My Life As A Traveling Horne-Schooler, by Jenifer Goldman (which is available in our bookstore), chronicles the educational journey of Jenifer's unique and exciting learning experiences traveling with her uncle Jerry Mintz. Below, Jen offers us a kind of editorial postscript to her earlier narrative. Here, she helps us to understand some of her struggles to find educational settings in which she could thrive as a learner.

 

TALES OUT OF SCHOOL

 

My Life After Traveling Home-Schooler

by Jenifer Goldman

 

Looking back on yourself just how you were as a child is a very insightful thing to be able to do. I don't really mean remembering how it was or being nostalgic, not that those don't have their places as well, but it is more interesting to look at an actual work of art or writing, which shows how you thought of yourself at the time. In my case I have the chance to look at a very indepth story where I tell exactly who I thought I was and what made me that person. This comes in the form of My Life As A Traveling Home-Schooler, the book from which excerpts were published in the spring 2001 issue of this magazine. I wrote this book when I was about ten years old to document my experiences home schooling with my uncle Jerry. Looking back, the thing I recognize above all as the most valuable lesson that I gained during my home schooling is the ability to act on my passion for knowledge. During this short period of my life I really learned how to learn. Being an independent learner is the single driving force that got me through my return to public education, my continuation to college education, and is still one of my most important assets as a working adult.

 

During home schooling, much more than with public school, you have the chance to learn from real life experiences. Unfortunately not many home-schoolers have the opportunity that I did to travel the country, but there are countless real life educational opportunities close to home as well. For me, the idea of having to learn math in a classroom was a dreadful bore and I couldn't see the necessity of it. However, if you go on a regular food shopping trip and you have a budget to work with, or go to a restaurant and it comes time to figure out the tip, the need for routine math becomes instantly apparent. As a child I had a great passion for science, and I loved animals, yet somehow looking at a biology textbook while listening to a teacher rattle on about the life cycle or the classifications of living things just doesn't hold my interest as much as going to a zoo or taking a nature walk. When you are immersed in something in daily life, the excitement and necessity of education becomes overwhelmingly clear. I was incredibly fortunate in that I had my uncle Jerry Mintz who was willing to take me with him all over the country to meet people and explore different surroundings. [Editor's Note: Jerry Mintz, Paths' Editorial Advisor, is a leading advocate for and a long-time practitioner of alternative education.]

 

I had some difficulty back then relating to other people, no one would ever say that this is one of my faults today. I attribute that in large part to different kinds of people I had the occasion to associate with during my travels. I know that oftentimes people are concerned with the "lack of socialization" that is considered by many to be an unavoidable fault of the home schooling option, I can assure you that this is not necessarily the case. I learned more about healthy socialization with members of my community from home schooling than would have been possible in a public school environment.

 

My surroundings did not teach me that it is important to be like everyone else; they did not show me that fashion is more important than intellect and commonsense; and most importantly, I was taught that being yourself is the best thing you can be. These insights came to me in less than one year of home schooling, and they will benefit me for the rest of my life.

 

In the beginning of sixth grade I faced one of my hardest challenges: I had to go back into the public school system. For the past year I had tasted freedom. I knew what was out there to be discovered and explored, and I did not want to be restricted to a non-flexible curriculum. I made some good friends, but I couldn't bring myself to work with the system. I struggled through sixth and seventh grades without very much enthusiasm, and with an unhealthy dose of boredom, then decided to move to Massachusetts to live with my father. I thought that a different home environment and a new group of classmates and teachers might be the key. My father has always been an important figure in my quest for knowledge and back then I believe that I thought he knew everything. We went to museums, aquariums, and all sorts of other fun and educational places.

 

Unfortunately I found the school system there to be substantially worse than it had been back on Long Island. I couldn't relate to the kinds of people I was surrounded by, and my teachers had an extreme lack of insight into the minds of their students. We talked with some people there about an alternative high school program that sounded promising. We visited it and expressed interest in my attending school there. It was a very small program that was part of the public high school. The size was its main appeal, but it was also a problem because they did not have any openings at the time. So I went back to New York to live with my mother and stepfather again rather than continuing to attend the public high school in Cambridge.

 

I attended public high school in New York for ninth grade, or maybe I should say I chose not to attend it, ever. I discovered that if I just didn~t show up for class, no one would notice. I spent almost every day at the public library learning about things that interested me in a more efficient manner than I felt I could learn it in the classroom. Regrettably, no one else saw this as a positive behavior and eventually they noticed my absence, almost three-quarters of the way through the school year. The administration decided that it would be best for me to be on a PINS petition, which was basically probation to force you to go to school.

 

My mother and I went to court to figure out what we were going to do about my situation. The judge wanted to send me to an all-girls boarding school in upstate New York for girls in my situation; I think he referred to us as "delinquent." We ended up visiting it, but I believe it was mostly to scare me. When we returned to court I suggested an alternative school that a friend of mine was attending and thankfully the judge agreed. So at this point we went for my entrance interview at PACE. As it turned out, they would not have an opening until my second quarter of tenth grade, so I would have to continue at public school until then. The absurdity of it was that I had to attend every class, not ever miss any school, and not a single one of my credits or grades from that quarter would transfer to PACE. Essentially it was public babysitting, not school. Finally the time came for me to start at PACE, where there were about 45 students in the whole school, which included grades nine through twelve. This was an ideal situation for me since it meant that the classes were somewhat more flexible about the curriculum. My first year there I made up all of my missed time in ninth grade and finished tenth grade classes as well. Most of my teachers were really openminded about our course of study and would be willing to go into more detail about things we were interested in and try alternate methods of teaching the things we were not interested in.

 

Beginning the following year I had the chance to go to a vocational program called BOCES for half of the day. I chose to go to a program for small animal care, because I wanted to work with animals for a career. What I really wanted was to work in a zoo, but everything comes one step at a time. Every day I went to BOCES in the morning from 8:00 until 10:30. We studied all the basics of animal care. We learned about grooming, anatomy, basic diagnosis of disease processes, and assisted with surgeries. I was finally learning something in school that really interested me.

 

I graduated from PACE and BOCES in 1997 with high honors. About halfway through my senior year I decided that I wanted to move to Colorado after graduation. I had been there with Jerry during my travels, and I fell in love with the clean air and mountains. My father had moved to Colorado Springs about three years earlier, and I had spent the summer there a couple years back. By the time I was graduating my father had moved to Denver and had seen advertisements for a college called Bel-Rea Institute of Animal Technology. He sent me paperwork and brochures about them and it looked interesting. I went out there on a vacation from school to look at Bel-Rea and meet the administration. It was a small school, just under 500 students at the time and the facility was small but nice. I decided to give it a try. I received a scholarship and paid for the rest with savings bonds I had received from my great aunt as a kid and some help from the rest of my family. It turned out to be a very intense program but it was something that I was passionate about. I took my time going through; I finished the two-year program in three years instead, but it paid off because I graduated with honors and a 3.6 GPA. After receiving my associates' degree in applied sciences from Bel-Rea, I took my national boards and became a certified veterinary technician.

 

I am currently working for IDEXX Veterinary Laboratories as a chemistry technician, where I run diagnostic lab work on all types of domestic and zoo animals Recently I have been promoted to Lead Technician on the night shift. I live in Colorado with my fiancd Jonathan, my father Harley, my dog Wednesday, and my cat Morticia. Aside from my work at IDEXX we also own and operate a videogame store, Looking Glass Games, in Parker, Colorado, where Jonathan dedicates all his time and energy, and my father and I pitch in as much as possible. I still use all my skills and ability to learn every day, and I will always be dedicated to learning and growing as a person. Without the unique educational experiences I had growing up, I doubt I would be as strong and dedicated as I am today.