Smrt Lernins

Today is National Teacher Day, which comes, somewhat predictably, in the middle of National Teacher Appreciation Week.

As homeschoolers, we are each our child(ren)’s teacher…excepting those unschoolers who eschew the word “teach,” of course. I’d like to take a moment to tell you teachers-in-your-own home how much I appreciate you.

Homeschooling isn’t easy. You do it anyway.

Your day isn’t done at 3 o’clock or even 6 o’clock — it’s not done until your children are all tucked in bed, and even then, you often stay up for hours going on plans for the following day or preparing for the weeks and months ahead. You don’t get summer vacation. You don’t get a two-week break at Christmas. You can’t draw a line between your job and your personal life. You can’t walk away from the work and the children when the day is done. You do it anyway.

You don’t get paid to do this. You don’t draw a salary and you don’t get a pension at the end. Your “salary” is intellectual growth of your children. Your “pension” is the well-adjusted, well-educated adults you have raised. Your “benefits” aren’t in the form of health insurance and paid leave, but in the amount of quality you spend with your child. The nest egg you’re building for the future isn’t financial. You do it anyway.

You don’t have a union. You have to scrap out the support where you can find it, through online forums or local homeschool groups. You have to be your own advocate, figure things out on your own, or ask for help from others like you. It can be an uphill battle the whole way. You do it anyway.

You don’t have a mandate from the State. You may even be at great odds with your state by choosing to homeschool. You fill out forms, jump through hoops, and then fill out more forms about jumping through hoops. You may have to put your family and your life up for scrutiny for someone else’s determination of whether you’re fit to homeschool. You do it anyway.

You don’t have someone developing an approved curriculum for you, setting academic standards for you, or giving you the exact information your children should learn. You don’t have it that easy. You have to figure it out on your own. You can’t just teach to the test, satisfied that the test scores will be the end to justify your means. You have to determine what you can use, what you can afford, what standards you will set for your children. You have to find a way to teach them everything they need to know for college and for life. You’ll probably miss a few things, and you agonize over which things you’ll miss. You do it anyway.

You don’t do it “their” way. Your job isn’t always respected. You don’t get special license plates. When someone asks you, “What do you do for a living?” your answer often isn’t what they want to hear. You’re subjected to a rigorous line of questioning about what you do and what you teach and why. Your motives are suspect. Your methods are scrutinized. Your rigor is challenged. You do it anyway.

Day in and day out, you do it anyway. You continue to educate your children, despite others’ misgiving, despite criticism and unwanted commentary. You invest time, money, and energy that you may not actually have in making sure your children have a thorough, meaningful education. You reach out to others like you and offer them help, advice, materials, support. You raise your children with character and creativity.

You’re homeschoolers. You don’t give up. You do it anyway.

Happy Teacher Appreciate Day, to my community of wonderful home-teachers. You’re loved. You’re appreciated.

I’m pretty lucky.

I’m a white, heterosexual, middle class woman. My gender identity is the same as my biological sex. I hold a postgraduate degree. In short, with the exception of sexism and the occasional prejudice against Southern accents, I go through my life free of discrimination. It’s pretty easy to be white, straight, and middle class in the U.S. Patchfire likes to call me “Apple Pi,” because my life (while quirky, hence “pi” rather than “pie”) appears to be the all-American ideal of suburban normalcy.

I don’t make assumptions about my children’s gender or sexual identification, however. I don’t know who they will grow up to be. I don’t know who they’ll love. I can, however, do my best to create a world where they will be treated as equals no matter who they are. I can fight for their right to marry whomever they love, to raise children, to get a job wherever they are qualified to work, regardless of whether a church thinks that’s “right” with God. Even if my kids all grow up straight and cisgendered, I would still fight for the rights of your kids, because no mother’s child should be denied the right to love, to have a family, and to just live his/her life, simply because someone else believes in a literal and bigoted version of a book written 2000+ years ago. ETA: I was linked to this lovely video made by a young man who has suffered through and overcome some of the very bigotry I’m talking about.

This morning, I woke up to a post on the WTM forums about whether or not the ENDA, a law that would prohibit workplace/hiring discrimination against gay/transgendered people, threatens “religious freedom”. Really, you guys? I’m flabbergasted that the very notion of gays being treated equally under the law, at least where employment is concerned, is that threatening to you. Apart from the fact that the law specifically exempts religious employers, do people really believe that gays are conspiring to take over the churches*? Are people really still buying into the ludicrous notion of a Gay Agenda?

I don’t understand how you can think of yourself as a good person while campaigning for another human being to have fewer rights than you. It’s so inhuman to treat someone else as less human. It’s unpatriotic to want to steal the rights from another citizen, rights that you so carelessly enjoy, because you don’t like the cut of their jib or who they love. The absolute gall of thinking your religious beliefs trump someone else’s basic human rights, let alone actively working to deny those rights, is one huge reason why I’ve drifted further and further from identifying w/ any of the primary religious groups in this country. Is this what Christ would have wanted? I seriously doubt it.

To that end, I’m a member/sponsor of the Human Rights Campaign, which fights for equality for all people — straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, cisgendered, transgendered. These issues include, among many others, the right to marry, to have biological children without legal threat, to adopt, to be employed without fear of termination based on sexual/gender idendification, to serve in the military without fear of discharge based on sexual/gender identification, and to be free from hate crimes. I will also soon (I pick a new organization for donation each quarter) be sponsoring the Southern Poverty Law Center, which works against hate groups of all ilks.

Bigotry and discrimination is just plain stupid. I’d like my kids to grow up in a world that isn’t stupid, thanks.

*Perhaps they think that because anti-choice pharmacists could infiltrate pro-choice dispensaries and then stand in their “religious freedom” to refuse to dispense the very medications they were hired to dispense. Funny how bigots think everyone as small-minded as they.