Back during my teaching days, I started a master’s degree program with the intent of becoming a principal. I was very excited about my first class on curriculum and a specific assignment to “invent” a school. We had to write a paper about a fictitious school, detailing its guiding educational philosophy and corresponding course offerings. So I conjured up a brick elementary school in the nicest corner in my school district and dubbed it “Birch Street School.” I tailored the curriculum to meet the “needs, interests, and abilities” of the student population as I had heard my professor use that phrase many times in class. I even used Print Shop Deluxe to design a rudimentary tree logo for the cover of my paper. While I got an ‘A’ in the class, I never finished the program nor did I become a principal.
As luck would have it, I would get my chance to be a school administrator in 2020. Fortunately for me, it was a position at an imaginary school because some twenty years earlier I wrote a graduate paper about a school that didn’t actually exist. When California shut down in March, our boys were staring at a three week vacation as our school district retooled for the new normal. Jenni and I knew we had to do something to occupy the boys. Plus, my office had shut its doors and there was a pause on real estate, so I had some time to “play school.” With plenty of stay-at-home hours in the day to fill, the Matsumoto Homeschool Academy (MHA) was born. Designed to be part Hogwarts, part Bayside High, it was our way of segmenting the day and surviving our new found family togetherness.
Home schooling was never something I had previously considered for my children. Of all the tasks related to raising good human beings, compulsory education was one that I’d assumed we would outsource. I know that may seem odd, seeing as though I was a teacher; but having been a teacher, I’ve always known there is a certain compartmentalization that comes from teaching students who aren’t related to you. Conversely, there’s a familiarity that can’t be removed when teaching your children. Emotions can run high and fuses tend to be shorter. With no other options on the table, homeschooling in the time of Coronavirus it was.
I appointed myself Dean of Students as well as head of the math department. The boys received acceptance letters from their new school and were instructed that classes would begin the following week. At 8:28 am on Monday, the first warning bell–the bell from the card game Pit–rang twice, and students scrambled to clear their breakfast dishes and get their pencils sharpened. We gathered at our reclaimed wood dining table, and the faculty laid out expectations for the students. Students would adhere to a strict dress code of “no pajamas,” but were allowed to maintain freedom of expression in their hair styles. This was more of a practical arrangement, as opposed to any educational philosophy, as no barber shops were open within a reasonable proximity to the school. We established a schedule for different subjects and MHA was operational.
With Jenni and I tag-team teaching throughout the day, things ran pretty smoothly. The former Ms. Purchase introduced creative writing techniques and modern art styles. I went deep into the vault and pulled out every old lesson I could think of. The last time I was in the classroom, flip phones were king and Destiny’s Child was still intact, but like riding a bike–it all came back to me. We did probability with marbles. We recreated the King’s Chessboard with pennies to model exponential growth. We had band practice, physical education in the driveway, a video broadcast team, and a Twitter account that promoted an upcoming class reunion for our 1995 graduates. In no time at all, we were becoming one of the best fake learning institutions in all of Southern California.
Just like traditional middle school, gym was the highlight of the day for the students. At a time when no one was leaving their house, just venturing past the front door was a breath of fresh air–literally and figuratively. We played whatever games we could think of that could use our driveway for a court, like four square and cornhole. We even invented a version of paddle ball tennis and used a yellow extension ladder as a net. After exercising each day, the focus shifted to our health curriculum and students received specific instruction on how to create appropriate lather when washing their hands. There were also lessons on not touching your face, but no one ever mastered that.
While our private school was fictional, there was something very real going on. MHA was our family’s attempt to make the best of a bad situation. Do you remember how isolating the early pandemic was? There were no drive-by birthdays or backyard gatherings at a distance. Back in March and April, it was our household and our household only. It is a small miracle that we didn’t all go crazy. Whether it was to stave off COVID boredom or escape the reality of the news, I think all of us needed a little MHA in their lives. After nights of binge-watching Ozark, I know that I needed a reason to get out of bed in the morning, even if it was an imaginary job at a non-existent school.
Although we’ve got two cynical, jaded middle schoolers on our hands, they played along. Never once did they resist or put up a fight about the educational initiative. Ultimately, I think they knew they weren’t going to be allowed to play video games all day, so Mom and Dad pretending to be their teachers was a welcome distraction.
Eventually, our school district established their remote learning program and there was no longer a need for our little home school. Real estate was declared an essential industry so I overcame my fear of touching doorknobs and got back to work. The school bell was returned to the Pit game, and the reclaimed wood table went back to hosting dinner. The boys spent the bulk of their days staring blankly at computer screens with their headphones on. With less life in their eyes, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the re-education in Clockwork Orange or the famous Apple 1984 commercial. While the boys would freely admit that our homeschool creation was superior to their new virtual shell of school, I don’t know that we could have carried MHA on much longer. It was never designed to be permanent.
Our brief foray into homeschooling is now a fond memory amidst the challenges of 2020. I am still the on-call math tutor in the house who helps with simple interest and converting fractions to decimals. But it’s no longer my curriculum, and I sometimes grow angry at their textbooks for someone’s inability to write good word problems. For example, this gem from Ryan’s recent homework, “In a baseball game, Emerson struck out 45 times in 140 times at bat. What percentage of at bats did Emerson get a hit?” I don’t even know where to start with this question. I’m offended not only as a former math teacher, but also a Little League manager. Whoever wrote this problem has no concept of how many times a baseball player would get up to bat. This careless author may have completed a Masters Degree in Education, but I guarantee you they didn’t take any classes on fictional private schools. Perhaps they need to brush up on a little known academic paper from the nineties, the one with the rudimentary tree drawn on the cover.
