Zombie to Warm Body: Our Transition to Homeschooling

Last week I finally saw the movie Warm Bodies.  It was an assignment for my homeschooler—that he find and be prepared to discuss the thematic elements of the movie as it relates to Shakespeare.  

(Advanced work really—assigned to my daughter’s college class, Shakespeare in Film, but as homeschoolers, we supersede our eighth grade curriculum--often.)

In the film, the zombie teen is restored to human form.  The premise was not new to my husband nor I because we’d seen just such a change in our own son.  In the past year, our Zombie child morphed into a more self-directed teenager with greater confidence in his own talent and abilities—a phenomena nearly as incredible as that in the movie! 

It began last year when my husband and I pulled our pre-teen student out of one of our state’s best public schools.  He had become a problem.  I don’t mean at school, because over the past nine years he had finally perfected “normal studenthood.”    

He would consume copious amounts of information and produce admirable hoards of paper and his teachers were thrilled that he could finally sit still and shut up.

It was our problem.  When we recognized that our potential inventor/engineer had adapted by turning off his inventive mind to meet the expectations of a conventional education we panicked.  He had adapted a little too well and excelled at sitting still, staring blankly at the wall and uttering banal inanities.  ZOMBIE!  Dinner conversations were limited to a serving of, “I don’t know,” with a side of “Nor do I care.”  

The straw that shoved the camel through the needle’s eye was when his homeroom teacher said, “To help your son be more successful, I recommend that you come in each day after school and preview each of his six teacher’s assignments on their boards to make certain he has all the details of the work written down and then go to his locker and make sure he has all his books and papers necessary to complete the work at home. AND I DID IT!  For a week, then it dawned on me that for years I had been schooling during all of our home time and that home schooling full-time might take less time.    So, we left school with the hope that if we do this, he may “at least finish high school.”  What a dim view of his greatness.  

Instead we were granted unexpected benefits as we unwittingly set in motion five changes that modified the ZOMBIE child.  SKIP TO THE END if you are rushed to lasso answers amidst a whirlwind.    

Zombie Strategy #5  

SLEEP:  Rising at the crack of dawn to stumble to a bus that leaves one hour and fifty minutes before school starts.  Lack of sleep is the number one problem interfering with child learning, just ask any educator.   Hence the sunken dark circles and the vacuous Zombie stare.

Those wasted hours of bus time are about how long we spend completing our book-learning.  Now we have actual leisure time for his anti-zombie training, i.e., scouts, piano, robotics, tae kwan do...

Zombie Strategy  #4  

PURPOSE:     There can be nothing more difficult for a teacher than struggling to create interest in a subject with a ZOMBIE.  Until a youth can take power over their own education, forced learning remains an instrument of torture—for the child and the adult.  Then at least two hours of homework drudge were added on to the end of an already learning-deficient school day.

Right now my son splits Math Mondays between coding classes, (codecademy.com) and college algebra (udacity.com).  Many of these on-line courses offer free certification to students upon completion. 

Zombie Strategy #3

 

DE-STRESS:  Educators know stress inhibits learning in children.  And thus develops the callous sense of self preservation so apparent in Zombieland.

Herd learning is a schedule of strict classes on a tight schedule, of time consumed by the classmate who should be the subject of  (not a group member in) the psychology project.  After which, the teen then lumbered across campus in the seven minutes allotted.  He bypassed the locker book exchange and yet without text, still only staggered into the classroom by the skin of his teeth.  If he arrived late and slammed into a closed classroom door, he was rewarded with a half-hour long after-school detention with the same babbler from psychology class.  

We have gifted that teacher with less stress and that classmate with greater personal attention as his teacher now instructs only 149 students daily. 

Zombie Strategy #2 

CUSTOMIZATION OF EDUCATION TECHNIQUES:   Homeschooling relieves the burden of pressure when a child is not yet brain ready and prevents the schism in the parent/child relationship created by that failed expectation.

  Freed from the bounds of teaching with a text to a test, homeschooling offers classical learning in the world of Platonic (stories) and Socratic (questions) education through virtual situations, simulations and infinite questions.  Both are more effective than learning by rote repetition, lackluster lectures, and wearisome worksheets.  My rapidly morphing teen is learning how to think, not thoughtlessly consume and regurgitate.   In a workforce of ZOMBIES, his leadership skills will be invaluable.

Development or Drills?    I should own the patents to every math, science and reading skill-builder  known throughout the history of man. I had no inkling of developmental readiness because in public education, all children must progress the same--together, with none left behind—a common core.   He and I fought-taught spelling utilizing every culinary tool from soup to nuts and I promise you, Zumba’s got nothing on the athletic gyrations of a mom-bod in full-out alphabet spell.

SOCIETY:  No more school lines, a half-hour-long waiting zombie-like to shuffle into the restrooms alone (the new safety rule at school)—all part of that cool school social thing that home school deprives him of.   We don’t miss that, nor do we miss the isolation of that creepy counter-culture lunch crush.    

 We are now eligible for a myriad of home school groups that orchestrate field trips and social activities.  These occur so frequently that we find ourselves struggling to fit in content amidst the hands-on and on-site learning.  We find these groups to be diversely educated, multi-cultural, intergenerational bastions of children flourishing in alternate learning cultures; a society in which children are challenged—the antithesis of Zombie. 

Zombie Battle Strategy #1 

WE LOVE ONE ANOTHER!

WINNER!  Before home school, my son and I shared an autocratic relationship wherein I pressed him mechanically to perform.

We no longer live in a Zombie (parallel) relationship; we interact in a new way and I believe it’s because he exults in the exercise of control over his own education.  We trust him to pick, choose and direct his own path—which translates into confidence as a competent adult. 

 My heart warms when strangers admire and comment as they watch the new interaction between my young teen and me, (it happened twice in a month!)

THE WHIRLWIND ANSWER:

Back to the warm metaphor, I believe the zombie teen in Warm Bodies evolves due to an increased awareness of feeling—of my hope for him, and ultimately of love and self worth as he recognizes the value he offers the world.   I know that for our former Zombie, the most important change is that he knows there is an infinite world of knowledge out there and he is confident and capable of discovering his purpose in that challenge. 

If you think your child doesn’t know that, find ways to warm that body.   Zombie Attack!

If I Make You Angry, I Win

Children teach.  The very act of parenting is a daily dabble in the puddles of patience and long suffering, but there are moments when a child turns a shallow little dip into a complete submersion of a vast and spiritual depth.

My oldest son Ian, is inordinately bright, and that makes him an odd ball to his peers.  We have faced our share of challenges, like his response to the “bully on the bus.” He ax-kicked that kid in the head, but the driver assured me that the incident would go unreported because, in his opinion, the other kid had it coming. I still initiated the “turn the other cheek talk,” and I further explained that turning the other cheek was not in preparation to throw a 360 back kick. 

    

It was ten years later when Ian was a senior in high school that he came to me again.  “Mom there is this guy in AP World History that just won’t let up.  He trash talks me every day and it goes on and on until the girl behind me sticks up for me and tells him to leave me alone.  What am I going to do Mom?” 

I reminded him of the bus story outcome and I gave my best mommy answer, “respond politely.”  Long after graduation, he told me the rest of the story and his solution became one of those headlong dives into unplumbed depths.

Aside from (or perhaps due to) the bus incident, my son has become a person that is slow to anger.  Scripture encourages us to become so and gives many examples of Christ being slow to anger.  An example: The story of the woman taken in adultery and brought to Christ by adversaries with a hidden agenda.  He faces a lose-lose scenario; either answer he would give will be wrong.  What does he do?  He doesn’t flare out in anger, doesn’t protest in rage, doesn't let his temper rule, he simply crouches down and draws in the dirt.  And he thinks.  He becomes our great example of marshaling our thoughts and controlling our responses.  He is slow to anger. 

I am a passionate person, a drama queen and I love nothing more than a good argument.  My father assures me that it’s in the genes and I work to manage this character trait.  My son’s response to his World War History problem encouraged me to work at this even harder.

We live in Oklahoma where we really get to practice freedom of religion.  I am offered a blessed day when I leave Walmart, and when we moved there, one of the first questions was if we had yet found a church.  Practically every street corner offers one of a different faith.  As I drive down the street. the big posted church bulletins are thought provoking... “When you feel abandoned, it was not Christ that moved.” Another states, “If I make you angry, I win.” 

Wow.  “If I make you angry, I win.”   It could be my touchy neighbor speaking, my adversary at work, my spouse, or that guy in the passing lane on the freeway, or a random person at the supermarket.  He that provokes me to anger WINS!  Or it could just be Satan speaking.  “If I make you angry, I win.” 

A quote from Thomas Monson states:  “To be angry is to yield to the influence of Satan.  No one can make us angry.  It is our choice.  Anger, Satan’s tool, is destructive in so many ways.” 

From the Holy Bible, in Matthew 11:11, after Christ makes his majestic entrance back into the city, he goes to the temple and sees what is happening there.

In our minds, we have the artist, Carl Bloc’s depiction of what happens next.  In this painting, Christ is wielding a whip over his head and the animals are running amok.  There utter chaos in the frame, but in a talk Gordon B. Hinckley states that this “is not an outburst of uncontrolled anger.”   

So what really happened?  If I remind myself of doctrine, I know that Christ was perfect on earth, and so I reread the verses with added insight. 

Verse 11: Christ enters the city, visits the temple, views what’s going on and then goes with the disciples to Bethany.  Maybe he ponders on what is happening and gives himself time to marshal his thoughts?

      

Verse 12: It isn’t until “on the morrow,” that Christ goes back to the temple, and methodically--for the second time--casts out the moneychangers.  He upends the tables and the chairs and verse 16 says that he “would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.”

I have a new and enhanced view of the story--Christ was perfect, slow to wrath, and not dictated to nor governed by anger.  I am further convinced by what happens in the very next paragraph—he teaches.

Verse 17: And “he taught” and said to them, “is it not written that my house shall be a house of prayer, not a den of thieves.”  No one learns well when frightened and the ability to influence others is lost with anger.  Christ taught immediately after the incident, so he must have cleansed the temple in a manner that did not appear that he had lost hold of his senses, nor become “possessed” in anger.

My new son-in-law begins law school in the fall and he doesn't like to argue... with me.  He protests that I have just changed my mind, contradicted myself, gone off on a tangent and diverged too far from topic.  I protest that I’m not in it to win, I’m in it merely to argue. 

But Gordon B. Hinckley gave an example of truth as he related a story of a man that pitched a fit when he asked him to move a train.  The man ranted, screamed, stomped on his own hat and Pres. Hinckley couldn't help but laugh at the man.  He quotes Ecclesiastes 7:9:  “be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry:  for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.”  When temper gets the better of us, we lose the ability to convince, to teach or even to influence.   

 Verse 18 proves the efficacy of Christ’s teaching ability as “the scribes and chief priests heard, and sought how they might destroy him, for they feared him.”  It was not his actions they feared, but his impact on the people, “because all the people was astonished at his doctrine.”  Christ was effective just as the son-in-law will be as cool heads prevail.

In Priesthood talks given in conference in October, 2007 and 2009 respectively, President Hinckley and President Monson relate many heartbreaking stories of lives ruined by anger, the result of emotions ruling people who, upon reaching their breaking point, act.  Many later responded, “I don’t know what came over me.  I just went too far.”  I believe that the influence of Satan governs our actions more freely when we relinquish control and it does take only that small suggestion to push us over the brink. That is why we see good men doing really horrible things.  In Tulsa recently, one terrible story ended tragically when a pregnant woman in the midst of an argument pushed her husband through an eighteen story window.  Tragic and life altering consequences result when anger acts. 

The world would have us be true to our natural being—encourages us to disregard what it terms “old-fashioned convention” and to do as we feel—to act on our base nature—be authentic and real.  In contrast, the Lord and his gospel would have us marshal our thoughts and emotions and control our actions. 

As a teenager, my son, Ian really liked Chuck Norris—the jokes and stories and because he has an impeccable memory, he recalls them all.  When I asked him about how the situation in World War History resolved, he told me this story; it could be a fable, who knows. 

Chuck Norris was sitting in a bar and a man came into the bar up to him and said, “You are in my chair.”  Chuck looked at him, stood up and moved to another.  The other patrons at the bar said to the man, “That guy is Chuck Norris, he coulda trounced you.”  The man was prompted to go to Mr. Norris and ask why he hadn't stood up for himself—why he hadn't fought him.  

It's said that Chuck Norris looked at him and quietly responded, “It’s a chair.”

After relating that story my son said, “Mom” he said, “I figured it’s just a chair.”  

When I related the response to my husband, he responded the opposite of me. He said, “I have not paid for ten years of martial arts training for that boy to turn the other cheek.”

I must admit that I did think that if my son had taken his black belt to school and set it on the desk with the three gold stripes showing, the problem might have been resolved.

But in the big eternal picture, such action would have taught no eternal principle.  And with a worldly perspective, in the end my son would have gained nothing and his effort to become more like Christ may not have begun.

I have a testimony that our efforts on earth to marshal our thoughts, to learn to control our bodies—will help us emulate Christ. 

I know that these are mere tools preparing us for the eternities to come, for a time when we will be like unto God and we must train now at His feet.  I encourage all of us to further study these talks, to take these principles into our lives to become slow to anger and to endeavor to become more like the Master.