Ok sort of stating the obvious here but September has always held for us the significance of a new school year beginning, the start of a very short fall sailing season (about 4 weeks before haul out in Ontario) and to some extent, the end of the summer fun and return to normalcy.

Not that fall, winter and spring weren’t fun…they were. But regardless, September has that baggage attached to it.

Not this year.

7am this morning: I wake up, check my watch, say to myself “why the heck are you awake Megan, go back to sleep”…then realize it’s the first day of school for most kids in Canada and decide to get up and enjoy a few peaceful morning moments in the cockpit before the first kid is up. To be clear, I’ve not done this even one time yet this summer…I’ve usually been the last one up every single morning, at times embarrassingly late. But this morning some part of me clearly knew it was time for normalcy. Hopefully it sticks, 7am was really nice out here.

By about 8:30 everyone was up (Greg was last this time!) and we took the family back-to-school picture from our huge aft cabin bed (all 5 fit and it’s not even terrible) to capture the moment-not-moment. After yogurt and granola Greg and I held a roundtable in the cockpit where the kids had to introduce themselves to the ‘class’ and share one thing they did this summer. And they were introduced to Mrs. and Mr. Harris - their new teachers. BOO YA SUCKERS!

Liams response: Hi my name is Liam and this summer I moved to our boat, Matriarch. (yawn)

Aden’s response: Hi my is Aden Harris, one this I did this summer was looking at bugs under a telescope (she meant microscope I’m pretty sure unless she’s met a friend with a telescope)

Grace’s response: Hi my name is Grrrrrrrace? and this summer I went swimming in the pooollllll? (Mrs. Harris intimidated her obviously)

Ok fine, if not a bit boring. So we spontaneously decided to give the kids the task of writing out 5 things they learned this summer and one thing they want to learn this year. Almost immediately Mrs. and Mr. Harris got into a debate about learning objectives and double barrelled questions and giving too many options in a task…in the teachers lounge of course (aka the aft cabin). We clearly have to sort our approaches out - I feel very very strongly about these things since Liz and I design this stuff for adults all the time; however, Greg wants and needs to be involved and really, it’s a fairly harmless and forgiving learning environment (unlike the learning environments in my professional life)…so Mrs. Harris will need to be a bit flexible (not one of her strengths). So after about 30 minutes…we got some stuff. Aden’s was a mish-mash of what she did and what she learned due to Mr. Harris’ take on the instructions, Liam’s was brief…bit too brief for an 11yo, and Grace had 2 items total and both of them closely mirrored Liam’s work. Oi…off to a super start.

As for the kid-take on today….

Liam, how do you feel about not going back to school this year?

sigh I feel a little sad because I am going to miss all the friends i have. I’m happy though because not going back to Chris Hadfield gives me the opportunity to meet new people and I don’t have to see people who were mean to me. I’m not going to name names but you know who you are (I really don’t think they are reading this Liam). Ok whatever. I will miss Ms. Lash…she was one of my favourite teachers. I don’t miss the stress of finding out who is going to be in your class.

Aden, how do you feel about not going back to school this year?

Well I am going to miss all of my teachers they were all very good. Even my kindergarten teachers, and my grade 1 and grade 2 teachers were all really nice. And I’m going to miss some of my friends, some of them were really nice as well. I am going to miss playing with them. I feel a little bit happy about it because I am not away from my parents and I get to play with my brother and sister. Because when Liam is playing with his friends and Grace is playing with her friends and I want to play with them I don’t get to because they want to play with their friends. And now they don’t have a choice. I have another thing. In grade 2 Liam wasn’t even out on recess at the same time as me, that I am happy about. I would rather play with my brother and sister. And I’m at home. And I know where everything is. I don’t have to go to my desk anymore - my desk was always so messy and I would have to dig around to find stuff. and now I know where everything is on the boat I can get to it easily. Also we can do better things like go paddle boarding and snorkelling at recess which I am pretty excited about, it’s better than playing at the grass or gravel.

Grace, how do you feel about not going back to school this year?

I feel that I will miss some teachers. I will especially miss my old kindergarten teachers and my old Grade 1 teacher and will miss some of my friends at school. Some of them were nice and I really like them as a friend. I feel sorta of scared because today is the first day of school and it’s basically a whole new thing because we haven’t done school in the boat before. So ya. It’s going to be a whole new thing. Suspicious…(she stroked her chin like she had a beard). I’m happy because I get to spend more time with my family and I can see my brother and sister more often, well mostly my brother. Because I almost never got to see him because there were 2 people to take down blue bins and he was one of them that was only when I saw him during the day. That is all I have to say. ok?

Unlike talking a kid through making a sandwich while you also have one eye on another job, teaching the kids in a meaningful way will require effort on our part as much as on theirs; however, we really are looking forward to it...some weeks we might crush tons of lessons...some weeks we may not do anything formal at all. It will all be fine.(See!? look how flexible Mrs. Harris can be already!!)

School in in session kids!

Much love,

M