How I Chose Homeschool

 

When I found out I was moving back to North Carolina after two years of living in Colorado and going to Animas I immediately blocked myself from feeling sad. Moving back was always a looming possibility that I was subconsciously preparing myself to accept. This knowledge didn’t make me any less sad to leave of course. More than this sadness I think was the loss of my future at Animas. I used the summer almost as a grieving period for this future and for the friendships I had. During the summer  through meditations on my life led by gratitude I accepted that my family and I were moving and I resolved to make the best of the change. 

 

I had high hopes for my new school in North carolina. It is the sister school to the middle school I attended so I thought it would be the best option available in my town. I did not expect to be so disappointed in the organization. The apathy of the teachers contributed to a sense of pointlessness and existential dread which at times brought me quietly to tears during class. The teachers placed their rules above the need to understand a student. Don’t get me wrong I see the inherent value and necessity of these rules however it is the religious enforcement of and emphasis placed on them which I feel actually works to the detriment to the school community. This emphasis leads students to believe that they only have value if they strictly follow these rules as well as exhibit submissive personalities and/or behaviors towards adults.  Likewise students at Massey Hill Classical  believe that following rules and respecting ‘authority’ is virtuous. This is in stark contrast to Animas where students are encouraged- even expected to have independent and creative thought as well as rich lifestyles. 

 

Take for instance the orientations students go though. At Animas the first days and weeks are dedicated to team building as well as expectation setting.  This came as a shock to me as a freshman  when my first task as an Animas student was to work with my advisory to build my advisor a ramshackle carrier in order to compete in a race between other advisories to see who could get their advisor to the top of the hill first.  My orientations in middle school as well as my  introduction to Massey Hill was reading both the school and the county student handbooks. As you may have ascertained from this comparison my feelings towards my new school were negative. The thought of the next two years, specifically my Junior and Senior years of high school which I had been eagerly awaiting my whole life suddenly looked grim and lonely. 

 

I used to like and appreciate these rules; following them brought me certain rewards and a sense of accomplishment during middle school. I simply accepted them as the basis of a school society just as ‘laws are the basis of civilization’. I have come to oppose this presupposition, instead I believe that relationships are the true foundation of any community. It is imperative that everyone  understands and agrees that each individual has value and is vital to the community. This abstract of community is measured by the quality of the relationships of the people within it and their ability to learn is contingent on their ability to collaborate. In my experience rules should come second to people and their relationships.

 

 Rules lay out the expectations we have for one another. Operative words being ‘one another’ the problem with the system in place in my home county is that the rules seek only to regulate the students and thereby imply that students have no right to have expectations of their teachers. This boils down to the fact that students are not viewed as equal participants in the school community. I saw that some teachers viewed students as transitory and themselves as permanent and therefore ‘part of’ the school. This perceived gap in  buy-in accounts for the attitude that students are less valuable than teachers. This attitude combined with the power teachers have over students and their emphasis on rules fosters a sense of defiance toward teachers in students which wears on the  fabric of the school community . I felt this sense of defiance viscerally during my time at Massey Hill. This was strange for me because I have always had strong relationships with my teachers and have even come to know and love some of them as friends.

 

What’s more, I felt that there was no place for me to fit in within the student body. For example, I once asked if I could sit with a girl I was friends with in middle school. She and her friends acted coldly towards me and I felt that they resented my taking up space at their table. This one experience exemplifies the atmosphere at the school.  

 

My ultimate qualm with the school was how and what they taught.  At the end of each year from grade 3 through to grade 12 students take a state administered exam to ensure that they know the exact skills deemed necessary for that grade. This is the end goal of almost all teaching in North Carolina public schools;  teachers  quite literally teach numbered ‘objectives’ from a book and are required to get through all of them by the end of the year. Making passing the test the ultimate objective of learning threatens what we all want for the children of America: creative thinking and a thirst for knowledge for its own sake. By going back to this system of education I was forced to ask myself ‘what is the ultimate purpose of education?’ 

 

 As an American child, I assumed that everyone went to school because well... that’s where children go. When I asked why kids go to school  my parents being lawyers explained that it was the law: that children below the age of 16  had to go to school and if they didn’t their parents would get in trouble. This is a perfectly fine answer except for the fact that it does not address the purpose of education.

 

In my view the  interest of any school should be creating the most realized and successful version of each student. In North Carolina schools individual prosperity seems to be an afterthought to measurable achievements such as high grades, various tests, and graduation. The difference in the attention paid to a  student’s individuality, opinions, and needs is a chasm between the two schools and is reflective of each school’s own perceived purpose as well as  the  roles it predicts its students will fill.

 

Animas aims to create citizens with the skills and experience necessary to succeed in an increasingly deindustrialized society. It is imperative that my generation have creative thinking and problem solving skills as well as experience in communicating work and ideas to others. I believe Animas does this through requiring students to create projects confronting contemporary issues and present their work at public exhibitions.  Furthermore Animas encourages its students to engage with the wider community, for example I was able to work with San Juan Basin public health on  their communities that care initiative as well as have the opportunity to speak with the Durango Herald on multiple occasions. I take these connections very seriously because I know that success in ‘the real world’ is dependent upon my ability to  collaborate and build relationships with people and organizations.

 

 At Animas I was continuously given the opportunity to choose what I studied and what work I produced.  I was pushed to challenge myself for the sake of knowledge and to  find creative ways of expressing that which I learned to other people. I was left craving this intellectual freedom in my hometown.

 

Having read of all this it will not surprise you that I asked my parents if I could move back to Colorado on my own. To my astonishment they agreed. I think my family and I observed  a glaring conflict between our philosophy of education and the actions taken by the school when they refused to place me in more advanced classes. The school’s administration would not act in the best interest of the individual student because it would require them to break their rules.

 

My mom and I also thought we had a great alternative in homeschooling. We cooked up a rough curriculum for the semester surrounding the themes in John Steinbeck's ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ .  We were attracted to  ‘The Grapes of Wrath’  because it deals with themes of  political unrest and economic strife and inequality while touching on topics like  agriculture, psychology, and even automobiles. In talking about our plans it was clear that I was actually excited to work on these and the choice to pull me out of Massey Hill became clear.