I’ll never forget
the moment I decided to let my daughter drop out of school. That sounds a bit shocking, I know, but the
reality was that I needed to rescue her from failure in the traditional school
setting and it was the only idea we had.
It was 1994. Ciara was ten years old and she was in the
fourth grade. It was the evening of her
first day back in the classroom after the Christmas holiday vacation and the
two of us were at dinner together in her favorite Chinese restaurant. I can remember vividly where we sat and how
helpless I felt when we discussed how uncomfortable she was in school, how hard
math was, how much she felt like an utter failure. My child’s self-esteem was suffering, she was
miserable and she was not learning in that environment.
A crucial moment
came and from the depths of this mother’s soul came this brave and crazy
question.
“Would you like to
quit school and stay home and learn with me?“
“Yes.”
It was a risky
moment. When we announced our news the
next morning, some naysayers in the family and neighborhood wondered at our
sanity. Others, I’m sure, thought we were certainly gutsy but completely
misguided.
If it weren’t for
my intuition, my love for my child, and the support of some family, friends and
wonderful school administrators, I’d have spent the next few years totally
terrified.
Don’t get me
wrong. I did spend many worried days and
sleepless nights in my School for My Girl.
Although I had gone back to college later in life and had recently
passed all the general requirements of my bachelor’s degree as a straight A
student, I was no teacher. In fact, I
didn’t have one education course under my cap or gown.
The School for My
Girl was a 24/7 experience. It began and
ended with every sunrise. I usually scoured our local library for new materials
but found very little in 1994 to help me educate my daughter other than the
children’s books we read, the textbooks borrowed from her school and the
workbooks from “teacher bookstores.” We
didn’t have a strict curriculum but flew by the seats of our jeans blending
community service and volunteerism with visits to museums, rigorous ice skating
lessons and private tutoring in math. We
spent long days reading, reading, reading and playing computer games like Math
Rabbit and Oregon Trail.
One day during our
first summer I visited our library and found a newly-published book written by
a father who had taken the same risk I did.
Best of all, he lived and wrote to tell about it.
In the summer of 1991
Dan Riley enrolled his daughter, Gillian, in the Dan Riley School for a Girl.
“You should feel very proud …” he wrote in his acceptance letter to her. “Unlike less discriminating schools that
accept students from anywhere … we don’t.
We chose you to be our one and only student.”
“The Dan Riley
School for a Girl: An Adventure in Home Schooling” (1994) was my lifeline. I
devoured the book and it saved me from the panic that was rising at the start
of our fall semester. I learned from Mr.
Riley that there were bad days and ones that were worse when tempers flared and
confidence waned. I also learned that
Gillian thrived and that their experience changed both of their lives just as
it was changing ours.
My daughter,
Ciara, attended the School for My Girl for eighteen months until she was
promoted into her first year of middle school in seventh grade, essentially
skipping the sixth grade. We knew she’d done a great job when her first report
cards in public school were mostly As and she had little trouble in any
subject.
In the ensuing two
decades, many books have been published to help home schooling parents take the
plunge or continue their journey. I
haven’t read them and can’t recommend them but several other memoirs of the
experience have been written including “The Year of Learning Dangerously:
Adventures in Homeschooling” by Quinn Cummings (2012), “Real Life
Homeschooling: the Stories of 21 Families Who Make It Work” by Ronda Barfield
(2002) and “Love in a Time of Homeschooling: A Mother and Daughter’s Uncommon
Year” by Laura Brodie (2010).
Newly published
books in the Minuteman Library catalog are “Homeschooling Gifted and Advanced
Learners” by Cindy West (2012) and “Legendary Learning: The Famous
Homeschooler’s Guide to Self-Directed Excellence” by Jamie McMillin
(2012). “Homeschooling: Take a Deep
Breath, You Can Do This!” by Terrie Lynn Bittner (2004) was reprinted in
2012.
Resources such as
“Homeschooling Methods: Seasoned Advice on Learning Styles” edited by Paul and
Gena Suarez (2006) and “Homeschooling Step-By-Step: 100+ Simple Solutions to
Homeschooling’s Toughest Problems” by LauraMaery Gold and Joan Zielinski must
be full of practical advice. Brad Miser
has written “The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Homeschooling” (2005) and the
American Library Association has published “Helping Homeschoolers in the
Library” by Adrienne Furness (2008).
Years after our
school closed its doors, my one and only star student had extremely
successful careers in high school, college and graduate school. She is a confident, smart, gutsy young woman
who doesn’t take any failure sitting down. She understands that success is
hard-earned but never impossible. I
credit most of our success to her determination, strength and intelligence. I
also credit it to our public library that was a resource of extracurricular
materials, books that we didn’t have to buy, and that one amazing find, “The Dan Riley School for a Girl.”
If you
would like to reserve any of the titles above please call the Reference or
Information desks of the library, 781-769-0200, or visit the Minuteman Library
Network catalog online to reserve them.
