Love of Learning

Dear Students,
Today you embark on a most marvelous adventure – you will be taking on the quest of Learning at Home. There will be formidable foes: Procrastination (an oily character, silver tongued and sneaky – beware!), Distractions (be gentle with those posing as sibling and ruthless with social media) and Restlessness (this is actually Discontent trying to convince you that school is easier at school). But the battles won will be sweet and the victory earned through your wise time management and perseverance will be priceless. And all I can think to say is . . .

Welcome to my world!!

This is how I was given my education, every day from Grade 1 through completion of high school in Grade 12: textbooks and assignments handed out by my mum; a patchwork of assorted grade levels and subjects gathered round the table at any given moment; average class size = 1. The principle always joined us for lunch (my dad) and story time wasn’t limited to the kinder class – the superintendent read an assortment of classics while we finished our home economics class (aka, after lunch clean-up – don’t underestimate this skill because it is a necessity).
I loved my education experience and am pretty chuffed (as my Australian friend Danielle would say) that you get to sample this experience of home schooling. (Pro tip: once assigned homework has been completed, moms will sometimes allow baking cookies to count as extra credit in math and science, especially if the recipe had to be doubled – because hello #fractions and #foodchemistry!) Someday the world will go back to normal, so it might not be a bad idea to write down five things you think home schooling will be like to look back on.

So happy studying friends! Be curious. Be dedicated. Be willing to be stretched and look at things from a different perspective. You never know what you might learn.
And, quite a number of years after the fact, I’m happy to report that the learning doesn’t stop at the end of grade 12, or the completion of college. If you are curious about things, it keeps going for your whole life. Because fully living life is learning, and that is pretty great.