Homeschool: A Choose Your Own Adventure Story
Everybody goes to school, so everybody knows the stories — mean teachers, cool teachers, homework, science fair, sports, prom, bullies, nerds. The familiar experience of growing up in a school setting pervades popular culture from television to movies, books and songs. When we made the decision to veer away from that well-trodden path, we were staring into the void. Our journey might not lead us toward any typical milestones — there may be no school dances, no clubs, no after-school hangouts with peers. We’d had a set map (albeit a map with a moderate diversity of trails) and that map was now replaced by an entirely blank page.
As I prepared to submit our educational plans, I confronted the loss of what was expected. My brain hustled to fill in that blank page. It hunted for milestones that could mark the wide open spaces. If we didn’t have memories of prom night, what else would we have? Could we keep any of the guideposts on the old map, if we wanted? While my thoughts swirled, I came to realize that the possibilities had not shrunk at all; they had become nearly endless. The blank page was not empty — it was a picture of total freedom.
In truth, there are homeschool proms. There are homeschool clubs, contests, and field days. There are homeschool communities. You can replace a typical school experience with its homebound echo, but you don’t have to. In truth, you can do anything. Crafting and developing our homeschool plan is an ongoing exercise in divergent thinking. That alone tells me that we are on the right track. Divergent thinking and nonconformity are practices that I earnestly revere. We are a family of rebels, radicals, free spirits and dissenters. Most schools don’t really allow for that. In general, schools love a map.
Within our first few days at home, we ordered a six month subscription to Tinker Crate to foster our son’s interest in STEM. Our third kit was a glowing double pendulum, accompanied by an exploration of chaos theory. It explained how chaos is not random but, rather, a highly complex phenomenon, sometimes too complex to understand. It explained how scientists use something called a random walk to model chaotic motion. The random walk effectively predicts many statistical phenomena, yet each individual step forward is based on a mechanism of chance (like a coin flip). Some paths end up being more common than others, but all paths are possible.
As homeschoolers, we blaze trails of every kind. We find trail markers, choose them, or erect them ourselves. We revel in the vast expanse of blank pages, and we cover them in really, really good notes (sometimes pictures). We write entirely new stories — our own. My heart steadies when I realize that we are living the sage advice of a favorite poet:
“Remember: The rules, like streets, can only take you to known places. Underneath the grid is a field — it was always there — where to be lost is never wrong, but simply more.
As a rule, be more.”
— Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
We are walking through the open field beneath the grid. We are more.
