This is Chapter 3 of a story about Reschool Yourself that I wrote for a GoodReads.com contest, which asked for a story written in a  24-hour period purely in status update form. Each line could be only up to 140 characters, though I’ve edited slightly here for readability. Chapter 1 gave a background on the idea for the project and how it developed. Chapter 2 highlighted some of the freedoms that adults expect but don’t give kids in school, and it shared my first taste of reschooling: kindergarten.

After spending a week in kindergarten, I said goodbye to my “kinder posse,” as I called them. I felt sad to leave them, because we’d started out together, but it was time to move on to first grade.

The first graders were a little bigger. They could speak clearly, print their names, and read basic sentences. The six-year-olds and I made a rainbow collage of our handprints with satisfyingly goopy paint. We shaped the letter “M” out of Play-Doh.

Most of the teachers humored me by treating me like every other kid. They would call on me in class and score my worksheets. I did math problems and hands-on science experiments. I remembered some things, like spelling, and not others, like photosynthesis.

I had pangs of regret about spending years memorizing information that I’d forgotten later. I wished I’d been able to use that time in a more useful way. To do art, for example. This became clear to me one day in second grade, I was immersed in drawing a dragon. The teacher said to stop now, because it was time for math. I felt almost panicked. But I don’t want to do math. I want to keep drawing! I started to wonder what kind of artist I could have become if I could have drawn all day as a kid. Or what kind of writer, if left to my stories? I wondered what kinds of artists the world would produce if kids could draw or write all day if they wanted.

At recess, on the playground, I challenged myself to do things I’d been scared to do in school, like tetherball and cartwheels. I got closer to doing a cartwheel than I ever had as a kid. It was terrifying, but I made around 40 attempts, mostly in my living room. Then I remembered that my insurance wasn’t very good and called it a day. Tetherball was worse. I was playing a chubby third grader, and he whacked the ball hard. It went right for my face and hit my nose so hard that it made a SMACK! The kids gasped.

“Game’s over, kids,” I said. I power-walked to the nurse’s office, hoping my face didn’t swell. It didn’t, but I had to hold a chilled beanbag to my nose for the rest of the day. Luckily, I found this as funny as the kids did. I still stink at tetherball.

After a few weeks at my elementary school, I felt at home there. The teachers and kids knew me by name, and they were used to my being there. For the first time, I was the most popular girl in school. When I walked into the cafeteria, kids would scream my name and beckon to me. Four teachers had known me as a student, and they thought my project was a great idea. It was strange to talk with them peer to peer. I still couldn’t call them by their first names, though. They would always be Ms. Alessio, Ms. Aja, Mrs. Lucas, and Mr. Neubacher to me.

I especially loved Mr. Tim Curley’s third grade class. It was like an educational playground, with musical instruments and oddities everywhere. Movement, games, improvisation, personal stories, sound effects, were daily rituals. I really would have enrolled for the rest of the year if I could have. I was amazed at how much a teacher could do within a public school classroom, despite all its requirements for grading and testing. Play and fun tend to disappear from people’s lives as they age, but Mr. Curley thinks that you can infuse them into whatever you do.

In fourth grade, I had one of my old teachers, Mrs. Lucas. Jesus, a kid at in my table group, passed me a note as she walked by. Luckily, Mrs. Lucas didn’t see it and ask me to share with the whole class, because the note was a poem about diarrhea. This was classic fourth-grade potty humor. The fourth-graders were hitting puberty and stank up the classroom after recess with their armpits and feet. Time to start using Speed Stick.

I couldn’t believe that the fifth graders were so small, because I’d felt so big in fifth grade. Fifth graders were top dogs in the school. As I’d expected, the curriculum got harder as the kids aged. I knew fewer and fewer of the answers in science and social studies. One day in class, a long division assignment began to hurt my head. In a moment of weakness, I exercised my adult privileges to bail out and go home.

By Mid-October, when I had completed grades K-5, I didn’t want to leave my elementary school. I felt at home there. I knew everyone. I’d felt that way as a kid, too, on my way to scary middle school where you had to rotate classes and change for P.E. in the locker room.

During my elementary school experience, I’d learned a lot, and laughed a lot. I felt that I’d gotten what I’d come for. I saw that my teachers always had my best interests at heart. They wanted school to bring me success, not cause me any pain.

I had also learned to distinguish the supportive teachers and school community from an education system that needed to make a lot of changes. Teachers wanted change, too. I’d been able to observe a lot of things that I appreciated about schools, like in Mr. Curley’s class, as well as things I’d change. As I walked away from my elementary school, I felt lighter, and complete with my past experience there. It was a relief to know that I’d evolved since age five.

To Be Continued…

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