I shared the following post on my facebook page on September 15, 2017 after our whirlwind year of our youngest child's cancer diagnosis. She was diagnosed with stage 3, B-Cell Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and completed an intense chemotherapy protocol of 3.5 months which brought her to remission.
"We were asked so many questions about how we were keeping up homeschooling this past year. I’ve been thinking about how to answer what homeschooling looked like (and still looks like) in our family for months. Here’s my attempt at the answer, it's hard to summarize in only a few words!
I’ve been homeschooling my kids for the entirety of their lives. They’ve never sat in a conventional classroom. It’s a personal decision and has been a great fit for our family. I absolutely love it. (It’s not say that we haven’t missed the benefits of the beautiful community that teachers and classmates make. We had a delicious taste of that community during Eden’s hospitalization when a relative’s class adopted Eden as their own classmate from afar. Through team effort, they held a car wash fundraiser, made and sold bracelets and researched cancer as a group. They showed such compassion for a girl they had never met. We love them for it!)
Last fall, before Eden became sick, I wrote out a vision for our homeschool to help me stay on track. My hope was that it would help me to make homeschooling decisions that would be true to a common goal. The vision I wrote out is simply, ”To discover truth, beauty and goodness together as a family; and to teach my kids how to order their affections”. (By ordering of affections, I mean to teach my kids what’s important to love in life and in the right order).
Looking back over the past 6 months, we didn’t get a whole lot of “worksheets” and “book work” done. We didn’t do the number of math lessons we normally tackle in a year. But we were able to be together as a family every single day. I believe what we learned this year in the hospital is more than we have learned in all our homeschool years put together. What’s amazing to me is that we stayed true to my homeschool vision for the year… without even trying to. I thought I’d share a few things we learned this year:
Compassion. For the sick kids. For Eden. A world we were thrust into and will forever be part of us."
Patience. Life didn’t revolve around our own wishes anymore. We had to rely on a new timetable. On new people. On the hospital’s schedule.
Selflessness. When your little sister opens presents in front of you. Every. Single. Day. Like it’s Christmas or something. To choose to be happy for her and set aside your own mixed feelings. To be okay with her getting far more attention than you ever thought possible.
Kindness. It goes a long way. When you’re hurting and someone has gone out of their way to love you, it ignites something in you. Our friend’s family motto is so true: Kindness inspires kindness. Booboo’s Beanies was born because of this.
Positivity. Life is just better when you can see the bright side of any situation you find yourself in. Sometimes you have to dig deep to find it. Eden quickly learned that having no hair isn’t always a bad thing. She loved that it didn’t blow in her face. Getting ready was lots easier if you only have to put a hat on. And her favourite: checking for ticks is much easier on a bald head.
Don’t shy away from hard things. I can’t help but think of our nurses and doctors. To choose this field of work. What would we do without them? What an inspiration they are. Both the girls have added “nursing” as a possible future profession.
Bravery. As the saying goes, courage in not a lack of fear but the ability to move forward in spite of it. And to take it a step further, I’d always ask Eden before a needle or other scary situation, “Who makes you brave?”. To which she’d respond, “God does.”
We didn’t abandon academics during our hospital days but at the same time, they weren’t our first motive. The kids did manage to intentionally work their way through many math lessons and work sheets. But what really amused me is is how organically “academics” were achieved along the way.
Clocks. From the long, boring hospital days in her hospital bed, Eden learned how to tell time. To the minute.
Handwriting. Thank you cards.
Measurements. Eden became a pro at reading measurements of metric volume. We had to add up and record the amount of millilitres of liquid that she consumed. And on Eden’s ward, everything that “goes out” is also measured and recorded by the patients too. By the time Eden and I would be back in her room from the bathroom trip, I’d forget the millilitres that had gone out. Luckily, Eden would remember and I would jot it down. We made a good team.
Percentages. It’s a very quick and important math lesson when you hear that the tumour inside of your body has shrunk by 50%.
Spelling and vocabulary. The kids would journal during the day. They learned quite the new vocabulary and with the correct spelling. “Mom, how do you spell Chemotherapy?”. “Hey dad, are we still in isolation?”.
I started to have some complex feelings about how our upcoming homeschool is supposed to look this year. How can anything in our lives ever be the same again after everything we’ve gone through? What’s important to us now? I’ve come to the realization that the same homeschool vision I wrote last year applies to us this year and every year. To discover truth, goodness and beauty and to learn to order our affections. The world is our classroom. Our Lord is our teacher."
