Eight - Homeschooling Series: Not Back to School
A good education does not always come from books, nor does it take place in a building where everyone is learning the same thing at the same time.
Knowledge, which is acquired under compulsion, has no hold on the mind. Therefore, do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to discover a child’s natural bent. Plato
We homeschooled.
I pulled my kid out of a private school during second grade. We homeschooled until he went to college, the college of his choice.
My kiddo wanted to be an engineer.
It was very clear the government or private school system wasn’t going to be able to make that happen.
In 2014 he graduated from a top ten engineering school and is now an Aerospace engineer working in that field. He was hired in his last semester of school.
If you’re curious about our story, you can read here.
I get many questions about how I homeschooled my student. Especially once one finds out he’s an Aerospace engineer working in his field since graduation.
My student was what experts call “highly gifted”, which presented its own unique degrees of difficulty with homeschooling. There’s always an aura of mystery portrayed when the subject of giftedness comes up, and that was as much of a stumbling block as it was a “gift”.
I pulled my kid out of school then because I felt the school system would do harm to who he was. I imagine the idea that the school system will do harm is present in decisions being made about homeschooling in the current education environment.
The nuts and bolts of what you need to do to homeschool, no matter what your situation is, will be similar to what I had to do, and it is all common sense stuff.
Homeschooling is not just curriculum. It is a myriad of decisions about a lifestyle you’re choosing for your family.
This is the eighth edition in my homeschooling series. This describes another one of the unique study situations we enjoyed as homeschoolers.
This series, which is periodically presented on Thursdays, will deliver common sense ideas for those who want to homeschool or who are already homeschooling and need some new ideas.
Every year after leaving the brick and mortar school building environment we celebrated “not-back-to-school”.
Not-back-to-school for us was celebrated just after Labor day holiday, or when most of the schooled kids were confined daily in taxpayer paid for buildings.
Most homeschooled kids I encountered were very different than the schooled kids we encountered. They were curious, well behaved, able to engage with people of a variety of ages. There were many times that docents in museums commented on how well behaved groups of homeschooled kids were.
Sometimes we went with a group, sometimes it was just kiddo and me, always after 2PM.
If you arrived in the morning, usually 10:30-11:00, to most museums you would encounter the walkie-talkie toting adults herding crowds of unruly school children. A noisy lunch period from noon to 1:00 and then magically, they disappeared just before 2PM.
How much/what do you think they learned in the hour and half they were actually touring? We on the other hand could enjoy any museum to our hearts were content.
Pro tip: as a homeschooler go after 2PM.
The best time to enjoy big museums and popular school field trip destinations was after Labor day though.
Travel was a huge part of our homeschool.
One year our not-back-to-school adventure was a trip to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. The reason for this was our studies that year included a first look at Aerospace engineering, and naturally we chose the state that was “First in Flight” (North Carolina) to tie to our studies.
Our trip included an afternoon flying kites on the very grounds where Orville and Wilbur Wright launched man into the space-age at Kitty Hawk. Well really it is Kill Devil Hills, near Jockey's Ridge State Park, but who’s nitpicking on what we remember from our history? Before we left home, we studied the plane and the kites that were used at the Wright Brothers Aerospace Museum in Dayton in Ohio, but my student wanted to go to the place where flight began!
The presentation at the Wright Brothers Museum at Kitty Hawk was the best.
We went to The Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education, located in Corolla between the historic Whalehead Club and the Currituck Beach Lighthouse. They had some awesome daily, free programs. There was a class on crabbing and then kayaking on the Currituck sound that we attended.
We also went to The Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Cape Hatteras National Seashore preserves the portion of the Outer Banks of North Carolina from Bodie Island to Ocracoke Island, stretching over 70 miles. The Outer Banks and Cape Hatteras has a wealth of history relating to shipwrecks, lighthouses, and the US Lifesaving Service.
We went in search of the shipwreck of the Altoona at Cape Point, Buxton NC. It was a fun outing, but kind of a snipe hunt (practical joke or fool's errand). The treacherous seas off the outer banks of North Carolina and the number of wrecks that have occurred there has given the area the name “The Graveyard of the Atlantic”.
We were there to maybe have a glimpse of some of the other shipwrecks that can be seen at low tide.
Blackbeard the famous pirate was also know to sail the waters in the Outer Banks:
With its shallow inlets, North Carolina’s Outer Banks became a haven for many pirates during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The most notable was the pirate Blackbeard. Blackbeard called Bath, North Carolina, his home and spent time as a pirate ransacking and pillaging unsuspecting ships off the banks of North Carolina.
We also hoped to maybe find something interesting washed up on the beach.
We should have obtained a better map.
But at least we were in the right place, there were others looking for the wreck of the Altoona as well!
Outer Banks folklore is fun to read about and the idea that we were standing on the same beach as Blackbeard the pirate was pretty awesome.
Another bit of local lore I discovered on this trip to the Outer Banks was the Wild Horses of Corolla. Locally, they are known as Banker Horses and they really are something to see running out of the dunes.
All of that in our first ten days of “school”.
Each of these activities were filled with what people think of as “school subjects”. Math and Physics with flying kites, map reading and compass skills searching for the Altoona. I could go on but you get the idea.
How much do you imagine those schooled kids confined in taxpayer paid for buildings learned their first week?
Our best Not-back-to-school was a kayak trip to Algonquin Provincial Park in Canada. I won’t list all of the things we did and learned because I hope you’re getting the idea that a good education does not always come from books, nor does it take place in a building where everyone is learning the same thing at the same time.
I will give you our list of top 10 paddler tips. It kind of shows the “schooling” that went on at Algonquin. We had a great time devising it from our experiences at Algonquin and along the way!
It is inappropriate sit on the bow of the The Maid of the Mist with your kayak paddles and shout “bring it on” at Niagara falls.
Algonquin Provincial park wolves really do exist and will visit your campsite, so don’t worry about the bears.
Some of the biggest frogs you have ever seen live at Costello Creek south of Lake Opeongo, in Algonquin Provincial park Ontario. Don’t let them hop into your kayak. The water is cold.
No matter what anyone says, vault toilettes were not a good invention.
Always wear sunscreen on the lake, especially if you are in a bright yellow kayak.
It is not a good idea to run towards a heavily armed ranger hunting a wounded wolf yelling “it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me” at night, in Canada.
Half-n-half for coffee does not keep very well in a thermos in the hatch of a touring Kayak.
Bilge sponges are not supposed to be used for bathing.
No matter how hard you paddle you cannot get your kayaks to fly over a half submerged tree.
If the culvert is big enough you can certainly paddle through it. Send the kid in first. Why portage if you don’t have to?
Do you have a not-back-to-school story?
Such a powerful and engaging piece of writing -- well done! I really appreciate the attention to detail and suggestions for homeschooling parents. Thank you!