A Tale of a Suburban Classroom

In the last two posts, you’ve gotten a glimpse into the second and third  decades of my life. If we jump forward to the fourth decade, I can tell you one more story. This time, I was a mom at home with a couple little kids. One was approaching school age. I was teaching her to read and enjoying it. But we both needed some space and structure.

Preschool was serving the purpose well. Nine hours a week, she could play and create and socialize. And she could learn to read and write at her own pace at home. 

Why couldn’t this schedule keep working?

 Emotional, social, and academic development are equally crucial, but they don’t all track at the same rate for a lot of kids. My firstborn was about three different ages if each of these areas could be isolated. My next child was approaching school age fast and she had a whole different personality. 

The hybrid school idea was born, complete with a philosophy that made time for play and the outdoors, despite - or perhaps because of - the schedule being 12 hours a week. Recess, nature study, art and music would not be shortchanged for math and writing, and no harm done because the rest of the week would be 1:1 academics at home.

I won’t tell you if I’m still in that decade of my life, ahem, but I will tell you that today you could visit a dozen classrooms where over 140 kids are learning math, reading, writing, history, science, art, and music together; and you could follow those same kids home-  if that weren’t weird - and see them learning math, reading, spelling, writing, and reading various books and pursuing their interests at their own pace at couches and tables and (at least at my house) outside or on the floor.

These classrooms are in a well-regarded suburban district. All the parents of the kids at the hybrid program have to pay school taxes with no credits or tax write-offs. The school doesn’t take a dime of tax money.

 The public schools are ‘good’, but these parents prioritize something more than test scores. They prioritize what works for their kids. Some kids are gifted and were bored in their classrooms. Others were excellent readers but not so excellent at math and needed some time to just develop each skill at their own pace without being labeled as ‘behind’. Others simply thrive with time at home, in sports, pursuing their own interests, and moving their bodies for large portions of the day. 

So far, I don’t have data on test scores since each family is responsible for testing on their own and the program is less than ten years old (see, I could still be in the same decade), but I can tell you my kids scored at or above average on their standardized tests and, on average, homeschool kids score higher than public school kids on standardized tests. 

 I’m not sure how much test scores even matter, but there it is.

Every kid is a person much more complex and nuanced than their scores on a standardized test. Ideas, experiences, wonder, imagination…these are all just as, if not more, important to personhood than fact recall or skill demonstration.

 But how do we measure those? They don’t show up on standardized tests.

But what if the development of these, and more, are really what education is about? What if parents see this when they see their child defeated with homework and academic pressure, with a loss of natural interest by 4th, or 2nd, grade, or with a belief they are somehow ‘behind’ because they didn’t learn their ABC’s at 5 but at 6 or 7?  

There might be an exodus from schools, or restlessness within, because parents and teachers and kids know intuitively that, as important as facts and skills are, there has to be more to developing a life fully lived and a mind abundantly fed.

As Mr. Malcolm said in Jurassic Park, “Life will find a way”. Perhaps that’s why microschools, hybrid schools, homeschools, Acton Academies, Classical Conversations communities, University Model Schools, charter schools, cyber schools… of all shapes and sizes are springing up all over the country. Innovation and creativity still abound and humans are pretty good at finding a way to live and thrive.