First Day School: Consensus and Comic Books

I am by no means the First Day School teacher I planned to be when a second child joined our Meeting, along with my eldest, who had been the only Quaker child in town at the time. I was so excited about the lessons we would have with two kids in the Meeting instead of just mine. I always meant to be pretty laid back about it and not all bossy and school-ish, but I never expected how laid back I would get.

Our girls were six and nine back then - they are 12 and 15 now. We started with the testimonies, and that went well. We talked about them and made art about them and read stories that exemplified them. Stories became a big theme with us. I read to the girls a lot. I am fond of finding books that are about Quakers in history or in the present, or just that really exemplify Quaker values or challenges, and I am good at finding good ones...reading these books has always gone over well and I still read to the girls a lot.

It was different when I tried to take us on a study of influential Quakers in history and Quaker history itself, though. The girls were willing to listen to some short stuff, but they didn't really want to participate in projects or in-depth exploration on these themes. They wanted to hear the basics and move on - that was not content with which they really wanted to spend time or interact. Over the years, as we started looking at Quaker practices, queries (and even midrashim) and the First Day Schools Peace Quilt project, it became clear to me that the girls did pretty much as they liked. Any efforts by me to persuade them to focus on lessons they were not interested in were met with resistance so quiet and firm and polite and implacable that you would think they were...well...Quakers.

So I pretty much turned it over to them.

The girls and I talked about how Quakers do things by consensus and then we started doing things that way in First Day School ...well, we started accepting that we were already doing things that way and would continue to - I started facing reality and making it official, I suppose. I no longer try very hard to sway them when my ideas are not "the sense of the First Day School" - I have let it go. I still bring the girls ideas and try to help keep them on track - and they often are into my ideas and want me to facilitate things, but more and more often they have their own ideas and their own circuitous ways of doing things. I often feel like the most major slacker First Day School teacher in the world, especially now that I am a public school teacher during the week who does not work in a setting where this sort of consensus-based learning is remotely do-able ... but my learning to be a slacker First Day School teacher instead of a structured one has actually been good for us, I think. The girls are creative and, while they are more slackerly than I might have them be themselves, they come up with insights that are really more germane to what the Light says to them than anything I think I could have done. I wish I could be more like this, more just a guide, at my school, although I've tried and there are, sadly, numerous reasons why I cannot really pull it off there in a constructive way.

I do think the consensus, unschooling sort of First Day School that we have works, though. Right now the girls are studying world religions and doing research on a comic book they decided to write and draw on how the American Revolution could have happened non-violently. They are also planning a very silly you-tube video on mean girls...sigh. I kind of look forward to a more structured "program" of stories and coloring and projects with our two Little Friends, who are both three now (there is also a very Little Friend who was born this past year), when they really start First Day School in the fall, but who knows? We are unprogrammed Friends and, so far, we have had a really unprogrammed First Day School. It works for us, and I love it. Our girls are growing in the Light.