The word I am searching for this week to reflect on the learning process (at home) is: Restructure. When my son and I began this home-schooling, “stay-at-home” experience, we worked side-by-side to place imagination and logic within the same scope and sequence patterns. I analyzed each week, as to continue challenging, introducing and stringing concepts together; weaving his distance learning with my delivery skill set as a teacher and tactile artist. As we approach the final two weeks of distance learning for the year, I cannot help but look at where we have been and where we are headed. Restructuring learning is at the front of my educator’s mind.
Adapting to this new “normal” is not easy for any parents, for any human beings, for that matter. Letting reality sink in is an important part of the acceptance stages of this experience, moving from inconvenience to a continued nuance to a then stressful, overwhelming period, to finally acceptance and restructuring the what and the how our summer will proceed (with most summer camps and programs for child care cancelled) and how the fall will appear in preparing for a very likely “second-wave” of home-schooling. The reality that is in deep need of restructuring appeared clearly (for me) this week. In the most unlikely of places, a new idea emerged out of the dust and old boxes.
The garage, at my mother’s home, has been in dire need of being cleaned out. It has not been thoroughly cleaned for at least five years. Each fall, we say we will take a Saturday, and then between work, our busy lives, and company visiting endlessly—another year goes by with more boxes stacked up and shoved to the sides. I decided this week during one of our sixty-degree days to go up, take a break from home-schooling projects and silent reading times or video chats, and tackle this feat for my mother. My son helped for a little bit, but the bikes, Ripstiks, and badminton rackets took over his interests in the driveway. The day passed, and I ended up with three smaller boxes of collected stuff to sort through at the end of the evening, as the garage cleaning began no later than 10 am. Our beloved neighbors, across the way, yelled out that they, too, would follow the lead when they witnessed all the "junk" in the driveway. Needless to say, the cleaning lasted well into the evening hours, until I took home three boxes to sort out. In those boxes, I discovered a bag of neatly wrapped Christmas gifts, meant for an aunt and cousins. They were dated 2013; the box on the stale, white (once elaborate and dark) chocolate truffles with a festive, shimmering gold bow, indicated the year. I sat there wondering how in the world these packages were misplaced, and then I realized abruptly just how all of our lives have just been too filled with too much stuff, and I am not talking just about material goods, I am suggesting the stuff that we are stuffed with is insignificant and impure, a bunch of rot that needs a good cleaning to uncover and restructure the “why” so many all seem to be having a similar awakening. My friends continue to share similar experiences in that they are (for first time) feeling quieted even in the overwhelming restructuring that their lives have undergone in these past nine or more weeks.
The awakening has been long overdue, and this sentiment is coming from a mother and educator who has often already been frustrated, time and again, with the lack of the "awakening of priorities" in our overbooked, often-at times-shallow lives. Yet, here I was uncovering that no matter how much I disliked this lack of awakening from others, through the years, I still (through no choice of my own accord) was nothing more than an outcome of the culture I have so often critiqued. Those Christmas truffles (handmade) had been stashed to the side of the garage one rushed evening (I imagine) coming home late from the bazillion things I was trying to handle on any given day, thinking that we’d grab this little bundle in time for the Christmas celebration. It was stuffed in the back of the mind until that priority was lost to all of the other obligations on a daily basis crowding our lives unnecessarily. So, what has become of us and this restructuring awakening? How do we prepare for the realities that may become our daily lives this summer and well into the fall or following year after that? The whole bit is reminding me of an old adage, my grandmother stated when times became strange or obtuse. She would say out loud, without a doubt, that the “heart was willing, but the flesh (the body) was weak.” Our bodies, our minds, our families, our learning, our very social existence is being restructured, and no matter how much our hearts are wishing life could just return to that crazy “hamster-wheel”- we as conditioned, Westernized thinkers didn’t necessarily buy into but felt comfortable within- it will not. The next part of our human journey is to ask how to restructure this new life and what parts (for each of us) do we wish: to grow; to eliminate; to establish; to maintain; to preserve from this life-altering experience.
Two pieces that I am certainly going to restructure (and have mulled over this for educators) are as follows:
1) Remote or Distance-learning needs routine; yes, but not in the usual manner. I am not just referring to content (as I have been commenting on content and delivery each week). What I am referring to (especially if the second wave puts us all back in a similar reality for distance-learning) is how to model working from home, as a practical reality, for the future student and worker in the 21st Century. This goes beyond the discussion of weekly Zoom meetings and cross-curricular, multi-age learning projects for families to connect and work through, as they meet State Learning Objectives for each grade-level. What I am talking about is how to restructure our 19th-20th Century concepts of time in the day that have been normalized for over 200 years. Different from a common start time and day routine, for example, remote work, in reality functions like so: You may be presented with a work project that requires four straight-fifteen-hour days of interesting work in a group of like-minded professionals. Then, you may take two days to work on your own home projects or personal health without looking once at your work project, or waiting until the weekend morning arrives, and you might have a moment to yourself and for your family needs. Observing our children’s (students) remote educational experience is something that must be restructured to mimic the remote working experience (described above) that will be the norm in the 21st Century, with or without a Pandemic. Many professionals already prefer balancing out their working lives with their familial lives. The reality is: What if one child wished to work four hours straight on a learning project while another, in that same grade-level, desires to break it up in twenty-minute intervals. Watching my son during this nine-week home-learning experience, I recognized a need for educators to be discussing how to write a new kind of quality curriculum that allows for interpersonal movement beyond what progressive educators are already doing. Part of that answer begins with truly looking at the essence of TIME,in our day sequence, and recognizing now remote experiences dominate TIME, that each one of us is actually on a unique pattern (not necessarily all under the same board or classroom at the same time trying to accomplish something on similar terms in similar time) or Grid that must be uncovered and intersected for community learning to resume and grow.
2) Distance-learning, also, needs one summer gig for each student (child) in the household. With summer camps and learning experiences-through-daily-interactions cancelled and the need for continued modeling of the remote working experience (that already was well under way for many Millennials before this Pandemic), a different summer of learning is much needed! In our restructuring, my son and I spoke about what interests him. I have chosen one extended learning program to take place, at least once per week for two-hours; we decided upon the time, together, to fit his attention-span and learning needs. He has chosen the second one. Rather than make him feel as if summer were not happening, I decided to alternate the two learning programs, one for his interest and one for mine as a means to continue to challenge his growth as a learner. What that looks like, in our household, is an alternating of Spanish Lingo Programming and Gaming technology each, for a two-hour-session, from June through August.
I wish, in closing this reflection, to leave readers/fellow educators/parents with a Restructuring exercise:
For the last two weeks of your home-learning experience, record the time (everybody in the family) of your activities (all of them) within a twenty-four-hour period, each day for 14 days. Then, have one person, in the family, collect them; make sure, before collecting, that each family member has not placed a name on the recording of the time document. Pass each TIME-tracking document around the communal table. Try to have each person guess which family member recorded what activities--just for fun--to see how well each of you know each other’s habits in the home and remote work setting.
Then, have a solid discussion with your family members about what remote learning/work looks like in each person’s sphere of existence, now that an external sense of TIME has been altered. You could pose a guiding question like: Who works best in the morning, or who is the mid-afternoon cranky crasher? In this way, you may be able to begin working together to highlight each of your most productive times and to identify when you each need retreat space or active/organizing space (like cleaning out a garage to reboot your sense of making-meaning), or even who, in the family, is struggling with taking that kind of initiative in carving out their own essence of time and experiences that they find interesting in learning more about or growing within. See what is waiting for you and your family to uncover. I am happy to offer more questions if you contact me.
I cannot say that this experience is somehow making us all the better for it. It is simply stated: isolating; odd; feels surreal; even extremely uncomfortable most days. To be disconnected, physically, from humans is not human. For many (including me), the digital connections lost their luster, even as far back as week two. They are (ultimately) cold and sterile, no matter how exciting, we designers, can make them appear. The tangible experience is real, and humans still crave this experience in order to survive and more importantly; to thrive. Ultimately, so many of us have changed, universally, as a result of COVID-19. What I can say is that with all negative experiences, we know (this goes without even saying) that sources of light will and do somehow surface in unforeseen ways. We just need to remain vigilant in our observing (lest we miss the slight rays) and in our understanding of restructuring concepts for TIME in this era; the front-and-center question remains for uncovering exactly how to make meaning of TIME -with others- within each of our own little digital microcosms. Have a great week, home-schoolers.
Ms. Porcupine and her son, pressing forward.
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