Monday in Kalispell, MT – It is time to build a whole new ‘classroom’.
Episode 3, Season 5 of Gilmore Girls was on pause mode when I glanced at one part of the wall of this home’s living room. The rightmost part is covered with names and representations of the primary and secondary colors. The leftmost part is covered with grotesque, uppercase letters of the English alphabet.
My goodness. This is totally embarrassing!
I confidently took a photo of the aforementioned wall of shame and share it in different social media platforms seven months ago. What was I thinking?!
Seriously, using jute fiber to string letters?
Very lame sistah!
I’m ready to be stoned to death right now. My ever creative artist-architect brother Hendrix would be the first one to cast the first stone. I am sure of it!
Okay, okay, okay. Now that’s out of the way and I have fully accepted the responsibility of this lapse of judgement, I carried on a 24-hour task to make up for my mistake and build a whole new ‘classroom’.
Hold your horses right there!
I’m not building – as in constructing an edifice with cement, stones, and sand – a classroom. I’m going to do corrective procedure of the portion of this home which I have designated as the area where I hold one-hour daily classess with my twin children. Our learning corner, so to speak.
Okay let me backtrack a bit…
Yes, I’m teaching my children – Nicholas and Antoinette – at home. I crafted weekly plans for them utilizing books which were recommended from my readings in my graduate class in Language and Literacy Education at the UP Open University. A number of them, I discovered from reading websites and printed materials on homeschooling.
I have been plagued with a feeling of hopelessness in the last three weeks. The terrible-two stage is horrifying. One second Nicholas is the sweetest kid in the world giving me random hugs and kisses; another second he turns into this evil creature who constantly says “no” and throws things at me.
Then there’s the matter of being holed up as the lone adult inside the house. I can’t drive and my permanent resident status is still in the works. I don’t trust day care centers to do the best for my children. So… one day in January – at 3:00 in the morning – I startled Jeff’s peaceful sleep to tell him my plan.
“I’m going to be a parent teacher,” so I declared.
“You are already,” he replied, a little pissed off from the disturbance I caused.
“I mean I’m going to be more serious about this. I’ll make a weekly lesson plan/curriculum. An area here in the house will be converted into a learning corner. I’ll decorate the walls with red, yellow, blue, green… and then I will post sight words and then teach the kids how to sing. I’ll buy a guitar to…” I explained (or at least tried to).
“You play the guitar?! Are you the woman I married?”
“I know the basic chords. Music class. High school.”
Then I went on talking about my big plans and the materials I will use. By the time I told him to drop me off at the Dollar Tree Store on Sunday after church, Jeff was snoring happily. He rejoined the unicorns in Dreamland.
He didn’t remember what we talked about.
But I did and I made true to my promise. So here’s how the learning corner or shall we say ‘classroom’ looks like now:
Please don’t let me post the before photo to save my soul from further embarrassment.
I managed to splash some colors, rearranged the table and chairs, and removed the hideous cutouts of the uppercase letters of the English alphabet. Hooray!
I am now OFFICIALLY an accomplished woman.
By self declaration.
Hey, class is from 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. from Mondays to Fridays.
See you!
