The Slate of Expectation

It feels like yesterday when I made the decision to keep her at home. You know, just for a year.

This week we began year four of this school around the kitchen table thing. It's been nothing like I imagined three years ago. It's been far better and far worse, a series of ironies that play out daily in this crazy life of mine.

I am the teacher as well as the student.

I am learning that years of formal education pale in comparison to the school of hard knocks.

I am learning the most; this is certain.

I am learning to work with what I've got and to work with who I've got.

Three years ago I imagined a homeschool room: bookcases lining walls, beanbags for reading, neatly organized everything...the {still} unfinished bonus room as our own personal schoolroom, a sacred space devoted to learning together.

Three years ago I imagined hands-on, creative everything: Egyptian pyramids baking in the oven and child drawings to accompany her phonics instruction.

Enter perfectionist daughter frustrated by her 1st-grade motor skills, crying buckets as she tried to draw the perfect cat that sat on the mat and how it didn't look how she pictured it in her mind.

Enter exasperation over the Egyptian pyramid project turned nondescript lump of crumbly mess.

Enter frustration and perfectionism that precluded much of reading, math, and history that year.

Enter tears. Again. Hers and mine.

The glossy curriculum magazine advertised a creative, gentle, hands-on approach. I read not one disclaimer regarding perfectionistic, frustrated children.

Somewhere along the way we settled on the classical model in its rich simplicity, a non-trendy, no bells and whistles approach. We learn in much the same way our great-grandparents did in their one-room schoolhouse...which is convenient, since a one-room schoolhouse {with one giant, oval-shaped desk} is exactly what I have.

And so I work with who I've got and what seems to work for us all:

Creative, inquisitive, perfectionist, not-loving-to-read daughter. She needs a streamlined, efficient, traditional way of learning so that she can have the rest of the day to be who she is: creative. Extra time in the day also means extra time to {sigh} practice reading...and more time for her book-loving mama to read to her.

Bright, compliant, book-loving, golf-playing son. He needs a streamlined, efficient, traditional way of learning so that he can have the rest of the day to read some more, to practice golf in the backyard...and to let his book-loving mama read to him.

Non-compliant, attention-hoarding, toddler. He needs his siblings to finish school quickly so that he can have everyone's attention...and let his book-loving mama read to him.

Somewhat introverted, contemplative mother who is not naturally gifted in the art of nurturing. She needs her children to finish school efficiently and collaboratively so that she can finally stop talking and hide from said children and have just a few moments of quiet to write...or to let her book-loving self read a bit...or to take a nap.

So that's who I've got, a little bit of every personality living and learning together, a family of 5 in our smallish home, doing school in the space where we do everything else: the eating, the crafting, the writing, the wiping up spills...

The wiping up tears.

It's not a picture of that beautiful sacred space, gilt-framed in my mind. It's a picture of a messy space with tattered edges...

And it is very much sacred, a hallowed ground of sopped-up juice, Cheerios, and eraser dust.

Funny how that out-of-reach, idyllic schoolroom stands symbolic for the rest of this unpredictable journey called home-education. As we traverse the overlapping trails of living and learning, I, the teacher mama, am figuring out that I don't know much of anything...and that what I thought I knew doesn't count for much.

Day in and day out, I am learning to unlearn, to humbly wipe the slate of expectation clean and allow Someone Else to write the story on it.

............................................

A parenting post linked up with the lovely

Ann Voskamp at A Holy Experience.