If the ever-evolving corona landscape is making you consider homeschooling, you are not alone. I have had multiple people reach out to me in the past several weeks asking questions about homeschooling given the uncertainty of the coming school year. While I am no expert, I enjoy helping other families in figuring out how best to customize their child’s education. In a series of posts over the next few weeks, I will lay out some answers to the most common homeschooling questions I am asked:
- Should I homeschool? Can I homeschool? (Spoiler alert – yes, you can!)
- How do you choose curriculum?
- How do you organize your year/week/day?
- How do you teach multiple grade levels at once?
- How do you keep the littles happy and busy?
- How can I juggle my own job/career and homeschool?
Little of what I will share will be unique to me. I have gleaned wisdom from many moms over the years and will share that here with you. I will also point you in the direction of helpful resources no matter where you are in your decision process.
The first question to ask when considering homeschooling is why. Why do you want to homeschool? Whether you are considering homeschooling for a year or for the length of your child’s education, having a firm why will help shape the resources you choose and give you fortitude when the days get tough. It will help keep you grounded in your decisions and give you confidence moving forward.
Here’s how I found my why.
I never planned on homeschooling. Neither my husband nor I were homeschooled. My husband attended public school his entire career, including college and grad school. I attended private schools the majority of the time, with a stint in public school 4th-8th grade. For being a planner by nature, I never really considered school choice until my oldest was preschool age. When weighing the options for preschool, I honestly didn’t want to fork over the money. That probably sounds terribly shallow, but it’s true. My husband was deployed, we were far from family and I had the time. I knew I could teach her the basics of a preschool curriculum at home and save our family a lot of money.
The next year when Addison was in Kindergarten, we moved to West Point, where for ten months my husband was in a graduate program at Columbia University. He only had classes on Monday and Wednesday evenings and Tuesday afternoons. I knew homeschooling would give us the flexibility to travel and more opportunities to be together as a family, which was really important coming off of two deployments in three years.
So, it wasn’t until Addison was in first grade that I really thought about how long I was going to teach our kids at home. I don’t use the pronoun “I” by mistake. In the early years, homeschooling wasn’t a terribly joint decision. I had just decided that what’s I wanted to do, and Chad supported it. He enjoyed the flexibility to travel and not be tied to a school schedule. By first grade I was already pretty far down the path of “we are a homeschooling family,” but Chad wasn’t there at all. In the beginning, he accepted the decision with minimal reservations for the early years. As long as mama was happy, he was happy.
But a few months into the school year with a first grader, three-year-old, and new baby, I wasn’t happy. The yellow school bus looked like a ticket to freedom and sanity for us all. My friend encouraged me to write out the pros and cons of homeschooling for our family and to pray over the list. She said, “Academically, a one-to-one ratio is almost always better, but you have to know what’s best for your family overall.”
So, I sat down and made a list of the pros and cons of homeschooling as well as the pros and cons of a traditional school. Chad and I went over together and prayed over it. My tendency was to die on the hill of homeschooling just for the sake of saying I didn’t quit. But I knew I wanted what was best for my kids, for my marriage and for our family. The result was developing our philosophy of education together, which would serve as our guiding compass for all decisions regarding how we schooled our children.
“We believe our children’s education should produce lifelong learners who are passionately living out Christ’s call on their lives. We want them to be self-motivated, ethical, hard-working adults. We want them to be firmly grounded in Scripture and have a wide base of knowledge to be able to pursue what the Lord calls them to do and to be able to serve the body of Christ and the local church.”
For us, the pros to homeschooling that tipped the scale were time and flexibility.
Time – Discipleship takes time. For us, traditional school simply didn’t provide enough time for us to do that to the level we wanted to do it. We also wanted our children to have time together as siblings and foster those relationships over peers. Friendships are vital and we want our children to have friends, but for most people, sibling relationships are going to be more influential and more enduring than third-grade best friends. As a mom I also wanted to share in my kids’ excitement of learning and firsts. There is nothing like the excitement of listening to a kid read when it first clicks!
Flexibility – Being a military, travel-loving family, we loved the flexibility homeschooling offered for our schedule. When deployment reunions or moves happen in the middle of the school year, we can take as much time off as we need (easier for littles than older ones I will admit). We are free to explore places in off peak time periods and take school along as we need to. Aside from traveling, we also loved the flexibility homeschooling offered in our children’s education. I often say homeschooling is not able teaching every subject at home – it is about having the flexibility to customize your child’s education. Whether that’s online classes, slower paced curriculums, coops, internships, hybrid schools or dual enrollment, there are countless ways you can customize your child’s education based on their interest, learning styles and your family’s needs.
So, do I think homeschooling is the right choice for every family? No, absolutely not. Homeschooling is family decision that has to benefit every member of the family. Miserable moms and kids are not the goal. Learning and discipleship are the goals. This doesn’t mean it’s an easy road of sunshine and roses. Doing the right thing if often hard, but constant misery and hard are two very different things. There are many children too, especially ones with certain special needs, that would thrive better in a specialized school environment.
Do I think every family can homeschool? Yes, for the most part. If you have a desire to homeschool your children, you can do it. There are financial resources and free options for families whose finances would prevent them from purchasing curriculum. However, I do believe homeschool is difficult for two full-time working parents, especially with young children. It can be done, but there has to be considerable flexibility for at least one parent to make it successful. I am learning the art of juggling my career and homeschooling my children myself!
Do you have to have patience to homeschool? The number one response I get to homeschooling is “Oh, I don’t have the patience to do that.” My answer is always, “Yeah, I don’t either.” I hope the past few months have been a testimony to NO ONE HAS THE PATIENCE FOR IT. Parenting is a choice to live for something other than yourself. Homeschooling your kids provides lots of opportunities for growth for everyone. It provides opportunities to work through things together and grow as a family. There are ZERO homeschooling moms (or humans…) that are patient and kind and loving 100% of the time.
Do you have to be a teacher to homeschool? No. All that is required to homeschool is the ability to find the resources that will best help your child achieve success. Anyone can do that. Online chemistry and calculus classes are popular for a reason!
In considering whether homeschooling is right for your family, whether for a season or for a lifetime, here are some things you can do to figure out your why.
- Pray alone and with your spouse often
- Write out the pros and cons of homeschooling for your family
- Write out the pros and cons of traditional schooling for your family
- Write out your philosophy of education (This is a great exercise no matter how you choose to school your kids!)
- Talk to homeschool families about their experiences
Once you figure out your why, you will be in the position to move forward with the frequently asked question of: How do I choose the right curriculum?
That answer is coming up next time!