Goodbye Public School

I sent in the letter of intent to completely home school my daughter today. It had been sitting in my Google docs for a while now. I’d gone back and forth on the idea and then I thought that we would maybe start next year, if my daughters grades hadn’t improved. Then COVID-19 hit and we’re home trying to figure out how to do all this online stuff. She’s crying, I’m frustrated, and I just had to say that enough is enough.

The current education system doesn’t work for my daughter. It just doesn’t. I feel the need to make this clear from the beginning though, I don’t blame the teachers. Most of my daughters teachers have been hard working, incredible people that I hope to use as my guideposts from here on out. My daughter has been lucky enough to have gotten to know some of the most amazing people during her time in the public education system. Lunch ladies, guidance counselors, principals, aides, assistants, art instructors, librarians, and so much more. These people aren’t just teachers to my child, they are like family members that she loves, still to this day, wholeheartedly.

The world is changing though. We all seem to want to believe that after just two more weeks (and two more weeks and two more weeks and so on and so on) everything will go back to normal. But the hard cold truth is, the world from here on out is going to be vastly different. Better or worse, we don’t really know yet. We do know that the world we’ve been preparing our children for isn’t the world they are going to have to learn to live in from here on.

I wake up afraid. I won’t lie. Every day there is something new and it feels worse than the news from the day before. I try to put my phone away. I try to pretend nothing is wrong for the sake of my kids but let’s be real: our kids know something big is up.

My kids don’t seem to be afraid in the same way that I am though. They just seem to accept it. Then again, these are kids who prepare for active shooters the way we prepared for tornadoes and fires, and they’ve been doing it their whole lives.

It makes me sad and a little sick to think about it. But it’s true.

As I said before, I’m not blaming teachers. You can only do what you can do, and you have to do it with what little you can get. I’ve worked in childcare, and it taught me that my patience is not what I thought it was. I could never ever manage the education of 20 plus children. Nope, never.

The best that public education can do is a one size fits most plan, and that is an incredible weight to carry, but the one size fits most plan isn’t working for us anymore. If I’m being honest, it never has. I’ve watched my brave, loving kind-hearted, beautiful child become a withdrawn, sad, stressed out kid over the years. She calls herself stupid, and says that she just can’t learn. I didn’t raise my child to think this way about herself.

Every year we have to have the parent teacher conference where I plead for any and all assistance that my child can get. I do everything that I’m asked to do, but every year we have to start back at the beginning. She fights tooth and nail to make the same grades as her friends but never seems to, and it’s killed her self esteem.

So, now we’re home bound, and in the middle of a pandemic. I know that technically everyone is being homeschooled right now and I’ve looked into the schools Non-traditional plans. I’m sure that under the circumstances this is an incredible feat. No, scratch that, I know it is. You guys were not expecting this and you are doing the very best you can while trying to take care of your own families.

It’s just not for us. I want this time with my children to not be unnecessarily stressful. I don’t want my daughter crying at my kitchen table that she is stupid, or watch her anxiety give me wild flashbacks to my own terrible teen years. These are all side effects of a lot of things that have being going on for a while now, but this crazy time we’re living in just made me realize that I don’t want my daughter to spend any more time hating learning or feeling like she can’t.

I promise that we are still learning. We are reading every day. She’s learning math and we are learning about soooo much science! I’ve had both kids write down what they really wanted to learn about and they made really great lists. Astronomy, gardening, animals, geography, history, and so much more. We’re really excited to get started.

If the past few weeks have taught me anything it is this:

Life is fragile and time is precious. It’s always been true but this constant fear and this sudden change has really put things in perspective. I don’t think many of us can really say that we were always living the way that we should or prioritizing the right things. I know I wasn’t.

I just want to make sure that teachers, all of you who have been apart of my daughters life know, that we will continue to fight for you and all that you do.