How We "School" Part 3: Lessons

Lessons. Lil'Bug has taken lessons. How is this exactly unschool? To unschool is to embrace what and how you learn from life and naturally, right?

Sure, but there comes a point when you want to master something and you seek out teachers, or perhaps taking a lesson sounds like a fun, dare I say it, social thing to do.

Here is where the difference, at least for us has occurred.

Lil'Bug took music lessons. Really, music lessons is redundant in our family because we have a music room and she has access to about 15 real instruments and 30+ of her own toyish percussion things. But she wanted to take lessons, which as a three year old means singing and dancing and playing with toyish like percussion things only with a room full of other three year olds. Fine.

Here is where we take a different approach. One lesson we had a substitute teacher whose style of relating and rule sets were different from our regular teacher. In our regular class, Lil'Bug always played helper and assisted in handing out things and cleaning up. The new teacher balked at her efforts to help and explained "nicely" that Lil' Bug would get an instrument when she sat down and waited. Lil'Bug stood there stunned for a bit, but processed it and sat down. And yet, the teacher made a point of handing sticks to everyone, including me, before giving them to Lil'Bug very last and saying to the class that she got hers last because she sat down last.

What? That was unkind, but apparently acceptable to everyone there. Well, except for my sweet tot who set her sticks "nicely" down and left. Walked out of the classroom.

I followed her out and sat down with her. She explained that she didn't like the teacher, thought what she did and said was rude and unkind. She wanted to go home.

So we did. I agreed with her AND if I was in her position I would be allowed to choose to quit. As adults, when someone treats us poorly we have choices. Why not let her choose how she wants to be treated? Because she is a child, should she suffer the ill treatment of someone just because they are years older than she is? I don't think so. Sure, I paid for the class, but that money was already paid and gone and certainly not worth the price of humiliation for my child in front her parents and peers.

So we quit. She tried going back once the regular teacher was back, but it was never the same. So that was that.

Some parents I have talked to said they would make their kids stick it out, finish what they start. Some said they would have confronted the owner and/or the teacher. And some agreed with my decision. I learned a bit about myself and my kid that day. She could have thrown a fit, but she simply walked out and clearly articulated her needs. What would have happened to our bond and her trust in me if I had ignored it? She looks to me to be her hero, her helper, her teacher, and her friend. But most of all, her mama.

So, back to lessons. We also do swim lessons, she calls them that. Really it is swim play and she asks me to teach her things or spot her while she tries out "dangerous tricks." She trusts me to not let her drown. She trusts me to catch her. I think she calls these swim sessions lessons because she has been taught to by PBS kids shows and peers that when you learn something it is a lesson. Schoolish thinking.

Lessons, just a word, but we have decided to make it our own. It is our way of countering the culture of schoolish creeping in.