Lessons from a different kind of classroom

During my education history, I’ve bounced back and forth easily between the Mat-Su Borough School District’s public and charter schools.

From kindergarten to fourth grade, I was in public school and enjoyed it a lot. For fifth grade, I was home-schooled to spend time with my mother, who was finishing an out-of-state contract. When I hit middle school, it was back to public school. But by ninth grade, public school just didn’t sit right with me. And by the first semester of 10th grade it really didn’t feel right, so I was back to home-schooling until this year, my senior year of high school.

Many people wonder what is home-schooling? It’s self-explanatory in one sense: school at home, where your parents are your teachers and you’re learning in your Spiderman pajama pants over a bowl of Captain Crunch.

In another sense, it can be many different things. For me, being home-schooled was a change in a repetitive routine, an opportunity to go for the credits needed for my diploma, but in ways different from the typical classroom setting. For example, I’ve received required credit from the district by studying zombies in literature and history and how that is portrayed in pop-science, or I’ve studied ecosystems and spent some time on a trip to Arizona learning more at hand about the specific desert system. Home school is a way to open up the different ways to learn outside of a classroom by taking the student out of the environment and creating a learning environment wherever the student is.

With the recent boom in the number of K-12 students in the Mat-Su Valley, many options exist for those in search of education opportunities. When a 5- or 6-year-old begins the first step toward his or her high school diploma by beginning kindergarten, they can do so at an elementary school, a Waldorf or Montessori-inspired program, a charter school or home school, which allows parents to teach children using different curriculum or teaching styles. Personally, those alternative techniques worked best for me in fifth grade, like when I was promised ice cream once a lesson or two was completed.

Now I attend Twindly Bridge Charter School. Three out of my five classes this semester are correspondence distance education through Brigham Young University’s online course system.

One class is participating in a sports team for the district’s credit waiver, another is a self-created course for American Literature in which I chose three classic novels and a short story I want to read and then report on them through an essay.

In addition to these classes, I can take some educational sessions offered by the school to follow my interest in astronomy or bread making, for example, and also have the flexibility to volunteer for Radio Free Palmer. In public school, I don’t feel like I would have had this wide range of opportunity to be creative with my learning.

In any day of my school week, I can wake up at 4 a.m. or noon to start my classes, or stay up all night to do my classes because I baked cookies and worked during the day. On Monday, I might want to work only on an online course or only focus on writing my article for the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, and then Tuesday read some of my assigned English book before I work on an online course.

Getting all of my coursework done by the semester’s end is my responsibility, which teaches me time management, self-direction and organizational skills that will benefit my future job performance.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t an attack on public school by any means; just an overview of some of the many and varied opportunities for education in our little — but growing — Valley. Learning is variable, constant and lifelong. It can be exciting, boring, scary or refreshing. You decide.

Dylan Gette-King is a high school senior who enjoys warm weather, food and bad knock-knock jokes.