Enriching Education: Taking a Gap Year This Year

Our Kids Don’t Need Remote Learning. They Need a Gap Year. With school buildings shut down, the solution for many is right under our own roof.   As the founder of, Other Goose, an international homeschooling community for kids ages 2-7, Erin Loechner has spent the better part of this year mentoring over 10,000 quarantined families while schools closed nationwide. Daily, she communicates with caregivers who seek reassurance that our customized all-in-one plan will keep their child on track. But when pressed for which “track” they’re referring to, for what standards they’d like to see their children stand for, the majority of parents shrug their shoulders. One recent response? “Whatever’s normal, I guess.”   Now, six months into a roaring pandemic, we’ve been handed a year of turmoil. Benchmarks are toppling and status quos are being called to question. There is no normal. What now? We begin by reclaiming our agency. Parents: try on the wild idea that you might know more about educating your child than an institution does. Ask yourself two questions: (1) What does my family value? (2) What makes my kids light up? Then, spend the school year guiding your children toward both. If you can’t muster up the confidence to call this exploration of undiscovered passion an actual “education,” then call it something else: call it a gap year. Historically, the practice of a gap year originated in the ’60s with the intentions of delaying academics to instead teach young people self confidence, practical awareness, and community activism. In rapid succession, gap year companies, trips, and programs began cropping up throughout the world; an entire generation seeking relief and respite from the severity of their parents’ wars. Now – nearly six decades later – our kids seek the same: relief and respite from the severity of our many, many wars. Today, a battle rages for everything – opioids and bullying to shifting economies and climate change (there is even, per the documentary namesake of 2009, a War On Kids). We need only scan headlines to witness the immediate shrapnel. And while a worldwide pandemic is far from the relief and respite a gap year touts, perhaps you’ll get what you wanted all along: kids that begin to value Alma Thomas over taco day, activism over athleticism. You’ll be granted the freedom to swap out Laura Ingalls Wilder for James Baldwin. You can ban Dr. Seuss; you can veto letter grades. Toss the uniform, and the uniformity. You can educate as an act of resistance, and you can raise your children to think critically about their role as an advocate for the world around them. What will happen is this: in a single year, your entire family will tilt toward discovery. You’ll spend less time fretting with your kid’s school over tech issues and Zoom schedules and more time igniting wonder in your child’s soul. You’ll educate in the way that worked for generations prior: one of apprenticeship, of practice, of trade. You’ll invite your kids into your daily life, whether through accounting spreadsheets or blueprint renderings or sauteed garlic. Your child will gain independence. He’ll make his own lunch. She’ll wash her own socks. Maybe your 9-year-old will discover the joy of sewing – and stumble into his own bespoke bow tie line. Maybe your 8-year-old will embark on a great CEO adventure after designing a cup for her grandfather with Parkinson’s. Maybe your 11-year-old’s local lemonade will sell for millions at Whole Foods. If nothing else, your teen’s failed attempts at baking sourdough at home will make for a far more heartfelt admissions essay than the C+ sheet cake recipe from Home Ec. Your child will learn from you. And you will learn from your child. Yes, you’ll still have time to yourself. Yes, your kids will get the basics covered one way or another. Yes, each child can take ownership over their own education with a few hours/day and a library card. No, it is not feasible for everyone, logistically-speaking. Neither is remote learning, or business-as-usual, or co-ops, or pandemic pods. But it’s an option for some, nonetheless. And it’s one worth considering. If our future generations have indeed inherited a faulty system, if goodwill is hard to find, if our kids feel lonely and unsafe and ill-equipped, perhaps it’s time we parents led the charge in offering a solution. Perhaps it’s time we gave them a gap in the war. -- Bestselling author Erin Loechner has been an online educator, homeschool advocate, and international lecturer for over 15 years.  Her all-in-one homeschooling plan for the early years, Other Goose (www.othergoose.com), has been used by over 25,000 students worldwide, and includes daily literature, creativity, foundations, outdoors, relationships, language, math, rhythms, logic, and habit lessons for kids ages 2-7.