So, this week, the word that we are thinking of putting together something new has spread a bit beyond day care families and personal friends to friends of friends, realtors, and some public officials. It is a bit scary wondering how people will react, especially people at school.
I visited another big property this weekend and got very excited about the idea of moving my family to the top floor, a gorgeous, modern, sculptural apartment with an incredible view over Somerville, Cambridge, and Boston. The first two floors and the basement were large spaces which I thought would have potential as a small school, a group child care or school age care program, or multiple family day care programs. I fantasized and crunched numbers, researched and networked Friday night and Saturday before and after visiting the property and ended up on Sunday morning deciding the place and timing were not right. However, in the process, I learned a whole lot about our personal finances, real estate, zoning, regulations, building codes, and resource people I need to talk with to learn more.
I also expanded my vision of what might work for our alternative learning ideas, and am thinking about new ways we might realize our vision. It occurred to me that we might organize a network of family day care programs or coops which would have a shared philosophy and which might share some administrative or financial expertise, and could create a larger community of families and teachers working on creating mixed age, flexible, family style learning environments. These groups might function in the short term as places for younger children and school age children whose parents took responsibility for their homeschooling, and would have the potential to bring people together to consider the idea of creating an alternative school, if that environment felt right.
I am not set on that idea and don’t know if it would even work or appeal to other people, but it struck me that I have been advocating for some creative solution to the shrinking family child care pool in Somerville and what appears to be the growing population of families with children and that combining the needs of families with school age children and younger children might be one way to make that happen. The idea of homeschooling seems to be appealing to more and more families, and certainly we have been getting more and more families interested in family day care for their younger children and for after school and summer care. It makes me think that there is something about the two concepts, the freedom, comfort, mixed ages, time outside, the informality and relationships and sense of community, that people are looking for, not just for one child, but for siblings and for groups of children, perhaps children of parents who work or live together or know each other well and want their children to grow up closely connected. It seems maybe we are looking to recreate a sense of extended family or neighborhood that we no longer have as naturally for our children as we had for ourselves growing up and that homeschooling and family day care have the potential to provide some of what our children are missing.
I am going to let this idea bubble for awhile. I am hoping that maybe by expanding our circle a bit, we will connect with people who will bring their own ideas about what we can do, and perhaps will also have skills to offer, or expertise, that will begin to help make it all possible. Before long, I want to organize a meeting someplace like the library community room so interested families and potential teachers can get to know one another.
