World School

It's been a whirlwind two weeks in our house! October has come and gone and it's finally starting to cool off a bit here in Bahrain. Is it, cool, crisp autumn air? Not even close. But it's also not a relentless 120 degrees either, so I'll take it. 

We made a big decision about a week ago and disenrolled Stella from the DOD school to bring her home and educate her ourselves. 

It wasn't a decision we made lightly and I'm sure there are some traditionalists reading this that are audibly groaning, but we feel led to do this and feel like it's the right decision for OUR family. Between them losing her on the bus one day, the administrations handling of that situation, and the traditional public school setting, the DOD school just wasn't a great fit. We knew coming over here that we were going to lose our amazing charter school in Maryland and that we'd have to test the waters of public school and see how it went. We did and it didn't go well. So, here we are. 

Currently we're just getting our feet underneath us and seeing what works. Our first week wasn't the greatest, but I just have to keep reminding myself that this is a transitional period. Stella's going from sitting at a desk most of the day doing worksheets to being free to choose what she wants to learn about, and how she wants to learn (with some obvious rules and restrictions in place... there will never be a day that goes by in this house without reading). She's testing boundaries and limits and my patience but we're figuring it out. 

Neither Christopher or myself had great experiences with the public school system. We both had some great teachers (looking at you Mrs. Pence, Mrs. Smith, Mr. Clarke, Coach Shirley, Mercer, Mr. Woods, Tipton, and Mrs. Simpson-- and I'm sure a few more in there that I'm forgetting- or that were Christopher's teachers) but we also had some horrible teachers who broke our spirits and tamped down our natural curiosity. 

I had a sixth grade teacher pick on me so much my parents had to meet with the principal on multiple occasions for no reason other than she didn't like me (she wasn't hired on the following year). That was the point I started hated school and it only snowballed from there. Then, I actually had a teacher in high school accuse me of plagiarizing a poem I wrote because, and I quote, "I wasn't good enough to have written that on my own" (this was said in front of my whole class). I had to bring in my rough drafts and a note from my mom to prove that I'd written it myself before she'd grade it (never mind the fact that I'd excelled in all my English and creative writing classes up until that point and had scored the highest possible scores on all the writing tests that had been administered-- so I know there had to be documentation on all that and I wasn't coming out of the blue with the ability to write- she was just a grade A bitch). 

There are more and more stories like that of teachers we had who wouldn't listen or told us we weren't good enough or smart enough or wouldn't take the time to recognize different learning styles were needed. And I get it, I do. The public school system was created to cultivate workers to support society and classrooms are over crowded. I understand all that. But we want better for Stella. She deserves better and so did we. I wonder sometimes how different my life would be if I'd had a different learning experience. If homeschool hadn't been laced with such negative connotations back in the 90's or if it had been easier to find curriculums and co-op groups for my mom. I wonder if my natural curiosity would have been nurtured and my abilities and strengths celebrated and cultivated instead of thrown aside for practicalities that, to this day, I've never used (looking at you Pythagorean theorem). It still makes me uneasy to think about going back to school. I will read books all day long, I'll have in depth conversations and do research on a whole host of random subjects, but the thought of being back in a classroom brings such negative feelings flooding to the surface that it's just not worth it. And I wonder if all of that would have been different if my education had been different. 

So we're starting this journey and Stella has dubbed it World Schooling since we'll be traveling the world and I absolutely LOVE that! Because I truly believe that she can learn more being immersed in a different culture or going and SEEING things first hand all over the world than sitting at a desk and reading about them. We want to raise a human being with her own, individual thoughts and ideas, who has compassion for others and a zest for life and an insatiable curiosity and we want to celebrate her strengths and cultivate her passions and teach her actual life skills instead of book work she'll likely never use. 

We've kept her involved in this decision and we asked her,before we even pulled her, what she wanted to learn and here's her quick list: 

And yes, pretty much all of that is STEM and I knew it would be before we even asked her the question. She is so science minded it's not even funny! 

So we're baking and experimenting, reading together, traveling, tasting, and experiencing our way through her education. And you know what? Even in just a week, I've learned a hell of a lot and I can't wait to see where else this takes us!