Off The Beaten Path

For months now there has been a lot of debate over students returning to conventional, in person instruction in physical school buildings.  Strong opinions are being voiced and I don't think anyone disagrees with the fact that for many families having their children in this setting is an economic necessity, if nothing else.  I also believe we can concur that for legions of students what we consider traditional education, whether public or private, is relatively effective.  However, there are others who need something different entirely.  My youngest daughter is among those learners who do not thrive at a run-of-the-mill brick and mortar school.

When our public school closed last March, we realized for the first time the full extent to which our child had become turned off to academics.  Yes, we knew she didn't want to get on the bus in the mornings, she called the school a "prison" and a "chokey," she wasn't eating or growing well, but we trusted that she was still learning.  She wasn't.  She was simply in crisis each day at school and resorting to whatever response got her out of or at least through anything stressful, threatening, or demanding beyond her capacity to handle at the time.  And when she walked off the bus, she carried her school armor into our home, too, impacting what she could (not) or would (not) do for the remainder of the day.  One argument for in-person, conventional education cited frequently is that school is the only safe place a child may have and that's certainly true for some.  Another is that traditional school ensures or at least assists our children's stable mental health.  But what if it's the school itself that makes a child feel endangered, vulnerable, and harmed?  In hindsight, not being more attuned to what was really happening with my little girl at school is a huge regret.

When we began home instruction after spring break 2020, it became painfully clear that our daughter wanted nothing to do with academics. The mere mention of a worksheet or a book or a learning app resulted in her running away at best.  More often, she would throw herself on the floor, scream, and kick.  She fought us tooth and nail on anything assigned by the school and refused to as well as was unable to participate in the virtual classrooms.  After a few weeks, we broke from the school and the curriculum.  Yes, we still reported on what we were working on and maintained contact with teachers and therapists, but we allowed our youngest to learn only interest-based.  So, she gladly passed along the books and asked us to read them aloud rather than having to do it herself.  She was curious about planets and we talked about them for many weeks.  We listened to a lot of music and we danced and we learned the names of composers and their work.  We played with kinetic sand for hours.  We sat time and again in front of the world map looking at countries, oceans, and continents.  We jumped on the trampoline so much that parental injuries were sustained.  We installed a new swing set because it became a favorite sensory and motor activity.  Still, there were moments when our child shut down and refused and we accepted her no.  We had understood that she needed to regain her own power when it came to education.  This is how we ended the 2019/20 school year.

After a summer with only light academic activity and a focus on outdoor and family time, we started the current school year with a bronzed beauty, now a registered home schooler, who had gained not only several pounds in weight and inches in height, but also found her voice and trust again.  So we set out to slowly increase the scholastic demands based on her IEP and a modified fourth grade curriculum. Since the beginning of October, I have had the help of an excellent academic interventionist who could see right from the start that our child was very capable of learning in a very different way.  She tuned in immediately to what was needed and by now has formed a mutual adoration society with our little one.  Just this morning while waiting for her teacher, my youngest said, "Miss Sheets is like Miss Honey from Matilda.  I am smart with Miss Sheets."  Let those last six words sink in.  Do you hear what I heard?  My child feels smart again because a teacher has helped her regain her academic confidence and success.  Not just any teacher though, but a teacher who is willing to practice math facts while walking through the neighborhood, a teacher who comes with customized work sheets (hello, Mariah Carey, Swan Lake, and Grinch), a teacher who jumps on the trampoline while checking monthly vocab, a teacher who gives choices and who accepts a no, a teacher who takes the ever-precarious emotional and mental balance of her student into real consideration from one moment to the next.

From where I sit right now in March, I can tell you that our youngest child will have met nearly all of her IEP objectives when her IEP expires in April.  She will have touched every area of the fourth grade curriculum in her own way.  She will have attained a level of speech, personal expression, and self-assertion far surpassing her ability from a year ago.  Her body is healthier and stronger.  Her mind is calmer and better able to respond to stressors. She recognizes that she is a person with the right to be herself.  Her curiosity alone will have taken us through the solar and digestive systems, through penguins and the David series, through watercoloring and to gleefully choosing her own books at the library.  Home school has allowed us to explore ecosystems and food chains, states of matter and heat, indigenous people and cultures of the Americas as well as citizens' rights/responsibilities and elections. By May we'll have added knowledge about early Ohio, Earth's surface, and natural resources along with anything else that comes up for spontaneous interest.

Of course, home school and home-based instruction haven't magically solved every challenge our daughter faces, but they have created a playing field in which she feels safe, supported and ready to learn.  We have discovered so much about how she ticks and how a student-centered, interest and task-based approach that allows her to self-control actually meets her unique needs.  She also requires close, mutually attuned, and trusting relationships without any elements of coercion or punishment with her teachers along with the flexibility to learn organically, frequently hopping between subjects (and sometimes even literally between objects) and seizing onto those moments of readiness and spark where her mind can catch on so quickly while respecting the times at which it must rest.

I can tell you exactly what was missing for our child in the conventional school setting which for seven waking hours each day deprived her of a holistic approach not just to education but to her entire understanding and development of herself as a whole person.  Her emotional, spiritual, and mental health were not just being ignored, but damaged.  Her freedom to make decisions was nearly completely removed.  Her freedom of expression was basically denied.  And under those conditions in the constraints of a physical school building with its necessary limitations on every level, the instructional strategies and interventions were largely ineffective for her as was the system of earning rewards.  She was neither safe (based on her own perceptions), accepted or included.

I am not ever going to tell you what's right or even feasible for your child and family and I am keenly aware that my children's choices spring from privilege.  All I ask is that you consider that there are children who are not well-served through traditional education nor even special education.  As a society and collectively, I do not believe we currently feel responsible to provide what those children need to learn and thrive, but let us at least acknowledge and accept that there are students and families who require a unique path and work toward a future where they are fully supported on their journeys along with every student who can succeed in more conventional settings and ways.