Depending on how you know us, what I’m about to tell you may
shock you. You’ll either think we’re
crazy or maybe you’ll think we’ve seen the light. Maybe you will just be confused because you
have no frame of reference for the crazy thing we’ve done. That’s okay.
I’d have thought the same thing as little as 4 or 5 months ago.
Before I get into this I want our close friends and family
to just remember one thing. For the most
part, I know that you trust us. I know
that you think that we generally have it together and, up to this point, that
we haven’t screwed our kids up too much.
(If the previous statements don’t apply to you and you think we are
screwed up, and our kids are too, well then, you’ll have more ammunition in a
moment). I want you to remember the fact that you think of us as competent
individuals before you let your mind roam into the “THEY’VE FALLEN OFF THE DEEP
END” zone. Give us the benefit of the doubt.
Deep Breath
About a week before spring break we initiated stage one of a
two stage process which is going to dramatically alter our family
lifestyle. We pulled our middle child
from public school, (3rd grade).
Stage two will be complete at the end of this school year when our
youngest graduates from Kindergarten. He
won’t be going back in the fall.
We aren’t doing private school. We are homeschooling. Yes, it’s true.
But why would we do such a thing? How could we make this decision….did we think
it through? How can we possibly provide every aspect of a complete education at
home? What about socialization? How can we be more effective than trained,
certified teachers?
I’m going to answer these one by one, because I think this
will accomplish two things. 1. I won’t
have to keep answering the same questions over and over, and 2. I want you all
to know that we are taking this seriously.
I also want everyone to know that I’m not looking to convert anyone
else, or, to go on a rant in which I tell you all that public schools are
horrible and that you are a bad parent if you don’t educate your kids the same
way I do. I’ve encountered attitudes
like that and they bother me. So here we
go.
1.
WHY WOULD WE DO SUCH A THING?
Well, that’s a complicated question. Part of it is that we’ve watched our oldest
navigate the waters of public school for the last 10 years. He’s done great! In fact, he’s staying where he is. And we believe that’s a good thing. However, we have also watched a lot of things
happening in the schools he’s attended which have worried us. Some of the things he has encountered are
great and some not great, and looking to the future, we think that with
personality differences in our kids the other two might not handle some of
those not so great things as well. We
aren’t running away from the not so great things, but rather weighing them
against the negatives of other choices available. Once we weighed them all, the negatives of
other options seemed less numerous. No
education option is perfect. And we don’t
think it’s fair to say that there won’t be downsides to what have chosen. But we will face them as they come, and make
other choices if we decide it’s necessary.
What are the negatives within the public schools? Well, our answers might not apply to where
you live, or, maybe they don’t even apply to your child even if they exist in
your schools. So, it doesn’t really
matter if I list them all our or not. We
can also say, with relative certainty that after studying lots of different
models of education that our younger kids have learning styles that seem better
suited to things like the Classical Model, or Charlotte Mason Model, which
allows kids to learn in smaller environments.
This allows the child to quickly move ahead in curriculum if need be,
or, focus on a skill in a more vigorous way until it is fully mastered. We’ll touch on this whole ‘different model’
thing in a bit.
2.
DID WE THINK THIS DECISION THROUGH?
We can say that we have absolutely thought this
through. We both poured over research,
academic journals, and published studies.
In addition to that we browsed literally dozens of web forums in which
parents talked about the pros and cons of pulling their kids out of school and
how it worked out for them. We tried our
best to shuffle through, and weed out, propaganda that was either blindly pro
homeschooling or anti homeschooling. If
you’re wondering, there is no shortage of inflammatory articles or rants on
both sides of the issue. What we found
was this; homeschooled kids, in general, have a lot of academic success. When parents home school with structure, they
are actually more likely to have higher success than kids who go to public
school. The trend continues through
college. Does this mean we think our
kids wouldn’t have had the same success in school? No. We
are engaged with our kids and their educations, and honestly, we’d help them succeed
no matter where they were. But, with
that being said, we also recognize that we have the ability to do MORE outside
of a traditional model of education……we have no restrictions. And when your
kids are bright and capable and you suddenly see the possibilities available
when those restrictions are removed, it gets kind of exciting. So yes, we have thought this through. If you’re interested in some of the research
we based our decisions on I will post a selection of them here:
3.
HOW CAN WE POSSIBLY PROVIDE A COMPLETE EDUCATION
AT HOME?
This is a great question.
One I would have asked 6 months ago.
The answer is simple. You,
yourself, all by yourself cannot. Or, in
other words, homeschooling, the way WE are doing it. Is not isolated. We are not trying to do all of it all by
ourselves. Which brings in one of the
first big negatives of homeschooling. It
can be pricey. I recognize that some are
able to do it very economically by writing their own lessons etc., but that’s
not the way we are opting to do it. We
have bought complete curriculums for almost every subject. And by complete, we mean complete. They are structured with a script to lead
every single lesson. Really well done
and easy to teach. As the kids get older
the curriculum changes. However, we have
also joined an organization for next year called Classical Conversations which
is a pretty cool thing. I’m not going to
explain the whole thing here, but you can visit their website if you want to
learn more. Basically, we are following
a “Classical” education model. This
means the emphasis is on core subjects, (Math, Language Arts, Science, History,
Art, Music and Latin). It’s a holistic model
in which it all kind of connects together.
For instance, in history this week we learned about Richard 1 of England
and the Crusades, while in Art we learned about icons and illuminated
manuscripts…they all go together seamlessly.
With Classical Conversations we are guided through a very rigorous and
structured outline for each subject each year in cycles that rotate. Classical Conversations has different age
levels all the way through high school, during which time the kids start doing
both their regular school work as well as dual college credit. The classical model follows the Trivium of
education which is the Grammar Stage, Dialectic Stage and Rhetoric stage. It’s really interesting and I encourage you
to research it if you’re interested. But
back to the question. We are pretty
evenly equipped with backgrounds…one of us with science/math and the other with
English/Lit/History. Our degrees will be
very helpful although I don’t think they are absolutely necessary to
homeschool. A private music teacher is
giving a music/voice/and piano lessons to both the kids once a week. Special home school PE classes are available
in our city during school days, as well as art classes, dance classes,
orchestra, sports teams and pretty much any elective or club you’d find in a
public school. When you homeschool you
have to pay for these out of pocket, but there are a ton of options
available. And honestly, it would be
easy for a homeschooled child to be OVER scheduled in my opinion because there
is just the potential to sign up for too many extra things. But that’s a good problem to have going into
the next question…
4.
THE ‘S’ WORD….SOCIALIZATION
Ahhh….I am very guilty of muttering this about homeschoolers…”they
are going to be weird and unsocialized..”
I admit it, I thought it. You are
probably thinking it too. Luckily, the
research shows that this fear is absolutely, 100 percent, unfounded. Are there some weird homeschoolers? Oh yeah.
Are there some weird kids in public school? Oh yeah.
The truth is, the kind of socialization that we think our
kids need to have to be normal isn’t actually always found in a public
school. But it can be. It can also be found in a homeschool, and in
the classes, clubs and groups that homeschoolers join. Research shows that a huge majority of homeschoolers
test psychologically normal in all the categories that pertain to friendships,
peer relationships and social settings. In addition to that, homeschooled kids
are more comfortable socializing with a wide variety of people and ages. In fact, some of the articles I quoted above
show that homeschooled kids are more likely to be involved in social clubs,
civic groups and even more likely to vote as adults. I’m not sure why this is, unless it’s because
they are more likely to be exposed to these kinds of things as kids because of
super-involved parents. Rest assured, if I see my kids turning into strange
hermits who prefer talking to the cat instead of humans I will re-evaluate
things. Ha! In all seriousness though…the research right
now shows that kids who come out of public school are increasingly likely to
carry emotional baggage that follows them well into adulthood. Not every kid…but some. And that baggage affects their earning
potential, their higher education level, their relationships and a host of other
non-savory things later in life. I’m not
saying it’s every kid, or that MY kids would have had that happen….but if we’re
looking at the possibility of kids turning out weird from homeschooling than I
have to point out that there’s an equal or possibly higher chance that they’d
come out of public school screwed up. So
I think we can agree that this worry is pretty much negated by the alternate negative
possibilities of other options.
5.
HOW CAN WE DO A BETTER JOB THAN TRAINED,
CERTIFIED TEACHERS.
Well we probably couldn’t if we were comparing apples to
apples. If I was standing in front of a
class of 20 kids for 7 hours each day I would definitely fail miserably
compared to a certified teacher. They studied
the philosophy of how to teach kids in a traditional classroom. Luckily, I’m not teaching in a traditional
classroom. Actually, what I’m doing isn’t
even really the same thing. Basically it
boils down to being a private tutor. I
think we can all agree that there’s a huge difference between being a tutor and
a teacher. A tutor sits with one
student, one on one, and only focuses on them.
There is a reason why monarchs and royalty in the ‘old days’ hired
private tutors for their royal offspring.
Tutors work. Most of those
articles I listed above touch on this.
Homeschooled kids don’t have high academic test scores because their
parents are geniuses who teach with superhuman skill. It’s because their entire education comes
through private tutoring which we KNOW, 100 percent, without a doubt, is
superior to any other kind of teaching method.
But it’s clearly not a feasible model for public schools to follow. They can’t hire a tutor for every kid. Imagine what that would cost. However, what do schools do when a child is struggling? They send them to a resource teacher who does
what? One on one tutoring. In most traditional school models tutoring is
reserved for kids who need extra help.
But imagine if your entire education had consisted of one on one
tutoring? Imagine how much more you
could excel in those areas that you excel at? Imagine how much more you could
excel in areas you struggle?
Homeschooling is really one on one private tutoring. When it’s done in a structured way with
awesome curriculum it gets really amazing results. So no, I couldn’t teach as well as a trained,
certified teacher. But luckily, I’m not
teaching a class full of kids. I’m
tutoring two kids, one on one.
In closing, I just want to say how excited and happy we are
to give this a go. The kid we’ve already
pulled out is just flying through her work.
She is loving Latin and is already translating and writing full sentences
and conjugating numerous verbs. She has
discussed and memorized classic poetry, studied feudalism, the crusades, the
fall of the Roman Empire and poured over the amazing notebooks that Leonardo da
Vinci left behind. I’ve already seen her
master topics in math that she told me she hated and didn’t ‘get’, and we are
diagramming complex sentences and learning about science in a way that is much
more hands on than she could have ever experienced in a regular classroom. Next year when we go to stage 2 and start
with Classical Conversations we will have one regular school day a week, field
trips, and tons of opportunities to connect with peers and experts who are all
available to make homeschooling so much more accessible and feasible than it
has been in the past. It’s also important to
add that there is more than one way to homeschool. I’m sure we would be considered HIGHLY
structured. Some people are probably a
lot less structured than us. I don’t
want anyone to think I’m saying our way is the only way…it just fits us best.
And, if at some point we think a different choice would be
better for our kids we will do that with no reservation. We’ve only got them for a little while, and
while we’ve got them we’ll do our best to make that time count, wherever that
may lead us.
So that’s it in a nutshell.
We are homeschooling. And don’t
fret, we’ve got this. (I think). ;)
