One Room Schoolhouse

Just the other day a friend and I swapped philosophies on education and found that we share a resolve that is quite counter-cultural: we aren’t in a hurry to read younger, achieve faster, sit still longer, and know all the things. The path we’re on is slower, with room for soaking up beauty and wonder, and we sure hope this choice keeps the love of learning and adventure alive longer.

The longer I walk this slower-paced trail, the more sure of it I am.

The first two students in my one-room-school-house were boys who needed to be outside, to run and get muddy, to touch everything and do everything fast and loud. Culture poked at me from every corner with stabs of guilt and fear in those first years. My students weren’t reading at 6, they weren’t ahead of the academic curve, and oh goodness we just might fail at this whole thing.

It took some time to shake off the cultural expectations of each scheduled school year. I knew I both wanted to and had freedom to teach differently than traditional classrooms. I wanted our kids to be little as long as they could. I wanted them to play pretend as long as their imaginations would let them, to be wildly unaware of technology and time. I wanted them to taste Laura Ingalls and Anne Shirley and the Boxcar Children. I wanted an old barn and the woods to be more enticing than the checkout line of ToysRus.

My first few had a slower start by circumstance- I was green at teaching, they couldn’t stay in a chair, and a baby every couple years set our pace for us. The more guilt I felt the more I pushed and the more our relationships became entangled in the alphabet and phonogram cards. I should have slowed down then. I should have read aloud more instead of stressing over their reading levels, because the condition of my heart sets the pace for theirs in the early years.

Each baby that joined our schoolhouse made me set aside my giant school year of aspirations. Each one bought time for those boys to play and grow and slow down on their own. Between the ages of 9 and 10 is when I have seen them catch all the basics we spent years circling over, scoop them up and soar off on their own. When they gently dismiss me and take the reigns on their own is when I see them rise the fastest.

These girls are going to be different for sure, they already are. But I sure am going to take what I learned the hard way in the first 5 years and apply it to the next:

Years of gentle, peace-filled repetition of the basics WILL pay off in time.

I must already be becoming what I hope to see in them.

They will slow down. They will grasp hold of reading, writing and arithmetic.

Seeing their mama love to read and write and learn and marvel at the Creator through His creation IS part of their education.