Homeschooling with Tim & Bailey #2: Your School, Your Rules

Gummy Bears photo by Jebulon / CC0

Here's the second installment of my new series, Home Schooling: Assist and Persist. (I can’t settle on a name for this series. Do you have one? Please suggest.) Thanks to everyone for the terrific feedback on the first one!

So, after we warmed up by reading some jokes from one of our joke books — dog-ear this practice for a post coming soon — I asked my kid what rules should our school have. Her look was priceless.

I said, “Your school, your rules.” 

She looked at me as if I’d walked her into a candy store and said, "Which jars of gummy bears would you like to take home and sleep with?"

She says, “OK, kids make all the rules.”

I coughed, “Eh, most rules.”

“My school! My rules!”

“Yes, but my school too. Compromise,” Dad splains.

Again a look, but she’s into this now, and lobs her big setup: “Can we disagree on the rules?”

I said, “Sure.” 

And her big finish, “Then ha! Rule #2 is, we can disagree on all rules!”

Dang, she’s good. I said, "OK, that’s fair, but then Rule #3 is that a courageous, robust, but logical defense of all rules is allowed, encouraged, and even rewarded."

“Yeah, whatever,” she says, feeling her short-lived victory slipping away. 

I said, “Wait! Rule #4 — Kids choose rewards.”

“All”

“Most.”

“Gummy Bears?!"

“OK.”

“Pad time?”

“Sure.”

“Even Roblox?"

“Even Roblox.”

She’s a little shocked, “OK, what’s the catch?”

I said, “Eh, one of the rewards is that you get to pick your favorite vegetable for dinner."

“I don’t have a favorite, not fair.”

"Well, then we’ve got a school here, don’t we?" Every school needs to be a little unfair sometimes.

“Next rule!” she interrupts. “Rewards can be changed too.”

"Sure, but changes to either rules or rewards must be submitted in a goofy poem, illustrative drawing, or scripted scene. Extra credit if all three are used.”

She’s speechless, but in deep in thought. And that’s what I want — not just for her, but for all kids.

The best schooling understands that the generation of thought is the foundation for a child’s urge to create and push themselves. I ask her if we need any more rules. She says, “I don’t think so.” But she is already preparing a drawing to request a rule change.

 This is something I’ve tried to teach and preach to my fellow educators across the country. When trust and buy-in is high, the need for rules tends to be much lower. We are less likely to tear down something we helped build. 

And most important is that learning, at its root, works best when it seeks not just correct answers, but more thinking and questions. And it will continue to work at its best when our next generation of great thinkers are willing to ask those questions — and even write a goofy poem to represent them. Learning to team up their reasoning skills with their creativity in order to accomplish great things.

Hope this helps.

Tim & Bailey 

This classroom is a generator of thoughts, problems, and possibilities.