Thinking About Homeschooling Your Child? Here's One Family's Journey, Part I

Whenever I overhear conversations about homeschooling (from non-homeschoolers), there seem to be several comments that come up repeatedly. They all make me smile. Here are a few, just to give you the idea:

• Shouldn't you have a degree in teaching, to be able to homeschool your child?
• Isn't homeschooling just for crazy religious people, who want to shelter their children from the real world?
• Those children must not be well socialized.
• Homeschoolers are always more advanced than children in a traditional school setting - they all get into schools like Harvard and Yale.
• Doesn't he get bored, being home all day?

I'm not actually going to address each of those comments here, although they will be covered in some of my upcoming hubs. In this hub, I will only address the first comment, based on one family's experience. "Shouldn't you have a degree in teaching to be able to homeschool your child?" The short answer is, well - no.

There must be as many types of homeschoolers as there are - well, homeschoolers. I'm halfway into my first year homeschooling my only son, who is 7 years old. So far, it's been a rewarding and positive experience (for him too!). I must admit though, that I did not really "choose" homeschooling - it really presented itself to us as our only viable option.

My son spent Pre-K, Kindergarten, and First Grade in a small Catholic Grade School, located in a liberal, progressive, university area. The school was filled with vibrant international families, parents who were well educated, and were always involved in the latest and greatest. It was an intelligent, loving and close-knit community. For the first few years there I envisioned myself joyfully spending the next 8 years with these families.

My son did well through the Kindergarten years, but First Grade was immediately problematic. I received daily reports from his teacher about his lack of focus, and unwillingness to complete work. His reading seemed to be lagging behind the others, and as he fell behind in school, his behavior began to suffer, and disrupt others in class. I began to dread pick-up time, when I would study his face as he was walked out to the car, to see if it had been a "good day" or a "bad day". More often than not, it had been a "bad day", which meant we would spend the rest of the afternoon having temper outbursts, and resisting homework - which would renew the cycle of falling behind. After six months of this, I realized that they system was just not working for him. He was tested through our local public school system, who proclaimed him academically "at age level", to the jaw-dropping disbelief of his teacher.

By March of that year, when behavior charting systems, and remedial reading programs did not seem to be helping, I felt the need to stop the cycle. I had begun to speak to some homeschooling parents who I knew, and observed some of their lessons. I paid attention to the behavior of their children, and noted that they were quite "normal" - some were polite, some were not, some were quiet, some were very active. The real breakthrough for me came when I located a book on Amazon called "The Well Trained Mind" by Susan Wise Bauer. After inhaling this book during an overseas flight, I realized that this was something I could do, and something that might just change my son's experience of education. My husband and I decided not to wait, but to begin immediately.

It seemed safe to start by purchasing an entire curriculum, and use it for at least a year, before I branched out to anything else. There are an infinite number of curricula out there, that plan the entire year for you, tie together all the classes, and even have some fun online components for the students. One that had been mentioned to me as a quality program was the K12 Online School.

But by this time, I was well into the second reading of "The Well Trained Mind", and had begun to look up some of the recommended materials for each subject. The main reason I responded so positively to this book, is because it did not generalize. The author goes step by step through each subject, different approaches to teaching it, and then gives you a list of current materials and books that can be used. She lays out schedules for different ages of children, down to the number of minutes they should be expected to work on the subject, and how many days a week.

As I looked up the books and materials that she listed for each subject, I was reminded of my own love of learning, and was able to look back on my own learning experience. On Amazon, the comment section for each book became a treasure trove of information, as thousands of homeschooling parents have left detailed comments about each book, the different learning styles of their children, and recommendations for alternative materials that matched these. Within a couple of weeks, I had independently chosen an entire curriculum, and felt very confident about beginning to implement it.

Once we had decided to take this step, and had chosen a curriculum, I had to make a few decisions before actually teaching him.

While I knew that my son had gone through most of first grade, and had absorbed quite a bit, I decided that I would repeat the grade anyway, to make certain that I was filling in any "holes" in his learning.

By this time, my son also had an extremely negative association with school, and I felt that by repeating some of the information he had absorbed, I could begin to rebuild his love of learning. In addition to this, I knew that it would be a challenge to even get him to do any of the work without throwing a major fit. My reasoning was that early successes would give him the strength to push through later, when the material would be new.

Finally, I decided we would work straight through the summer. In combination with reviewing quickly the things he already knew, I could also begin with just a few minutes a day, and work up to a full schedule by September.

This was my plan. I formulated it within about a month, and then immediately began teaching my child according to the plan. Did I need a degree in teaching? No. I did need to have an understanding of who my son was, and what conditions he needed to succeed academically. I knew that I would learn much more in the upcoming months, simply because of the amount of one-on-one time I would be spending with him. As it turns out, I learned much more that I had bargained for. Please look for the next part of our homeschooling experience in an upcoming hub.