The Spirit of Inquiry

In a post I never thought I'd be writing, we have entered Season 3 of "Homeschooling as a Working Single Parent." Yes, we've made it to high school. When I started this, I literally told people it was an experiment. "We'll just see how it goes," I said, trying to remember how to act nonchalant about something, "It's just an experiment...if it doesn't work, he can always go back." Ahem.

I've neglected this little blog to death, but I haven't forgotten about it. My dreams of having a widely-read blog (with a companion podcast?!) that brings me a couple hundred dollars here and there may never be fully realized, but I've been persisting for 37 years and I'm not stopping now.

One pattern coping mechanism I've adopted each year is to outsource just a little bit more. Despite my desperate attempts to Do It All™, I've realized that I'm not any less of a homeschooler just because my kid uses an all-in-one curriculum, or just because he is enrolled in an online school (oh, the humanity). I'm still the principal, assistant principal, superintendent, school nurse, janitor, counselor, teacher, hall monitor, school psychologist, and most importantly...mom. The buck stops with me, and his education is 100% in my Biogel size 7 hands. The difference is that this year I don't have to cry every time a lab report or essay comes across my tiny desk as I agonize over a rubric and wonder if I'm being too hard or too easy on him because he's my kid.

The deprogramming we've experienced has made itself very known as we have come across silly things like requirements to send your teacher an email so that the teacher knows you know how to email (as someone who was born post-Millenium, no less), fitting into someone else's calendar, and introductory discussions. "This is dumb," I was told, and I found myself saying, "I know, but we're back to a time where you just kind of have to do dumb things because...you just do." We're trading some freedom for peace this year.

We've been deprogrammed.

After I told him, multiple times I'm sure, not to spend too long on said introductory discussions because they're only worth 10% of the grade and nobody really reads them anyway, the young man told me that he was looking up an author someone mentioned is her favorite in her post. Almost immediately after the words, "I told you not to spend too much time on those" left my mouth, I realized that the child was demonstrating something I've always read about on the blogs and heard about on the podcasts. The Spirit of Inquiry.

I have been trying to look for this elusive Spirit of Inquiry in him for the last couple of years. I've always read about homeschooled kids being hungry for knowledge - they obsess about topics for days or weeks and pull and pull at the tread until they move on to the next thing. Homeschooling is perfect for them because they can nerd out all they want, even turning one topic into entire unit studies that go on until everyone is sick and tired of hearing about dinosaurs or the solar system or Abraham Lincoln all the time.

He is just not that way, I've thought, and we are going to have to go through the rest of his school career kicking and screaming (both of us). When you ask him what he likes learning about, his answer is "Nothing." What does he like about school? "Nothing." There's never any spark and all the learning is perfunctory, just something to do to get to the next year. He would never obsess over dinosaurs or the solar system or Abraham Lincoln.

But here he was. Something caught his eye and he decided to pursue learning more about it, so I quickly corrected myself and told him to learn about this author to his little heart's content. "This is what homeschooling is all about!" I practically yelled. "The SPIRIT OF INQUIRY!" He looked a little scared.

It didn't take but a few minutes for him to get the ick and figure out that Colleen Hoover looks like one of those "sappy romance novel writers," but this is so significant to me that I had to resurrect my two-year-old blog (had to search my email to remember what platform it was even on, just being honest) and record it for posterity.

We've come a long way, baby.

Day 3: Is It Christmas Yet?

In today's episode, we learn that not every day is a great day.

Of course, we already knew that from the time BH (that's Before Homeschooling), right? Nothing new there.

But when the young man sleeps until 11 (yes, that happened and I let it - it was extremely difficult on my part, but the natural consequence was that he didn't have time to do what he wanted to do, namely screen time, and he actually really hated it) and doesn't take his medication because he woke up too late to take it so the focus is just not there today, the fact that work (which for me happens in my living room) is crazy and I spent at least an hour and a half on the phone with various parties trying to find someone who would willingly fill his prescription is just too much.

So, it's 9pm and there's a Spanish lesson being finished on the couch. Natural consequences.

However, here's what we gained:

1. He devised a plan on his own for how he plans to get himself out of bed in the morning (problem solving!)
2. He actually ate today (no medication-induced appetite suppression!)
3. I got a good chance to work on my prayer practice, my patience, and my empathy (after lunch I took him an ice cream cone upstairs to eat while he worked because I could tell he really was trying his hardest and I felt like the coolest mom)
4. We spent time together discussing and reviewing language arts, science, and social studies
5. We read a devotional together on my Bible app at the end of dinner
6. He helped me make dinner
7. We went to the gym together
8. He suggested that I add MORE responsibilities to his list (don't worry, I woke up before medical assistance became necessary)

I can honestly say, just from past experience, that very little (if any) of that would have happened if he was going to school all day every day.

What have we learned today? It's okay for every day not to be the Best Day Ever, because God has some good stuff in store for us no matter what.

That, and to go ahead and have that glass of red and handful of Cheez-Its while you're making dinner.

School is IN!

 Today is the first day of school, but there's no school. There's no bus, no lunch packed, no giant bag of school supplies that will be redistributed and never seen again, no "Welcome to Mr./Ms. _____'s Class!" emails, no one-word answers about how the first day of school was ("Fine," anyone?), no folder full of forms for me to sign, no wondering what's going on, no government school telling me what lessons to teach (looking at you, GaVS, of the School-at-Home Year of Covid), and no other kids.

It's just him and me, in our apartment, with the curriculum I chose. Me, as superintendent, principal, teacher, Mom, and full-time work-from-home employee. Teaching between scheduling surgeries and answering phone calls and emails, planning lessons during my lunch break. There's no Dad coming home later to take the pressure off, no siblings around to entertain each other, just me having a very well-concealed meltdown under the surface yesterday wondering how I was going to make it all work.

You know what? It's working, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

It's 1:42pm and we're in our last class of the day (Spanish! We get the freedom to learn Spanish!), and no tears have been shed. He has diligently completed his work, didn't complain during this morning's Learning Language Arts Through Literature dictation exercise, and has been caught reading (for fun!!!!) no fewer than three times today.

I've wanted to do this for years. YEARS. I've had a bone to pick with the public school system since kindergarten, and I've always said I wanted to but couldn't because I didn't have time or patience or resources and I was always working at the hospital. Well, I'm doing it.

I call this blog "We Are All Students" after what Jesus says to the Pharisees in Matthew 23:8:

    "But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher and you are all students."

My student is not the only student here, and we BOTH have one teacher. One of my goals through homeschooling is to learn as he learns, through the grace of Jesus. I have already learned what I am capable of when I put things in His hands, and I fully believe that without Him I would not be doing this. And it's only the beginning.

Come learn with us!