A couple of weeks ago, a woman from Skadaddle Media emailed me to ask if I’d share the Reschool Yourself story on camera for Mutual of Omaha’s aha moment campaign. She said she’d found me through an Internet search, and that the video production trailer was coming to Jackson as part of a nationwide road trip to collect the life-changing stories of everyday people.
Watch a short video of my aha moment here.
If you’re curious to get a glimpse into my time in the classroom, I’ve posted three videos of me and the students at my elementary school, El Verano. They’re just super short clips and not edited, but they’ll introduce you to the kids I’ve written about and how they interacted with me. The first two are from the documentary shoot.
1) Competing against the third graders in Around the World, a math game that many of us played in class as kids (32 seconds):
February 22, 2009 Elementary School, School Memories, Video 1 Read more >
Today the RSY site got a little cosmetic surgery, a tuck here and an enhancement there.
Here are the changes, which should make the site more user friendly:
The challenge of blogs is that older posts get pushed down into the archives, even if they’re still relevant. I restructured the home page to make room to highlight the best of the blog.
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.
Today, for the first time in 23 years, I went back to kindergarten.
I slept 20 minutes through alarm and woke up with that blasted Billy Madison song stuck in my head (my own fault) and hurriedly got dressed and ate breakfast. With my backpack, notebook, and brown bag lunch, I walked the few blocks to my elementary school. I passed a few kids holding their mothers’ hands. I was surprised to arrive at school in just a few minutes. Apparently my legs are a lot longer now than they were between the ages of 5 and 10.
Everything at the school seemed to have shrunk. I almost have to kneel to get a drink of water at the fountains, and the classrooms and cafeteria seem half the size that I remember them. When I arrived on campus, I watched the principal greet parents and kids as they pulled up at the bus circle and observed a group of girls looking at the class lists posted in the hallway. My mom and I used to walk to the school a few weeks before classes started to look at these lists. One of my strongest memories is the apprehension I felt as I searched for my name, since my experience in the upcoming year would largely depend on my teacher and the kids in my class. I remember feeling relief when I spotted my friends’ names alongside mine, or anxiety when they’d been assigned to a different teacher. Though we’d see each other at recess, our friendship wasn’t quite the same as when we were in the same class.
At around 7:45 am, I headed to the kindergarten room where I’ll be volunteering through next Monday. My original kindergarten room now houses a first-grade class where I’ll volunteer next week, and the kindergarten is now in a portable next to the play yard. Barbara, the teacher and a family friend, is honestly one of the kindest people I know. Someone recently said, “People can’t mention Barbara without adding, ‘She’s so nice!'” Barbara asked me to help greet the families as they came in and get the kids settled, helping them hang their backpacks in cubbies and showing them puzzles that would occupy them as their parents left.
To my surprise, not one of the kids cried, and neither did any of the parents. One mom looked back at her son a few times as she walked down the ramp of the portable. Another mom ended up staying the whole day as a volunteer because her son didn’t want her to leave. While Barbara very much appreciated her help on the first day, she expects that if the mother continues in the classroom, the son will have a fit when she finally leaves him.