How We Found Ourselves Home Schooling. . .

Now that you’ve had a chance to learn a bit about home schooling, let me introduce myself and my family. My husband and I have a family with two boys, a 10-year old 4th grader that lives with us and is home schooled and a 17-year old junior in high school that does not live with us and attends public high school. We live in the very home-school-friendly state of Texas where parental options are very flexible.

We home schooled our younger son in pre-school, really more for something to do than anything else, and then enrolled him in a private Christian school. He spent two years in Pre-K and Kindergarten, during which time we found that he was quite bored with many of the activities and lessons and was becoming a discipline problem, especially in loosely supervised activities. We changed schools to a secular preparatory school, where he spent two years with excellent teachers, but continued to have difficulties with behavior.

It wasn’t until third grade that we seriously considered home schooling. I was getting calls from the teacher repeatedly…I didn’t like the approaches they were using at school …my son was miserably unhappy and finally a very good friend of mine asked what I had observed in the classroom. I told her I’d been to school many times for class parties, to drop off things and I hadn’t really observed too much…what exactly did she mean?

A Day at School

That was when she told me something that taught me a great lesson. She told me to go and walk in that child’s shoes for a day. I was startled. That’s an age-old idea, but what exactly did she have in mind? The next week I found myself in a (very small) blue plastic chair in the back of the third-grade classroom, with a brown sack for lunch, a notebook and a commitment to stay from 8:30 to 3:00. Mind you, this was a very different agenda than my usual day!

I sat and watched as the class spent time doing warm up exercises, those who finished early read or busied themselves while others worked. Then they took a 25 minute spelling test, as each word was repeated several times and then they all waited while one student or another had skipped number 8 and didn’t understand number 12 and so on. Even I was doodling in my notebook by the time we finished that. . .

The morning progressed with a variety of tasks, including lots of down time, misunderstood directions, waiting for others to read out loud, science labs that went awry, and other daily routines for the students. If you’ve never spent time in an elementary school classroom, you may be surprised at how much time is spent in group organization. Even the best of teachers have to move a group through the activities that are given and it takes a while.

But on that day, I saw my son in a new light. He often finished his work early and had nothing to do—he isn’t good at occupying himself quietly and the results were disruptive—he and other students quarreled—he begged the science teacher to do the lab work alone and she refused—his love of learning was being destroyed and by noon of that day I knew I had no choice but to take him out of school.

Now mind you, this was not my intention when I went to school that day! I only went to observe to be better prepared for a teacher-principal-parent conference the next week. My husband and I had not talked about home schooling. We’d paid several months tuition in advance. I was in charge of the yearbook, for goodness sake! And yet, at lunch time that day I offered lunch at McDonald’s and my son and I had long chat. I knew I couldn’t send him back and he was ready to get out.

So, Now What?

I did take him out of school that day and called my husband who was, of course, out of town. "Guess what I did today, dear???" Fortunately, my husband is willing to support my adventurous soul and he didn’t panic, but he did ask, so now what?

And that was a big question. It so happens that I am a teacher. But I have carefully chosen to build my career around teaching adults and college students and have purposefully avoided elementary schools. I do have a Master’s degree in Adult Education and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction, but I know absolutely nothing about teaching third grade!

We made it through that year and the results were wonderful. I had a happy child again, deeply interested in learning, far exceeding the boundaries school had set for him and healing from his unfortunate experiences in the classroom. Every child is different, and you’ll have to decide for each child what is best for him or her.

With that as a bit of background on our family, I’ll tell you more as we go along about our journey of discovery. What I learned from this experience was to step in and take a good look at what was going on. Then I could make a decision about what as best for my child, rather than simply relying on the "normal" routine to determine how I built a foundation for success for my child.

Your Turn!

At this point, I'm going to encourage you to take a few minutes and introduce yourself on our class message board. This class is offered to parents across the country and those with children of all ages.

You may post as little or as much information about yourself as you like, but here are some suggestions:

1. Your First Name
2. Your County and State
3. The age of your children
4. Why you're taking this class at this point in time
5. Any special concerns or questions you may have about home schooling
6. Any other comments you'd like to make!

The Discussion Board for class can be found at this link:

This will conclude Lesson 1. I hope you've enjoyed the beginning of our class. Ponder the information we've talked about here and see how it fits with your family situation. In review, you should be comfortable with the following:

• The legal structure in your state for home schoolers
• The terminology used to describe home school options
• How to use this classroom and the Discussion Board

People have lots of questions when it comes to home schooling, and with each lesson I'll post a few that I hear often for your review.