My Own School Experience

I'll never forget the way I felt the first time a teacher told me "You have a gift. I rarely see a student who 'gets this' the way you do. You should really move forward with this". I was overwhelmed. I felt a surge of pride, and yet humbleness. Someone believed in me. I felt special. Appreciated.

I just think it was a shame I had to wait until college to interact with a teacher like that.

The first time I came across the term "burnout" referring to kids in school, I didn't get it. Huh? kids, getting burned-out? They're kids! They get up, someone makes them food, washes their clothes, drives them around, what do they have to be burned-out about?

Then I started thinking back on my own school experience. Part of my problem accepting homeschooling was the sense of nostalgia I felt about school. Red apples and crisp white paper and No. 2 pencils. New backpacks and saddle shoes.*sigh* School was great. There were so many great memories...like that time...wait that was bad... or when...no that embarrassed me... that great teacher...what great teacher? The more I thought about it, the fewer truly positive experiences I had in school, and the ones I did were either just playing with my friends or in an extra-curricular setting, band or Bible quiz team. Everything else had sucked. And I thought about my grades. In elementary school I was a straight-A, happily over-achieving student. By middle school I was falling behind in math, and by high school I gave up. I didn't even try. It wasn't until college, when I was able to choose the majority of my classes, study on my own and pursue my interests that my grades went back up.

I started school young. I went to a private Christian school that included a K-4 class. So at 4 1/2 I rode the big yellow bus for an hour, got to school where I sat at a desk, looked at the blackboard and wrote in a workbook. We had lunch and recess, a short rest time, and got back on the bus at 3. Kindergarten was more of the same.

Then came first grade. I don't wish my first grade experience on anyone. I had the worst teacher you can imagine. Her name was Miss Schaffer. She was young and looked like Miss Piggy. She had big blonde hair and bright pink makeup. She was overweight and would sit at her desk with her shoes off and eat lollipops in front of us. And boy did she have it in for me. I can remember looks of disdain and even the hateful way in which she said my name.

One time I was supposed to have my mom sign that I had done my homework. I did my homework, but the slip of paper she was supposed to sign had fallen out in my desk and never made it home. My life was over. Miss Schaffer would unleash her wrath on me. What should I do? I knew how to spell my mom's name, but I could only print. My mom would sign in cursive. I got the slip out and crookedly scrawled "Carla" across the top of my paper in the best cursive I could manage. I knew my last name was impossible.

I handed in my work. My face was hot. My heart was in my throat .She looked it over. "Did your mom sign this?" she squinted her eyes at me. "No."  I felt proud. I had told the truth. I started out bad, but I had made it right. She would tell me what I did was wrong, but she was glad I told the truth. I would lose my recess, but I didn't mind, because I deserved that. "Go stand in front of the class".

"Boys and girls, everyone look at Colleen." They all stared at me. My knees were shaking. "Colleen is a very bad person. She is a liar".

Then there was the time I broke my arm and needed surgery. I had climbed onto the washing machine to reach a chin-up bar in the doorway. I fell and broke it in three place. At the joint the bone actually snapped off and was just kind floating around in there. I had to have surgery and missed a few weeks of school. I came back, basking in the attention and cast-signing. Again, Miss Schaffer called me up front. To welcome me back, I presumed. Again the kids were instructed to look at me, and this is the message she delivered,

"Boy and girls, Colleen broke her arm because she was playing somewhere she shouldn't have been. Now God is punishing her. You should all learn a lesson from her."

What the heck?!

And the time I told her I was sick, and she made me eat my lunch anyway and then I threw up in the hallway. And the time she told me my hair was dirty. And when she told my brother he "ruined the concert" by singing so loudly. What hurt the most was when she told me my mom was very bad because she was divorced.

Second grade wasn't much better. We had Mr. Campbell. He never humiliated us, but he asked little girls to sit on his lap at his desk and he kissed them on the cheek. Then he asked my mom to borrow her car to take me and two other little girls on a field trip to Philly-with just him. Yikes. Needless to say, none of us went. The other two girls didn't return to our school next year.

The next few years were uneventful, with mediocre teachers. Third grade is the year I started falling behind in math. No one stopped and tried to help me understand it. I guess they didn't have time. So as the years went on, I fell further and further behind, a snowball effect, eventually ending up in remedial high school math and never recovering.

Maybe this sounds like a lot of blame-shifting. I should have tried harder in math. Asked for help. But remember I was a little kid! I couldn't be solely responsible for my education yet. I needed guidance. I'm not bitter, or resentful, I'm just recognizing that sometimes, the system fails, because it's a one-size-fits-all system, and kids, people, aren't made that way.

I was definitely burned-out by high school. I really didn't care anymore. I didn't try. I didn't know where to start. I forgot a lot of my assignments, and just remember feeling lost and distracted all the time. I was drowning. I had no time management skills, and instead of stepping in, asking, "What's going on? do you need some help?" I just got irritated remarks and looks of disgust from teachers. After one particularly horrible presentation in front of the class, one teacher said, " Go sit down. I don't even know what to say".

Thanks for your help.


So that is part of what I am trying to avoid by homeschooling. I want Gracie to know that, learning is fun, just as I have discovered, 11 years after school, it's fun. I'm not worried about cramming facts into her head at his point, but with helping her develop skills she can use to learn things herself .Observation. Critical thinking. The word educate literally means, "to draw out". That's my goal. To draw out those skills, her natural abilities, and show her how to make them work for her.