Does anyone know how to start a school???

It's a cold, dreary day and Ben and I hopped in the car to go to the train table in the children's section of Barnes and Noble. I have to admit that often when we go to places like this, I secretly hope that there aren't any other kids there so Ben can peacefully play (remember, he's at that awkward learning-to-share stage), I can sip my coffee at leisure and snoop around the children's lit section for a little bit.

There was another mother/daughter pair there and the daughter was the same age as Ben. Oh boy. My heart took a small anxious leap and then settled quickly when the two connected right off the bat and played peacefully without ever arguing about who had what.

Of course, we started with the small talk and I quickly learned that the mother is from Morocco by way of Venezuela. We continued to chit-chat and she mentions that her oldest of her three kids is a first grader at a school that she and her friends started. It's a small Jewish school that only has 7 students since there aren't any Jewish schools in Madison.

WOW!!!

I had a whole handful of questions for her about how you go about funding that kind of project, etc, etc and it sounded very impressive. I shared with her about the charter school that I taught at in DC and she was very interested in the language-immersion aspect of it. Let's just say that we both got very excited about this type of education and all the benefits it creates for our kids and she finally said, "Hey! Do you want to start one with me?" ... and I think she was kind of serious.

If I only knew how, I would totally be game!

It was so refreshing to meet this new friend. I hope we do more together, because she hit the spot!