

I type these words with grubby fingers that spread straw like it was a Thursday morning, 2013. The news came the other day: we're in for a six week hiatus. Six weeks of a life we lived for six years.

 We might just learn something.

The Importance of Not Doing Something: Part I: The Resolution

Writing is hard sometimes. I mean, not right now. Right now, my keyboarding skills can barely keep up with my usual verbosity, and writing is like uninterrupted talking. That's blogging, I guess: Think something, try not to oversay it, mash it all out on the laptop keyboard, publish, and wait to see if it made sense to anyone but me. Easy.

But when the prompt is official and external, writing is like trying to do origami, using nothing but my elbows and big toes. The result is an excruciatingly clumsy facsimile of something other people seem able to do with ease, or fingers.

That's how it was when I had to write a teaching philosophy for one of the classes I took last year. Working on my Elementary Education degree, I was zooming through an assignment until I got to "What is your teaching philosophy?"

I could have done a better job if I had taken the 15 most frequently-used words in my courses thus far, put them on magnetic refrigerator poetry tiles, donned a blindfold, picked words off my fridge randomly, thrown them on the floor, removed my blindfold, and read them aloud. The first draft was something like, MY TEACHING PHILOSOPHY IS MEANINGFUL SUPPORT STUDENT LEARNING ENGAGEMENT HUNDRED PERCENT PIAGET ACCURACY VERY LONG TIME.

Maybe not quite that bad, but none of it meant anything to me. And it was supposed to be why I do what I do for the foreseeable future of my career as an educator.

Hm, maybe I could do this thing better. I tried a trick I use sometimes, when hitting a writing block. I imagined the statement I wanted to write, in this case my teaching philosophy, as something that already existed, pre-defined. It didn't have to be a lofty goal. It could be what I've already been doing, or why I've already been doing it. The trick worked. All the jargon faded away and my real intentions stood there, clear as they always are.

My teaching philosophy is based on the assumption that the student is always my best partner in the endeavor to educate them.

Yes, it's basically "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make 'em drink." in school form. You can compel, cajole, threaten, and bribe a child to sit, and hold a pencil and paper or book, but you can't make 'em think.  They have to be down wit it, to some degree. We go together, or not at all.

Many who tried our hand at huh?-schooling our own kids read John Holt at some point in our studies. (Or, unstudies, as the case may be.) He was no fan of school, insisting that the expectations imposed by a formal learning environment destroy a kid's natural tendency to be voracious learn-o-matics. Kind of a downer if you plan to work in public education, but a real punk rocker if you've declared your home a hands-on exploration zone of anything goes.

Holtism may have gotten a little out of hand, here at the BU, during the years the kids and critters were trashing the place. I mean "discovering knowledge."

My li'l "partners" in "education," were free range freight trains at times.

 But I guess that was kind of the point.

Pro Tip: If pseudo-feral un-raising kids in a backyard petting zoo is your idea of school, prepare to live in a world of undone housework and a bramble of untamed habits. Watch out, because behaviors that soothe, in absence of other obligations, can get out of hand. Like our raging case of invasive backyard bindweed.

You know if it's true if there's a garden metaphor for it.

Maybe we had to figure it out for ourselves to really get it, but all of that unfettered freedom taught us to love limits. Seeking balance actually makes us happier than seeking happiness, but balance is a moment-by-moment accomplishment. One year, thirty minute increments of screen time are exchanged for chores, followed by an afternoon of tree-climbing. Before you know it, it's a year later and you're taking all day to write a teaching philosophy while your tree-climber spends way too much of her morning in headphones, mouth-breathing over her Kitty Kats RPG.

After an informal formative assessment, I decided to propose a New Year's Resolution.

But, but, resolutions, man. Who cares? Live your best now now, man. You don't need some stupid white man's holiday, right? Do chickens wait for an arbitrary date on the calendar to start being better chickens, man? No, they just peck the calendar to pieces. Maybe eat some of it.

Be like chickens, man.

Okay, so what if saying, On ___ Day, I'll Stop Shoulding and Start Doing is just a human construct? Man? I do happen to be a human, and kind of a constructivst, I have discovered. If we build our own reason for doing, or not doing something, then we really might do or not do it.

In that spirit, four weeks ago, we began a concerted effort to limit everyone's screen time. It has been surprisingly popular among the alums, as was the idea that I Shall Be The Enforcer Of It. For now.

Since beginning, we have had a rough aim, accomplished through my rough act of putting everybody's cell phones in a shoe box and declaring how long the break will be each week.

And sure, I can keep doing that. But, as usual, I have ulterior motives, I mean "learning objectives." Pesky ole' John Holt won't let me rest at merely training them to do less phone-staring.

      A life worth living, and work worth doing: that is what I want for children (and all people), not just, or not even, something called 'a better education.' 
         -John Holt Instead of Education:Ways to Help People Do Things Better

We can toss the cell phones in a box, do origami with our fingers for a rainy Sunday afternoon, and blog about it later. But, by the power of Bloom's Taxonomy, how can I really make this engagement more meaningful? Holt help us, how can we all learn to do life better? And then blog about that? Stay tuned.