Love in a Time of Homeschooling Read Free Page B

highly structured environment. At every stage of development she had chafed, not only against her homework, but also against the world of classrooms and desks so alien to her nature. In retrospect, I see these moments of discomfort as signposts on a road to homeschooling, a road traveled by many families who have children with special needs, special gifts, special personalities—families who look at the mismatch between school and child and ask themselves year after year: Can’t we do better than this?
    There are countless reasons why parents homeschool—stories of unhappy children or ambitious parents, bad schools or persistent bullies, religious fundamentalists or nerdy academics—and these narratives, with their varied characters, are as compelling as the homeschooling itself. They reveal the vast complexities of education in today’s America. On that April day, however, I wasn’t thinking about all of that. I didn’t assume that I was headed toward homeschooling. I only knew that something about my daughter’s education was going wrong, and I must try to fix it. My once-joyful child now felt so oppressed by her schoolwork that she wanted to retreat into dark spaces. This couldn’t continue.
    Over the next few days I pondered Julia’s education up until that moment. Awake at night, staring into my bedroom’s shadows, I recalled scenes from preschool, kindergarten, and third grade. Some of the scenes were happy, but others were tinged with conflict and stress. These memories struck me as symptoms that might yield a diagnosis. I told myself that if I could sift through these glimpses from the past, I might be able to choose the right direction for the future.
    And so, in the days to come, I pieced together the narrative of Julia’s education, beginning at a little Montessori school beside a rippling creek.

CHAPTER TWO
Julia and the Schools
    It’s hard to focus when you look outside and see that the branches of trees are forming eyelids.
    J ULIA
    J ULIA WAS TWO YEARS OLD WHEN SHE ENTERED W OODS Creek Montessori—a sweet, small place situated in an old brick house on a half-acre of land surrounded by a buffer of trees. In front of the school ran a wide stream and jogging trail, where the children took regular nature walks. A stroll to the left led through a tunnel above shaded pools that housed one large snapping turtle and several eight-inch fish. Beyond that, the trail opened onto a wooded enclave behind student apartments, and there, for two years, an anonymous undergraduate maintained a small fairy house. A three-inch-high, round wooden door was attached with hinges to the hollowed-out base of a tree, and when the children kneeled to open it, they found a little statue inside, sometimes a fairy, once a gnome, most often a red, round-bellied Buddha. The children scribbled notes for the fairy/Buddha, and left gifts of flowers, drawings, beads, and tiny plastic furniture. The anonymous student responded with messages of gratitude and friendship, until, one morning, the children found the door ripped from its hinges and the occupant gone. A note explainedthat some vicious human troll had taken everything, and the fairy had gone into hiding.
    Fortunately another good spirit came to watch over the children, a reddish brown screech owl perched in a squirrel’s nook, high in a tree that stood in the middle of the school’s small parking lot. For over a year that sleepy bird faced the Montessori entrance, mostly drowsing, sometimes opening one eyelid at a time. The school’s largely Quaker staff dubbed him “Friend Owl.”
    I never felt guilty about sending my firstborn away to that preschool. Some people imagine homeschooling moms as ultra-clingy zealots who refuse to relinquish control of their children, but that’s not me. By the time Julia was two, I was eager to set her loose for a few hours each day. I had another baby to tend, six-month-old