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Home Education Magazine
May-June 2004 - Articles and Columns
Ode to a Maternal Teacher - Sarah Fletcher
Dear Mom, Do you remember this? A tiny girl sits, a little speck enveloped in the giant, red living room sofa. Tears stream down her chubby little cheeks. "I just can't read anymore, Mom! It doesn't make any sense," I say, dropping the white list of phonetic words on the floor--rat, cat, bat, mat, sat--as tears overflow my blue eyes, making a bizarre wet pattern on the sofa fabric. Your worried hazel eyes, framed by prematurely graying hair, watch with helpless anxiety. Twisting your wedding ring, you told me later that you were filled with an overwhelming sense of powerlessness. Was it the right choice to take Sarah and Becky out of school? Am I competent enough to instruct them? I can't even seem to teach Sarah how to read basic word lists. Over the next few weeks you used words from the list to write little stories, adapting them to my specific learning needs, and made those stories into booklets for me to read and color. And I learned something I will never forget: to love reading.
As I reflect on my second year of college, the success I experienced amazes me. Just before I left for college, I started thinking about my education so far and received a rare and shocking epiphany: almost all basic knowledge I have is because of you. My love for reading, my ability to write with flamboyance, the fact that I remember that the sum of the digits of any number multiplied by nine equals nine is all because of you. As I recall, I wrote you a thank you note. I know you were really touched, but now it's hard to imagine that all your hard work could somehow be fully acknowledged through some sort of thank you note. But I'm trying again, so here are my thoughts.
You must have agonized over the decision of whether or not to homeschool us.
At the time, it certainly was not mainstream the way it almost is today. When Dad was laid off and we could no longer afford private school, most parents would have taken steps to enroll us in public school. Yet, you had such strong convictions that we receive only the best education taught from a morally upstanding perspective, public school simply was not an option.
So, you investigated other avenues; you never considered settling for the easy way out. I remember with ironic amusement people's responses in the earlier years when I would tell them I was homeschooled. "What's that?" they would say. But by the time I graduated from high school, responses would be more like, "Oh, my sister's next-door-neighbor's cousin homeschools her kids." Yet, in a time when homeschooling was hardly known, you still chose the road less traveled because, though it was bumpier than some and at times barely visible, though sometimes it may have felt like you were blazing your own trail, it was the best road for your children. And for that I thank you.
Even more than your courage in deciding to homeschool us, I will always remember and benefit from the effectiveness of your teaching, your ability to factor in my emotional needs, my personality, and my own special way of learning. There was the time I was filling in a phonics workbook. The assignment was something like, "Circle all the pictures of items that begin with the letter R." I got each one right except for one. It was a picture of a rat. When you asked me why I hadn't circled it, my response was, "Because it's a mouse." In school it would have been marked wrong, but at home, you understood and marked it right.
Another time, we were going over my math lesson (always a struggle). I was learning how to multiply fractions. In my mathematically challenged mind, I could not accept the concept of multiplying a fraction by its reciprocal in order to find the answer to a division problem. Multiply to divide? Until I understood, I was physically unable to complete these problems. You stayed up half the night trying to discover a way to explain with your literary mind (and my own similarly developing mind), the logical reasoning behind this problem. And you were successful. I can divide fractions.
Do you remember the silly but meaningful experiments we used to do, like creating an arch out of sugar cubes, or making rock candy out of sugar water, or dying carnations by putting them in water with food coloring? I loved it when you read Laura Ingalls Wilder out loud, when we studied the Old Testament with Gertrude Hoeksema or memorized poetry together. Sitting by the fire reading Shakespeare out loud made me feel safe and loved. Our day trips to The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Art Museum, and our longer trips to Gettysburg, Williamsburg, Washington DC and New England were enriching experiences I would not have gotten had I gone to school. I remember I used to always spell friend (freind) and beautiful (butiful) wrong. Thus the lesson, "I before E except after C," and spelling beautiful out loud fifty times--"B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L." (I still spell it in my head as I write or type it out.)
There were hard times too--my struggles grasping the concepts of math that even you sometimes struggled with. My difficulty disciplining myself to study for and take exams. I also remember how frustrated you used to get when I wouldn't schedule my homework well, or I would get behind on my grading. There would be days where math lessons, or history reading, or scheduling biology for the week ended in shouting matches and slammed doors:
"Mom, ten pages is too much work for one day!"
"Sarah, you will never get through the whole book by the end of the school year unless you read that many pages each day. Or, if you want, I could cut down the number of pages to five, and then you could work through the summer."
"OK, I guess ten pages is fine."
There were days when you would collapse into bed in the middle of the afternoon out of sheer exhaustion, only to have us hover over you a few hours later, wondering when dinner would be ready. I know it must have been at those times that you felt the most underappreciated and, should I have been in your shoes, I would have questioned whether homeschooling was worth all the effort.
In all honesty, there were times when I resented your decision to homeschool me--times when I suffered from the "grass is greener" complex. Because sociability is one of my overwhelming personality traits, sometimes I wished I had more opportunities to spend time with my friends. But hindsight is always twenty-twenty, and I wouldn't trade the small group of close friends I developed or the good study habits I acquired--despite the lack of social distractions--for anything. And somehow, despite these mini crises, or perhaps because of them, we always managed to muddle our way through and come out on the other end wiser and closer.
Mom, I realize with the talents and abilities you have there are so many other things you could have done with your life. You could have furthered your education, pursued a career, opened a teashop. At times, with a sort of guilty concession, I realize just how much you gave up for us. At these times I feel I can never fully thank you for what you have given me: my mind. Just as Robert Frost describes, you were given a choice of two roads. You looked down one as far as you could to where it bent in the undergrowth. Indeed, though faced with two roads diverging in woods, you took the one less traveled by, and for me that has made all the difference. So here is my feeble attempt to express my intense gratitude. Thank you, Mom. Thank you from the girl on the sofa.
With all my love,
Sarah
© 2004 Sarah Fletcher
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May-June 2004 - Articles and Columns
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