I was hesitant. The cost was $80 plus most of the daylight hours on a Saturday, though it did include two catered meals and other treats. I wasn’t sure I qualified, since my only school aged child just crashed his way through a difficult year of public Montessori. But the logo drew me in, a whimsical line drawing of a tree swing and a string of pennants – just the sort of thing I like. The Recess Retreat, described on Facebook as “a planning retreat for Pittsburgh home educators”, was decidedly devoid of discussions on structure, curriculum, or even, ironically, planning. It was a get-away-from-home-and-kids retreat, a brief recharge for busy moms frayed by end-of-summer frenzy.
When I rolled up to the beautiful Schenley Park Visitor’s Center, there was only one other bicycle at the rack. It did not, in fact, belong to the elderly man in Spandex leaning on the railing but to a very pregnant mother of four who was presenting on “Raising Wild Kids in the City” and commuting her commitment to the outdoors. I was impressed, and then I took stock of the other women in attendance. Interesting and diverse (well…except for skin tone, the only disappointment of the day), there were tattoos and shaved heads, there were conservative ankle length skirts. Some ladies were trendy and polished, others carried baskets and wafted patchouli. Some unschooled, and some followed a structured curriculum, for various spiritual, or non-religious, or just plain practical reasons. There were moms with one child and moms with seven. Entrepreneurial families incorporated their ventures – basement bacon curing! dad’s office stockroom! farmer’s markets! rock’n’roll! the Recess Retreat itself! – directly into their family’s daily learning. Much of the discussion was rooted in gratitude for Pittsburgh’s cosmopolitan gifts to parent educators – museums, public transit, technology, and also countless acres of green woodsy spaces. The view from the historic building was a daydreamer’s delight, suspended over the park on one side and with a view of Phipps Conservatory’s outdoor garden on the other. Women who, like me, have never been able to sit still in their lives, stood in the back, gazed out the windows, left the room to nurse babies on the sunny balcony, or chatted in animated clumps about things that were not the suggested discussion topics.
The next day I texted my only other homeschooling friend:
‘So I went to that retreat and my definitive takeaway was “these are my people”. And that was exciting because it wasn’t that they were necessarily anything ‘like me’, but it was the same kind of people-ness that makes me excited to see you. It’s an attitude toward learning and children and relentless pursuit of our own continuing education. They were “What are you reading?” people. Really rekindled my desire to learn and create and explore.’
I have a lot of questions to answer about homeschooling but what I also have, as the retreat was designed to remind me, is the privilege of time. Time to sit and think, time to wonder and learn with my children, at their pace, our family’s pace. Time to ponder, to read books and ask questions, to stop for fifteen minutes because we found something curious in a creek puddle worth poking with a stick. I will likely make my break from the bonds of the classroom school setting sometime in the next year not because I have deemed homeschooling to be some perfected (non)system for my children’s education, or even with any confidence that I know what I’m doing but, quite simply, because it lights me up inside. There is so much I want to learn alongside my boys. Homeschooling calls to me with its freedom to eschew timetables and rules in favor of the deep flow state of pursuing one’s passions. It encourages me to believe my own intuition about my ability to mother, to learn, to teach, and to go outside and move my body as much as I possibly can. If, as I am gleaning from my habitual reading of therapeutic literature, it is my own emotional regulation that will set the structure for my kids’ abilities to be strong and resilient and empathetic creatures, then the same reasoning must apply for cultivating attitudes of lifelong curiosity.
What are you reading? What will we learn next? When is it time for recess? The answers to the best questions are always more questions so: how about right now?
Huge thanks to Kristen Schmich for planning and executing the Recess Retreat beautifully, just because she wanted to.
