Seeing the Light

by Hillary Harvey, August 14, 2009

This is my favorite kind of light: when the sky is covered in dark and sort of stormy, blue-gray clouds, but the sun is off shining in a corner, casting its bright light in long rays against the green of the trees. The light is contrasty: bright and rich and dark and colorful, all at the same time. The world seems to pop out, shouting for you to see.

Of all the times I hated going to school, my least favorite time was spring when this kind of light happens often. The worst part was not getting to feel the breezes on my newly uncovered skin, not being allowed access to fresh air (especially in high school). Our air circulated out from between the slats of ancient radiators caked with a thick, greasy film, where janitors' tools could not reach. We had a great view of the mountains, but no mountain air.

Zoë doesn't get this. She thinks that school is like her Montessori preschool, where they got to play in a rabid pack for a couple of hours in a naturally-lit Victorian with fresh, clean wooden toys, open windows, and then out on the playground in the cool, green grass or riding bikes on a small circular driveway.


II.
When we bought the house, we were fairly confident that we shouldn't choose one based on the public school we'd be districted to. I’d told the real estate agent, "Well, we homeschool, so that's not really much of a factor." But when we got the house, it suddenly seemed sort of uninformed to not even look at the schools in the area. So I made an appointment with the principal of our local public elementary, and Owen took the morning off from work.

The school is the smallest in the district, with about 250 students in grades pre-K through 5th. The property abuts the high school, which the principal and teachers noted, as it allows some high school students to come help out in the elementary grades for credit. We talked with the principal for about an hour before going into the first grade classroom to observe a reading lesson. It was a typical building, with flourescent lights on the ceiling, small, unopened windows in the classroom, tiled floors and painted brick walls.  There were lots of windows in the hallways and a little courtyard in the middle. The school was bright and happily decorated with children's artwork and projects, and the principal, secretary and teacher we met were all good-hearted, intelligent, and determined people. We liked them and their school very much.

But as we listened to them talk about their curricula, texts and school events and protocols, we knew that it just wasn't the place for us. The reading lesson was comprised of a short at-your-seat exercise program led by a student "to get their brains warmed up for learning." Then began the memorized drills. There were 21 kids in the class, a couple of people seemed absent, and they recited together their phonics. We wondered if Zoë would be a teacher's pet or if she would just open and close her mouth along with the others, trying not to seem lost. From what I've seen in her academic homeschool classes, Zoë is not super quick with the answers, though she often knows them. I’ve watched her sit quietly, pensive (thinking about how she told me the same answer yesterday) as someone else shouts it out. And while she's eager to please adults and always the first to raise her hand, she doesn't always focus well enough to know what she's volunteering for. She's a bit of a dreamer, like her parents, but socially intelligent and eager to fit in.

I wasn't surprised when the principal told us that recess was 20 minutes. The playground was on one of those spongy blacktops, the play equipment fairly new and probably freshly painted and toxic. It sat there unused when we visited. I thought about trying to explain to Zoë how long 20 minutes was. When she asks to go to school, I ask her what that would be, and she says she'd get "to play on the playground with other kids." But she doesn’t see that when I take her to the playground to meet our homeschool playgroup every Monday, we spend at least two or three hours at a clip. I suppose I could tell her that it's the same amount of time it takes to drive to Pata's house, but driving time does not move as quickly to a kid as time on a playground.

I imagine that if the kids don't eat their lunch in time (they have 20 minutes for that, too, and I guess you could get Zoë to eat her lunch in 20 minutes if you sat her alone and didn't feed her until mid-afternoon - but don’t the younger kids eat first, probably around 11:30?) or didn't finish their homework or were talking in class (or if it was too wet or too cold or too hot or too gray), they wouldn't get to go outside. From what I've heard from friends who have kids in the local public schools, that doesn't mean they go into the gym to play dodge ball. It means they stay in their classrooms to talk at their desks. So perhaps no running around rabid with other kids that day? And then maybe the drills would be ever-harder, possibly causing people to fidget or talk or not pay attention, thereby forcing the teacher to repeatedly tell them to stop and eventually take playground privileges away for the next day? (I love how Holly describes this.)


III.
These are the things that I was thinking about when we visited.

I thought about how our own reading lessons were done in our pajamas at the kitchen table, with me hovering as she read, making sure she got each word and concept. And how the stories we read were mostly chosen by her.  And how she would often ask me to order things from the library, to include in our lessons. I thought about her math and science and writing classes that she took last year, how they had about 5-10 kids in each of them, and how the moms who ran them let her sit with her hand on their laps and call out when she knew the answer.

I tried to be open and to compare fairly what we were offering with what the public school could give her. But when I looked at their biggest event, I just knew it wasn't to me what it was to them. A teacher coordinated a "farm day" where local farmers brought in animals to the courtyard; and there were all sort of activities and learning opportunities organized around their visit; and the older kids, for whom the event was not originally intended, were eventually allowed to go, too, so that it was a whole-school event.  They were so proud and it was probably such a huge endeavor to organize and an amazing thing to offer on such a large-scale. But I thought about how often Zoë goes to the farm (every week in the summer and even to a weekly program on a farm), and I thought about the most recent field trip, in a series, that I'd organized for our little homeschool group (through the Forsyth Nature Center where we went on a hike through Kingston Point Park to explore the various ecologies there - we were out in the sun for two hours, hiking and running around, smelling the lilac trees and honeysuckle, and exploring new terrain with a knowledgeable and wonderfully child-friendly educator).

You may find this justifying and like I was making decisions about things that were already decided. Which is most likely true, but I was contentedly surprised when Owen had the same impressions (and I promise, I let him speak first… you can ask him). So two weeks ago, I sent in our Letter of Intent to Homeschool.  And this week, I sent in my fretfully prepared IHIP (Individualized Home Instruction Plan).  And now we wait.  Owen and I both know that if we let Zoë choose, she would make her life decisions based on fashion.  She’d go to the Catholic school down the street "because you get to wear those Celtics" (kilted uniforms).  But lately, when we’re out and she’s asked what school she goes to, Zoë’s been saying, rather proudly, “You may think I go to school because I have a backpack, but actually, I’m homeschooled.”  To which people generally reply, “You’re lucky.”