My Education, part 2: Homeschooling with My Mother

Luckily for my brother and me we did not begin our education in public school, where we both would have been stuck with labels that could have damaged his sense of self worth and my easily inflated ego irreparably. My mother decided to teach us at home after I had attended I believe a couple of months of first grade. I wasn’t a problem student, and I remember having fun with classmates, but I wasn’t happy there and she wasn’t happy with the methods and especially the priorities that are employed in public schools.

We spent our days learning, and mostly trying not to label it too carefully. I don’t have very clear memories separating years except when we moved between houses when I was seven or eight years old. My mother worked hard to make sure we were learning things in all of the subjects we would have been taught in school, mostly so she could record this and keep us officially official. She was always flexible and happy if we had our own ideas about what or how to study. I remember being delighted to learn one year that  a person could read about a subject and then write down what they had learned and then, if one provided a name or some designation of topic, other people would be happy to read it—I had discovered essays! I proceeded to write I think thirty-two of them that year (as I have said before, I was very fond of numbers and of documenting my accomplishments). Most of these were a short paragraph or two long. One was entitled “Dolls” and I believe was the result of original research. The longest was on King Tutankhamen, for which I drew my own reconstruction of the Nile on our computer.

My mother was also very considerate of our different learning needs, which along with our age difference (which is only a year and a half, but a year and a half can be a big deal in grade school) required a lot of creativity and careful thought. Isaac, as I began to describe in my last post, is I think a kinesthetic, visual, aural learner. He could listen to my mother read to him for very long periods of time as long as he had something to do with his hands, and would remember just about everything he had heard. I loved to be read to as well, but more often needed to stop doing anything else so I could focus on seeing what was being described or just the words themselves in my mind. 

Most of my memories of day to day learning are by myself, with frequent projects with Mom and Isaac. We spent a lot of time in parks talking about biology and ecology. We spent time with craft projects, often in a weeklong craze that petered out rather abruptly. Mom bought a loom and I learned to weave. I journaled and thought about my mind. I read books—sitting in the branches of trees when possible.

Learning this way taught me to respect my mind and to take responsibility for what I was learning. I decided myself how best to test what I was learning (for things like math, anyway, which I felt benefitted from checking to see what I remembered. Many things, like vocabulary and history, can just be re-looked up if you really need to know them and find you have forgotten) I would wait until at least a week had past since I had studied a chapter and then do as many of the questions at the end as I could. If I ended up getting more than fifty percent, I was proud. I knew that I had really internalized this knowledge, and was not just parroting back things I managed to keep in my short-term memory. These skills of knowing my mind, knowing how to learn something and how to check if I had have served me well all my life.

My Education, part 1: Isaac and My Mind

My younger brother has always been a touchstone for me in thinking about education, though I'm sure it would surprise him to read that. And I think he would be surprised for the same reason I try to always keep him in mind: His brain does not work the same way mine does. His mind (from what I understand) functions mostly in pictures and sounds. He is very good at putting things together and at making them look the way he wants to. He is good at showing ideas visually. I am not. I function in words and numbers, primarily. I love to read and I am very good at math. This also means that I am very good at tests, especially those lovely bubble tests I took every year starting in elementary school.

Isaac, you might guess, is not so good at those kinds of tests. He learned to read quite late, and even after he did so, expecting him to derive some concept from flat black words on a flat gray page and then find the appropriate flat black words from the list provided wasn’t an appropriate way to measure what his mind was capable of.  He could and can get decent scores and decent grades, but most of the ways that students’ minds are traditionally measured miss the majority of his intelligence.

He suffered emotionally for the immeasurability of his mind beginning when he was quite young. I was held up as an ideal little brain, loving to read books and work with numbers. Most of the things that Isaac was motivated about were dismissed as games or hobbies, and not the stuff of ‘real’ education. I wasn’t usually convinced that the books I read were building my mind more effectively than the drawing of creatures and construction of scenes with legos or other toys on which Isaac spent his time. I was honestly often embarrassed when I tried to do what he did—he understood things about how shapes could fit together to make something unexpected that I could not keep up with—his creations were consistently more interesting than mine on multiple levels.

I was eternally conflicted about the different ways our intelligences were treated. I was made accustomed at a very early age to being thought of as the ‘smarter’ and often simply ‘better’ sibling. Most of the time I knew that that wasn’t true, but that knowledge by itself wasn’t always enough to make me unhappy hearing it, as least as far as I myself was concerned. I lived on praise. I did hate the way I could see it made Isaac feel, and because of this I sometimes resolved not to tell my family of something ‘admirable’ that I had done. I would conceal the fact that I had already finished a novel or how quickly I was getting through my math workbook. Sadly for both of us (and especially Isaac) my resolve did not often outlast my need for positive attention.

Even a step further outside of measurable education are our emotional compositions. Another thing that made it easy for adults to praise me was my retreating and people-pleasing nature. I tried to get out of the way or change the topic of conversation and make conflict unnecessary. Isaac did not. I often thought he was unreasonable, and he could definitely be disobedient, but he maintained a principle within himself of not abandoning things that mattered to him I have always admired and envied.

A new year

I was in Seoul when my grandmother passed away, on my way to visit Xiaoxuan and her family for the Lunar New Year in China. I felt very far away and it still (two weeks later) doesn't feel very real, though I have been trying to call my grandfather regularly to stay connected to him and this new reality.

I flew to from Seoul's Incheon Airport to Beijing Capital Airport a few hours later with no problems except a few minutes of tension as I realized I hadn't used my US debit card in months and wasn't sure how on earth I'd remember the PIN so I could withdraw money for a cab to go meet Shirin. My Jedi mind tricks, however, recovered it from the recesses of my mind on only the second try. The taxi driver proceeded to take me for a ride, as cab drivers in China universally don't feel bad about ripping off americans as we are so obviously rolling in money, but other than that the travel part of the day went well.

It was a very surreal week of travel, with my mind trying to adjust to being in a different country and often wishing that I was in the US. I kept Grandma and Grandpa in my thoughts and tried also to be present in the family gatherings that Xiaoxuan was kind enough to invite me to join.

At her father's parents' house I met aunts and uncles and a couple of cousins, and her cousin's two year old daughter, who really wasn't sure what to think of my at first but decided that I was alright after we spent some time drawing (read: scribbling randomly) together. We stayed up late watching the national dance/music/and sketch performances. We headed home around 11pm, I think, and after getting ready for bed it was just about midnight and we watch out of the bay window of Xiaoxuan's family's 8th floor apartment at the storm of fireworks in every direction. It was impressive. Everyone went to bed shortly after that, as we had to wake up extra early to return to her paternal grandparents' house to eat new year's dumplings and set off a few fireworks of our own.

Grandma's funeral was New Year's Day in China. I spent the day (except for breakfast) with Xiaoxuan's maternal extended family-- her mother's parents and brother. We ate well, of course, and her grandfather showed me a VERY complicated puzzle which I was not able to solve. I played Mazhang with Xx, her mother, and her grandmother. I lost, of course, but I held my own. Her father asked me if Americans just don't like humor because I hadn't been getting all of his jokes. I told him we did, but I am rather slow on the uptake in Chinese language conversations. He remains skeptic.

That night for me was the time of Grandma's funeral, as it was in the early afternoon in Iowa. I said prayers and thought about my family alone after everyone else was asleep-- I had talked to Xiaoxuan about Grandma a couple of times but mostly was still processing by myself. It was a gift to be welcomed into a family that week, strange though it was that it wasn't my own family in Iowa.

Education questions

I have pretty confidently decided on pursuing a masters in education/teaching certificate in the states, and then doing montessori certification afterwards. This will let me work with middle school aged students, as a montessori certificate alone almost definitely would not any time soon, and continue to learn about the montessori children's-minds-focused method of teaching/assisting students to learn.

I have been trying to find ways to break the large topic of education into pieces that I can realistically write about in separate blog posts-- I'm actually encouraged by how hard it's been because it's showing me how close I am to this topic and how big it is in my mind. It's a lot easier to see things that are farther away. However, I really do want to investigate this through writing. I want to write about my own educational experiences and what I have learned about how I learn, and about different educational philosophies. So! This is a placemarker/pledge to pick a small piece and start writing next week!

To begin with, here are some ideas I have been investigating:

Ken Robinson: "Schools Kill Creativity" and "Bring on the Learning Revolution" (talks on ted.com)
E. M. Standing: "Montessori: Her Life and Work" (book, which I highly recommend to any interested in investigating how they learn and what they believe about their minds)

I would love recommendations for things to read about education and cognitive development (especially for adolescence)!

This time from Seoul!

Our trip has continued to be excellent, overall. We accidentally bought train tickets for Tuesday instead of Wednesday and  ended up having to stand a lot for a long time rather than having the relaxing afternoon watching the country roll by as we had planned. But on Wednesday morning we walked up to the top of Busan, including at least part of the 1,000 steps that are apparently famous. We went to a huge lovely bookstore yesterday, and I now have The BFG; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; and A Wrinkle in Time to give to Xiaoxuan when I visit her family fort the lunar new year in February (going back to Chinaaaa!). We then ate some excellent Vietnamese food and saw Tron: Legacy in 4D (meaning 3D glasses and seats on hydraulics so when the characters swoop, we swoop).

Today we are staying in until evening, when we're going to Hongdae to do whatever is done when the year changes at midnight. Jei and Christian are going to make me watch the 1st and 3rd Indiana Jones because I don't think I've seen either of them in their entirety.

Christian and I put off buying any travel tickets until we'd actually left and were worried that it would make this an expensive trip, but we bought plane tickets back home from Seoul (since we came by boat from Jeju to Busan and train from Busan to Seoul) and they only cost us 30,000won (less than $30) each. It was a very new airline, so I'll be able to tell you better on Sunday WHY they were so cheap, but I am confident they will at least get us home.

As far as things-Christian-says updates, which should probably become a regular facet of this blog, he has periodically channeled the spirit of New Yorker (or something like it) Odysseus, or "Ody" for short ("'ey, c'mon, we're pals, right?"). He also informed me that he is naturally built like Brad Pitt, with a slightly larger nose. But is allergic to "stupid poop-heads" and since he spends so much time with ME, is always swollen.

A kind man.

Coming to you from Busan, South Korea

Hello fair reader! I am in the PC bang (computer room/cafe) in the shared floor of a Jimjilbang. The women's sauna is on one floor, the men's on another, and the shared sleeping floor, with cafe and computer room and massage chairs, on yet another. Christian is on his way up, he's just texted me, and we'll be spending the night here before spending another half-day in Busan (the highlights of which will be the beach, again, and the RussiaTown near the train station) before catching our train up to Seoul to stay with a friend there through new years. We took an over night boat from Jeju-si last night, and didn't sleep much. We got into Busan port a little before 6am and have been wandering ever since, so I'm not feeling too bad about having hit the sauna around 8pm and just chilling for the rest of the evening.

More updates when I'm back home!

Movement and Stillness; Silence and Sound

There is a magic in traveling, whatever the distance. It takes me out of myself and gives me permission to look at the world. Even taking the bus home from my school a few towns over, feeling the landscape rolling past me puts my place in the world into more perspective. I can see more clearly how far I have traveled and how much world there will always be left to explore.

In part I owe this to the motion sickness that I sometimes view as a tragic irony. I can't read in cars or especially on buses and only sometimes on trains or planes. I sometimes can't hold conversations well because I can't keep turning my head to look at the person I'm talking to.* I have always gotten motion sick, as far as I can remember, which has meant that car rides (and more recently plane and train rides) have left me with nothing to do but be in my mind. It makes me a less-than-ideal travel partner; as soon as I sit down in a car, my brain sets to meditative work.

I love thinking about the world without being altogether in any one part of it. I love tracing a line that has connected who knows how many other people. And I love that my responsibility is just to be wherever I am. "I'm on the bus, dude." or "I'm on a train, dude. In China." and "I'll deal with it when I get there." It is an opportunity to turn off my responsibility/stress mind and just think about whatever comes.

It is often when I am traveling and staring absent-mindedly into the distance that I am able to articulate myself the best.

This year has probably been my richest ever in terms of travel. I was on Jeju staying with Christian for six weeks just after the year began, then I went 'home' to Nanjing for Spring semester. Afterwards I traveled to Chongqing by 25 hour train, then to Yichang by three-boat on the Yangtze river, then by 13 hour train to Beijing. There I was picked up by Xiaoxuan and her father's entourage, and hosted in Langfang and Guyuan, near Inner Mongolia. I went home for three and a half short weeks, and zigzagged my way all over the Mighty Midwest seeing people I love. I've been in Korea for a few months now, spending most of my time on Jeju but some in Seoul, and Christian and I have another trip to Busan and Seoul in just over a week. **

What matters the most, of course, are people. It is wonderful to travel with or towards people I love, but I also like to travel alone. I have had some lovely conversations and even made friends on trains and waiting for them. It is very easy for me to feel isolated sitting home alone, or when I am at work with no one to talk to. But even if I am by myself on a bus, I feel connected to the people riding it and to the places I pass. And as I begin to learn the history of whatever place I live in, I begin to be able to trace lines back through the reasons for and implications of what people say and do, what kind of work they do and where. It is magic that there are so many lines to trace and to continue.


*I was recently lovingly reminded that much of this may be in my head. I am better in motion if I am not struggling with anxiety, if I have been taking care of myself mentally and physically. I am better if I have someone's hand to hold, and that has little to do with my inner ear.

**that was a really long brief overview...