This is school
“My kid comes home tired and doesn’t want to go outside to play. It’s an interesting perspective.”
This is Greg. He sits on the Board of Directors at ROCS for his second year. He’s head of Development.
How did you become a board member?
“My wife and I tell this story slightly differently, but my attempt at an objective recollection is, we saw Cheryl do her thing at orientation. A member of the board stood up and made a pitch for, ‘Hey, we need a board member. We’re missing one and it’s the development position.’ My wife elbowed me and said, ‘Hey, you should go talk to that guy’ and I interpreted that as, ‘Hey, you should go become that board member position.’”
Was it really that easy? No, of course not. There is a whole process to becoming a board member which Greg went through. But now that he’s there, I was curious how being on the board has affected his view: of the people, of the school, and of the education his child is receiving there.
“Being on the board has, at minimum, forced me to get to know Cheryl [School Manager] in a way I guarantee you, I would not have known if I wasn’t on the board. Cheryl is like the spirit of the school, the vision. She holds it all together or she puts staff in place to hold things together where she can’t.
It’s forced me to interact with some teachers that I may not have interacted with naturally in other ways. It’s forced me to engage and learn how these folks talk, interact, connect and how they teach, in some respects.”
Bethany and Anne are two ROCS educators who fill positions on the board. In addition, there are six other members besides Greg, who offer more than just their time and opinion on the business aspects of the school.
“You get to learn someone’s academic, professional, or even experiential background that you wouldn’t get to in a different way. I’ve seen a level of respect that, if you couldn’t call it friendship, I don’t think we have a word that is correct anymore.”
In terms of the school itself, Greg has had to think about the nitty gritty in ways that he probably wouldn’t have thought about otherwise. At least, if his child wasn’t attending Red Oak, where everything is built by and with the community.
“How do you deal with HR? Or security? Or basic communication? How do kids get to field trips? It’s made me think about those things in a way where I’d be like, ‘So, someone’s got that covered right?’”
In that same vein, that means balancing and thinking about the expectations put on the community at ROCS.
“It’s hard not knowing what every parent or volunteer or friend of the school has in terms of their own personal availability or background. I might see something as an easy task, but someone might be having a hard time fitting in 2.5 hours of volunteer hours that week.”
Either way, Greg’s esteem for the school is obvious, and he points out that despite how the school is run, it is still definitely a school.
“I told my wife, ‘It’s a school.’ And she was like, ‘Well…technically it’s a homeschool…’ And I was like, ‘What????’”
It has given me a respect for the way the school is run/operated in way that is dramatically more professional than some home-school co-op. It is a school. Red Oak is a way for bunch of homeschool parents to reinvent a school while it’s still being a homeschool collective...but it’s a school. It’s got a language arts teacher and a math teacher and school administrator. There’s a real email system. This isn’t homeschool…it’s school.”
And it’s a school made up with people who care. And as Greg points out, people who care about both the present and the future.
“Pick a board position, and think ‘We could better this.’ But I’m not just bettering what my kid can be experiencing, but I’m also bettering what the next kid who is not mine, should and could, be experiencing.
As opposed to just ‘some school’ it’s like an actual thing. It’s part of a movement, in a way. It’s showing you that there is a different way to educate kids and they are going to come out just fine. “
In addition, Greg was very adamant that every parent is “missing out if they don’t, at least on occasion, go to a public session board meeting.” They are the held virtually the first Wednesday of each month. At this point, both my curiosity and call for duty is peeked. Is yours?
-Celeste Irving , ROCS mom