The Where I am from poems had scrapbook potential all over them. It’s been way way too long since I sat and scrapped.  Far too long.  Scrapbooking used to be my defining hobby.  The *what I do* after being mom and farmer. Something about the combination of mom, farmer, and digital photography (vs. prints in my hand every week) pushed scrapping to the back burner since Brendan was born. That was a real shame. I missed it. So this week when my daughters wrote their own ‘I am From’ poems we sorted through the stash of papers and started to put pages together and it felt SO good!

I realized my scrapbooking has suffered from the same second-guessing my homeschooling has endured. In my guilt over productivity I look at our elaborate hand-made pages and think how impractical they really are. They take so much time and thought and coordination. What about Creative Memories old motto – better to have finished albums than creativity? Well I bought into that idea in both areas of my life at different times.  It IS tempting to question yourself when you see volumes of others’ finished pages. Still, the prospect of churning out mass produced pages like so many cookie cutters left me cold.  Cold enough that I just couldn’t do it at all if that was the way it was to be done.

Sitting at the table this week carefully matching up patterns and fonts, ribbons and tags reminded me how deeply satisfying the process itself is.  This isn’t about numbers. She who dies with the most pages does not win. : )  Rather, it is about putting yourself on the page, telling a story, and then illustrating it with lovely images.  I think, in the end, education is that for us also.  It is not about producing volumes of student work, but about touching their hearts. It is about inspiring them and about asking them to put care and forethought and passion into their work. It is not about checking off squares or being “done”. 

I guess my scrapbooks will never be “done” and with any luck at all neither will our educations. What I hope for instead is that they will nurture that drive to reflect, to create, and to express and not allow it to be crushed by quotas.  Education too is about the process.

Here is the text of Moira’s poem:

I am from…

The large yellow house with the old gray barn

Sweet baby goats, annoying chickens, and kittens fed with an eyedropper

A black Shetland pony that only I can ride

Planting gardens, doing math, and writing narrations

Keeping notebooks, drawing faces, and playing dolls

Cute babies who try to talk and play with toys too big for them

…whom I push around in the stroller or the wheelbarrow

The Buddy System

A purple room that my sister and I share

Big brothers who like music and basketball

A mom who milks goats and helps us with craft projects,

A dad who gets the guitar and sings songs even though he doesn’t know how to play

…who drives us around in the tractor,

Piano lessons on Wednesdays

A church full of friends and ladies who wear veils

I come from fun!

And Alannah’s:

I am from…

            Small yards in crowded base neighborhoods with kids everywhere

            

Long drives to new houses

            

            Green Virginia fields and yellow buffalo grass prairies

            Sadness at the airport, worry about Dad’s safety, relief at retirement

            Tractor rides and silly songs with Dad

            Waking up early, goats with full udders, hatching chicks, and crowing roosters

Wheechairs rolling down the halls, basketballs on hardwood floors, and the piano playing all day

Cutting out paper dolls, crocheting on the couch, and riding double

Little brothers, sword fights, and stick armies

Always a baby in the house, never in cribs

Watching the yellow school bus drive by while I sprout seeds, multiply fractions and read in the kitchen

Learning at my own pace

Working with our hands, read alouds, and family movie nights

Rock concert masses and soft Gregorian chant

The Rosary