When I first started considering homeschooling my children, one question I kept asking everyone was "Why did you start homeschooling?" And one of the best pieces of advice I was given was to write down my own reasons why we ended up making the choice. Here's why we eventually pulled our kids from traditional public schools.
1. Happy Family Time
My number one reason for homeschooling was to change the dynamic of our day. Prior to homeschooling, our school day usually resulted in 30 minutes of fighting in the morning before school ("Get out of bed!" "No, seriously, get out of bed now!" "You can't wear that -- it's against the uniform standards." "Where's your homework!?!?!" "Get in the car -- we're late!"), and then after school it was several hours of fighting ("Change out of your uniform." "You need to finish your homework." "Stop watching TV -- you aren't done with homework!"), then dinner, then cleaning up dinner, then getting ready for bed. Oh, and of course, homework wasn't done, so we would stay up late with a tired, frustrated, angry child who we were begging and pleading with to just finish the dumb worksheet. By the end of 2016, my oldest was halfway through 5th grade and my second was halfway through second grade, and I was just DONE with this routine. We were trying all sorts of changes to our parenting attempts by implementing Love and Logic, and while it was helping in some ways, school days were still just awful. I LOVED our summer breaks, and spring break, and basically any day that my kids weren't in school. We don't have a perfect home life with no fighting and spotless floors by any means, but it was night and day difference between school days and non-school days. I was starting to see my days as "happy time" (when the oldest kids were in school, or non-school days) and "angry time" (the times before and after school). I spent my afternoons looking forward to bedtime, and then hating bedime because it meant the next day was getting close to starting. I absolutely hated that fact that I didn't want to be around my oldest kids 5 days a week, and I would have done just about anything for that to change.
2. Freedom to be the parent
Around this same time, I was starting to get frustrated with feeling like the schools were telling me how to parent my children. I felt like I was getting judged if my child didn't complete his homework every day (regardless of how well he was actually doing in the subject -- I had a child acing every spelling test but getting in trouble for not doing his spelling homework). I got emails about my kids being late to school, which was salt in the wound because I already felt like my mornings were just plain awful. I felt bound to vacations that fit within the school's calendar, and stressed about my kids not having unexcused absences. Basically, I stressed about how the school saw me as a parent, and not whether I was actually doing a good job as a parent.
3. Freedom to go at our speed
Without going too much into the long story, my oldest has had a love-hate relationship with subject speed. Most of the time, he keeps up just fine, but every now and then he'll fall behind and gets run over in the process. Not only will he struggle with a subject, but he'll take a huge hit to his self-esteem. He would frequently tell me, as young as 6 years old, that he's "just no good" at that subject, that he's stupid, and so on. He'd come home with a bad grade on a test or quiz and you might as well have tattooed "Stupid" on his forehead. Homeschooling will allow us to get rid of those assessments, and just focus on learning the material for learning's sake, and not for the test.
Meanwhile, my second son was frequently bored. He would do really well on tests and quizzes (when he could focus), but refuse to do homework. He'd easily get bored in the classroom and get in trouble for talking or walking around. In his last year in the public school, he was diagnosed with ADD. Personally, I feel like the classroom environment contributed negatively to his ADD -- it was asking him to do all the things he didn't want to do when he didn't want to do them, and to do it quietly at a desk. But, change up the format and he was just fine. He struggled answering math questions when given a full sheet of them, but give them to him one at a time and he would do great. Let him walk around or make a game out of completing a worksheet and he wouldn't have any (or as many) problems, but make him sit quietly at a desk and he would go crazy. Plus, he always seemed to have no problems, other than focusing, on his homework. Everything just clicked, and I never heard him say "I don't know how to do that." It was easy for him--too easy. Homeschooling will allow him to go at his speed and cut out the busywork that bores and frustrates him.
4. Freedom to explore
I've always wanted to incorporate travel into my kids' studies. What better way to have history come alive than walk the same streets as Benjamin Franklin, or see the Constitution in person? What better way to make math come alive than bake cookies and understand the difference between 1/8 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp salt. I wanted my kids to LOVE learning, and not learn because they had a test coming up. Plus, lets be honest -- how much do you actually learn when you cram for a test? You may remember enough to pass, but did you actually LEARN it? I wanted my kids to learn, not just pass tests.
5. Testing
I've kinda touched on this, but I think schools are spending way too much time on testing, especially for elementary schools. There's weekly spelling tests, unit math tests, science tests, reading (DIBELS) tests, SAGE testing, etc. It takes up so much time! And add to that all the prep work for the tests. And why? What purposes are served by testing?
1. To let the parents know how the child is doing.
2. To let the teacher know how the child is doing.
3. To grade/judge the teacher/school/school district.
You don't need this in homeschooling. I know how well my kids are getting the subjects by talking to them. I don't have a classroom of 25 or 30 students, so I don't need a test to tell me that. I can free up so much of my kids' time if they aren't being put through so many tests. Add to that my concerns with our benchmark test system SAGE (see, for example,
here and
here and
here [the FSA is SAGE --
Florida purchased it from Utah]), and this was a good reason to pull my kids out of public school.
6. Miscellaneous
There were other factors that influenced our decision to homeschool. High on the list (though not listed above) was religious influence -- I feel like God led me to this decision. I've also had many other homeschool families swear that friendships between their kids improved after they started homeschooling, and I would love that to happen. I wanted to be more involved in their schooling but it was getting harder and harder as our family grew larger. When my oldest was in kindergarten, I volunteered in his classroom weekly. As we grew from a family of two to a family of 5, my available time (and access to babysitters) became slimmer. I tried to stay involved through emails to the teacher, field trips, homework, and more, but I always felt like I didn't really now how my kids were doing -- how they were getting along with other kids, how well they were understanding the material, etc. Homeschooling is cutting out the middle man (the teacher) and allowing me to be involved while still allowing them control in their learning. I also was concerned about what was or would be taught to my kids that I didn't want them learning at such young ages, either taught by the teacher or learned from the other students.
So, why did YOU start homeschooling?
A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-First Century by Oliver DeMille -- an interesting read about an approach to education taken from how many of the Founding Fathers were educated. Education is focused mainly on those ages 12 and up, and using primarily literature to learn, but not all literature: classics. A classic is not defined by how long it has been around or by whether the school systems deem it as such, but a classic book is one that inspires greatness. This was one of the first books I read on homeschooling, and I loved the ideas of how to use literature to teach all subjects, even math. We have enjoyed reading several books on the classics lists, though not all have captured my kids' attention as I would have hoped. You can view more about TJEd on their website.
Teaching from Rest: A Homeschooler's Guide to Unshakable Peace by Sarah Mackenzie. This book gives homeschooling parents a reassurance that your child will be okay. As mentioned, my biggest fear is that I will fail at this, but Mackenzie reminds us that we need to put aside our fears and anxieties and worries in order to be in the proper spirit to teach. If we are anxious, our kids will feel anxious. If we are at peace and happy, they will feel comfortable. There is a lot of reminding that God will bless us as we attempt to raise our children well, and this is an aspect of the book that I loved. I bought this book as an audio book, and will re-read (or, rather, re-listen to) it regularly.
My current read is Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life by Peter Gray. This book has taken me the longest to read but it has been one of my favorites so far. Peter Gray is a common name among the unschool community. Unschooling is based on the idea that children will learn everything they need to learn to become successful adults if the adults get out of the way of their learning. We destroy our children's natural desires to learn by insisting that they learn this subject, and this topic, this way, on this day, at this time, rather than waiting for them to discover and learn the subject when they are interested and ready to learn. Just as our children will learn to walk and run without our specifically trying to teach them as such, they will also develop loves for certain subjects and find ways to support themselves doing what they love. Dr. Gray's book especially appeals to me because his background is in psychology (he's a research professor in the Psychology department at Boston College)--as is mine--and his arguments are all well-backed by research studies in psychology, sociology, and anthropology. He brings back my love of psychology while reminding me of the amazing potential that my children have.
