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Home Education Magazine
September-October 2003 - Articles and Columns
The Great Trade - Meg Oceanna
Volunteering for Our Community and Coming Home Rich
Community Commitment was The categories listed in the curriculum I submitted to the state last fall. Little did I know just how large a role these endeavors would play in our homeschooling year and how much my daughter would grow through them.
Rosalie began the first large-scale volunteer job of her young life last spring when a friend introduced her to the world of therapeutic horse riding. The work she learned to do was rewarding for her and I decided back then, after watching her come home muddied, tired and pleased with her experience, that volunteer work should be officially included in our curriculum.
Rosalie's responsibilities at Equus Therapeutics involved caring for both horses and people. She performed the basic duties of grooming and tacking up horses and ponies, an enjoyable activity for such an animal lover. Having briefly experienced these chores many years ago, Rosalie felt confident that she could relearn them easily. The newer duties involved entering the ever-changing arena of horse plus rider.
Having seen Rosalie's tendencies to wish that life (especially human behavior) could be magically consistent, I think her experiences in this particular riding ring have helped her grow. Horses don't act the same from one week to another, or even within the same lesson. They are no more programmable than people. The riders have good days and bad, just like anyone else in Rosalie's life. This time she was committed to seeing them through it--helping a rider perfect her posture by going around the ring one more time (when her boots felt heavier than bowling balls), holding tightly to a protesting pony so a timid rider could take his time mounting, changing her lead from loose to a more direct approach for a participant who wasn't geared for listening to directions that day. All of these constantly changing circumstances have pushed Rosalie's black-and-white categories into far corners. She has experienced a lot of gray areas with Equus Therapeutics. It has been wonderful to see how gray areas blossom into colors of growth--courageous reds, compassionate blues, patient greens and the solidly realistic browns of good ol' fashioned manure.
The second volunteer job on the list involved animals as well. Over the years, our family has provided a temporary home for about thirty cats and kittens, whenever our local animal shelter was filled to capacity and desperately trying to uphold their no-kill policy. Having recently moved into a very small residence, we could no longer provide space for more than our own pets. How pleased we were when the shelter purchased a small shed and located it in our back yard! The bargain: we would take on the hard-to-handle cases--the cats who were literally climbing the walls at the shelter, who desperately needed intense work for feline-human compatibility, and the ones who were labeled "feral." The shed's arrival coincided with the beginning of the school year for us. The list of cats in need was long, so we rushed madly about preparing the space with cages, blankets, litter pans and other supplies. Within two days, our first resident strolled interestedly around the space, sniffing the new boards and meowing her approval.
Five feral barn kittens soon became high on the list of priorities in Rosalie's day. These creatures came to us wide-eyed and wary. It was my daughter's job to transform them into loving pets before they outgrew their "cute adoptable" stage. Rosalie spent hours--many, many patient and persistent hours--working with Nemo, Athena, Tristan, Lilac and Fern. She learned to use food and play to draw them out of hiding places. She learned how to approach each one according to their personalities. We both were surprised to find that caging the most feral kitten brought her around in a matter of days. Four were successfully adopted. When forty-below weather forced us to close down in January, Fern was shuffled from one place to the next and came back to us on the first day of our spring opening, still in need of finishing touches.
In all, fifteen animals have been entrusted to us so far this year. The lesson of letting go has been a significant one for Rosalie. Another and equally important lesson has been that caring for so many animals includes as much unsavory clean up work as it does play and cuddle work! When March arrived, we spent hours preparing the shed for the spring influx. Sore backs, bruised shins and bandaged fingers marked the end of three days of disinfecting every item and hauling away countless loads of unsalvageable bedding. In spite of time spent scraping small brown plops from the floor, Rosalie declares that foster care has been her favorite volunteer job this year.
Having attended a one-room schoolhouse (that almost felt like a second home) for eight years, my daughter knew she would miss the place after her eighth-grade graduation. During her last year there, the possibility of her returning during her homeschooling years to help in the classroom was mentioned more than once.
It certainly was strange for her to walk through the front doors last September and take her place in the morning circle, not as a student, but as a classroom assistant. This is an ungraded school where all levels of learning take place in one giant room and the oldest students often help the younger ones. Thus, Rosalie was accustomed to these traditions and basically knew what she would be doing. It soon became apparent, however, that her position now was quite different. If the students quarreled or fidgeted too much, it was now Rosalie's sole responsibility to set things right. The teacher counted on her in a much more significant way than the former "keep an eye on the younger ones" duty.
At the beginning of the year, general classroom support occupied her usual three-hour Monday mornings--overseeing the glue guns or iron, helping with sewing or cooking, and any number of creative activities. Later, group or one-on-one instruction using math games was added to her list. Rosalie not only gained confidence as a responsible leader, but found a nice way to keep in touch with former schoolmates and teachers. She also frequently brought home some tidbit of information that she picked up from discussions or from work displayed on the walls.
Her fourth job was performed jointly with me. Our local library called for volunteers to help them process every item in their shelf list in preparation for converting to an electronic system. I was honestly surprised when they agreed to allow someone as young as my daughter--13 at the time the project got underway--to participate. For seven months we would march through the doors of the children's room, find the box filled with our tools and pull out the next shelf-list drawer. It was my job to write down whatever Rosalie told me to. She pulled a book from the shelf, located its identification number (either ISBN or a Library of Congress number) and read it aloud. Often, she would have to choose from several different ISBNs, quickly learning the codes for trade, library binding, softcover, series, etc. Further research was necessary when the information was simply not there. She would double check for title, editions, author or publisher to be sure the shelf-list card I held in my hand was indeed the one for that book. For the most part, we enjoyed the work. We came across many interesting books and grew to appreciate the nonfiction section as never before. Rosalie checked out books she normally would not have. It was gratifying to see her search for the verso page, do the work, then flip through the book and discover a new world. And having abandoned the picture book section years ago, she was now encountering old friends. "Hey, I remember this!" she grinned one day. Gosh, she hadn't read that book in ten years. How wonderful that books have been so powerful in her life for this long. I suppose over time we have checked out thousands of books, and it felt so right to repay the library for the richness they've brought into our home. We got to know the librarians better and that felt great, too.
It has been so rewarding for Rosalie to participate in these mostly out-of-home homeschooling experiences this year. She has been a solid member of our community rather than a student tucked away in a classroom or holed up at her desk at home. The focus one gets when volunteering can be very different from holding a paying job. Rosalie was not working for cash in order to buy her next pair of cool sneakers. She was working to learn more about the real world and to help strengthen that world. Supposing there are countless opportunities out there for all ages of homeschoolers and their interests, I can't recommend volunteering highly enough.
© 2003 Meg Oceanna
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September-October 2003 - Articles and Columns
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