Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We got started early this year by making corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and Irish soda bread last night since we were all home together. There are leftovers for tonight anyway, and now we can go have someone else's cooking tonight and take in some local Irish music and dance. We do this every year. So of course the question . . . "Are you Irish?" No, I'm not! I'm also not Mexican, but I still cook Mexican food every year on Cinco de Mayo. We've taken to going out for Chinese food on Chinese New Year because we like the free calendar they give us at our Chinese restaurant; it's the scroll type with "Year of the Tiger" 2010 pictures on it since we can never remember what animal is associated with what year (thank you Blogger for automatically figuring this out for us on our blog profiles!) So in our house, we treat St. Patrick's Day like no less of a holiday than say, for example, Thanksgiving.

Which has got me thinking . . . these celebrations are another component to our homeschool "mystery" as we've taken to calling it since no one knows exactly what we're doing on the inside here! The transformation of this blog started like this: first, as a writing project to get my kids writing more if they got to see themselves "published." Then, as a sort of "off the beaten path" travel blog since people were always asking Mike and I about all our little unknown restaurants, trails, yurts, hidey-holes, etc. Finally, as a way to explain and dispel myths about homeschooling. What I have come to realize is that the homeschool blog idea really encompasses all of our prior blog ideas because homeschooling is more of a way of life. The word "homeschool" itself is more commonly used as a verb than it's counterpart "school." For example, I would say, "I am going to homeschool my child." I could say, "I am going to school my child," but it is more likely that I would say, "I am going to send my child to school." There is nothing that angers the homeschooling community more than seeing this word broken down into two words "home school" which implies that we have a school in our home, and if you were to see my home right now, it is more reminiscent of a "home zoo."

So from here on out, holidays, travel, and the basic day to day are all fair game for the homeschooling blog since these are all ways that we educate our children. "Oh, so Kathy you guys are unschoolers?" Not exactly! At this very moment, my kids are taking an AIMS practice test because they will be taking this standardized test the second week of April at their homeschool enrichment program sponsored by the local school district. I think the mere fact that two days per week I send my kids to a program sponsored by the public school, pretty much disqualifies us as unschoolers. Aren't labels fun! "Oh, so you guys are Evolved Homeschoolers because you believe in evolution?" True, that we believe in evolution. My daughter still talks about the trip we made to La Brea Tar Pits when she was about 5 years old. I can't believe the stuff she remembers from that museum. It must've had a profound effect on her because she remembers the mammoths, saber-toothed cat, and even the 9,000 year-old woman that fell into the tar. I have no idea how people can doubt evolution. One of my daughter's best friends just told my daughter the other day that scientists mix up the bones of a bunch of different animals to make something that didn't exist. ??? However, since we also go to church, I think we're disqualified as Evolved Homeschoolers as well. I am the World's Biggest Doubting Thomas, and it is my nature to question everything, but I am fortunate that the ELCA that I belong to is a bunch of rebels, in the spirit of the biggest rebel of them all, Martin Luther. So once again, I am without a label, being completely disgusted with Right-Wing Christians in America, but at the same time, respectful of the fact that this group is also making up a large percentage of homeschoolers, and I include many of them as my friends.

So today we are celebrating St. Patrick: a man who found God as a teenage slave and who isn't really Irish, but let's label him that way anyway! I personally like to think of this "holiday" as a day to be thankful for Irish American immigrants, and the struggles and prejudices they overcame to be respected members of our society. I hope homeschoolers will someday overcome these same things too.

Pistol Packin' Mama

The big day came where we downloaded the "Affidavit of Intent to Home School" form, signed our promise that we would "provide at least the subjects of reading, grammar, mathematics, social studies, and science," got the form notarized, and all piled into the car to file the form at the county courthouse. When we got there, all four of us went in with the magic form. We handed the form over to the woman expecting . . . ? "Are you sure about this?" "We need to take your photos for the FBI." "Here's a list of the testing schedule so we can check if you're doing your job." "You're the worst parents ever." We heard none of that. The lady merely said, "Thanks." No balloons dropped from the ceiling. No judge shook our hand. No family photo was taken.

Now what? My first concern was that we get out and meet some other homeschoolers so my kids wouldn't feel like they were the only ones being homeschooled. After all, my biggest reservation about homeschooling was the worry that my children would not be exposed to diversity. I remember when Amy Carter attended public school during the Carter presidency, and that is the first recollection I have of the importance of mixing socioeconomic classes. Around that time, I began to take note of the segregation within my own southern California community. We had a hispanic housekeeper that we used to drive home at the end of her day of working for us. They were a large family with four or five kids and various other family members all living in a one-bedroom rented mobile home across the street from the railroad tracks in our pricey beach community. We would drive up to find her family's laundry drying on the clothesline after her day of doing our family's laundry. This seemed like injustice to me. My mother did not have a job outside the home, it just seemed like we had a housekeeper because that is what one did. My mother would tell me, "Elena is happy to have the job with us because she just wants to send money home to Mexico." So then I wanted to know what was going on in Mexico! I was pretty sure Elena's family did not have a lot to eat because they were relieving us of our male baby goats left and right. About this time, I became the "president" of our 4-H goat group (hold the applause) so I was learning a lot about dairy goats, and I knew that the females were coveted for the milk and there wasn't a lot of use for the males other than breeding (Elena lived in a trailer without a yard) or meat. I asked why we didn't take Juan the gardener home after his day with us, but that was because Juan didn't have a home. He lived in a cardboard box in a canyon near our house. My friends and I used to play in the canyon during the day, and we saw how Juan lived. So when people ask me, "Why don't you just move to a nicer neighborhood with better schools?" I really don't want to live in the high house on the hill anymore.

So how was I going to expose my kids to different people, such as they would get at school, when most days it was the three of us genetically-linked "diverse" people hanging out together. We started going to homeschool support groups, park days, museum days, art classes, field trips, music classes, etc. Early on, we were probably doing too much as we were gone almost every day for this or that activity for homeschoolers. One of the biggest surprises to homeschooling has been the oddball people we have met since we left the school system. There's the kid who has a seizure disorder so his mom has to stay with him all the time so she figured she'd just start homeschooling him. We've met several dyslexic kids -- totally smart kids, but worksheets and in-class board work were completely wasted time for them. We know kids that were adopted from different countries that are being homeschooled because their ages and their ability level (aka "grade" level) do not match. Also, many kids that, for whatever reason, are either way above or way below grade level; the school system tends to just not know what to do with these kids. We have also learned about different religions because there are lots of people that homeschool so they can infuse religion as part of what their kids learn. I've met parents that are anti-vaccination, anti-medicine, and anti-establishment. My favorite mom: the "pistol packin' mama," always showed up to homeschool park days with a baby in a sling and a gun on her hip. I have lived one block from the "projects" in downtown San Francisco, have frequently walked London parks in the dark of night when I lived there, have traveled through Checkpoint Charlie in East Berlin when that was still in existence, and currently work as a an ER nurse which is consistently rated as one of the top professions for workplace violence. At my job, at any time, we have armed hospital security, armed Sheriff's officers, armed Department of Corrections officers, prisoners, AND gang members, but somehow a group of homeschooling children and moms in a suburban park appeared to be a danger to her. Gotta love homeschoolers!