A Best Day in Education

 "Give everyday the chance to be the most beautiful day of your life" -Mark Twain

     This past 2020-2021 school year brought many changes for us all. For a multitude of reasons our family chose to transition our four kids from public school to homeschool. Challenging experiences with distance education in the spring of 2020 due to the pandemic related school closures- combined with an immediate family battling cancer- did not leave us a choice. What I expected to be the worst year of my life over time blossomed into some of the best teaching related experiences of my life. Life has a way of working out like that sometimes. I am a former middle school math teacher, however, this year I became a full time homeschool teacher of all subjects for kindergarten, 2^nd, 5^th, and 6^th grades. While this overwhelmed me in the beginning, over time it gave me a window into how interconnected all the subjects are, and my passion for education has soared. For example, I had no idea how much I deeply loved science and history until I had to teach these subjects. Being able to relearn material for other subjects and grade levels alongside my children has been exciting to say the least, especially since we can hop in the car and take field trips whenever we want. 

A special day in education for me that comes to mind is our recent field trip to the State Arboretum of Virginia. A friend sent me an email about this enormous research facility run by the University of Virginia. I was excited because it correlated to our study of plant and cicada life cycles and different ecosystems, so I decided we had to immediately go. I quickly visited their website, printed a few premade scavenger hunts for their beautiful gardens and for bird watching. Then we grabbed our binoculars, bug spray, a picnic lunch and headed to the arboretum.

From the moment we arrived at the VA Arboretum we were stunned by the beauty of the plentiful flowers, plants, herbs, trees, and wildlife. We leisurely walked around the 712-acre farm making notes on our charts, counting, tallying and learning the names for different new colorful plants and birds (all plants and trees were labeled with plaques). We took pictures with our state tree and enjoyed a picnic lunch overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains. To learn about pollination, we enjoyed a stroll through the farm's pollination garden and watched various insects busy at work pollinating the flowers. We were also able to get super close to cicadas newly molting and other adult cicadas resting on leaves. A few days prior we read about cicadas, wrote a report, and completed drawings of the cicada life cycle at home, so this real-world experience brought it all to life. The cool breeze, inviting sunshine, and tranquility that surrounded us that day reminded me why I work so hard to bring authentic learning experiences to my students.

Days like our trip to the VA Arboretum are my favorite days in education. I love when several subjects blend together, and we can be engaged in learning new things together in the real world. Right now, the world is our classroom, and my best teaching days are when we can take adventures together to explore and see where our learning takes us.

 - Hausman, M.