Matthew Winkler and his son, Logan, just finished traveling (and skateboarding in) all 50 states to create a unique 6th grade of school. Read earlier installments here.

We got home to New Hampshire last week. Since then, Logan has been acting like a returned astronaut, relishing the comforts of a remembered life. The sunny days have kept him outside, riding bikes around the neighborhood and to meet friends at the town beach, playing flashlight tag each night. Indoors, he spends every waking minute building Legos or rereading his old comic books, sitting on the couch beside a cat. These activities sound awfully pedestrian, but after nine months zooming around the country in a capsule, they are a dream come true.

We visited two schools to tell our story, spoke to four newspapers, and even got interviewed at the local NPR station. Logan is comfortable and articulate, answering questions with a matter-of-fact attitude. One middle school principal praised our exploration of learning opportunities outside of the classroom and educational rewards that he can’t offer. I accepted the praise, but reminded him of the science lab, music department, and peer group interactions that he can offer, but were missing on our trip. Indeed, these factors have drawn Logan back into a public school trajectory for next year.

We are relocating to New York State this summer, so on our way home from Washington, D.C., Logan and I stopped to visit two schools near our new hometown. The Kildonan School is an expensive, private school that serves kids with language-based learning disabilities. Stissing Mountain Middle School is a public school in a rural school district with a diverse student body. The private school offers a robust and proven remedial program that would certainly improve Logan’s reading and writing, but there are only ten kids in each grade. The public school has 80 seventh graders. Even if we could afford the private option, the social piece weighs heavily on the scales of decision. Logan’s self-esteem is at an all-time high, but it has been a solitary year. He needs to apply these gains in an interpersonal environment to finalize his metamorphosis. In the “big school” is where he’ll learn the most next year; and we can always hire an after-school tutor.

The national road trip is over, but we are still exploring undiscovered territory. Every year will offer new destinations, new roadblocks, new milestones on this lifelong journey. In fact, Logan has an idea: his mom should take travel nursing assignments in each state, so we can all be together during our second orbit of the country. I explain that back-to-back thirteen week contracts would mean that such a tour would take twelve and a half years. “So?” he replies. If you throw open the scheduling, we are all 50skatekids.

Matthew Winkler and his son, Logan, just finished traveling all 50 states to create a unique 6th grade of school. Read earlier installments here.

If this were a Disney movie, our original departure would have been momentous, thronged with crowds of well-wishers. Actually, it was a non-event. We slept at home during the first week of our adventure, making day trips into Vermont and Maine. On the day we actually packed the car and left home for state number four (Massachusetts), nobody was around. My daughter, Alex, was at school, and my wife, Jessie, was working.

Today, we arrived in state number 50 (Virginia), and the first thing we did was go to the public library and tackle the next module of Logan’s online English course. No trumpets, no fanfare reception. Tonight, yet again, we’ll impose on the hospitality of strangers, and tomorrow there is more driving to do. The tally has reached 50, but the journey isn’t over yet.

On Monday, Jessie and Alex will meet us in Washington DC, where we’ll spend the week reconnecting with each other, visiting museums, and touring the White House and Capitol. Our family reunion will go a long way toward reestablishing a more standard daily life, but we’ll still have another eight hour drive northward before we can quit living out of a car!

Matthew Winkler and his son, Logan, are traveling all 50 states to create a unique 6th grade of school. Read earlier installments here.

Heading east from Denver, we pass fields of towering windmills, stretching from the horizon to the very edge of the highway. I point them out to Logan, but he ignores them. He’s seen them before. At the outset of this trip, it was exciting to ‘boldly go where we had never gone before,’ but at some point it became passé. Same highway, different state.

As we cross our own tracks in Kansas City, I realize that we have come full circle in many other ways. When we set off last September, I questioned the “classroom” format, venturing into home schooling territory and even experimenting with online classes. Now I’m searching for a middle school where Logan can enroll next fall.

Logan used to hate school, but now he’s ready to go back. The volatile fuel of discontent and innovation that launched this trip has burned away, and we are gliding back down to earth. As we activate our landing gear, the anticipation of our homecoming overshadows the novelties along the home stretch. Logan would rather see his cats, dogs, friends, and Legos than the Kentucky Derby hoopla.

At the peak of our journey, I felt like we could keep it going indefinitely. “50skatekid tours the world!” we used to joke. But, closing the loop geographically, we’re also completing a full cycle of attitudes toward education in general, and this trip in particular. It has run its course, served its purpose, and I’m glad there are only fifty states! After months of vagabond adventuring, I just want to sleep in my own bed, beside my patient, supportive wife.

Matthew Winkler and his son, Logan, are traveling all 50 states to create a unique 6th grade of school. They’re in the home stretch: just three more States to go. Read the other installments here, here and here.

When people hear about this trip, the most common reaction is “That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard!” And then, after digesting the concept for a few minutes, most adults add, “What a great bonding experience for you and your son.” No doubt!

I considered myself a very engaged dad to begin with, but our mutual understanding and camaraderie has certainly jumped a couple of levels since our frequency of interaction rose to 100%. This has strengthened our bond in ways I’m sure I don’t even appreciate yet. As Logan advances through his teenage years, he’ll encounter sex, drugs, petty crime, and other adolescent pitfalls. In the wake of this trip, I anticipate that he’ll still feel comfortable confiding in me and hopefully even heeding my counsel. On the other hand, if we had spent this past year at home, our time together would have been restricted to my herding him onto the school bus in the morning, through his homework after dinner, and into bed at night. He’d probably have spent weekends avoiding school and anything associated with it, including me. Not a great launch pad for parent/teen relations.

In fact, I followed this typical path with Logan’s older sister during her early teenage years. I gradually transitioned from an authoritarian taskmaster to a background advisor as she grew up. I confess that I had trouble staying “hands off,” especially during the college application process last year. Ultimately, I decided that the worst-case scenario (a gap year) might really be the best next step in her personal growth. A senior this year, she dragged her feet until a New Year’s Day epiphany kicked off thirty days of scrambling for transcripts, teacher referrals, essays, forms, and fees before the February first college application deadlines. Could I have kept my mouth shut through the entire fall semester, while she procrastinated as the checkpoints on the college readiness calendar rolled past? I doubt it, so it’s probably better for both of us that I was out of town.

As another positive side-effect, my daughter and wife have had their own “bonding experience,” comprised of jointly running the house, nightly dinners for two, weekly chick-flicks, and plenty of estrogen laden, heart-to-heart talks about my daughter’s first boyfriend, her qualms about growing up, uncertainties about college, and melodramatic overreactions to the latest high school social crisis. In my absence, they even bunked together sometimes, talking late into the night. Although I missed them both during the past eight months, I’m glad I didn’t get in the way of this mother/daughter communion of souls.

2010 promises major life changes for our family. We’re planning to move to another state, my daughter will leave behind the security of her high school and childhood home, Logan will enter some new, unknown educational situation, and I’ll start a new job. These new challenges will cause tension, to be sure, but as a result of this past year, we’re well prepared to face them.

Matthew Winkler and his son, Logan, are traveling all 50 states to create a unique 6th grade of school. Read the first installment here.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the romance of our grandiose quest. “Dad and son tour 50 states in nine months.” Truly, we’re having a great time, and I spend a lot of time extolling the positive aspects of this journey. But it’s not all upside.

Logan has learned a lot this year, in ways no classroom can offer instruction, but the converse is also true. He’s learned biology from a textbook, interpretive hikes, and YouTube videos, but we lacked a science lab for controlled laboratory experiments. Likewise, my expertise falls short in some subjects. Logan’s guitar comprises our music curriculum, but I don’t know how to play it. He picks a song and we parse the how-to video on guitartutee.com. We get the job done, but there are better ways to study science and music.

Last week, I was reminded of the human dimensions that this trip has pushed into the void. We stayed in a house with a basement room full of Legos, and I couldn’t pry Logan out with a crowbar. “I’d forgotten how much fun it is to play with Legos!” he explained, like an addict after his first relapse. (He didn’t even want to skateboard!)  Later that night, another repressed facet of his humanity found voice. Beside me in his sleeping bag, he whimpered pitifully about how much he missed his friend—a boy we just met last week! How can separation from a newfound pal cause such profound loneliness? His heart is that desperate for peer relationships.

He’s not the only one with heartache. Video Skype calls to my smoking-hot wife have sustained our still-happy marriage (and you can read that however you want to), but we are both counting the hours until our joyful reunion in Washington D.C. (672 hours from now). Separate from this estrangement, I’m also stifling a growing desire for fulfillment of a more professional nature. Being Logan’s tour manager, chauffeur, and sixth grade tutor has been my favorite job to date, but I’m ready to shrink those roles so that I can wedge an actual “career” into the pie chart of my life.

When we crafted this solution, we knew there would be sacrifices, but we decided that the benefits outweighed them. We were right, but the gaps in this formula undermine its durability. This 25,000 mile journey wears thin, as it draws to a close, with only five states left to visit. The next challenge will be to concoct a balanced life—a permanent situation—that covers all the bases, including the ones we’ve neglected.

Matthew Winkler and his son, Logan, are traveling all 50 states to create a unique 6th grade of school. Read the first installment here.

Only five weeks remain of this nine month odyssey, and I’m starting to tally up the results. This trip was launched because Logan’s reading speed, self-esteem, and interest in school were all trending badly last year. Today, his reading fluency has clearly improved (as much as if we’d stayed home? Maybe.) His self-esteem is at an all-time high (he’s 50skatekid! As seen on Fuel TV!). He still doesn’t thrill at adding fractions or writing book reports—what kid does?—but he now manages these obstacles, instead of dodging them. On these counts, this journey has fulfilled our hopes.

At the start of our journey, Logan dreamed of getting sponsored and becoming a pro skateboarder. That hasn’t happened. But along the way, he’s added a few new tricks to his repertoire, picked up some free gear from generous skate shop owners, and even collected some in-kind sponsors (thanks DC, One, and Filtrate!). More important, he’s seen behind the curtain of the skateboarding world, through exposure to the industry’s distribution, manufacturing, trade shows, and talent. This baptism into the skating world comes with a mixed blessing: realism. He’s learned that most “pro” skaters don’t earn a living wage. Undaunted, Logan still chases that goal, while hedging his bets with inquiries into other careers and plans for college.

People are usually too polite to ask about the money, so I’ll just ‘fess up. The T-shirt sales never really got off the ground. Our focus on education—and resultant neglect of the e-commerce initiative—caused a lopsided balance sheet, mainly propped up by one plastic card. On the other hand, we had never heard of couchsurfing.org when we set off, but it saved our lodging budget, among other benefits. All said, we’ve spent an average of $30 per day. A big nut over nine months, but still the best money I’ll ever spend, and an investment that will reap dividends throughout Logan’s life.

And mine. Individually and as a father. Anyone who has done extended camping, bike touring, or backpacking through foreign lands has had the eventual epiphany: “This bag contains all the ‘stuff’ we really need.” After reaching that ascetic realization, the personality slides next into the crucible; fluff vaporizes and substance remains. I now realize what a fool I’ve been. I wish this were some cliché epiphany, suitable for a pop-song, but my revelation is disappointingly unromantic. Meeting people all across the country, at all levels on the IQ ladder, caused me to reevaluate my own ranking. I realize I have been overstating my mental powers, fooling even myself.

I think that the 32 weeks of our quest, to date, has refined us both, calibrated us more accurately with the truth. Logan has learned the devilish details of a ‘pro skater’ career goal. I’ve seen through the “stuff” filling our basement. Before this trip, Logan low-balled his own intellect and I oversold mine. We head toward the home stretch, changed men. Could a child’s typical 6th grade year affect his father this much?

Matt Winkler tells Band of Fathers what inspired him to take his kid on a skateboarding tour of all 50 states.

Imagine this scenario: despite genuine effort, your eleven-year-old child’s reading speed is a year below grade level, and it takes hours for him to memorize the ten words for the weekly spelling test. Except for art, P.E., and recess, going to school becomes an exercise in humiliation. Your kid’s attitude toward school is spiraling through dread, bound for rejection. What do you do?

My wife and I faced this situation last May with our son Logan. He’s a bright kid, but has a mild LD when processing text (the “ripple out” effect is incredible). We felt we needed to come up with a plan to get him back on track. Our unorthodox solution leverages his passion for skateboarding and his naturally hands-on learning style, combined with the longest field trip in the history of sixth grade: 50skatekid.

Since Logan and I left home in Wilmot Flat, NH, last September, he has skated in 43 states. We’ve stayed with altruistic strangers all across the country (thanks to couchsurfing.org). We’ve walked the battlefield at Gettysburg, the White Sands of New Mexico, and the deserts of Nevada. We’ve visited many museums, met pro skater Mike Vallely, and made a deck with skateboard manufacturing godfather, Paul Schmitt.

When we started this journey, I had second thoughts. And at the end of each week, I’d ask myself: Would he be better off in school? For all 29 weeks so far, the answer has been clear: No. Way.

A typical weekday morning finds us in the local public library, knocking out the next chapter in textbooks borrowed from Logan’s school, or completing a module of his online English course. Afternoons belong to museums, skate parks, and the interstate. We’ve only spent six nights in a hotel so far, so evenings involve meeting new people, swapping stories and ideas, and imposing on the hospitality of our countrymen.

This recipe–for Logan, at least–has resulted in a huge jump in his confidence. Liberation from a classroom audience deflated his anxiety about reading. (He now reads for pleasure–on his Kindle–thanks, Mom!) Our tight student-teacher ratio means he masters content quickly and completely, resulting in feelings of academic success. Harder to quantify, but more valuable, is the life experience he’s gained, including the lesson: “If you can’t win the game, change the rules.”

We have seven weeks and seven states left until the finish line on Mother’s Day in Washington DC, but the journey is already a success. Logan believes in himself again. He has taken the measure of his abilities and found them equal to this epic adventure. Travel along with us at 50skatekid.com

What do you think of this amazing and inspiring journey? Have you as a father had to take drastic action to positively affect the academic or social life of your child?