Some of the most wonderful people are the ones who don’t fit in boxes – Tori Amos
My kids don’t fit into boxes. I’ve known that their whole lives.
Their last few years of school, I even enrolled them into a wonderful private school that inspired creativity, focused on whole brain learning and encouraged self-expression.
But still, the classroom is a box.
Frustrated with his mounds of homework in December 2017, my youngest, Jei (who at the time was ten) said to me, “Mom, I wake up too early when I really need to sleep, you force me to eat breakfast when I’m not even hungry, then I have to go sit in a box all day when I want to play outside. I can’t be still and get in trouble for it. When I come home, I have to sit in another box to do the work that I couldn’t or didn’t do in the first box. It’s pointless and it’s not fun. I don’t learn anything. By the time I’m done, it’s dark outside and I can’t play and that’s the only thing I want to do. This happens EVERY SINGLE DAY until the weekend. Life’s too short to be in a box all the time and live for the weekend.”
His words struck a resonant chord and snapped me wide awake.
He was 100% right.
It was all so unnatural.
But I had never questioned it before. I just allowed the inertia of societal expectation and cultural norm to carry us along to do more of what’s always been done.
I’m not going to put them in a box anymore.
Both kids’ teachers have said about them year after year, “He’s so bright, so smart, so brilliant….but not living up to his potential.” or “He could be a straight A student, but he’s not putting in the effort.”
Perhaps that’s because I’ve coached them both to not take GPA too seriously. I WAS a straight A student, and if I could go back and give advice to my younger self, it would be, “Relax. Enjoy your life. Don’t put so much pressure on yourself. This stuff isn’t going to matter so much later anyway. Just enjoy the experience.”
Perhaps it’s because they can’t reach their potential when they’re trying to be contained in a box. Their potential is BIGGER THAN THE BOX.
So I am no longer going to try to make them fit in any box. I want them to have the freedom, curiosity, passion and inspiration to expand into their natural, God-given potential.
Very shortly after that fateful conversation over homework with Jei that day, I spent the next couple weeks conducting a thorough investigation into homeschooling and unschooling. Those who know me know I don’t do thoughtful, gentle “exploration.” This was full-on research and scrutiny for ten or more hours a day. I was on a mission to learn everything I could about the benefits and pitfalls of homeschooling. As each day went by, the 5:30am alarm to drag myself out of bed to then drag the boys out of bed to send them back into the box became more and more unbearable.
I never thought I could homeschool before because the thought of replicating school at home made me break out in a cold sweat and gave me heart palpitations. We couldn’t even get through an hour of homework without tears and screaming. The idea of unschooling intrigued me – that children are naturally curious and learning is always happening. Not only do they not need a classroom to learn, but that the conventional classroom was actually crushing their natural love of learning. I knew in my heart of hearts that was true for my boys. I wanted them to love learning and be motivated and inspired to learn by curiosity and delight.
The homeschooling rabbit hole led me into the magical realm of worldschooling.
What? We can leave the classroom box, we don’t have to set up a new classroom box at home AND we can satisfy the wanderlust in our hearts?
It’s actually a thing that families do and we can do it, too?
Of course we can.
Travel is a teacher like no other. It can breathe life into learning, engages all the senses, expands our minds and hearts and sense of possibility, fuels curiosity, passion and inspiration.
We had already been doing it naturally all along. We travel every spring, summer, fall and winter break. Every long weekend. Any excuse. We would even sneak off from school a few days (or a week) early and come back a few days later on either side of a school holiday.
The best education is never confined to a classroom. Tai and Jei had already learned so much from our travels. The boys wanted to read all about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when we spent the summer in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 2015. They talked to survivors. They read books all on their own that they bought with their own money just out of pure, natural interest. They were quiet and captivated in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
When they went to Pearl Harbor later that same year, they stood in silence on the USS Arizona Memorial, the visceral emotion of that historic event hit them in the heart when they realized that the service men who served in Pearl Harbor were now entombed in the ship beneath their feet.
They learned about children their age and younger hiding from Nazis in World War II when we went to Estonia. We learned Greek mythology in Santorini and even went to a 3700 year old archeological site in Akrotiri, which was abandoned in 1627 BC! We’ve studied Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table in Glastonbury, architecture in Barcelona, merchant trade and winemaking in Dubrovnik, Croatia, pizza making in Naples, family farming in Finland, medieval crime and punishment in Oxford, Samurai lore and code in Japan, Hawaiian culture, music, history and legend in Hawaii, chocolate making and history at Cadbury World in Birmingham, ship building and viking life in Denmark, and the list goes on. We didn’t just read about Stonehenge, or the Coliseum in Rome, or the Roman baths in Bath. We went there and experienced it first hand with all of our senses. And no classroom learning can ever compare to that.
As a family, we’re freedom chasers and adventure hunters. As we’ve deprogrammed from “the box” of conventional schooling, it’s been beautiful and delightful to witness how these freedoms allow my boys’ innate personalities to not only flourish, but also to fuel more growth and exploration.
Now, I dream of reading the Diary of Anne Frank with the boys and going to the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. Or studying the Northern lights and sleeping beneath them in awe in Iceland. Or learning about storming the beaches of Normandy while we visit the beaches of Normandy, or studying about the Vietnam war and visiting those historic battle sites, or pioneering in Oregon, or Ankgor Wat in Cambodia, or Gobekli Tepi in Turkey. It’s such a big, beautiful world and there is so much to see and learn by going out into it and experiencing the richness and depth of it.
Because when I think about anything big Paul and I ever achieved, NONE OF IT WAS IN THE BOX.
My greatest wish for my children? That they know they are loved and that they know they are powerful. That they know AND experience that they have the power and responsibility to design and create a life they love. One that is full of love.
And we’re doing that together.
