Reschool Yourself

Trampoline Gym from Darren Schwindaman on Vimeo.

Trampolining is one of my favorite ways to reschool, for these reasons:

1. It’s incredible aerobic exercise. I’m a regular jogger but get exhausted in about ten minutes. Your legs and booty will feel sore the next day.

2. It makes you feel like a little kid. No matter how old you are, on a trampoline you bounce and giggle like you did when you were five years old. At Sky High, there’s also a foam pit where you can fall in backwards or do bellyflops, and a dodgeball court where the littlest kids will surely get you out in the blink of an eye.

3. It brings out your inner daredevil. You feel emboldened to try all kinds of crazy stunts. I’m normally very cautious, but I end up somersaulting and doing adventurous things like jumping off the bouncy walls (which is how I fell and skinned my elbow). I curbed my risky behavior when I remembered what kind of basic insurance I have and how accident-prone I am. But for a few precious minutes, I felt like Evel Knievel.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been blogging less frequently than usual lately, both because of the holidays, and because of the craziness that is my last two weeks in the Bay Area. I just about started hyperventilating today when I realized that next weekend is my last in town before leaving for the south. T-minus nine days. How is that possible?

I keep coming up with new metaphors to describe the chaotic state of affairs right now. I keep saying that I have a lot of “irons in the fire,” or “balls in the air,” or “crazy in my brain.” On Friday morning, as the euphoria from the lazy holidays wore off and the reality of holycrapihavesomuchtodo set in, I broke down in tears. Darren, with his characteristic calm and can-do attitude, offered to help. He suggested that I use the Getting Things Done approach, created by consultant David Allen, that both of us think is brilliant. Allen says that in order to have a peaceful “mind like water” that is ready to perceive any opportunity or challenge, you need to get everything off of your mind and into a specifically organized system. Getting Things Done is one of the most important books I’ve ever read and warrants its own post, so for now I’ll refer you to a summary of it on 43 Folders, a popular productivity blog.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been waiting until New Year’s Day to share a poem that captures the spirit of both Reschool Yourself and the first day of a new year. The poem, “Ithaka,” is filled with the adventure, self-reflection, and excitement of learning that I hope infuses 2009 for all of us.

One of my favorite Santa Clara University professors, Dr. John Heath, introduced me to “Ithaka” during my recent visit to his Survey of Classical Literature course. He read it on the final day of class, to send students off with a reminder of what’s important about college, and life beyond it. He told them that college is less about absorbing information than about gleaning lessons about the human experience. Ten years after graduating college, they wouldn’t remember the minutiae of their classes, but they ideally would have internalized what had enriched their understanding of themselves and their own personal journeys. “Don’t worry about the details,” he said. “See what it is to be your own hero.”

Read the rest of this entry »

This is one of several poems I’ve come across lately about childhood, school, and growing up.

I’ve always written more prose than poetry, and most of my poems are from my teen years, when I was having trouble accepting that I was growing up. The poems are filled with nostalgia for a simpler past and often have a tinge of melodrama, since I use strong language when I’m passionate about something. This one was modeled on a Sharon Olds poem, inspired by a photo of myself at age seven on a school field trip to a local bird preserve. Remember that I was 17 when I wrote it, so please forgive any hints of cheesiness.

Read the rest of this entry »

I hope that you are all making merry during this long weekend. I’m feeling particularly content at the moment after one of those days that helps me put my priorities in order. This fall I’ve been operating in overdrive, not allowing myself much decompression time because I’ve worked mostly from home. Today I had a real vacation day where I did my favorite activities: exercising, envisioning future possibilities, indulging in incredible food, and feeling inspired to pursue my passion. Best of all, I shared these things with some of my favorite people on earth. It was a day that reminded me how I want my life to be, and how it’s up to me to make sure it ends up that way. Here’s the rundown of events:

8:45 am: 5-mile jog after a full night of sleep. My sister’s fiance, Brian, and I kicked off the morning with a run through the sunny Sonoma backroads, past vineyards and rolling green hills. It felt good to move after indulging in so many rich holiday delights.

11:00 am: Cohousing Tour in Cotati. Many of you know that one of my most important goals is to live in a community setting one day, with multiple families living in separate homes built on a shared property. Cohousing developments are one possibility, like condo complexes owned by the residents and designed to have large common spaces. Gill, Bri, Darren, and I toured a cohousing community in Cotati that had a toolshop, vegetable garden, dance/music studio, and a couple of costume closets. They had me at “costume closet.” I am crossing my fingers that our own little enclave, perhaps in the south, is in the cards in the next few years.

Read the rest of this entry »

Now you're all in big, big trouble.

The photos taken in and out of the classroom this fall tend to be among people’s favorite things about the project, especially those of me looking like Will Ferrell’s Buddy among the elves. I’ve uploaded some of them to Picasa and Flickr, and I’ll continue to do so over the next couple of months. I’ll let you know when I add more.

Shots from each of the schools and me in action. Highlights include the Middle School Dance, Middle School P.E., and College Dorm Life.

http://picasaweb.google.com/mjdicker/

First days of elementary school:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24221612@N07/

If you do, leave a comment!

Remember cleaning out your desk before the winter break? This one stayed open by itself, but other kids needed to prop theirs up with rulers. Most modern desks have a flat surface and cubbyhole instead of a hinged lid, but these are relics from the old days. Mr. Neubacher believes that it’s important for kids to have a home in the classroom and learn to take care of their own space.

This is one of several poems I’ve come across lately about childhood, school, and growing up.

I read “Fern Hill” for the first time in high school English. It captured my nostalgia for what I remember as a fairly idyllic childhood, which gave me a bit of a Peter Pan complex. Why grow up if being a kid is this magical? I’m sure it wasn’t actually quite so perfect for any of us, but like many, I tend to romanticize the past. I especially love the last line of this poem.

Fern Hill
By Dylan Thomas

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve taken a breather from blogging in the past few days to let my fall reschooling sink in. It feels good to take a few days of real vacation, probably the first that I’ve let myself have since August. When alone, I work myself into the ground, but when I’m with friends, they thankfully wrench me away from my workaholism. And whenever my sister Gill comes to town, as she did this weekend, then the wild rumpus starts.

During the holidays, I’ll be blogging sporadically. Gill and her fiance, Brian, are in Sonoma this week, and Darren arrives tomorrow. This means there will be lots of carousing and posing for ridiculous photos, but not as much writing. Next week I’ll be buckling down and gearing up to spend the spring in Jackson, so I hope to get rid of the piles of CDs and bags of yellow pads that seem ready to swallow me whole.

I’m still mulling over and making sense of my time in the classrooms. The final step of revisiting the past will be processing “personal artifacts”: old photos, home movies, and keepsakes. Perhaps most importantly, I’ll read the writing that I’ve saved from my school days, such as newspaper editorials, humor pieces, journal entries, personal statements from my college applications, and the short autobiography I wrote my senior year of high school. My teenage writing is rife with school stress and nostalgia for a carefree childhood, and it helps me understand the powerful influence school had on who I became.

I spent so many years wishing that I could just be a kid again. Now that I’ve taken the opportunity to relive my childhood in many ways, I’m finally ready to let it go.

If you do, leave a comment!