Final Answer: Homeschool or School School?
I know I’m not the only one having some version of this debate with myself, my friends, my husband, and perfect strangers. I pass them at ten-foot intervals at the park and yell: “SO should we send our kids to school next year or do we keep them home? And if we keep them home, do we enroll in the public school’s distance learning program (Zoom school), or do we go full home school?”
Wow. You know, when I look at the questions all spelled out in actual words like that, they seem kind of answerable! I’ve been listening to them slosh around in my head like a boiling hot terror stew that’s also inexplicably screaming like a tea kettle? I totally should have written this down earlier! LOL, okay, let’s bang this out. School or homeschool. No problem. I’ll be done with this in like 5.
Okay.
Okay.
So obviously death is a factor. Not that that’s new. If I’m being honest, fear of their violent deaths was one of the hardest parts of sending my kids to school for the first time. (How was your Fourth of July by the way?) That and coming up with nut-free lunches. Which, hello, also a death factor! We live in a world where we cannot always opt out of death, but this kinda feels like a situation in which we basically… can? So… I feel like… we should?
HOME SCHOOL: 1
DEATH SCHOOL: 0
It’s funny, though, because “death” isn’t on the top of my list of COVID concerns--although, can we call it a list if it’s technically novella-length? Holy shit, we have a trademark and possibly a podcast title: my novella of concerns. Do you have one too? What am I saying? You read this blog, you definitely have a novella of concerns. Take your own novella of concerns, fine people who grind their teeth at night, and go throughout the land. Take it and make real the 5,000-word sparsely-written tomes of terror, anxiety, hypothetical nightmare scenarios, the spectre of our children forty years in the future, snatching a wad of gum out of a complete stranger’s mouth and yelling “I WANT THAT” because WE DIDN’T MAKE HIM GO TO SCHOOL AND LEARN HOW TO BE HUMAN IN A SOCIETY IN 2020.
I NEVER LEARNED TO SHARE HOME SCHOOL: 1
SOCIALIZED SCHOOL: 1
Okay but that’s really not fair to homeschoolers. I know lots of families that homeschool and their kids socialize. They do homeschool music, language, art, science, and sports. Their parents create a network of other families, an intentional community, a commune if you will, orgies optional, and that intentional connectedness between individuals has as much value as learning to be a cooperative member of a classroom whose rules and norms are not sculpted by the individual interests and personalities of the kids who happen to occupy it that year.
I NEVER LEARNED TO SHARE IS A MYTH DON’T BE A DICK HOME SCHOOL: 2
COG SCHOOL: 1
Buuuuuut one of the things I love about public school is that it teaches my children one of the few lessons I cannot: that they are not the center of everyone’s universe, and that not everyone thinks they are brilliant and adorable all the time, and that they are not better than anyone, and that no one is better than they are.
“You’re not that special” is truly one of the most crucial lessons our kids will ever learn. It’s so FREEING. And I deeply believe, I’m talking all the way down to my pelvic floor here, that as a parent, I can’t teach it. I know some parents can. They figure out a way to be both nurturing and circumspect, create a devil’s brew of perspective and unconditional love. I’ve never had much luck blending the two, so my kids get one or the other, usually depending on how hangry I am. Right after lunch they are the lights of my life. Come 5:45 pm. they’re the high beams screaming toward me on a two-lane road when I’m just trying to GET HOME IN ONE PIECE FOR THE LOVE OF-- but my point is this: My job and the world’s job overlap sometimes, but not on whether my kids are special. My job is to remind them every day that they’re special. The world’s is to show them that they can’t expect everyone to think that. I need school to help them learn that they are one of many. Or maybe I don’t NEED school to do that. But it’s easier. It’s so much easier…
YOU ARE THE LIGHT OF MY LIFE HOME SCHOOL: 2
IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU AND GOD IT’S SO MUCH EASIER SCHOOL: 2
One of many. One. Of many.
I don’t know if it’s the dangerous levels of carbon monoxide that have built up in my body because I wore a mask to the pharmacy earlier, but I think a lot of us have a new appreciation for the ways that our lives interconnect with the lives of the people around us. And yes, I am talking about those contact tracing maps that show how one super-spreader could infect the whole block party in a single game of beer pong. I’m talking about how individual choices reverberate across a web of connections that will always be invisible to the person who first plucked the string. Have I killed someone? Will I? These are the questions that I always answer by putting on a fucking mask, y’all. Because maybe I have or will, but it won’t be because I couldn’t be bothered to accessorize properly.
This school decision is not just about me, my work schedule, my kids, their social-emotional needs, and our collective willingness to wear actual pants to learn. We are one of many. This decision is also about my community. We live in a world in which we cannot always opt out of unintentional, sixth-degree harm. But I wonder if this is a situation in which we kind of… can?
Do I technically have the scheduling flexibility to homeschool or assist with distance learning? Yes. Do we have the resources to homeschool or distance learn? Yes. Is my home a safe place for my kids to stay all day? Yes.
Can every other kid in our school district say the same thing? I don’t think so. And can I make that child’s school experience a little safer, or even give them more hours at school with more attention from a teacher, if we make the decision to stay home this year? Yes.
I LOVE YOU EVEN THOUGH I DON’T KNOW YOU AND THAT’S WHY I HOME SCHOOL: 3
SAVE A SPOT FOR SOMEONE WHO NEEDS IT SCHOOL: 2
But oh no, here it comes - the paradox of a selfish parent who would sacrifice anything to ensure that their child is happy and healthy.
Have my kids flourished in school? Yes. Have they learned to be kind, take turns, respect routines, take risks, and resolve in conflicts in school? Yes. Will they learn any of that shit next year in my living room? Fuck, dude. I have no idea.
I mean, I feel like September will be pretty good. I’ll take the watercolors to the park and we’ll do art by the river. I’ll invent a Pokemon unit that’s really about EARTH SCIENCE and we’ll go on a hike and collect the makings of a Squirtle habitat which we’ll construct over glasses of fresh lemonade while we listen to Beethoven. Okay but see then it’ll be… 9:15 am. Deep breaths now. When you’ve spent your whole day’s love and patience and creativity by 9:15 am you must choose between screen time and running to the hills with all the snacks. And people, it rains so much here.
The 9:15 am gut punch will only get harder and harder as the year goes on. Come January, by 7:45 am I’ll have been awake for 19 hours already that day. You’ll find me at the bottom of the coffee pot, grumbling like the villain in a Scooby Doo movie played by Clint Eastwood: “Ya darn kids, rassa-frassin’, do yer damn worksheets and NO THEY’RE NOT ABOUT POKEMON THEY’RE ABOUT DIRT now quit bellyachin’ or I’ll give you somethin’ to fracka-rackin’ cry about, see if I don’t.”
Perhaps I’m placing too much stock in the mystical arts of teacher magic when it comes to creativity and patience, but no, actually, I really don’t think I am. I’ve volunteered in lots of early childhood classrooms and let me tell you what, those hoes really know how to werk that EQ. So I confess, I don’t have a lot of faith in my keeping-my-shit-together muscles. I know my kids will have a more regular routine and a more professional student-teacher relationship if they go back to school. But more importantly, I really really really really really want my kids to understand how to have a relationship with an adult who isn’t a parent or grandparent, a grown-up who doesn’t love them for genetic perpetuation reasons, and who also isn’t going anywhere.
I’VE MADE A HUGE MISTAKE HOME SCHOOL: 3
DO AS YOUR TEACHERS DO, NOT AS MOMMY DOES SCHOOL: 3
But I love our teachers. I don’t want to make their job harder or more dangerous. It’s not fair to them. Not that they pursued a career in education because of their lifelong passion for biohazard hygiene and Zoom. I know they want to be back in the classroom. The kids do, too. But I just have too many questions about what that classroom will look like. For Buster, who’s going into Kindergarten, how on earth? I mean, just literally, HOW? On EARTH? Will they have toys or books? Will they have reading buddies or group projects? How much teaching will these teachers really be able to do when they are responsible for the impulse control of a group of 5 and 6 year olds who must wear a mask for 6 hours, and must not touch each other, and must stay away from each other? Can it be fun?
I imagine for these kids it’s going to be like there’s a fire alarm going off in the classroom all the time, at least for the first few weeks. The very way they occupy the classroom - a dozen human islands, masked from each other - is evidence of danger, an invisible threat they learn to wait for, all day, every day.
I imagine for the teachers it might be like teaching through an all-day active shooter drill. That shit’s traumatic for everybody.
Will they adapt? Of course they will. Can they get through it? Obviously.
Kids are resilient as hell. But their brains are under construction. Is this the path I want their little brains to carve so deeply, so soon?
So if I have the option to relieve them of the responsibility for adapting to a stressful, anomalous season, should I do that? Yes.
If I can protect their sense of safety, and give their brains time to grow just a little more before they learn too much about germs and death and human failure, why the hell wouldn’t I do that?
You might not agree with me on that last one. That’s okay.
I get it - my kids used to be scared of my sister’s gentle, sweet dog. I kept picking them up whenever he’d come over to sniff them, and they remained scared of him. Even though I told them the dog wouldn’t hurt them, I still picked them up. When I finally stopped picking them up and held their hands instead, that’s when they started to pet the dog. I get why you’d want your kids to go through it, not fear it.
When our kids have anxiety, parents have to walk the line between honoring the biological function of anxiety (protecting us from threats) and unnecessarily reinforcing the idea that safe things are threats from which we need to be protected.
I just… look, Diane, it isn’t the time for my family to go tough love, okay? This dog bites.
Like I said, the world and I have different jobs. The world is going to teach my kids that it’s dangerous. It doesn’t need an assist from me. I want to be my kids’ refuge.
As much as I want my kids in school, and as much as I hate to be the buzzkill boner grown-up in the room, I kinda feel like if anyone should have to bear the lion’s share of the burden for adaptation in 2020, it should be the adults with therapists and liquor cabinets and other coping mechanisms. Not the kindergarteners.
But honestly… how much more can we take???
I’VE GOT YOU KIDDO HOME SCHOOL: 4
DANGER IS EVERYWHERE SCHOOL: 3
In 20 years, do I want them in therapy because they learned at a young age that the world was dangerous and chaotic, and they didn’t have to? Or because they don’t believe they have the grit to exist in a dangerous and chaotic world? Either way, it’ll be on me. On this decision I’m making with not nearly enough facts, on my gut alone, which is a notoriously awful barometer of which grocery line will be fastest and also whether I will feel horky or triumphant if I have that eighth slice of pizza.
So okay. Final score: Homeschool 4, School school 3.
Homeschool it is. The decision is made. Final answer.
Whew! That took longer than I expected.
I better start looking at regulations and curricula-- wait, what’s that under my keyboard?
Oh, it’s the friendship bracelets that Chicken’s first grade teacher sent home at the end of the school year, with a note saying “You are brave. You are smart. You are kind. You are loved.”
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!
FUCK YOU COVID!
I HATE THIS!!!!!!!
I WANT SCHOOL!
I want to see the way his face lights up when his PE teacher calls out his name and waves from across the parking lot. I want him to teach me games I’ve never heard of. I want him to come home bearing new understanding and a little bit of mystery that keeps me missing him when he’s gone. The pain of missing him is tinged with sweetness, unlike the pain of NOT MISSING HIM, which is tinged with eyerolls and flipping him off behind a closed door.
I want to be a visitor in a community that he’s a member of. It’s devastating but so fucking beautiful to see your kid being loved in a way you never witnessed. You imagine all the high fives in the hallway, all the things he might have said to delight or intrigue these people who only know you as his mom. I want that for him. I want the walk-a-thon. I want to hold his hand at pickup and say “How was music today?” And hear him say, “I don’t like music,” and in the next breath, “Will you play a song we learned today on your phone?” FUCK! Fuck.
Maybe I rushed into this homeschool thing.
I don’t want to let fear drive my decisions here. It’s a great school. I’m sure they’ll come up with some incredible, creative ways for the kids to connect to each other safely! Like… charades! And… “No touching tag.”
And kids are resilient! And they’ll adapt. They’ll learn grit! And that they’re not the center of the universe! And they’ll be in this community we love, figuring out who they are while together we experience the excruciating, lifelong separation from each other that begins at birth.
It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. School school it is. The decision is made.
Final answer.
What’s that? A news alert?
Oh, COVID cases top 3 million?
FUCK! EVERYONE GET BACK IN THE HOUSE.
Okay but real talk if we go back to school at 9 am on September 1st, then these schools are gonna be closed by 11:30 on the 2nd, right? You guys feel that, too, right? It’s already rolling down the mountain, right?
So why even put the kids through that optional and stressful acclimation process if they’re just going to be coming home again anyway? Why not prepare ourselves for a year of home learning and just have the plan in place, period, make the decision, commit to it, buck up buttercup, this is your moment to Mom your ass off.
Homeschool it is.
FINAL. ANSWER.
5 minutes later: “Hey kids, want to ride our bikes to the school playground so I can imagine all the experiences you won’t be having on the monkey bars next year because I made the wrong decision to homeschool you?”
“Sure, Mom! I’ll bring the coping chocolate!”
FUCK! NOW I’M SAD ON A PLAYGROUND.
Oh, GOD, I want them to go to this school. Kids will laugh here! They’ll probably laugh like 200% more, masked on a playground, than my kids will laugh at home while I’m trying to figure out the rules of the new board game like “It says at the beginning of each player’s turn that player may not play a card that must be drawn on their next turn… what happy horseshit is this— DO NOT PICK UP THE DICE YET I AM STILL LEARNING THE RULES.”
But NO. NO.
We’re HOMESCHOOLING.
… do you think they’re still gonna do Scholastic book fair?
FUUUUUUUUUCK.
I’m at the point now where I feel like I’m breaking up with school, and I still love school but it’s just not gonna work out. It’s fresh, and it still hurts, and I’m still running over all the arguments in my head to see if I was right, quickly, before it’s too late.
And stupidly, I keep texting school. “Hey. Thinking about you. What are you up to?”
And school replies: “I’m just smelling like pencil shavings.”
And my heart aches. You always smell so good.
And I’m like, “Can I come over?”
And school’s like, “Yeah, of course.”
And I’m like thank God, oh God, I wasn’t too late to take it back.
And then school texts again: “FYI I’m infested with black mold now and ferrets. But I’ll give you a poncho and a lawn chair covered in a trash bag, and you can sit on the porch while we talk through the door. It’ll be just like old times.”
And I’m like. “... new number, who dis?”
I haven’t broken up with someone since 2004 so I’m a little rusty here, but I seem to remember that you can’t just go from lovers to friends without time and space to let your heart heal up. Girl, stop texting him. He’s wonderful and you had some good times, and you will have more again, but right now he’s infested with black mold and ferrets. Let him go. It’s a new season for you.
Once you make up your mind to either shit or get off the pot, you have to just fucking do it. Bear down or make tracks. And don’t look back.
We (humans) have a tendency to take irrelevant variables into our decision making.
For example, say I checked out at register two last time I was at Safeway, and it was super fast. This time I walk up to register two and there are thirty people in line. It’s a couponing club, and they’re all paying with checks. Meanwhile, register fifteen is wide open. The cashier is waving me over.
But I’m right here. I don’t want to walk all the way to fifteen.
And besides, register two is the fast one.
Not today it’s not, sweet cheeks! It’ll take a little more effort to switch the plan, but let the past go and look at where you are right now. Make your choice.
What’s past is behind us and out of our reach. As much as we want regular school again, we can’t have it. That loss is the reason for our anticipatory grief on behalf of our children. That loss is also not relevant to the decision that sits in front of us today.
Register two was hella fast last time but it’s a shit show today. Buck up, buttercup. Shit or get off the pot. Bear down or make tracks. Don’t look back. What’s past is behind you. The choice is ahead.
Now, hopefully it goes without saying that I wrote this pep talk for myself, based on my family, and crucially on the fact that I have a flexible work schedule and the ability to homeschool. I have no judgment for any parent who is wrestling with this incredibly difficult decision to which there is no right answer. If you are 100% team back to school, you’ll find me leading the cheer squad at drop off and pick up.
My heart is beating with yours. I’m breathing with you. None of us know what the fuck to do. But the sun will still come up and shine, oblivious to our tiny agonies. And your kids will be in therapy no matter what.
Final answer.
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