Wheels on the (Homeschool) Bus

Jeanette White is a freelance writer and editor living in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. She and her husband are homeschooling two daughters adopted from China.

My daughters have been enamored with buses since they could point and say “Buh!” Spotting them on the street became a toddler game of Slugbug without the arm punch at every sighting. They knew all the words to “Wheels on the Bus” and sang them often. Too often. Even now, Mei-Mei and Jie-Jie like to watch kids disappear into school buses at a stop visible from our breakfast table.

My own fascination with school buses ended abruptly in first grade, after a few weeks of riding more than an hour a day. I remember pulled pigtails, boys’ belching contests and painful boredom. But while one of the best aspects of homeschooling is the freedom to think outside the box, I couldn’t seem to think outside the bus when it came to the girls’ first day of school.

That’s how we ended up standing at a city bus stop, chatting with strangers and soaking up a burst of September sunshine. We took the long way to a small Korean restaurant, passing parks and shopping centers and neighborhoods we don’t often see. It was high adventure for two kids who live nowhere near a city bus route.

It’s not your typical rite of passage, but their first day of school was commemorated with good kimchee, ginger candy, and a post-lunch visit to an Asian market, where we browsed and bought a bag of salty dried plums. I failed to take my camera, but the girls have 2-hour bus passes for their keepsake box.

Afterward, we were lured home by a stack of tantalizing new books and art supplies. For a book junkie like me, this part of homeschooling is a slice of heaven. First Language Lessons! Artistic Pursuits! Writing with Ease! The Case of the Fiddle-Playing Fox! (Oops, wrong stack.) Chalk pastels, watercolor crayons, whiteboard, 3-ring binders! Did I mention my fondness for office supplies?

I started our week with subjects we’ve been doing all along at a more relaxed pace, like reading, math and writing. As the days passed, we added new subjects to the routine one by one. I thought of jugglers who start their act with three bowling pins and add the rest one at a time, taking a moment to get their rhythm with each addition. I’ll write more about how our lessons are going a little later.

We’ve scheduled two weekly classes away from home—fiddle lessons and beginning gymnastics. Jie-Jie and Mei-Mei have been fiddling for several months, but gymnastics class fills a new time slot for us. Is it too much? Just enough? We’ll soon find out. Every friend I’ve quizzed has a different take on how much road time is too much. I’d love to hear your ideas about that.

We ended our week of homeschooling with a belated Moon Festival celebration at our friends’ house, eating Chinese take-out and walking around the block with colorful paper lanterns lit up by tea candles. Four giggling girls led the way, circling back only when a candle needed to be lit again. Cloudy skies made it easy to forget the moon was nowhere near full. In a weird blend of cultures, Mei-Mei and Jie-Jie played The Chicken Dance on their fiddles while my friend playfully tried to follow on her erhu, shipped here from Shanghai.

Something tells me we’ll manage to think outside the box after all.

Read-Aloud of the Week:
The Three Princes: A Tale from the Middle East, by Eric A. Kimmel

Quotes of the Week:
“I can spell a-e-i-o-u!” –Mei-Mei, 5

“It looks like a dot-to-dot W.” – Jie-Jie, 7, spotting Cassiopeia while stargazing

Back to School

Now summer fun is over and my son has started middle school. It's a new school popular for its academic focus. We were thrilled he was able to get into the school, but we didn't know how much studying he'd face since we'd become used to his "fun-filled" elementary school.

Now it's been three weeks, and I am totally surprised by the study load my son has been given and how many school rules he has to follow. Every day he comes home with a lot of homework. He has so many notebooks, folders and dividers from his classes and for his homework. They make his backpack so heavy that one day he wanted me to call the AP and ask if he could let students carry fewer books! The school is also very strict compared to his old school. Students can't be late for class and they must wear the school uniform. If they're late or don't wear their uniform, parents must meet with the AP. One day after he talked in class without raising his hand, his teacher asked him to write a 500-word essay about it. (This reminds me of how we used to write self-criticism essays when we were in school.) After only three weeks, they've taken tests for their subjects and parents were asked to sign on each test!

I'm not used to this at all. In the past five years, he just had too much fun at his elementary school. He didn't have much homework and never had to write so neatly. When he talked in class without raising his hand, he either got time-out or his behavior was ignored. He had no tests except the state-wide ones. I thought that was the standard of American education - fun, fun, and more fun, plus creativity! But now I see a totally different picture of American education, and this is in a public school in New York City!

I know it sounds a little bit like he's in school in China - study, study, and study! But I really feel that's how he can learn and grow. Today I asked him how he feels about his not-so-great grades on the tests. He said he thinks it's good to know where he stands and why he made those mistakes, and that he'll learn more and try his best to improve his grades next time. Wow, that's what I was looking for all these years in his education! I feel so relieved to know he understands the importance of learning and appreciates it. I'm also glad to see a public school like his focusing on teaching and learning!

Art and the Cultural Revolution

Before I went to see the Asia Society's exhibit "Art and China's Revolution," I didn't expect it would have much impact on me. I couldn't imagine that things from the Cultural Revolution period could be an art scene exhibited in the West.

But when I visited the exhibit this week, I was totally impressed with everything I saw. All those oil paintings were so familiar to me (they were the everyday scene during the Cultural Revolution), but I'd never seen the original paintings myself and didn't expect them to be so large and powerful! Besides oil paintings, there are posters, wood prints, sculptures, water color paintings, and more. Yes, the themes of these works of art are very revolutionary, but they are all art pieces that actually illustrate the period of time we experienced. I also saw the posters that were once on the streets, at schools and even in homes, the Mao pins each of us wore, the rice bowls, plates, and other household products we used, along with all things culture revolution. Together they reminded me of the era I grew up in and the ideology in which we were trained.

This exhibit may have shown the Cultural Revolution from a perspective new to many Westerners. Having grown up in that period - even though I learned Mao's quotations by heart every day, witnessed terrible scenes on the streets, and saw my Mom, who taught at Beijing University, separated from her family for about four years (I saw her only 12 days a year when she returned to Beijing from the countryside's unversity camp) - I still enjoyed my childhood, my school, my friends and whatever I did at that time. I believe I am who I am now partly because of what I experiened and learned in my childhood.

I don't mean that I want to go back to that period, but there is another side of the story Westerners may not know. Perhaps you can start with this exhibit. Please visit the exhibit if you're in the city; if not, you can see and learn about the show from Asia Society's website.