It’s California, but not the California many people see on TV and in film.

Everywhere, nature awaits:  the sweeping views of Indian Valley, the narrow canyons created by the stunning Feather River, the forests thick with wildlife and resonant with birdcalls.

The boys played with their new friends, a little boy and girl whose parents had the vision several years ago to get out of a congested, overcrowded urban area, and let their children learn in greater freedom, surrounded by nature.   The small, experiential-based school they have chosen is not costly; it offers an enormous amount of outdoor education.

The public school my kids used to attend didn’t allow outdoor gardening, nor did the children have access to a stream or brook.   Recess was a concrete and mulch playground with a grassy field nearby for soccer, softball, etc.   Nature was set up only to be conducive to organized sporting events and the custodian’s large mower.  A few times a year, we’d receive a notice in the mail from the district about pesticide application:  If you have any safety concerns, please call XXX-XXXX.

My kids’ school day offered 3 recess periods on the concrete/mulch/sports field.   Add to that the two times at the bus stop, and you’ve got about an hour and a quarter a day of outdoor time.   “What was your favorite thing today at school?” I’d always ask them at 3:30.  “Recess!” they’d say.  Or “Lunch!  ’Cause after that, there’s recess!”

We all know to take such remarks with a grain of salt.   Get enough grains of salt together, though, and you will have a salt shaker.

I started to think about the elementary school where I lived in Denmark:   They had an organic garden, and kids were coming from preschools and private kindergartens that let them play outside for huge stretches of time, in rubber boots and thin zip-up snowsuits to keep their clothes from getting muddy. A Danish kid the same age as my sons already had had countless hours more of outdoor programming and overall outdoor time.  Yet Denmark’s literacy and numeracy rates are far higher than the U.S.

Has America, the land first of Hollywood, then of drive-thru shopping, and finally of Microsoft, Apple, and the internet, nailed a coffin lid onto our society’s historical connection to the great outdoors?

Looking at today’s children, guided by their technology- and TV-addicted parents, can we not safely say that nature deficit disorder is the new black?

What to do, what to do?

Well, I got a map.  And a guidebook.  And some cheap bows and arrows for the boys.  We drove.   Up, up, and away from all the plazas, parking lots, and areas where the land could provide nothing more than a surface for cement foundations, crops, and asphalt.

“We’re gonna be spending some time outside, boys,” I told them.  How does camping for two months sound?

“Can we keep these sticks?” they asked, showing me the walking sticks they’d used on our first long hike, and I said yes, provided that they weren’t too long for the car.  They fit.

All of this fits.

If we don’t sharpen our #2 pencils and gear up for battle this spring, we’ll be in trouble.

Our principal and superintendent will ask questions.

Your parents will feel I’m not doing my job.

Our school’s Great Schools ratings might take a hit.

Those ratings affect how much families want to move here, so it could mean your parents’ house will wind up being worth less money.

Would any of you want that?

And I’m more worried these days than you might think, because the test results will be public record…sorted by classroom teacher name.

That’s me, kids.

I haven’t done four years of college and all that evening and weekend master’s coursework just to have egg on my face.  I still have a long way to go before I can retire from teaching.

So, here you are.  Here are the packets.  The tests aren’t for three months, but I will have you good and ready by then.

What you don’t finish in class will be your homework.

Remember:  Always fill in an answer, even if you don’t know the right answer.  You have a one-in-four chance of being right.

Yes, Paul?

What?

Well, your mother isn’t the one teaching this class.  I am.  And I say to fill in an answer even if you have no idea.  Even if the question isn’t clear.

Just fill in an answer.

After testing is all over with, we’ll have a class party.  I promise.

No, it’s not next week.  It’s in May.

No, we can’t have a February party.  You already shared your valentines.  The rest of this month will be work.

Come on now, get started on it.  You have forty minutes.  No talking.

No, Emily.  No raising hands with a question.  On the real test, you won’t be able to do that, so we won’t do it here.

Get started now.

[Silence.]

What have been the benefits? What have been the drawbacks?

I find that my answers differ from those of the boys.  Benefits, to me, have been these:

1. More time spent in one another’s presence. I think that the number of minutes spent together truly means something. The relatively recent, oh-so-North-American notion of “quality time” seems odd to me. So is that of mothers or fathers having to specify a block of time as time in which they will pay special attention to their child. Time is, well, time, and more of it together is just plain good for us, even when the boys look over and see that I am busy editing or writing, or they are watching me volunteer with local learners in Central America.

The boys and I are, quite simply, far more in each other’s day than we were when they attended public school. I never need to ask “How was your day, Sweetheart?” because I saw how their day unfolded. [But I do sometimes ask them this anyway—it's great to know what impressed them about a particular day's events.]

2. More opportunities to bond through shared travel, activities, studies, and relaxation. We aren’t just skipping school and leading our same lives in the home we had in the U.S.   We have a new setting, new options, and a far smaller circle of friends and acquaintances here.   It was nice to see that the boys were well liked in the U.S., but their friends so monopolized their free time that I sometimes just wanted my two kids back. Let me add that the two boys get along far better now than before; neighborhood friends sometimes would pit one boy against the other, which created a lot of family conferences about having your brother’s back.   In Central America, we never needed this little reminder.

3. Less taskmastering or “busy work.” We do math exercises, and discuss logical problems.  The boys occasionally write in a journal and take photos.  But we’re not falling victim to worksheet after worksheet as a manifestation of education.  Why does everything have to be so clerically rendered?   Discussing things while on a walk is equally instructive.  That even goes for me with learning Spanish.   I am using far more of an aural/oral approach than choosing to go the route of worksheets…because in the real world, I’ll hear and speak Spanish far, far more than read or write it.  So less desk, more motion.  Less paper, more discussion.

Discussing sea glass---where it's from, and how to judge when it's "ready."

4. More rest for better family health. Yes, we take life easier, and that begins with our schedule. Hurrying happens less, and when it does, it’s almost an amusing, thrilling change of pace from our norm. We live in a village with practically no shopping, no paved roads, and no expectations for people to hustle. There’s a certain mañana factor going on, and lateness to some event or class is not as heinous or embarrassing as it is up north. So we’re mellower, more rested in our bodies, and we’re healthier for it.

There are drawbacks, too.

1. Feelings of powerlessness. We’re not on our own turf, and it’s palpable. While abroad, we have experienced frustrations with not having a car, with having to walk everywhere in the heat, or the rain and mud.   We have been frustrated by the absence of published information about such things as bus schedules, local events, and even the area’s history.   It was severely complicated to get a cell phone, so we have gone without, and have relied on e-mail to communicate outside the village, and on the occasional borrowed phone to confirm a departure or appointment (thanks, Yorleny, Drew and Stacy!).  We have often not understood local people due to the language barrier, and sometimes also their dialect.   We have not been in our home, with its familiar comforts; this rented place with its bare walls, cold showers and critter-infested floors and mattresses has been a far lower standard of living than anything we have ever experienced.   In order to economize and have a more authentic Costa Rican experience, we accepted this housing, and this town with its limited amenities, but we sure didn’t enjoy it some of the time—no offense to the many people who love it there, but it would never be our cup of tea long term.

2. Absence of like-minded homeschoolers/unschoolers in the area. We are unique here, gringos who are not enrolled in any school, living in a Costa Rican village whose public school is overcrowded to begin with, and would not have accepted the boys for enrollment.   We have never found local families doing homeschool-type enrichment activities with their kids, or taking private classes.   [Once we saw a flyer about a ballet class, though.  But even with things on offer in the general area, we have been sans automobile, so....]   Most of the time, the boys have sought to play with random kids their age at the beach, but this has never been a scheduled event.   We’ve had no music lessons, no art, no sports, no drama, no chemistry club or chess club.   It’s a far cry from what I would have done to arrange a rich palette of activities up north.  You might say, and I might totally agree, that I picked a lemon in bringing us here.  But see #4 above.  We’ve also not had to play the role of Overscheduled American Minivan Family. Besides, one could argue that we have way too many drawings as it is, and not enough frames to put them in—not to mention no permanent walls to hang them on, since we have our entire household in storage.  Which brings me to #3….

3. Missing having a home. Our place was never huge or opulent, but it was somewhere where we could enjoy our kitchen gadgets and utensils for whipping up a meal together.   It was a place where we could invite our friends in, maybe change the furniture around once in a while.  It was somewhere where we weren’t having to shove things into suitcases to be schlepped out the door and into an idling shuttle van.   The boys always wanted a treehouse, and I never gave them one.  I could argue that instead, they got a cloud forest in Monteverde, scenes of Brahma cattle grazing in Guanacaste, and bits of seashell under their toenails from the warm Pacific beaches.   But they have missed the Pacific Northwest and its facilities.  We have all dreamed of a nice home there to come back to.

Now for what the boys have to say.  The biggest benefits:

1.  Getting to travel. Seeing sloths, seeing baby turtles, being on beaches, seeing volcanoes, going ziplining and on a long waterslide through the jungle, getting to see leaf cutter ants and learn about army ants while looking right at their meters-deep colony.  Seeing the world and understanding that in other places, other languages (like Spanish!) are the boss.

2.  Not having to do homework or study for state testing.

3.  No more cafeteria food. School lunches weren’t always so yummy, and everyone had to be really quiet in the cafeteria or else.

4.  Learning about poverty. People are poorer than we are and it makes their life hard.

Drawbacks:

1.  Not seeing our friends.

2.  Missing Life cereal.  Missing Baskin Robbins.  Missing Sushi Land.

3.  Wondering if we were doing the same hard math that the kids back home were doing.  Were they ahead of us at this point?

4.  The lower standard of living with its much more uncomfortable housing, fewer selections for meals, no public library, no clubs or activities for kids, streets that were muddy and without sidewalks making for dangerous walking.

I suppose, from seeing these lists, that we could have chosen a far more comfortable, affluent, and literate place to roadschool.  Next on our list is Europe and other areas of North America.  We’ll file these Costa Rican memories under “What to Try to Do Better for the Next Time” and focus on thinking back on all of the positives we gleaned from the experience.

Bridge over the cloud forest canopy, Santa Elena near Monteverde

Keep out.  This is our current area of study.  The boys and I took photos in Guanacaste and Nicaragua and have been talking about locks, gates, wires, walls, lighting, alarms, beware signs, trespassing signs, and more. We’re learning how this plays out in Costa Rica and Nicaragua as compared to what various places in the U.S.

In Central America, your front door is your front door plus an exterior wrought iron door, sans mosquito screens. Ditto for windows.  You have a levered window with eight to ten little horizontal panes that can be flipped shut, and on the outside, there are vertical wrought iron bars.  “It’s like we’re in jail!” my one son complained.  “And it doesn’t stop all the bugs from getting in,” the other son noted.

Your yard might be fenced with wooden posts and thin barbed wire. Or sheets of tin, like in the picture here.
But if you have money for an iron fence, or a cement wall with an iron gate, you have one built.

Sometimes, menacing signs help. Like this sign.  I was scared at first. But wait….Perro bravo?

My ethnically Italian sensibilities told me that this must mean “good dog” in English.  As in bravo, bravo, applause.

My bilingual friends corrected me: “It means the dog is fierce, brave. Beware of dog.”

“But where is that dog in the picture?” my son says, looking around the yard we’re standing in.  It’s a commercial business on land with what appears to be the owner’s private home in the back. Perro Bravo was nowhere to be seen.

“Well, maybe he’s asleep,” I offer.  “It’s pretty hot out this afternoon.”

“Or maybe…there IS no perro,” my other son said.

Now the kid is starting to get the picture, I thought to myself.

In between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, there is a border that is more or less two borders, because the Nicaraguans want people to enter from Costa Rica, then go through a no man’s zone, then enter their own special border that is fully theirs on both sides.

It reminded me of the mid- to late-80s when I traveled back and forth between West and East Berlin…only it was never so stinking hot in either Berlin as it was here.

If you work as a Central American truck driver, be prepared for your ass to sit at this border for the entire day. Keep out unless you are willing to enter and exit on our terms. This is the message to everyone who crosses here, even trucks carrying necessities and export goods.

I felt sorry for the Nicaraguans who spend each day here, either as officials, or as semiofficial immigration go-betweens nicknamed “coyotes,” and above all for the scores of others who peddle cashews, sweets, cold drinks, or crafts. They have jobs, though, no matter how hellish the jobs seem in the heat and humidity. It’s a better situation for them to be here in this hellhole than in many other parts of the country, where people barely get by on less than a dollar a day.  Where infants die of pneumonia in tin shacks.

With our program break coming up, I looked into ways to get to the historical city of Granada.   It boiled down to two options:   (a) get a ride somehow, by unpredictable public bus or by expensive taxi/shuttle, to the city of Liberia in Guanacaste province, then take a bus such as Tica Bus all the way up to Granada; or (b) pay one hell of a lot more money for a private van to pick us up at our door, take the three of us across the labyrinthine CR/Nica border and drop us at our Granada hotel—and do the exact reverse in a week’s time.

I opted for (b), mostly because I was warned that in this off season, with recent landslide-related highway closures outside of Costa Rica’s capital, San Jose, the long-distance bus services might be even more unpredictable than they normally are. And I was also warned about abundant pickpocketing and theft on those buses; people who put their stuff in the overhead racks run a big risk of losing their valuables as well as not-so-very-valuables.

So we’re spending a lot of money to head up to a historical city, one which itself is not the safest. Nicaragua today is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (Haiti ranks first). What’s more, around 46% of Nicaraguans are surviving on less than $1.15 a day.

It raises the question:  Why?  Why go there and take this risk?  Why not just stay here, enjoy the beach, and relax in our relatively safe little town?  Why not take all that transportation money we’ll be using, and donate it to a Nicaraguan relief agency?

A deserving Nicaraguan kid with no ability to pay for five years of high school can be sponsored very easily—-our round-trip Granada transport costs alone could send her/him to high school for two years.  Businesses in Granada know this, too, and even some of the local hotels and language schools promote the charitable educational sponsorship of local kids.

I don’t think I can very easily explain this math to my sons.  What we will spend there on a week’s vacation could in fact send a bright, impoverished Nicaraguan child to high school for five years—uniforms, shoes, and all.

Granada is, from what everyone says, a gorgeous, historical city with lots of opportunities to appreciate archaeology, geology, plant and animal biology, culture, and architecture, among other things.  It’s Nicaragua’s number one tourist destination.

But Nicaragua is hurting.  Here where we teach in Costa Rica, Nicaraguan kids sit alongside the local village kids.  There is prejudice:  Nicaraguans are mistrusted and looked down upon by some.  Many Nicaraguans here, whether legal or illegal residents, are willing to do work for much lower pay than the Costa Ricans will accept.  I walk past some of the Nicaraguan immigrant families’ places and see that they live in abject poverty, in tin shacks with few amenities.  The local public school denies some of the children access to a classroom education, maintaining that it is already overcrowded.  Yet what I am told here is that this place, for these Nicaraguan kids and their families, is the lap of luxury.

The game plan in Granada is this:  Bring toys, educational materials, and clothing to orphanages in the area.  There are orphanages in town, and a couple on nearby Ometepe Island in Lake Nicaragua.  We will make an orphanage visit in Granada and will treat a group of orphaned girls to a pizza party—the nun running the place does not know this yet, of course, but since getting food is an issue for her organization, we don’t anticipate any objections from her.

And we will take a carriage ride through town and around part of the lake.  It is the low season right now, and by patronizing local businesses and services, we will be helping them and their families.

All the while, I will be discussing the economy with the kids, and helping them to understand the value of what we are seeing in Nicaragua.   The essential questions will be:  What do people need?  What do people want?  What motivates people in their existence?

I’ll call this our Maslow’s unit.

Back home, there was Whole Foods, Wild Oats, Trader Joe’s, and other specialty shops where a person really didn’t have to look too far in order to procure interesting ingredients, spices, and condiments.

So, we were thrilled to get into “the system” here—-that of figuring out who knows whom, who can get access to a fishing boat to get fresh fish, and when (roughly!)  the fellows with the seafood truck will be coming through town to sell frozen shrimp (or camarones in Spanish).

It’s just how things are here—-you can’t buy frozen seafood in any of the three local supermercados.  Chicken, yes.  Mortadella and sausages, yes.  But not seafood.

But a lady I have met here knows a lady who dropped by today, and she knows a guy who happens to have…..and so, this afternoon, we are getting two mackerels!

The world is our school.  The way you get a mackerel here is not the way we did at Whole Foods, or in the freezer section of some container store.  The way you prepare a mackerel here is the way we would have had to had we caught it ourselves.  Time to learn about why and how we need to gut an animal for cooking!  We have one semi-sharp long knife among our apartment’s kitchen utensils, so wish us luck.

I bought onions, carrots, garlic, celery, rice and oil. We’re going to poach the mackerel because we have no grill.

I bought limones.  We’re going to clean all of our utensils and dishes with lemon halves so that our place won’t reek of fish for the next two months.

And the kids?  They’ll remember today.  They’ll remember their mom communicating with her hands and feet in semi-español, negotiating the procurement of the fish, and they’ll have a vivid image of the gutting process, the poaching, the tasting of our finished product.

And tomorrow, the big news in town is that the weekly fish truck will come through.   Rumor has it that it will be around 6 p.m.  That will give me time to get the ingredients all chopped up and ready for Costa Rica’s famous dish, arroz con camarones:

I will need:

* 2 libras de arroz,

* 1 libras de camarones pequeno pelados,

* 2 cubitos de camarones,

* 1/2 cebolla picada, * 1 barra de margarina,

* 1/2 chile verde picado, * 1 zanahoria picada fina,

* sal y pimienta al gusto,

* 1/2 ramita de apio y agua lo necesario.

I love how cooking lets us learn Spanish the alimentary way.  We all know that the way to a person’s heart, as well as linguistic competence, is through the stomach.

I love how putting a meal together here is a strategic challenge.  For that, it will taste all the better at the table.

What is infrastructure?

One definition I found online is:

Infrastructure:  The basic physical systems of a country’s or community’s population, including roads, utilities, water, sewage, etc. These systems are considered essential for enabling productivity in the economy.  Developing infrastructure often requires large initial investment, but the economies of scale tend to be significant.

How to explain this to my kids?

The roads are unpaved, and sometimes frighteningly narrow.  Try sitting on a bus barreling down the road—even an old Mercedes bus—and feel how your heart leaps into your throat at the sight of another speeding bus coming in the other direction.  Will there be room?  Will there?  You are at the mercy of fate.  You are at the mercy of the viscosity of mud.

It kind of makes orange barrel season not seem so bad.

You sleep in the heat and humidity, a ceiling fan swirling the air around you as you kick off the rest of your thin sheet.  It’s the middle of the night in Costa Rica. Suddenly, an electrical box on the street explodes with a big bang.  The fan slows its whizzing, and stops.  You lie there, wondering.  Two hours later, in pouring rain, another explosion, this time one with what sounds like fireworks.  You fumble for a flashlight.  Did you put your crank-up one right by the bed for such an eventuality?  No, you did not; it’s buried somewhere in your suitcase with the ESL materials.  Damn it.

In the morning, there is no running water, either.  Your toilet quickly becomes latrine-like.

There is no way of knowing who will come to fix all this, or when.

The boys ask, “Why did all of this happen?”

That’s lesson 1 on infrastructure.

Suddenly, they remember the electric company people in hardhats up north, all those folks climbing poles, checking wires.  The fellow who came by to read the electric meter.  We pay for power services, you tell the kids.  We pay each month, and part of what we pay goes for emergency repairs, so that we don’t have to go without power.

You talk revenue.  Here, in this village, the revenues for power are not as great as in a country like the U.S., so the emergency electrical services are much slower to respond.  Here, in this village, there is no company office——it’s very far away, over less than adequate roads.  So they won’t just zip over here like you think they would.

Now about the water.

“A main pipe may have burst somewhere,” you say.  ”Or perhaps the water has been shut off for preventative maintenance somewhere along the line.”

“But why wouldn’t they let us know ahead of time?  We could have taken a shower.”

“Yes.”

Infrastructure is not only the fixit people, the preventative fixit people, and the road crews who someday will get the blessing from the bureaucrats to pave these roads.  Infrastructure, above all, is communication.

And without power to our TV or radio, without putting signs up, holding informative meetings, or having a thorough and reliable postal system, communication can’t happen all that well.

“Just pretend we’re camping in the High Sierras,” I tell the boys.  We eat cold leftover rice, drink water from the bottles that we’re lucky to have at home, and go without showering.

“And stay away from those telephone poles and wires in this rain,” I caution.

When the water and power are finally back on, and the toilet its old self again, I say:  ”Someday this might be YOUR job, your responsibility, to make sure water is available and safe, the electricity is available and safe, and the roads are reliable and kept up.”

“Yeah,” my son says, looking around our apartment and then out the window at the muddy road.  “It’s important.”

Highway 199 was our intro to California, and it could not have been more beautiful.  The “Are we there yet?” became a math exercise:  ”Kids, YOU tell ME how close we are to being there yet…look for green signs that say Crescent City.  And look at this map.”  We don’t have GPS, but that might also have been helpful for their awareness of distance, rate, and time.

Crescent City is a perfect example of the place where geology meets history.  In 1964, an earthquake in Alaska triggered a tsunami that came all the way over to this coastal fishing and surfing town, creating devastation that somehow still can be felt today, even though things were rebuilt. Standing there on the long pier, we contemplated what it must have been like to receive that lethal wall of water, to have no idea whatsoever that it was even coming.

We camped under the redwoods and learned about their shallow root systems, and how the foggy, temperate climate of coastal California is what these trees crave.  We saw the partnership between thees trees and the ferns below them; we greeted the stewards of the redwood lands, huge banana slugs who clean up the forest floor, and, mesmerized by their color and size, began our own study of the redwoods’ most famous mascot.

California is so lucky to have the Jedediah Smith Redwoods park, and the lesser-known Stout Memorial Grove.  There, in the high season of August, we hiked and hiked with no other tourists in sight.  It was a fantastic opportunity to learn about nature’s silence—and, conversely, what humankind has done to break that beautiful silence.

We got to see what happens when the mightiest of the mighty fall down, and a discussion ensued about other tall, mighty things that have met their end.  We talked about shallow roots and the forces of nature, and about the life cycle—how even something 600 years old still has a life cycle to contend with.  We compared the life cycle of a redwood, a banana slug, a human, a dog (great for practicing the 7 times tables), and Pacific salmon.

There we were, among the giants, surrounded by silence, considering the realities of the natural world.

The fog rolled in; we roasted marshmallows and kept close to our campfire.  The next day, we headed down to Arcata and Eureka to take a look at the university I very nearly attended in the 80s, Humboldt State. Seeing the place, I had to wonder: How might my future have turned out differently if I had indeed come here to study?  I wound up attending schools with far less of an environmental concern.  And then I traveled overseas and worked in a developing country that seemed hell-bent on ruining its soil, water and air, all in the name of economic advancement.  Humboldt State might have been a superb start for me, but alas, it never happened.  But it could for my kids.  It definitely could.

We stopped to snap a photo of a gorgeous Victorian mansion built in 1887. I am all for beautiful architecture, but this place was the home of one of the barons of the logging industry, William Carson.  ”Did he know he was taking the redwood trees away forever?” my son asked.

“Yes, I suppose.  But that wasn’t what people cared about back then.  And remember, it has taken gasoline and oil, and exhaust and food packaging, to enable the three of us to be standing here looking at this mansion,” I said.  ”None of us can say that we don’t impact the forests.  All of us consume.”

We drove the Lost Coast to Mendocino Point, and talked about the difficulty of living somewhere miles and miles from services and medical care.  All around us, California sparkled.   “See, boys?” I said.  ”Just remember that there is a California that isn’t the thing you’re always seeing and hearing on television shows.  There’s THIS California, too.”

“Will it get to stay this way?” my son asked.  ”What about people like that guy with the mansion?”

“I’m not sure.  I hope so.  There are still people like that guy.  But just remember how this place looks today, and keep that memory in mind when you’re grown.”

Yes, after being that parent—you know, the one who helped with the PTA and volunteered in classrooms, the one who made sure her kids were as well adjusted in school as possible, and who read with bated breath every report card comment and district newsletter—something hit me like a 2′x4′.

What was it?

Was it seasonal affective disorder?  In the Pacific Northwest, that’s no laughing matter.

Or was it the steadily increasing stream of my kid’s take-home paperwork that looked for all the world like state proficiency testing?

Or was it my kid himself, who appeared stressed and weary from being made to feel scared of not “achieving?”

Something sure as hell happened.  I don’t know.

Maybe it was the art class we started to take as a family.  We drew birds.  We sat together, each focusing on our great big pad, sketching beaks and bodies and claws with pencil, then charcoal.  Afterward, my son did not seem anguished like he was right after his school day, setting down his backpack and taking out those test prep sheets.

After two hours of studio art together, we all felt great.  And I wondered this:  For years now in our district, elementary art has effectively been cut.  Why IS that?

Why is the ability to draw life from the eye any less important for a nine-year-old child than the ability to multiply 12 by 11?

I bet Alfred Hitchcock went to a school that let him draw big birds as a kid.

Kidding.

It started to dawn on me:  I could have my kids just go to this private art school twice a week.  And swim at the center a few times, since they love to swim.  And maybe take some time during the day to learn all those musical instruments we have no time for.  All of their hitherto “extracurricular” activities could become the new curriculum.

If there weren’t that long school day with all that boring homework, I’d even take them places to learn about how businesses run.  I’d take them into the community and have them meet people who do all kinds of different jobs.  I’d have my kids interview them. Take them for a coffee or a bite to eat, and ask about why they like doing what they do.

I’d take them out of the city and to more spread-out places.  Farms.  Mines. Transportation hubs.  I’d help them to see how things get from A to B.

I’d let them tell me what they’re really interested in.  They always ask about giant squids: “Mom, if there were a giant squid versus the Titanic, who would win?”

“Um…sorry to disappoint you, but back in 1912—”

“If there were a blue whale against a giant squid, who would win?”

“Is that what you want to know?”

“Yeah.  We really want to know.”

“Well, then.  Let’s find a way to find out.”

My friend asks, “Do you think you can homeschool?”

I’ll do my very best.

None of us is dumb.

Why were we ever made to feel that we are?

More importantly, I shouldn’t.

So I won’t.

Teachers also can’t.  Not with 26 kids to educate.  And the administration knows that they can’t, and shouldn’t.  There is a reading specialist who pops in, or who pulls kids out.  A room parent who coordinates things.  Volunteers who cut out laminated shapes and collate supplies.

There’s a P.E. specialist who gives the classroom teacher a much-needed break.  And maybe even a music teacher a couple of times a week to share the load, and even leave room for a planning period.

And when the behavioral going gets rough, there’s a principal and/or a counselor to address matters.

In the worst case, the parent can be called to come get the child.

In my new role as roadschooling mother, I’m going to serve as principal, counselor, teacher, curriculum developer, reading specialist, P.E. teacher, music teacher, food service worker, nurse, bus driver, custodian, playground assistant, and media specialist.  For no pay.

It’s madness, right?  Doing all that alone?

Well, what’s great in all this is that I have seen teaching staff in their “trenches of France.”  I’ve seen how fried some of them get by the time May rolls around.  I’ve been a teacher…witnessing how instructors marked time in the months of December and June, because the holiday spirit and the prospect of significant vacation time loomed so large in the kids’ minds.

I know what fried crispy looks like.

And I can’t do it alone, so I won’t.  I won’t cover every base, dot every “i” and cross every “t.”  I will find out what the boys want to learn, and go for it in the most organic way possible, one that we can manage.  New places will pique new interests, so I’ll have to keep on my toes.

Part of the plan is seeking out the wisdom and input of others in the settings we experience.  If there is someone else, child or adult, who can share interests and model aptitudes for us, I will welcome the contact.  And if there’s someone who is excellent at chilling out, at just being there, I will especially welcome the skill share.  Part of unschooling is deschooling, getting rid of the teacher voice in my head, and finding all the many quieter ways of learning and knowing things.

Catherine Zeta-Jones sang “I Can’t Do It Alone.”  I think about the cabaret I did a few years back, performing songs from the hit musical Chicago.  Now, as I look at our calendar and make arrangements, I’ve got that number playing in the back of my mind.  With gratitude, I’ll be enlisting some serious community help when we take our show on the road.

“Now ya see me going through it!

You may think there’s nothing to it!

But I simply cannot do it…aloooooone…!”

I have this book, you see. First saw it on the bookshelf at the home of our Alaskan friends, Wayne and Tania. I browsed The Curve of Time, then had to go and get my own copy at Powell’s Bookstore.

The Curve of Time is a true family adventure story from long ago, long before GPS. In Canada it’s considered a classic.

Muriel Wylie Blanchet, a newly widowed mother of five, decided to take her kids on a 25-foot cruiser, the Caprice, and explore the coastal areas of British Columbia. And not just once: she wound up doing this every summer, for years.

Talk about a badass widow on a mission to educate her kids. I think I have a brand new hero figure.

Oh, to replicate such a journey.  How can I learn those skills?

Because the kids would never forget it their whole lives long.