After giving Drue a good month off to decompress or, as many homeschoolers call it, to “deschool” I realized I had three challenges ahead of me. The first challenge was that I had no idea what Drue actually learned after 7 years of public education. Second, I had no idea how she learns. And finally, my biggest challenge of all was I had no idea how I was going to homeschool her, run a company, take care of my employee, take care of my clients and somewhere in all of this, take care of me. My friend, TerriAnn (of Cookies and Clogs) recommended I join a few Yahoo groups, read a few books and most of all NOT STRESS. It was very good advice. But to be honest, for a few months, every molecule of my Type A personality was stressed. I did not need a plan but by golly, I wanted one so badly that it was almost punishing not to have one. I was also pretty torn amongst friends and family who are educators. In one corner I had the “Unschool” and Montessori advocates who have successful, happy young adults who flouted conventional schooling, did very well for themselves and currently lead happy, productive lives. In the other corner, were friends and family who live and breathe the tenets of public education asking me what my plan was, how was I going to ensure Drue did not fall behind the standard course of study and how was I going to teach her everything she needed to know when I had my own scholastic struggles growing up? There was also the fact that, while Drue and I adore each other, we’ve never spent this much time together. Being the type of social beings who require our own separate Gal Caves to retreat to with little to no notice, how would we respect each others space while smooshed together in a 1200 sq foot space day in and day out?
I’ve never backed down from a challenge and I realized one thing I did have was a little time on my side. So while Drue relaxed and deschooled, I downloaded the entire California Standard Course of Study, mapped out the entire thing in a spreadsheet, removed redundancies and then downloaded a slew of standardized tests and aligned it to the standard course of study starting in grade 1 and moving through grade 8. After a few weeks of R&R, I started testing Drue every morning, leaving afternoons open for Drue to focus on her passions, read good books, and spend time outside in the sunshine. This also ensured I would have the time, energy and space to get my WORK work done as well as start investigate educational options and opportunities for Drue. I was advised that we would have a few months to figure out what classes and extracurricular activities we wanted for Drue because we pulled Drue from her public school towards the end of this school year. However, we lucked into finding a fantastic science lab class called Rock It Science and was able to enroll Drue in a once-a-week science lab that started a few weeks after she left traditional school. Rock It Science and testing kept us busy through May. Testing helped determine where Drue’s strengths and weaknesses lie, and allowed me to observe Drue in a home school setting. We quickly determined what her distractions would be, what times of the day were better for certain subjects and I was able to gauge how she handles various elements of standardized tests. As a reward for her hard work and efforts, I gave her a week off for her birthday and put together an educational plan of attack. Immediately I realized my plan might receive some resistance from my child… because the only way we were going to get all of her required attendance days in by the end of the year was to pad her summer schedule with school time. And that would not fly with my child who, to date, spends her summers at camps, sleeping, shopping, watching Discovery channel, hanging with her friends at the pool and reading. So, I approached her at a time of weakness… meaning I came at her after three days with her Uncle Erich, relaxing in front of the television with a red velvet cupcake in her hand. The child could not have been more comatose if I had smacked her upside the head. So naturally she agreed that yes, school over the summer was the way to go. Absolutely, travel in the fall more than made up for the missed weeks of hanging out poolside with her friends. And sure, some school work while she was at camp was understandable and oh, by the way, would I turn up the fan and pass her another cupcake? Best Mom ever!!
Flash forward a month and all that agreeableness was lost somewhere between snorkeling in the Coronado Islands and her first two hours sitting in a warm classroom learning advanced Pre-Algebra. Flash forward another month where a backlog of writing assignments, science assessments, and reading logs turned Drue from a generally pleasant person to a snarling, sullen, zombie-like tween who decided the entire universe is out to get her and surely no one, NO ONE! on the planet has as much work as she has and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what my late June through mid-July has been like. Oh, and add a Justin Bieber soundtrack running perpetually in the background. Is it any wonder I don’t have much of my mind left from time to time?
By the last week in August I’d had enough. So I did what any self-respecting Mom of a 12 year old who doesn’t mind being grounded, scoffs at losing any and every technical device in her room and can thrive on her imagination alone for days on end. I gave her sentences. Not 10, not 100 not 200 but an UNKNOWN number of sentences. And she wrote sentences about how she would either do her work and do it on time and to the best of her ability or write sentences (yes, I gave her sentences about writing sentences) from the time she woke up until the time she went to bed. And it took 2 DAYS of endless sentence writing, punctuated by loud sobs and muffled sniffles, but by the end of day 2, after contemplating the blister on her thumb, Drue decided that she would be right and ready to assume her school work the next day. The next morning Drue was up with her alarm, diligently plodding through her backlog of work, asking questions and turning in item after item on time, and done well. And we haven’t had a peep, whine, or complaint yet!
Man, I wish I’d had that sentence idea a couple of weeks ago, if only to lose the perpetual drone of Beiber in the background. Granted, those sentences might not have been the most educational thing she did all summer, but by golly it was the biggest lesson learned for her in a long time.
