Reschool Yourself

Thanks to Jen Groves for the inspiration for this Blog for IDEC 2012 Week post.
I’ve never been much for taking on physical challenges, especially when there was risk involved. Skydiving, mountain climbing, and other extreme sports have zero appeal to me.
That’s why it was such a big deal for me to challenge myself in [...]

My wonderful friend Heather Shellen invited me to guest post for her food blog, I Love Tongs, about the school lunches that I ate while reschooling on each campus. Here’s Heather’s very kind introduction, and an excerpt of the post. Read the complete post here.
A couple of years ago, my dear friend Melia made the amazing [...]

At some point, I will be writing a post called “Finish What You Start.” Long ago, I began posting chapters of the Reschool Yourself story, which I’d written for a GoodReads.com Twitter contest. I posted Chapters 1 through 4 but dropped the ball on posting 5 through 7. I’ll do that within the next couple of weeks. Better [...]

Reminiscing about the past isn’t just a way to pass the time; it’s an important way to understand its connection to your present.
When I decided to undertake Reschool Yourself, I was struck by how people found it odd that I’d return to my beginnings in a structured way. I thought it was odd that they [...]

This week I’m revisiting my schools in reverse order to record descriptive details that I couldn’t focus on while participating: students’ hair color, teachers’ vocal inflections, and so on. I went back to high school on Tuesday, middle school today, and am finishing up at elementary school tomorrow. The timing just happened to work out [...]

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Remember The Baby Project? In my Christian Lifestyles class senior year, there were more girls than boys, so I partnered up with my best friend Katie to parent a flour baby. Most of the pairs in the class gave their babies trendy names like “Taylor Jean” or “Skylar Marie.” We [...]

I have just a few minutes to post before I leave St. Vincent High School, so this post will be much shorter and more off the cuff than usual. I spent my lunch period talking with my old principal — who now teaches World History — and I ended up skipping Literature class because we [...]

My first week back at high school was so overwhelming that I’ve been procrastinating writing about it. I participated in classes taught by my old teachers, took a few tests, ate lunch with current students, and had a lot of thoughts and memories flood my brain along the way.
As I’ve mentioned, I’m packing my high [...]

In addition to helping process school memories, Reschool Yourself involves raising questions about the practice and philosophy of traditional schooling in general. I want to be clear that I love and respect all of my schools, and although I’m using examples from their campuses, I’m talking about school in general. I’m truly curious about why [...]

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