For every well thought out reason a parent chooses to homeschool their child, I’d like to believe that for another, it’s a catalyst. At least, that’s how my adventures in homeschooling began. The irony of it all is that a few weeks before, an old pal – you know the kind, the person you talked to 10 years ago and are kind of interested in what’s going on in their life but not enough to actually renew a friendship – posted on Facebook that she was homeschooling her three boys. I remember posting on her wall “why?…” Well, she never let me know why and really her family’s reasoning is not my business but I was curious. Then the family got overwhelmed in Puppy Madness 2011 and I forgot all about the fact that someone I knew dipped her proverbial toe into teaching her kids at home. To be completely honest, my mental picture of homeschooled kids used to be of under socialized weirdos who could not adapt to the norms of regular school or were being raised by total religious freaks who wanted their curriculum steeped in the Father, the Son with a nice dash of the Holy Spirit, snakes and strychnine not included. The only real world examples I had of homeschooled kids growing up was a child from my grandparents’ church who ate her own snot in public and an autistic kid who took ballet at age 15 with the five year olds at my ballet school. So when Drue slapped a kid and asked to be homeschooled, I figured I needed more and better information than childhood memories to make an educated decision. And luckily, a lovely couple, who homeschool their equally lovely and incredibly smart and social daughter, happened into our lives by way of adopting one of our puppies. But, first, I better back up and explain a little more about Drue’s situation.
First off, yes, it’s true. Drue slapped a fellow sixth grade girl. Like, OMG right? But before you judge her – and me – think back to middle school. Think back to the torture and hell that comes with middle school if you’re not into the cool music, wearing the right clothes, sneaking blue eyeshadow and pink lipstick behind your parents’ back and abandoning any individuality you have. And god forbid if you’re actually passionate about something that does not involve “dating” boys and holding hands with boys and kissing boys and talking about boys. Well, Drue is quirky. She’ll wear the same t-shirt two days in a row if it’s clean. She is not into boys yet. They kind of fascinate her but she still finds them a little repulsive and smelly. She’s into all kinds of music which means that while she occasionally indulges in a five hour marathon of Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, she’ll also hit the music server and pull down some early Genesis, Foo Fighters and maybe a dash of the Eagles, too. And she hates Justin Bieber which in middle school is the magical kiss of death, it seems. She loves lip gloss, mostly for the flavor. However, like her mother, she doesn’t see the point in makeup. Drue’s big passion in life is sharks. She wants to study marine life and save sharks. This has been her life’s passion since she was three. She has a master plan. This master plan does not include hanging out at the local strip mall or kissing a boy before she’s ready. In Mom terms, I think that deserves a huge “YOU GO, GIRL!”
However, because of this, a lot of well-meaning educators in Virginia and California have labeled Drue “socially immature”. Frankly, I label it “being on the right road to ensure you’re not pregnant and a total loser by 16″ but we’ll go with their label because it’s shorter. I’ve heard this label twice now when approaching schools about bullying issues. In Virginia I came in at the eleventh hour because I did not hear about the bullying until we were almost ready to leave the state. So neither I nor the school district were particularly motivated to do anything about the little terrors. The reality is that both Drue and I were circles trying to fit into square pegs in Fairfax so I dismissed the bullying as a “Virginia thing” and thought we were moving onward and upward. And for a time, we did.
When we got to California, it was the land of promise. And honestly, it still is. Drue fell into a group of geeky, cool girls just like her – who are thankfully still her friends – and for the first time in a long time, I breathed a sigh of relief thinking Drue had found her niche. But then Drue also fell into a popular crowd. Actually that’s not true – she courted the popular crowd and, because she’s a pretty girl, they let her into their ranks. The problem with popularity is that you don’t just become popular and automagically stay popular. You have to work at it. You have to make compromises. You have to lose your identity and become one with whatever is “IT” and “IN” today. And God help you if you don’t manage to walk that tightrope each and every single day because you quickly go from popular to tormented if you don’t. The easiest way to stay popular is to make everyone who isn’t “you” the object of contempt and scorn and no one does this better than a pack of tween girls. And after two years of being bullied during elementary school by a pack of girls and her fourth grade math teacher, Drue was at the end of her rope with the whole “mean girl” thing. So after months of displaying some pretty fierce anger issues at home that everyone assured us was “normal for this age” but actually stemmed from feeling compromised as a human being at school, she acted out against one of them. She stood up for what she believed in and let one of the girls have it.
Now when I was in middle school, a slap in the courtyard would have been dismissed and gone unreported. Or, maybe the parents would have been called and hell would have been paid at home. Maybe. But, with the plethora of no tolerance for violence campaigns everywhere – you know the ones that don’t actually work which is why our tax dollars go towards police presence and airport type security scanners in schools – we were called, Drue got detention, the counselors were brought in and Drue was immediately labeled “a problem”. While we were dealing with the school, Drue was dealing with harassment and bullying at school, on her way home and online. But this was a secondary line item after the fact since Drue was “obviously socially immature” and “kind of asked for the bullying” by slapping a socially superior girl. Needless to say, this attitude, sentiments confined to one knuckle-dragging harpy of a counselor from the Stone Age that was not, thankfully, shared by the school or the other counselor, started the process of our looking for other educational alternatives outside public education.
Before I go on though, I want it on record that we have no issues with the last elementary school Drue attended in Virginia or the middle school Drue attended here. The principals at both schools and one of the counselors from her middle school stepped up, addressed the entire problem including the bullying and harassment, and did everything they could within the confines of the districts’ policies. However, it is an unfortunate fact that a social pecking order does exist and that the average person conforms to fit into a social niche they are comfortable with as opposed to embracing exactly who they are and then finding people who accept them as is. This is not only tolerated but expected and encouraged in all walks of life. It is also a fact that middle school is really where the need to conform hits its peak. For a kid like Drue – a quirky, fantastic kid who does not fit the norm and who, at the tender age of 11, does not have the self esteem yet to be okay with herself exactly as she is – middle school is hell on earth.
So in the midst of meeting with counselors, trying to get meetings with the principal, finding Drue a therapist to help her deal with the stress of all the harassment, trying to help her find ways to sleep, taking her to school and back again to try to make her feel safe, monitoring her phone calls and emails to track down the harassers, calling my lawyer and the police when Drue received a death threat, checking the budget to see if private school was a viable option, and trying to send the message to Drue that standing up for herself was good but hitting people was not, Drue threw a “Hail Mary”. She asked me to consider homeschooling her for the rest of the school year. My immediate thought was “huh?” but since we promote a culture of tolerance, respect and fairness in my home, I decided it was only fair to properly consider Drue’s request and to really educate myself about homeschooling so we could have a real conversation around it. So while the school was trying to figure out how to support Drue there and keep her in the district, I started reading up on homeschooling at a local, state and national level.
And it all moved forward from there…
