Back to School

Everyone started back to school this past Monday. Dave is teaching basic English every day, between 1 ½ and 4 ½ hours per day; somewhere in the middle of the week he is supposed to continue with seminars, either on American History or Teaching Methodology, neither of us are sure. He has lots to say about this on his blog, so I won’t attempt to regale you with the details.

The kids, much to their chagrin (though sometimes I think they keep up the “I hate school” routine because somehow they feel it is part of their childhood rights to complain about it, not so much because they really believe it), started back to lessons on Monday, also. Samuel is in 3^rd grade now, Grace is in 1^st. In our haste to get ready for the kids’ birthdays, my annual trek to Alaska, and for the trip to China, we ended up cutting school off pretty early last spring. Because of this, we have unfinished business, mostly in the math department, and so the transition into school has been fairly un-traumatic, as there isn’t anything too new. In spite of occasional melt-downs, the kids seem to be happy to have this familiar structure to their day. School also makes the days go by faster, which helps ease the recurrent bouts of homesickness. Nothing like being able to say to them, “Look how quickly time is going! Only 5 ½ months left!”

I think the person hardest hit by “back to school” is myself. I realize now how spoiled I am back home where I am part of a large homeschooling community, able to meet at the park during school hours so the kids can burn off steam (and moms can gab), go to the library to get tons of reading materials (oh, how I suffer as I read the kids their history and can’t pick up stories from ancient Egypt or Elizabethan England—the padding just isn’t there to help fill out their understanding of the period they’re studying), and shuttle the kids to fiddle lessons or gymnastics. All of my support network, from friends to library to parks to art supplies, to even something as mundane as my kitchen, where we can make cookies together and plan meals, all is at home and here I have just the skeleton. We had plenty of challenges in the first six weeks in China. Now I see that I will have a constant challenge at hand: how to make school alive and interesting for the kids as well as myself, without ending up isolated and loopy from too much time inside. Samuel is learning a little poem from history about Guy Fawkes, that starts “Remember, remember, the fifth of November”. As we march around the apartment shouting out the lines to learn them, I think, “Gee, this would be a lot of fun if we had other kids here, to make “guy” dolls together and have our own Guy Fawkes Day.” These are the kind of challenges I’m talking about. Of course, as Dave points out, there are ample opportunities all around us for learning. Yes, I say, but the kids also need to learn how to read...

Not to get on the pity wagon, really. I’m just so used to the usual ups and downs of homeschooling and now, like with everything else we have encountered since coming here, I have to re-orient myself yet again and fit homeschooling within the context of being very much isolated, educationally as well as linguistically. At this point I am sure someone out there is saying, well gee, what about all the kids there? Can’t you all get together with them for weekly play dates? Well, yes and no is my answer to that. We live next door to a huge school.

Some kind of group p.e. class--view from our balcony

As far as I can tell, Chinese kids spend a lot of time at school, much like kids in America. There is a huge traffic jam every morning about 7:30 as the kids arrive to school, on bikes, in cars, on foot. About 11:30 they go home for what seems to be a 3 hour break, then return around 2:30 and stay until 5 or 6 (when there is an even bigger traffic jam, accompanied by a cacophony of horns), depending on how old they are.

Cars, bikes, buses--going home from school

Many kids stay even later than that, though, as there are kung fu lessons, dance lessons, and other lessons, the kind that take place behind desks, in the building right next to ours. I’ve seen kids in dance class as late as 8. Of course, I am kind of old-fashioned and believe that kids need a lot of unstructured time to play, goof off, read, stare at the wall, exercise, etc. I also feel they need to get lots of sleep. So I tend to feel a little alarmed at how much time these guys are in school. I guess I am just too lazy to consider having them out for lessons at a time I think best suited for showers and pajamas.

I don’t think anyone has figured out the best way to teach kids, the best way to raise them, the best time to go to bed. For me, I'm just trying to work out what seems best for us. I struggle with being too rigid and too stuck on a set routine, when oftentimes that rigidity is just a symptom of my concerns that I am doing the best thing or just ruining my kids. And now, mixed in with the usual parental doubts that plague us all, I must create a fruitful and fun learning environment, which incorporates both the wide world around us as well as the usual suspects of any curriculum. And to think I used to just be worried about the water!