Summer has always been a time for us to pause. It’s a time of reflection, of planning for the upcoming school year, and of relaxing and usually swimming.
I guess that’s true for most families, especially those with kids in school. A lot of homeschoolers emphatically don’t pause in the summer–the common wisdom is that homeschooling happens all year round, homeschoolers are not bound by school schedules. And for the most part that is the case for us–we have usually tried to travel during off-peak times so we have less hectic experiences, and we are definitely willing to pause “school” activities to jump on something else at any time of year.
But this summer is something else entirely. First of all, it is presumably the beginning of the end of the Coronavirus Pandemic. It remains to be seen if it’s really over, but those of us who could be vaccinated have been and even though we still wear masks indoors in crowded places, we are starting to feel a bit of a return to normalcy.
And even beyond that, Maya has graduated, she’s been accepted to college and deferred (NYU is willing to wait another year for her, phew!), she’s landed a job for the summer and upcoming school year and she’s getting her driver’s license. It feels like I have her poised like a stone in a slingshot, just waiting for the moment of launch, which will come in the blink of an eye.
And Max has been hired at a hospital, which feels also like a sort of launch. His freshman year was still pandemic-weird. He fortunately got to strike out into independence a bit, but nothing was normal and the jobs he could get were less than satisfactory. He is a hands-on learner and although he’s bound and determined to go to medical school, I’ve always said he’d be much happier if he could get his MD via apprenticeship. Unfortunately, the world and his chosen profession don’t work that way. But he now has a job as a nurse’s assistant and that will help him get the hands-on experience he craves. He’ll get to work with patients, listen in on Grand Rounds and be surrounded by the hustle and bustle of a busy hospital while getting to know the inner workings of the healthcare system. I know that will help him have a more satisfying undergraduate experience and help with med school applications.
On top of that, Sam has been enrolled in our local public school for his freshman year of High School. It was tough being in a new town during the pandemic, and he wants to experience school. When we started homeschooling, Nabil and I agreed that if any child ever wanted to go to school, we would make sure they could. As parents we can make educational decisions for our kids, but we can’t (nor would we want to) trap them in those decisions. All kids reach an age where they want different experiences than what they’ve been given, and my educational philosophy has been to get out of their way and let them try whatever they need to. And so, at least for now, another of my homeschoolers has reached the end of their homeschool journey.