I have thought long and hard about this. I have had many discussion about it and I think I have finally come to a place in my mind and in my heart that I am ready to discuss it openly, because I think there are more people out there that are like me.
I have considered home schooling my kids for quite some time. I have always been a bit obsessed with the future education of my children, I started looking at private school tuition before my first child was even born! I’m pretty sure it has to do with my own crazy education. We moved a lot, so I don’t think we were ever able to accurately assess my education. In lower grades I was above average, not in any “super smart” classes but smart enough to keep going. In Junior High I took advantage of a bad family situation and my grades plummeted. I was smart enough to know when to change that around and did not fail the 8th grade as anticipated. (evil laugh)
When I started High School my guidance counselor was on his way out, retirement… I don’t think it was a complete lack of caring for my education, but the schools were so over populated, my Junior High transcripts showed a student that barely passed courses, so I was put in some pretty basic classes. I coasted and it showed. Within the first few weeks of class I had an English teacher observant enough to know that I didn’t belong in his class, I needed to be challenged, and that is exactly what he did. He worked with me and my counselor and got me in an English class that challenged me. I tried to explain that I also needed to change my math class as everything I was doing was review from seventh grade, but that was not a battle I won that year. The following year we knew better, I was in an advance English class, I couldn’t skip to geometry so I muddled through Algebra 2 by barely doing homework and still ace-ing tests, and I found a new love for science. I still wasn’t truly trying though. I was still able to be the “dumb blond” in the “smart kid” classes. I kept that going all through my Junior year of High School. I think that up until my Senior year my only electives were still regular course credit classes, and I even convinced my counselor to let me take geometry and Algebra 2 simultaneously my Junior year, completing all of my math credits before I was a Senior. I barely tried all through school and still remained a B average. In retrospect it is easy to wonder what I would have done had I actually tried.
So here I am, with two little girls of my own and the ability to teach them while I work. At first I didn’t think I would want to do it. Then my oldest started reading words just before she turned three. Sure, she knew the names of restaurants we went to regularly, stores that we frequented, but she started asking me what certain words meant as she read things over my shoulder! I was floored. And I thought, “I could really do this.”
I talked to people, read articles and blogs, researched curriculum. The first question anyone ever wants to ask is “WHY?” I would back off of the question. My first response always popped in my head “Because it sounds fun!” I could never actually say that though. Was I really going to risk my child’s future on the idea that Mommy thinks it’s going to be fun? So I kept thinking about that one. I’m not really worried about my kids getting bullied, they do that to each other. Bad language? HA! Between me and their father they have a pretty spicy vocabulary, we’re working on that. I have great faith that our public school teachers are wonderful people that try very hard to do their jobs, and I feel they get little support from the parents, making the job even more difficult. I’m not super religious, so it really has nothing to do with a strong desire to teach them a faith-based curriculum. Plus I had so much angst about the socialization issue. So I simply put it out there that we are “only doing Pre-School” as I don’t have the extra cash to throw out there, and things went really well. Samie LOVED doing school, she asks to do “school” every day, even weekends, even though we only work on things for thirty minutes to an hour. She is reading at about a first grade level, is practicing writing letters, loves to color, plays matching games and puzzles, counting, even a little addition and subtraction when we can. I still respond to the question with a “We’re just testing it out” answer. Until recently.
I am looking at a Catholic program as it is my husband’s religion, it is a pre-packaged curriculum and it is incredibly affordable, plus they have lots of support for the parents and students. I started reading a book written by the woman that runs the school and I thought “None of these reasons for home schooling are any that I am concerned about,” and I realized, I am doing this because it is fun. Every day is not fun. We have some days that are down-right awful and even others that I don’t “do school” at all because the day is just not working for me in that direction. With home schooling though, that’s okay. I love the idea of teaching my kids the things I know and learning new things along with them. I am looking forward to re-learning all the things in science and history that I took for granted the first time around. I scope out new places to visit as possible future field trips. The idea excites me and terrifies me and it challenges me, and I love that. I don’t want my two girls to grow up learning to fit into a stereotype, I certainly don’t want them to do like I did and be the dumb girl in a smart kid class. I want them to learn to challenge themselves and to learn to do things that would never have been typically accepted in a traditional school system. I would never have thought I would want to do this and it makes me feel more alive than so many things in my life.
When I was eighteen or nineteen I was going to go into the Army. Some recruiters came to my house and gave me a “practice” test to see what types of jobs I could qualify for. I scored an average score. When I took the actual test I scored in the high ninetieth percentile and was told I should take an additional linguistics test. Only two of us took the test that day out of hundreds of people getting processed. I passed, the other guy didn’t. I did not end up going into the Army but the door they opened for me was something no one else could have, I learned that I was smart enough to do anything. Well, actually they said I was not qualified to build bombs, to which I told them it was only because I never tried before. I don’t want my kids, my girls, to grow up and not think they are smart enough, that they have to be tested and told how smart they are by someone else. I want to be the one to challenge them, to teach them to challenge themselves and to never underestimate their own potential.
So, I am approaching the education of my kids one day at a time. At some point we may decide, together, that they will want to mainstream into the traditional school system, that will be okay with me as long as it’s what we decide together, and as long as my kids understand I will always push them. For now though, the reason that I am choosing to home school my kids, well that’s because I think it’s fun.
Kneading, Reading, Streaming