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Article Excerpt
Through an event of synchronicity, my daughter Monica reached a threshold in her transformation from little girl to young woman (11 years old) simultaneous to my completion of doctoral studies in natural/earth sciences. Also at this time, our family was preparing to move from Arizona to Hawai'i to Chile, as Monica's dad was to begin construction of twin telescopes in these distant places. I share with you reflections on the learning path born of this temporal intersection that includes home school choices, learning/teaching strategies, and responses to transitions as an experiential history, not a model or template.
When Monica struggled through her fifth grade year in public school we listened, reasoned, and struggled with her. Teachers from kindergarten through fourth grade had consistently praised and rewarded the little, precocious girl for her well-done assignments and creative thought. Why then was the fifth grade report card riddled with C's? We questioned both child and teacher. "Yes, I like my teacher very much." "Yes, Monica understands the material we are covering, and she is a joy to have in the classroom. She simply does not turn in her work." Parents, child, and teacher made efforts to resolve this impasse. Finally, I came to believe that what appeared to be a deficiency in organizational skills and motivation actually contained tenacious roots of Monica's transformation from child to adolescent (Erikson, 1963).
Near the end of the year, her public school teacher advised us to consider a year of home schooling. I, a trained science teacher and scientist, her dad, a structural engineer; and older brother Dan (13 years old), a gregarious, sensitive, school community type, were all skeptical. However, our own current intense learning experiences (dissertation defense, telescope creation) had both parents thinking outside the box. We became open to education possibilities for Monica other than the K-12 norm. Monica, tired of the emotional struggle of the past year, explains her thoughts on the transition:
I was ready. My 5th grade teacher was one of my favorites from public school and she told me that she had home schooled her daughter for a while. She said that they were able to do a lot of the schoolwork required in a very short time and then had the rest of the time to explore other interests. This especially appealed to me because I have always had interests outside of school that were important to me. I am very fond of animals (wild and captive) and being on a more unconstrained schedule allowed me to go out and look for birds or go to work at the wildlife rehabilitation center.
From this tentative stance Monica and I began exploring home schooling possibilities. Dad returned his focus to telescopes and Dan involved himself in basketball, track, and a young man's middle school years.
Being a teacher/mentor/mom, or perhaps more simply a learning guide was a returning for me. I had earned a teaching certificate by taking education courses at St. Mary's College while completing a bachelor in science at the University of Notre Dame. The philosophies of Montessori (Zeise, 2001), Glasser (2001), Dewey (Hickman, 2001), and Jung (Hall & Nordby, 1973; Williams, 2001) contributed to my beliefs in child-initiated learning, no-fail schools, pragmatic-experiential curricula, and the reality of personality types. However, in college, learning theory was secondary to my interest in geology. Then came graduation, marriage, and my first job teaching seventh grade earth science in an inner city school in Massachusetts. Seventh graders taught me that it was difficult for them to connect my fascination with earth sciences and their textbook. I listened and entered a Master of Science Education program at Boston University, which focused on outdoor experiential learning. As a student teacher, I misted spider webs, raised salamander eggs, and learned the many ferns of a New England forest. In my classroom, I was now a very pregnant science teacher carrying firstborn Dan. Then came Monica and I spent time at home creating nature education experiences for children on a project basis while my babies grew. When the children were 5 and 6, I returned to school to study renewable natural resources at the University of Arizona. Six years later, doctorate finally in hand, Monica asked to be home schooled.
Home schooling, we found, came in many styles such as religious-based curricula; unschooling approaches (Fitsimmons, 2001); and comprehensive correspondence programs (Calvert School, 2001). We were fortunate to stumble into a loosely knit local home school group, Telao. The families within this organization were committed to support child and/or family freedom to choose the educational path that was right for them. Each family created its own school template of discipline, schedule, projects, core curriculum, field trips, tutors, and so forth. Diverse as we were, we all seemed to view education as an interconnected array of subjects related to daily life. Some families identified this wholeness within a unifying theme: music, classical literature, nature, culture, and the like. Together, the Telao families were a network of knowledge and resources such as textbook and materials catalogs, legal requirements, interesting activities within the region, and literature on home schooling approaches. Once a week parents and children gathered in a local park to talk and play. Usually, an activity was created for the enjoyment of all, Mary's Navaho hoop dancing, George's drum demo (with baby Sonia...
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