Homeschooling: A Retrospective {Part 1}

The summer when I was seven, my parents decided to pull me out of school. I didn't go back to Geneva Elementary for second grade, and instead I stayed home with my dad and my little sister, who was in a local Waldorf preschool at the time. This move to homeschooling completely changed my life. It is not an exaggeration to say that I have absolutely no idea who I would be today if I hadn't been homeschooled.

The Early Years

My mom was skeptical about homeschooling, and for good reason. She worked full time, and she was worried about having the time and energy to make it work. But she started researching got excited, and found a way to make it work. For most of my homeschooling career, we did school every evening after dinner. She would leave "homework" to be done during the day while she was at work (things like spelling, grammar, math), and in the evenings we would work on things like History and Science. 

Philosophy 

My mom, in her research, discovered the classical method of homeschooling. We became disciples of Susan Wise Bauer, and her book, The Well Trained Mind. If you're not familiar with the classical method, it's a system of education based on cycles and repetition. 

It has three main stages, the Grammar stage (1st-4th grades), the Logic stage (5th-8th) and the Rhetoric stage (9th-12th). The first years are focused on grammar and learning the mechanics of the world. The Logic stage moves more into analysis and discovering the "why." High school is about moving beyond the textbook and communicating your own thoughts.

In the classical method, all of education is spun around the spine of history and literature. Both history and science are studied in a 4 year cycle: Biology and Ancient history in 1st grade, Earth Science and the Middle Ages in 2nd, Chemistry and Early Modern history in 3rd, and Physics and Modern history in 4th. Then the cycle repeats for the Logic stage and again for the Rhetoric stage. 

In the first stage, the grammar stage, the focus is on learning about the world. In history, most of the time is spent reading stories and doing activities to introduce the child to history and the world, in chronological order. There is a strong focus on "living books," in other words - not textbooks. Kids are being exposed to literature and history at an age appropriate level. Science is similar. A lot of time is spent exposing the child to scientific concepts through reading books and doing simple experiments. 

The classical method also has a strong focus on writing and communicating, and this begins early. Formal grammar is studied from 1st grade on. Studying Latin is another common practice, and it also beings early, often in second or third grade. 

In the Logic stage, there is a move toward more typical "textbook" learning and towards learning the details. A study of formal logic often happens in this period to support this transition. The student reads classic historical fiction related to the time period they are studying, and some literature from the time period when appropriate. The study of science loops back again as well, just more in depth this time.

The Rhetoric stage is the culmination of the prior two. The student has a strong understanding of history already, and now the primary focus is reading literature and primary sources from the time period, in historical order. The student will read and write in depth about history. The focus now is on joining the conversation by using their strengthening writing skills to add their own thoughts to the academic discussion.

Reality

While this is the way you hope and want homeschooling to go, the reality rarely matches the expectation. That was certainly true in the case of my family. Homeschooling has been quite a journey for us, and it never quite reached the potential the classical method extolled.

Real life gets in the way, and in my family, real life made homeschooling very difficult at times. Living in a single parent household, with a parent who worked full time AND tried to homeschool us was a challenge for everybody. It was a struggle, and there were a lot of ups and downs to the way things ultimately went.

In the end, I read a LOT, I wrote a good deal, and I got a lot of real life experience that has proved invaluable to me as I move into the "real world."

In part two, I'll talk more about how my experiences homeschooling effected me.

Do I Have the Right to Write this Blogpost?

The final session I attended at the Chuckanut Writer's Conference 2016 was called An Author's Bill of Rights by Stephanie Kallos.

The session began with a question:

Do you have the right to write about ______? What does a writer have the right to do? Do you have the right to write about a person or event or group you are not part of or did not experience?

She spoke about how writers are so often hesitant to write about things/people/events that they don't have personal identification or experience with. For example, does she, a middle aged white woman from the midwest with no immediate connection to the Jewish community, have a right to write about the Holocaust? Or to write about a child with autism? Or a transgender person?

To me, this is a super interesting question, and one that I do think the writing community needs to be having a conversation about. But I have very mixed and often negative feelings about the way the topic was handled in this session.

First, let's start with the positive. At the core, the message was to not be afraid to write what you have not directly experienced. In other words, scrap "Write what you know." I do think that this is valuable advice. It's easy to limit yourself from fear, but there is a value in overcoming that feeling and learning through writing.

However, this was not where she stopped. To set this up, you need an image of the room we were sitting in. The conference was predominantly while, middle to upper class people in their 50's. While there were younger people, they were in a minority, and there were very few under 35. The lack of people of color was distictly notable. So, we have a primarily homogenous and privladged group of people listening to this talk.

Now, here is the problem.

She essentially was telling this group of people that it is okay to write about cultures they are not part of and people they don't know and experiences they haven't had. If she had not been a woman of color, or in some other way not part of the privlidged majority, this would have felt very different. But the way she was saying this felt very wrong. She was saying "Don't let anyone stop you!  You always have the right to write about anything!"

What she was missing was an element of respect. I agree that it is not only permissable but to some extent important to write about cultures you aren't part of. With the permission of the members of the group you're writing about. Can I, a white middle class 18 year old girl from Bellingham, WA write about what it is like to be a black transgender woman in Chicago? Maybe. But not without a shit ton of research and the blessing of members of those communities. I'm not telling my story, I'm telling their story. And if they don't like it, or if they want me to change it, or if they tell me to stop altogether, it is my responsibility to listen and respect their wishes. No matter what.

I am even questioning my own right to write this blog post. I am not part of nearly any minority groups. I am coming from a place of privlage. I have a friend and co-worker who I attended this conference with who I feel is in some ways more qualified and able to write about this topic than I am. And I certainly hope that he adds his voice to this discussion. But I also feel that it is also my right to give my thoughts and to share my concerns. I'm not writing this as the end all, be all of this discussion. I'm writing this with the hope of entering a conversation that I feel like I should perhaps be on the fringes of. This is my way of showing my support but also handing this topic over to those more qualified or more involved.

Yes. We as writers should not limit ourselves based on our direct life experience. I completely agree with this. We should use writing as a tool to learn more about the world and to educate others about what we have learned. But if we take on this undertaking, we take with it a huge amount of responsibility. It is our responsibility to do as much research as we possibly can. It is our responsibility to be as accurate as we know how to be. It is our responibility to understand that if we don't feel like we can portray things accurately, it is time to set that project aside. It is our responsibility to seek out and respect the perspectives of the people we are writing about. It is our responsibility, first and foremost, to respect their wishes and thoughts. If I am writing about the queer community and a member of that community tells me my writing makes them uncomfortable and asks me to stop, it is my responsibility to stop. If they ask me to make changes, it is my responsibility to make changes. I have the right to ask, but I do not have the right to insist. If I am asked to stop, it is my responsibility as a writer and as a human being to stop. 

Don't be afraid to write. But use common sense and compassion, and know how you fit into the conversation you are joining.

That is your responsibility, not your right.

Chuckanut Writer's Conference 2016 {Day 2)

Here is my summary of Day 2 of the conference, a few days late. This post is only going to cover the first half of the day, as the final session I attended deserves a post all of its own.

The first session I went to for the day was called The Tao of Daily Writing by Susan Colleen Brown. The first part of the session involved making realistic goals. How long can you realistically write each day? How many days a week can you realistically do that? And also setting some intention for your writing. For me, I came up with the realistic goal of writing 30-45 minutes a day, 6 days a week. This is a goal I would like to exceed, but I know that this is a manageable starting place.

The rest of the session (the other 40 minutes of it) were taken up by introductions. Every person there introduced themselves, their work, and how they fit writing into their day. I was a bit disappointed by this. The first part of the session seemed like it was going in a useful direction, but I wished the introductions part hadn't taken up the entire remainder of the time.

The second session of the day was a panel entitled Hitting the Right Note: A Conversation on Creating Your Character's Voice. The authors on the panel were: David Laskin, Sam Ligon, and Stephanie Kallos.

This panel ended up being a bit all over the place, so I thought I'd just list some of the quotes and pieces of advice I jotted down, organized by who said them.

David Laskin:

"Every piece has it's own voice and rhythm, they don't have to be the same."

Journaling and freewriting in the 2nd person can help you seperate yourself from your usual writing ruts, and keep creativity high.

Writing in the 1st person and the rewriting everything into 3rd (or the other way around) can be helpful as well.

"Imprint a character you're having trouble with onto a real person you know. What would that person do or say in a given situation?"

"Any day writing in a productive day, no matter what you write."

Sam Ligon:

"Prose is musical - the voice is the song"

Your first run is instict, get into the song and voice - the craft comes later. If you can't hear it, you can't write it.

"Short and long sentences mixed creates tension."

"Write for a smart reader. Assume they are as intelligent or more intelligent than you."

Stephanie Kallos:

"Give us long thoughts with a strong, present conclusion."

To spark creativity, make lists.

After this, I went to one more session. I had to leave the conference early, and so missed the last two break out periods. But the last session I went to deserves a much longer form thought that I can add to this post. To continue reading about that, click here.

Chuckanut Writer's Conference 2016 {Day 1}

This year, I have had the amazing opportunity to attend the Chuckanut Writer's Conference, which is happening today and tomorrow here in Bellingham. 

Here is a quick recap of the events of today, and the sessions I went to:

First off was the keynote: The Necessary Ingredients: Intimacy and Risk by author Claire Dederer.

She talked about some of the risks we take when we write: we risk being bad, we risk being good, we risk offending people, we risk a lot of things. The main take away for me was this. To be a writer is to take risks. You can't not take risks. The important thing is how to handle those fears and concerns and how you shape them to your advantage. You are going to offend people, but likely not those you were worried about. You're going to be bad, but that doesn't mean you can't learn from it and make your next thing better. 

For the first breakout session, I went to Try Essays by David Laskin.

This was my favorite session of the day. He began by trying to define the essay. It quickly became clear that that is a very hard thing to do. Essays can be memoir, report, science based, travel stories, opinion, or really basically anything. What I was left with was this: An essay begins with a question and takes you on a journey to new places, facts, or ideas that you didn't know or hadn't thought about before. Most importantly, the thing that separates an essay from a new report is voice. An essay should always let you show through and let your voice be know. Most of the rest of his talk focused on the mechanics of selling essays.

 Tips: Write for an audience that you assume will be easily distracted and bored. You don't have much space, every word counts. You can have a topic and a thesis and they don't have to be the same thing. Pitch the topic, but write the thesis.

He also gave some suggestions of essays to read including:

"Death, the Prosperity Gospel, and Me" by Kate Bowler from The New York Times

"O-Rings" by Sarah Stewart Johnson from The Best American Science and Nature Journal 

"The Siege of Miami" by Elizabeth Kohlbert from The New Yorker

Next was the all conference session, My Secret Weapon: Or How to Cheat the Devil by Erik Larson. 

He mostly talked about his own path to becoming a successful writer, and gave some tips. Some useful things I got from this talk were:

-Physically cut up your writing and put it back together. I actually already do this, and I think it is incredibly valuable for finding a good flow in your writing.

-Quit when you're ahead: Don't binge write. Stop in the middle of a paragraph so that you have momentum the next day.

-Set guidelines with the people you let read your work. Make sure you let them know what kind of feedback you want and how you want it. This will keep feeling from being hurt.

Finally, the second breakout session, How to Interview Anyone by Bharti Kirchner 

There was so much good advice in this session. a few highlights:

-Before an interview, do pre-research so you can make sure to ask valuable and intelligent questions, and make a list of questions before you go in, to save time and to make sure you stay on track. 

-During an interview, be sure to ask open ended questions, and be careful to only ask one question at a time. Avoid "why" questions that might sound accusing. Avoid leading language, and try to speak and present yourself neutrally to ensure you don't bias your interviewee. 

-After the interview, immediately jot down thought and feelings about it: What went well? What do you wish you had asked that you didn't? What immediately struck you as useful/important? Is this someone you might want to contact again?

Those were the sessions I went to today. I'm looking forward to going back again tomorrow! 

April 16th

Today is April 16th. It's the day of the semi-colon project, a day to be aware of our struggles, and commit ourselves to fighting on.

For me, it also represents a day of much personal importance. On April 16, 2010, my family moved out of my childhood home. That day was very painful for me, and later on, I labeled it as the day that "everything changed." From that point on, my parent's divorce led to more life changes, and my relationships with my parents changed drastically. My relationship with my father became a great source of pain and worry for me. I entered a time in my life where I was extremely depressed. For a period of two or three years, my grades in school dropped, my interest in social activities and other things I used to enjoy drastically diminished, and I spent a lot of time very anxious and very depressed, with no interest in involving myself with treatment of any kind.

Over time, this has gotten better, and right now my mental health is the best it's been since 2010. There are a lot of reasons for this, but among them: my relationship with my dad has improved greatly over the years, I have a large group of close friends I see regularly, I feel good about my plans for the future, I am in a stable and healthy romantic relationship, and I have been taking an antidepressant.

Throughout all this time, I have always held April 16th as kind of a day of mourning. It marked the anniversary not of the day that things started going downhill (that was several months prior), but it marked the point of no return. It's kind of a symbolic date more than anything. I decided, back in 2010, that it wasn't worthwhile focusing on the past. What's done is done. So I decided that the only day that I would allow myself to truly mope and be sad and feel sorry for myself, and cry about the past, was April 16th.

And as the years have gone by, it has still been a day, in a way, of mourning for the past, and recognition of the intense personal struggles I went through in the years following.

Today is April 16th. And I didn't even realize it until this evening. I spent the day with people I love, and I came home thinking that this was the happiest I could remember being in a very long time. I spent the day relaxing, free from worry, laughing, eating, being close to people I care about, and having a wonderful time. It wasn't until I got home that I even remembered what day it is.

To me, this really symbolizes the transformation my life has gone through over the past year or so. A day that would have been a day of sadness and melancholy a year or two ago was one of the best days I can remember having in years. I certainly don't want to forget my past or the struggles I've had, but life is moving forward. And it's wonderful.

March 31, 2016 {Spring break, Beach, and Heatstroke}

Well, as usual, it's been ages since I posted.  While I would love to say that this is the beginning of me posting more regularly again, I can't promise it. But I will try.

Right now, I'm on spring break, though it's almost over. The next quarter starts up on Tuesday of next week. I finished out last quarter with a B+ in German, an A- in Precalc, and an A in Children's Literature. It broke my 4.0 GPA, which I was a little sad about, but I'm not unhappy with the grades I got. Next quarter, I'm taking a Chemistry class, a World History (1750-today) class, and a British literature class about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Yesterday, my mom and Isabelle and my boyfriend Damian and I went to the beach with the homeschool Usual Suspects. It was fun to get to see people, and it was a beautiful day out at Larrabee State Park. Damian and I headed downtown for the rest of the day and continued to enjoy the beautiful weather.

I unfortunately, enjoyed it a little too much, and ended up very heat stroked. I have very fair skin and light eyes, and if I don't wear sunglasses and drink water, I do have a tendency to get heat stroke. I was very tired and felt feverish, and when we were on the bus, I was getting really nauseous and carsick, which is not an issue I usually have. It was a good reminder to me that I have to be way more careful in the sun. Even in March, on the first super nice day of the year, I still have to be careful. It was a super beautiful day, and I did have a good time.

At one point, I was sitting at the bus station, which was deserted except for these two homeless guys and a few WTA employees, and sort of crying because the sunlight and noise were making my head hurt really bad and because when I feel bad physically, all emotional stability goes out the window. I wanted to get up and move to somewhere without people until my mom could come to get me, but I was afraid that I was going to either throw up or pass out if I moved, so I stayed where I was. I have to wonder, what did the people around there think? I'm just another crazy college student :P 

In general, it's been a good, though not very busy, spring break. I'm excited for next quarter to start because I'm looking forward to my classes and to seeing all my friends again. I'm such a social person that not having school is actually kind of hard for me sometimes. I need the interaction or I start getting really restless. 

I am an Anxious Person

A serious post today about some personal and kind of dark topics, so if you like lighter fare, maybe skip this one. I saw a tumblr post today that got me thinking in a kind of depressing spiral, and so instead of simply being moody, I thought I'd write about it.

To start out with, I've suffered from anxiety and depression my entire life. I honestly don't remember a time that I didn't have high levels of anxiety. Sure, there were periods where it was better than others times, but I can remember intense anxiety as a toddler. While I've suffered from varying levels of depression (never really at the same level as anxiety, so I think of it as a much lesser thing much of the time) most of my life, that didn't really onset in a real way until I was in middle school.

The tumblr post I saw was talking about how when you have depression, you aren't a person sepperate from it anymore. You can't remember who you where before, and that can be terrifying. The depression is your identity.

This is something I identify very strongly with. The first time I went to see a therapist, I was 12. I was totally unwilling to participate, but I went for a while and we both got more and more frustrated until one day I simply refused to go.

At that point, I was not ready to deal with my anxiety. I knew it existed. I knew it caused me problems. I was very emotionally intelligent and self aware at that age, and I knew exactly what was going on, both in the world around me, and in my own head. But I wasn't ready to deal with it.

It took a very long time for me to be ready. Over the next five years, I dealt with a few years of depression. That combined with the anxiety I had, which was being constantly amped up by external life factors, meant that the ages of 12-15 were kind of awful. I honestly don't remember large chucks of those years (just because part of me blocked it out), and I have a lot of memories that are very, very negative, just because of my mental state of the time.

Then, the fall I was 16, something happened. Actually a number of things happened, all at the same time:

1. I started going the the local community college, and, for the first time in years, was really able to develop my own life and relationships seperate from the negative memories of the past.

2. Some of the circumstances in my family dynamic changed, in a way that I was at first terrified by, but that I later realized was a very good thing. This lowered my general anxiety levels.

3. Lastly, and this is the big one, I ended up in a position where I was esentially mentoring a friend through a very intense period of his life. This turned out in the end to be a very negative experience for me, and after months of drama, anxiety, sleepless nights, and a few tears, I ended up in a position where I had to let him go. He had done things that I could not condone and I felt that if I stayed in any sort of relationship with him I was going to end up getting hurt a lot more than I already had.

Letting go of that was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I was very close to this person, and I had sunk months of my life into trying to help him. But in the end, there was nothing I could do unless he realized he needed to change. And he just wasn't ready.

All of these experiences combined, but particularly that last one, made me realize that I needed to be a more mentally stable person on a day to day basis. Being in school helped me realize the most important factor in all this: I was a person seperate from my anxiety. Having an identity seperate from that allowed me to decide to go find outside help.

For years and years, I had been terrified that if I wasn't anxious, I didn't know who I would be. I was a person who was anxious and depressed most of the time. If I didn't have that, what did I have? Losing my identity terrified me.

The situation with my friend also made me realize a lot of things about myself. I was holding myself back by not allowing myself to take full advantage of whatever help I could get. There was still a long way to go from there, but that was the all important and totally vital first step.

Every now and then, I think about that friend, who I haven't talked to in nearly a year. I often feel guilty about some of the events that took place. I was the person closest in the world to him, why couldn't I help him? In the end, all that really happened was that I was used by him, but why couldn't I help him while I had the chance? Why couldn't I keep over negative events from happening? I was the only person with any hope of doing that.

But I have to remind myself: He wasn't ready. And while I poured all of myself that I could into helping him, if he wasn't ready to be helped, there was nothing any of us could do. Accepting help is one of the hardest things in the world to do.

I am not just a person "with anxiety" and a person "who suffers from depression." I am an anxious person. I am a depressed person. These things are part of my identity.

I don't want to not have anxiety. I want to know how to manage it. I will never not have anxiety. I will never not have depression. But I don't let them own me. I own them. I couldn't do that at age 12, or 14, or 16. It took time to get here, but I did. Every person's journey is different. I wish mine had been faster and easier and less painful. But I had to do the things I did to end up here. And that journey certainly isn't over. I know it'll probably get a lot worse at some point in the future. I'll struggle with this my whole life. But that's okay, because that's who I am.

And it's certainly not always great even now. Yes, I was ready to accept outside help, but that doesn't mean everything was fixed. I struggle a lot with all of these things. My life in general is in a place where I am doing much better than in the past, but it's a journey that never ends.

If there are people in your life who are anxious or depressed, be there for them. Don't try to fix them. You can't help them unless they are ready to help themselves. Hug them. Make them food. Invite them to do things with you. But let them go on the journey they need to go on.