Unschooling During a Crisis

Are there some things you hate doing? We don’t like gardening. Usually, we let our garden take care of itself. That’s why our hedges grew and grew until they were higher than the roof of our house. We should have pruned them back years ago. We shouldn’t have left it until a crisis forced us to do something about the branches that were overhanging our house.

You might know that there’s a huge out-of-control bushfire burning not too far away from where we live. It’s been burning for almost three weeks. The other evening, we attended a community meeting in our village to find out how the fire may affect us. The fire is expected to get 2.5 times larger before it’s contained. That’s frightening, isn’t it? What if the fire reaches our village? To reduce the chances of that happening, the firefighters have been back-burning in the bush close to our home. And that was going well until a couple of days ago when a little bit of a crisis appeared out of nowhere. The wind suddenly changed direction and the backburn fire leapt out of control. It raced towards the village next to ours.

And we raced outside to finish preparing our house in case the fire came our way.

Isn’t it amazing how fast we can do a job if it needs to be done? Suddenly the fact that we don’t like gardening was irrelevant. We all grabbed branch cutters and rakes and wheelbarrows and got to work. Emergency vehicle sirens and helicopters flying overhead spurred us on to clear the vegetation from around our house at record speed. And for some strange reason, we ended up having a lot of fun. Working hard together doing difficult things isn’t as bad as it sounds!

The fire didn’t reach us. But it’s still burning. That’s okay. If it comes our way, we’re prepared. Just like we were 6 years ago when we had a fire burning in the bush right in our village. For days, fire truck after fire truck disappeared down our road and into the bush where we run each morning. Water-bombing helicopters flew over our house again and again. And we were packed and ready to evacuate our home at a moment’s notice.

It’s hard to concentrate on the usual things of life when we’re facing a crisis, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter whether we’re dealing with a bushfire or the loss of a job or a medical issue or the death of a child or something similar. Even trying to exist on little sleep after the birth of a baby can feel like a crisis. When our attention is consumed with a difficult situation, how can we continue to do all the normal things of an unschooling life such as reading to our kids, going on outings, watching movies together, and strewing new and interesting things?

Fortunately, during a crisis, it’s not necessary to think about such things. There’s no need to strew or do anything extra to enrich our children’s lives. Life is rich enough already. Everything we’re experiencing is more than enough to provide our children with knowledge, and thoughts and ideas to ponder. And that’s not all. Crisis times can provide an added bonus. When we work hard and help each other through a difficult time, the bonds that connect us together grow stronger.

So all we have to do during a crisis is go with the flow. We don’t need to worry about our kids’ education. We don’t even need to feel anxious about our homeschool record keeping. At the end of each day, if it’s required, we should still be able to fill our records books with loads of notes.

Today, the backburning continues. We can hear more aircraft flying over our house.

“I wonder if they’re helicopters,” I say. “Perhaps they’re monitoring the fire.”

“Dad says that some modified passenger planes are being used to fight fires,” says Gemma-Rose.

“Are they still using the Elvis water bomber?” asks Charlotte. We remember this wonderfully named helicopter from our last bushfire crisis.

We decide to google ‘bushfire aircraft’. But before I can open my laptop, we hear a loud noise directly overhead. I rush to the window and then shout, “It’s a helicopter! A water-bombing one. Look at the hose dangling underneath.”

The fire burns. The firefighters are fighting it. And we’re learning. We’re learning a lot.

Something Extra

If you’d like to know about our bushfire learning experiences from 6 years ago, and how I recorded them in our homeschool records book, you could read my post, Learning from Life

This story can also be found in my book Curious Unschoolers, together with others about difficult times.

And if you’d like to know more about our present bushfire crisis, watch out for some more blog posts. Once again, the bushfire is providing us with lots to talk about!

Photos

In between holding the ladder steady for Andy, while he cuts back the overgrown bushes and trees, Imogen keeps a close eye on the Fires Near Me app on her phone.

So, I’m wondering if you are also affected by the current bushfires. Or maybe you’re dealing with another crisis? And do you like gardening? Maybe you prefer to let your garden look after itself like us.

Stay safe!