If you could go back to school and do it all over again, what would you change?
When Melia Dicker looked back at her education, she was unsatisfied. She had done very well, to be sure, but there was something missing. Something big.
Her aha moment inspired a journey to re-educate herself, on her own terms.
Melia decided to go back to school to live the experience she missed the first time around. Thus, “Reschool Yourself” was born. She set out to spend a year re-doing her education, chronicling her adventure on her blog.
Melia’s plan was two-fold: first, spend the fall going back to all of her old schools, from kindergarten to college, “triggering memories by doing whatever the kids did, on the classroom and the playground, and sorting through old photos and journals.”
Then, in the spring, she followed her curiosity wherever it took her – she learned by “doing things that [she] never thought [she] would have the time, money, or courage to learn: guitar, musical theater, and more.“
Completely immersing herself in the experience, Melia became a student again, doing everything that the rest of the class was doing, “even if it was boring or I didn’t want to be spending my time that way, I just wanted to remember what that was like.”
But even elementary school came with its challenges.
“There was a long division assignment in fifth grade, where I was so tired,” she recalls. “I didn’t get much sleep this whole time because it was so intense, and school started so early, and I was up late the night before blogging. I remembered how to do long division, but it was a different way than I had been taught, so I was struggling through this assignment next to these ten year-olds. I just thought, this is ridiculous, it’s a waste of my time, I’m going home and taking a nap.”
Realizing that students don’t usually have that luxury – most can’t even use the bathroom without permission, which wasn’t always granted -- it soon became clear to Melia why her first go-around left her unfulfilled.
“The biggest challenge we face is that kids aren’t allowed to develop fully and become who they want,” she explains. “School is about ‘have to’ and not ‘want to,’ and that’s a very dangerous thing to teach kids; they lose touch with the joy of life and what makes them tick as a person. Kids who are meant to be the next Picasso can’t develop because they’re stuck learning chemistry. The most important thing is to nurture that natural curiosity.”
But when Melia looked around her, she didn’t just see the problems with the system. She also realized just how much we could all learn from the kids.
“Watching the kids run on the playground,” Melia says, she found herself jealous. “I just wanted to have that joy that I hadn’t felt in so long, and that carefree attitude. And I looked around at the adults, and a lot of us didn’t seem to have that anymore. I felt like it didn’t have to be that way.”
One of the most rewarding aspects of her mission, she found, was reclaiming that part of her. Reading her blog, it’s clear that doing so has made her happier, healthier and more fulfilled – something Melia hopes we all learn from. From the beginning, she says, it wasn’t about her.
“It started with me and working on myself,” she explains, “and then sharing that with other people.”
Thing is, most “other people” don’t have a year to go back to school. But that’s not what this is about.
A big theme of the project, Melia says, is that “it really is never too late. People don’t need to take a year off to do the project. If you have three kids and you’re 40 years old and work full time, or if you’re 70 and retired and feel like it’s way too late, there are ways you can do it, and it doesn’t need to entail going and sitting in your old classrooms for a year.
“You can take a class at a community college, or online. You can check a book out from the library. There are tons of ways to do it – it’s just about getting back in touch with what you want to do. There’s always a way to do it.”
Regardless of whether you’re going back to school or not, we could all benefit from finding that part of ourselves we left in the classrooms (or on the playgrounds) of our elementary schools.
How will your aha moment help you become who you want to be?
To see Melia’s aha moment interview, click here, and be sure to check out her full story on her blog.
As for what’s next, Melia is on the start-up team for the Institute for Democratic Education in America, a non-profit whose goal is to connect stakeholders in education (students, parents, teachers, activists, etc.) in order to transform the education system.
We wish Melia the best of luck, and can’t wait to see how she changes the world.
