Adventures in Homeschooling

I had never thought much about the prospect of homeschool, like most parents whose children started in the public school system at age five. But as my children came home year after year and conveyed the things they saw, heard and were taught I started thinking a little more about it. My mother and I had done some research about homeschooling. We had leisurely been perusing the internet for several years and my mother was completely sold on the idea. But like so many parents who consider homeschooling their children, I was mortified that I was going to ruin them if I tried to do their schooling myself. I was afraid I wasn’t smart enough to teach a child the subjects required to keep them up with national standards so they would have an opportunity to go to college. My wonderful mother pointed out that all schooling was done in the home to begin with. We are the parents. We were put on this earth to teach our children. So why are we now blindly putting our faith in someone else to essentially raise our children? Public schools use a “standard curriculum” which means they have a “one size fits all” system. If your child has a hard time learning something the way they’re being taught, you are not likely to convince the teacher to try a new approach to help just one child. The general attitude I have noticed of the public school system is “What’s good enough for one is good enough for most”. That is not to say that there are not wonderful caring teachers in the public schools. Unfortunately it is pretty much out of their hands if they want to try something “new” to help the kids.
I am a single mother of two and I also work and go to school so I didn’t believe I would ever have the time required to teach my children from home. My mother reminded me she works from home and said she would be perfectly willing to help me on the days I am at work. I work twelve hour shifts so I only work 2-3 days a week which is also much more conducive to homeschooling than a Monday through Friday 9-5 job would allow. This was another reason I was willing to look into it further.
With a couple of my major fears allayed, I decided to look more seriously at homeschooling. I began talking to people at work. To my surprise almost HALF of everyone I spoke with homeschooling their children! I was amazed and with the information I was getting from my co-workers I was also very encouraged. After that I threw myself into my research coming up with all kinds of wonderful resources including a home-school consultant at our local library who has become an invaluable resource for us.
God was truly putting the path before me. He gave me a good running start exactly when I needed it. If I had waited to find out all that I was learning through my mother’s and my research, we may have been completely unprepared when I had to suddenly pull my son out of school last year. My son, who is now eight years old, has had emotional issues since my divorce from their dad that was beginning to affect him at school. He was becoming more and more withdrawn and quiet. He would get in trouble for not doing his work fast enough so he slowly but surely quit doing any work at all. As he quit doing his work, he would sit quietly at his desk, not bothering anyone but also not doing his work, so his teacher would get onto him even more. It was a terrible cycle that spiraled out of control.
Eventually, he was just going to school, sitting at his desk, getting in trouble for just sitting at his desk, and coming home incredibly stressed. I could see his love for learning burning out quickly. I was so angry. I had many meetings with his teacher and finally met with his teacher and the vice-principal. I asked for him to be moved to a new teacher only to be told that this principal did not believe in moving children into a new classroom simply for “behavioral problems”. I was appalled because it was his teacher who was causing and then exacerbating the “behavioral problems”! We had our last meeting right before the Christmas break. He did not go back to public school after that.
My mother (my partner in ALL aspects of my life- she is truly a gift from God!) and I found ourselves thrust into the world of homeschooling! We had learned so much through our research but felt very confused about how to start since everything had happened so abruptly. We went to The School Box to start getting supplies and see what kind of curriculum they had. They had several curriculums but none of it seemed to match up to where he was. So we decided to get several workbooks to start with and see just where exactly he was in his second grade education and what kind of learner he would be at home. We knew it would take some time to find a rhythm and form good habits. So we started out easily, going over the very basics and built up from there.
We learned so much about my son in those first few weeks. But the most important thing was that little sparkle that had almost completely disappeared from his beautiful eyes was back! He loved being home with us and not having to feel the stress of a teacher looking down at him. As we expected, the new wore off and he started balking at doing any work at all. Then we saw the emotional problems surface a little at a time. We worked through each little issue that emerged a step at a time and helped him through a lot of his issues. We are still working through some of them but knowing how well he has done with us versus what could have been if I had not taken him out of school makes me cringe at the thought.