Disadvantages of Homeschooling and Other Memories of Our Homeschool

Dear TEAMS,

In my last blog post about Homeschooling, I was being interviewed by a neighbor.  Here is the continuation of the transcript of the Interview, picking up with me talking.

Disadvantages of Homeschooling

I don’t believe the “socialization” issue, you could do a whole paper on the socialization issue, why that’s foolish.  A kid doesn’t learn their behaviors by being around other kids--that’s, that’s ridiculous.  If it was really true that there’s a “socialization” problem with homeschoolers, then there wouldn’t be school bullies. If there are bullies at your school, well they’re plenty socialized and they’re being socialized so what does that really say about that?  I don’t agree with that craziness.

However, there is validity to the fact that I’d like my children to really be around more diversity of beliefs. Our own personal faith stance is one of the Bible, but I really want them to be around kids who don’t believe the bible, so they can appreciate what it’s like to not believe the Bible and to see what their points of view are and to learn from them.  I can’t really toot the diversity horn [enough] because we do live in a very white, middle-class community.  I know that there are kids who are in a lower-class in the school system, but they still my kids are around a lot of kids who may not be [as well] off as financially as what we are. There is something about being able to have access to people who don’t believe what you believe and who see their life differently than how we see it and I don’t want to protect them from that, I want them to have the opportunity to use their brains to figure out what they think.  That is a disadvantage in terms of I have to make sure that I give them plenty of exposure to as much of that as I can.  Thankfully, because of our faith stance there’s mission trips and inner-city outreach and things like that that we can do.

Disadvantages to being homeschooled… it is a monetary burden on our family because public education is paid for by the taxpayers so we pay our school taxes but we have to buy our curriculum, we have to pay for our field trips, [pay for] anything that’s involved with academics. We have had to invest thousands of dollars to make sure they are learning.

I’m old enough that my kids weren’t allowed to be part of extracurricular sports at [our town’s school system]. In fact, we had had some run-ins with someone who’s no longer part of the school system about any sort of involvement in the school system. It was Governor Rendell who signed an Act when he was in office stating  that we need to have fair access to that and I am really very thankful for that and I think that our children have been an asset to the [town’s] school system because they wore the blue and white and they helped the Cross-Country team and the Track teams do very well.  They were a part of that, got to be a part of the teams there too, which is nice. I’m glad they got to be exposed to really good people, really good students, and you {smiles}.

The last disadvantage of homeschooling that I’d list would be a personal one, there are just some days I just don’t want to do school.  I mean, my life would be very different if I didn’t homeschool my kids because I would have 6 hours every day to myself. I could do more with my home-based business. I could be more involved in [volunteer work]. I [get] very emotionally drained from working my day and there’s a lot of volunteer opportunities I have chosen not to do. So those are some of the disadvantages. It’s work.

 Q: So last night you sad that there aren’t really “grade-levels” that you teach, am I right?
A: [Yes.]

Q: So would you mind like, explaining that a little more how that works?
A: Sure. Not every home-schooler is like this okay?  Some home-schoolers are very grade-level oriented. So they take classroom work, and they just do it at home, they “school at home.” Some home-schoolers are called “unschoolers” and they don’t believe that academic book learning has a place. And they want the child to go out and learn and they do guided learning with the child, they take a hike and look at the leaves, ok? That’s unschooling. I fall somewhere in between. I feel like school is suppose to serve the child and the child does not serve the school. Curriculum, what you use to learn, serves the child.  It’s a tool, but the child does not serve the curriculum. So if my child is not getting mathematical concepts, or is struggling with an emotional problem and needs to take some time off,  we stop the curriculum and we help the child deal with their emotional problem for days or weeks. Or, if the curriculum isn’t serving the child, we have to just stop the curriculum and say, “Okay, lets do a little bit of remedial work and figure out what you’re doing.” For instance [in] reading, it’s a fact that boys learn to read at, for the most part, later than girls do. Just because of the way, physiologically, their brain is developed. So I did not teach my children, my boys how to read, as early as I did with girls. So in terms of reading (most boys would be third graders would be around the age of 8) when my boys were around the age of 8, they didn’t know how to read yet and so they would not have fit into 3rd grade in [our] school system. They would’ve been considered remedial. However, right around 5th grade, everything’s clicking with them, and did not have to really teach them how to read.  I could sit down with them and I always read to my children—every day after lunch we’d sit down and we’d read--so they were being exposed to literature. I don’t want you to think that I wasn’t reading to the kids.  By 6th grade, they were putting 2 and 2 together and saying, “Hey every time mom says  the word ‘the’, it looks like that little cross, and that little line with a hump and that little curve with the line in the middle of it. That must be the word the!” They did that on their own. Now I’m not saying that every child would do that, that’s how I felt the curriculum could serve my children instead of my children serving the curriculum. My boys would’ve been so frustrated, soo frustrated if they had not been able to [pick up reading as fast as their classmates].  Then compounded with that, then they would’ve been put in the [remedial]class.  They can disguise it any way they want, they could call it the Cardinal group and the Bluebird group in the elementary setting but all the kids know that the Bluebird group was the “dummies” you know? Unfortunately it’s sad, and my boys would’ve been so frustrated with that. That’s how I don’t know what grade m children are.

[Another example is that] T is basically doing her senior project right now; she’s writing a novel. And so technically after this year, she’s going to finish it this summer, she’s basically kind of done with her English, because I’ve wrapped a lot [or other English and Writing instruction] into that novel. But for her math, she’s finishing Algebra 2, so she’s a sophomore in math.  You see how that works? It made more sense for her because she wanted to write a novel and I’m not going to sit there and say, ‘Oh I’m sorry, you have to wait till your senior year.”  So that’s, what the grade-level [thing] is.”

Q: My one friend, her and her brother are homeschooled and she goes to a place called a Co-op, have you ever heard of that?
A: “Yes, mhhmm. Sure.”

Q: So do you guys belong to anything like that?
A: “We don’t this year, but we have belonged to other Co-ops. Yep.”

Q: So then did they have like… elective classes there then or..?A: There are all levels of co-ops. In this area there are 3 co-ops where they just go every week and you’re taught by a teacher and you get your assignments for a week or 2 weeks and then you show up again in another 2 weeks.  Then there are elective co-ops.  For instance HATS is a co-op that is very drama-based. Puts on musicals, things like that, choral--their musical program they’ve gone to China for….”

A: (From T in another room) “ No Mom, that’s different, the co-op is called CLCHM, HATS just uses the space at the co-op.”

A: (Me) “Oh, I apologize, ok, well I stand corrected.  S was in a co-op this year with Bev. She lives 3 houses down. And he did science and English Composition. And Art.”

Q: So is a co-op sort of more like a ‘day-school’ and they just kind of give you something and you come home and your parents kind of guide you through?
A: Some co-ops are like that, that’s what S’s co-op is like but you can just have an elective co-op. Here’s an example: I did a field trip co-op one year. I planned 9 field trips, one a month, September through April. And a whole bunch of families from my church came to my co-op.  We went to the Whitaker Center, we went around town to local businesses, we… I’m trying to think of where else we we went, I think we went to the national clock museum. A co-op is just a group of people who are just doing things to supplement their homeschool. It can be like, well it can be academic or it can be just activities that you do together.

Q: Do you have to teach physical education?
A: Well if I was a homeschooler I would be required to. I don’t teach a physical education class just because I’m very fitness-oriented and a nutrition-oriented. So to be a successful adult, you need to know that you should exercise everyday. So all my kids get exercise everyday because its just required, that’s just what is required in our house. I have S in Boys Club baseball, M and E both are runners, T has her archery and has to take walks everyday. I don’t teach physical education because I’m required to by law, I do it because that’s what a successful adult does.

Q: Did you have to sign an Affidavit and get it notarized by the county’s superintendent or was that just thrown out of the window because you’re a private tutor instead of a homeschooler?A: I am in a legal gray area, being a private tutor. Not to the delight of many people though. {laughs}

Q: This might go with my question earlier about being in a co-op, but do you guys belong to any group or organization like HSLDA?A: Well the HSLDA, we did belong to that, [but] even they can’t actually represent us.  The law for private tutoring is a gray area in [our state], but we did belong to it because we really believe in what they’re doing, in terms of parent’s rights and their children.

Q: Have you ever done group home-schooling with another family before?A: Well I had a science co-op again where we did our science together with another family. Science is a good one to do with another family because it involves a lot of lab equipment and stuff so it’s just easier to go together and buy stuff.

Q: What would you do if home-schooling became illegal in the United States or [our state] where you couldn’t privately tutor your kids?
A: Wow. That’s a really good question.  I hope it never comes to that. I would fight it and I would go to jail because that’s a line in the sand for me. They’re my kids, I get to decide what happens with them. I’m not an irresponsible human being; I’m not a danger or a menace to society; I ought to be allowed to guide my children to adulthood the way that I see fit.

[Our Friend commented]: I read somewhere that it states, “a parent must ‘enroll’ their child, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be in a public school.” I mean if you give birth to your own children you should be able to choose how you want to bring them up.

[Me]: I totally agree with you there. Some people just need to learn how to agree to disagree though, and unfortunately some of them sit on the school board of the [our town] school system. I don’t think that the government knows what’s best for my child; I know what’s best for my child.

Q: What are your thoughts on public education?
A: Well, I want to make it very clear that I am not anti-public education. There are some kids who are home-schooled that I think would be better served by the public school system. They are few and far between and they are an extreme exception that the media kind of gets their claws into and makes the millions of kids that are home-schooled, they make people think that home-schooling is like that (what’s happening with these kids). I don’t think that public education is going to hell in a hand-basket. I do think that public education is not what anyone, including the teachers wants it to be. When I was student teaching, when I was doing my junior observation 20 years ago when I was training to be a teacher, all I knew was that I was around a whole bunch of people who didn’t like coming to work. They didn’t like what they were doing, they saw their school as a job, just another job. They didn’t see it as education and they started out really wanting to be a part of education and maybe changing lives but they just got [dragged] down.  All I knew was that the best thing that ever happened to me was my student teaching because that taught me that I didn’t want to be a student teacher in the public school system. It was too big for me to fix, and I was not being called into that area. But I don’t want you to think then that public school teachers are evil or the public school system is evil. I don’t.  I think there are a lot of really good people who feel like their hands are tied about what they can do. And I’ve met many of them and I feel really badly because they are extremely talented, smart, intelligent teachers who could just do so much more if things were different for them.

Advantages of Homeschooling

Dear TEAMS,

Our dear neighbor S down the street wanted to write a paper last Spring about homeschooling and I was one of her sources (as an interview).  I have placed the transcription in this and the next blog post, because as I read over it, I realized it said a lot about my convictions about what homeschooling is for me.  I have edited it for readability, and the full text is on my computer.

Interview with [Loving Mommy] about home-schooling on April 28 2012

Q: Do you need a certificate, license, or degree to homeschool your kids?

A: That is a good question.  You have to possess a high school diploma to homeschool. Technically my children are not even home schooled, they’re privately tutored because I possess a teaching certificate for [our state] and I have kept mine up to date and active with the state.  So they’re technically privately tutored, but they’re home schooled.   

Q: If you don’t mind me asking, why did you choose to homeschool them?

A: No I don’t mind (you) asking. The short answer is because it is right for our family, and that is usually what I say to people when they ask me why I homeschool. The longer answer is that before [Daddy] and I had kids, we were talking about the influence that we wanted have on our kids, and we also knew what being in public school had done to us as learners, and then to us as people. And I was mildly popular in high school, I was in the “Intellectual Diz” clique, and [Daddy] was not popular in high school and so he really understood what that was like. I didn’t like what I saw going on in high school because I felt like it was a lot of just “I’m here so that people can say I have done so many worksheets and read so many books” and it wasn’t about education. Looking back, though, you have to remember I was a 14, 15, 16, 17-year old so I didn’t have the wisdom of adults either. I did have some very good teachers thankfully. [Daddy] had some very good teachers, but they weren’t the majority of the teachers. So yeah.

Q: What do you think the advantages and the disadvantages are of home schooling?

A: Ok, let’s start with advantages first. Advantages of the children are that:

1. I can teach to their learning style. For example, my oldest daughter A is a very visual learner so I could do all sorts of things visually with her. I could do worksheets, I could do videos, and I could do things like that. My son S is a kinesthetic learner so he’s better at manipulating things and having 3-D things. If he doesn’t get concepts, it’s very easy for me to figure out how I can pull out manipulatives and help him get the concept.
2. Second advantage for the children for homeschooling, is that (and you know this from school) if you’re ever sitting in math class and lets say you’re even a good math student, you’re kind of getting it in Algebra or whatever, and then sometimes you have 5 days where you know you’re just not getting things.  It’s just not going in [the brain] right or for whatever reason you don’t get it.  Well with homeschool I can stop everything and I can say, ‘Okay, let’s spend some more time on this concept and lets approach it from a different angle.  Academically that’s very valuable to people because they learn the concept and it sticks with them. And I don’t have to rush through to get through it. Unfortunately in public school, they can’t do that.
3. The third advantage of home school is that we think it better represents what real life is, because nowhere except in the public school system or teachers in a public school system in adult life do you go to work for 9 months and then have 3 months off to do whatever you wish. And we felt like we wanted from very early on to teach our children what adult life is really like, because our goal is to raise successful adults. So when the children were young, we actually did school year-round.  I schooled through the summer so they understood that learning was a part of every day, their job was a part of their every day.
4. The fourth reason there’s an advantage to homeschooling is because, there’s a lot of stuff that we don’t want our children to have to be exposed to at an early age.  I was exposed to my first drug deal when I was in 7^th grade. And I just didn’t want to, I don’t, I didn’t want to have my children to have to see that and I got threatened by the kid who who passed the speed. So I don’t want my kids to have to deal with that. In my high school, kids were making out in the halls, and why should my children have to see that?  That’s stuff that isn’t a part of academic learning and it’s certainly not a part of everyday life. I mean when people wake up and go to the office, it’s not like people are making out in the hallway.
5. This rolls into point 5 which might be a corollary for you.  Only in public schools do certain behaviors happen. So we want it to imitate real life like the last point, but also in public school there are things that are accepted as part of public education that aren’t accepted anywhere else.  I think the [our town] school system is a very good school system from what I’ve seen from what I know the other area school systems are. I think they try to keep a handle on what’s going on but you know from a student’s point of view, what you really see, you see the smoking in the bathrooms, you see the kids making out in the hallways you know who got pregnant and who got the abortion, and why should you have to be exposed to that?
6. The last advantage I can think of off the top of my head is purely selfish for me.  Have you ever heard moms say, ‘Oh, they just grew up so fast’, or you see these moms or parents or grandparents saying ‘Oh yeah my kids, you just, you have them for such a short amount of time’ and all this.  I will tell you that whenever I think to myself  ‘Wow my kids are growing up so fast’ I can say to myself ‘and I’ve had them 24/7/365.’ I have gotten to take advantage of everything, not just first steps, and first lost tooth, I have gotten to be there.  Sometimes I had no idea that the kids were really stressed about something and because I was here, and I was available and they were homeschooled, I might be standing out there washing the dishes and they’d come in and go ‘Oh mom!’ and I’m not even thinking and then they just start talking to me about what was going on. So it’s a purely selfish thing.   I may still have regrets when my kids are gone, but I will always be able to say to myself ‘and I spent every one of the possible hours I could with them.’

So that’s a long list of advantages of homeschooling, I’m sure I could come up with some more. 

(See the next blog post for a continuation of the Interview)

What I Would Say to Teachers

Dear TEAMS,

I have gotten used to writing you letters these days, so much so that I found myself composing one to a group in our culture who is very expressive this time of year.  Here is what I wrote to them.

Love, 

Dear Professional Teachers,

I want to thank you for your contribution to society.  There is no way anyone knows what you have to go through every day to achieve the goals laid out for you in your jobs.  Most of my friends who are teachers got into teaching for way more than the administrative end of things and politics, which you have to do more of than you ever dreamed.  Thank you, thank you, thank you for choosing to teach and wanting to influence the next generation.

I’d also like to say that many of the teachers I know navigate the school waters well and never seem to lose their vision, mostly because they know they have a higher calling bestowed from above to make the world a better place.  These people rarely make comments about their jobs that confuse me.

 There are some things that confuse me about other teacher’s attitudes, sometimes, which I have gleaned from friends’ Facebook pages, interaction at community events, and when attending sports events at our local school.  I am expressing them here:

• Most people in the United States have to face all of the same challenges you do in your job, theirs just take on different faces.  I get confused when you adopt an attitude that no one could possibly understand what it is like where you work.  I think you underestimate the people with whom you are speaking.
• The only thing more frustrating than working with 24-30 young people all day?  Working with more than 24-30 adults who act like young people.
• Most people who go to work have to be at their place of work for at least 8 hours every day.  There is never a day where they will put something off until tomorrow so they can go home after 6 hours.
• Most people get 2 weeks of vacation a year.  Two weeks that they can sleep until they wish, stay up as late as they want, and do whatever they want all day.  Even if you are taking classes for professional continuing education, you are still experiencing time freedom for 10 weeks a year that most of the rest of the working people in America do not have.  And if you are working in the Summers to make up for your salary…good for you for understanding that you are in the same boat as the rest of us.
• Most of the rest of the people in America do not understand your dread at starting another school year, namely because they experience the dread of having to go back to work every Monday morning, 50 weeks a year.  I am confused because you never seem to show them the same compassion you want to have every August for that fact.
• Every single person on earth is underappreciated.  Most of them have people in authority over them who don’t understand them.  I am confused because you seem to feel you are in a special group, deserving of special strokes because you are underappreciated and teach school.  It makes no sense to me.
• I am confused because you are upset or offended that parents homeschool their children.  Yes, they really are saying that they think you cannot provide the same education that they can for their child.  Why does that bother you, if you became a teacher because you were concerned about education and children in America?  Thank God that you:  1) have an ally in that mission; and that 2) you don’t have their kid in your class—because parents who are that concerned about their children’s education would be as critical of you as you are of them.
• I am confused when you see a Snow Day as a special day of “vacation” to get your laundry done, catch up on some undone things, or watch morning talk shows and then cannot understand why people aren’t rejoicing with you.  Mostly, it’s because those people still have to get to their jobs through the weather and fit everything in their 8 hour day around the extra burden of their longer commute, all while figuring out what to do with their children because the school called a Snow Day.
• I am confused that you have tenure.  And the corollary to that is that I’m confused that you are bothered by CEOs making lots of money and then offered a Golden Parachute if things don’t work out.
• I am confused that you don’t like your salary and say teachers should earn more.  But since people have been saying that for the last 40 years, where were you when you decided to become a teacher and everyone was telling you that you wouldn’t make a lot of money?  It’s okay to not have realized what that really meant in light of having adult expenses—we all did that—but why exactly do you think you shouldn’t have to do what everyone else does to supplement an inadequate income?
• I am confused at your anger at society in general.  My student teaching was the best thing that ever happened to me, because I saw in the Teacher’s Lounge what most people who taught for a living were like.  Mostly, they were angry, mean, and petty.  They didn’t like people they worked with, and let them know about it.  They talked about problem kids in the school as an annoyance and not as a human being who desperately needed help.  Almost all of them were on anti-depressants or anti-anxiety meds and told me that I’d understand once I got to their situation.  The teacher I student taught under went on vacation to the Bahamas for a week and called in sick every day, so that I could “experience the real life of a teacher for a week.”

Yes, I am confused at so many things.  Because what it seems you are confused about is that you don’t teach to influence the next generation.  You influence the next generation just by showing up.  Whether it is a good influence will be entirely up to you.

Practical Tips to Consider Before Homeschooling

Dear TEAMS, 

I was speaking with A the other morning about her thoughts concerning homeschooling her kids.  She and J have discussed it, but since A is the first person who was homeschooled who J thinks is normal, she’s not sure he’ll be into it.  However, after 16 years (as of this writing) of teaching multiple children at home, I thought it would be good to have a reference point of things to consider before even approaching homeschooling as an option. 

1. You need to be in agreement with your spouse.  Homeschooling is demanding, complex, and even a thankless job as it is.  If your spouse has reservations about it, or even a “whatever” attitude towards it, it will make it even harder.  Daddy and I talked about homeschooling when we were engaged, me telling him I really wanted to do it and that it was the best for our kids.  Mistake.  Daddy needed time to understand what homeschooling was, he needed to figure out how he felt about it, and he needed to not be overwhelmed with what we were doing with our kids before we were even married.  I’m not saying your spouse has to be actively involved with it, but he/she does need to be convicted this is what’s best for your family. 
2. Homeschooling is about the student, not about the teacher.  I think every parent (except those who are exceptionally mature, which I wasn’t) goes through a phase where they think having children, homeschooling them, etc. somehow makes their identity or even makes them a good Christian.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Homeschooling is a tool to help a child, not a badge to be worn. 
3. Curricula serves you, not the other way around.  If the main educator and students of your homeschool detest worksheets, then I think it’s pretty obvious your homeschool curricula needs to not be worksheet based.  But there’s a corollary to this:  the child’s needs supersede the parent’s.  So the educator needs to be prepared to suck it up and find something he or she can live with if little Johnny or Janie thrives on auditory learning but mom or dad are visual learners. 
4. There is no one right way to homeschool.  As much as you will hear that at a Curriculum Fair or in curricula catalogs or from well-meaning friends whose lives have been simply changed by x, y, or z practice, you need to find what works best for you in that moment of that school year.  We have switched curricula in November that just didn’t work.  We have skipped whole sections of books.  We have taken 60-day breaks because of personal issues that had to be processed.  We have had 3 different students learning the same concept in three different ways at the same time.  Naturally, if you live in a State that has certain requirements for homeschoolers, those have to be tended to.

I imagine I will write future posts with other suggestions, but this is a great litmus test to get you started considering if you want to even go there.

Love,