Homeschooling

To Homeschool or Not to Homeschool:

Our Family’s Quanundrum



     Before we begin discussing our reasoning for our decision, we want to remind you that this is why we chose this for our family and not proclaiming this to be an absolute truth for all families. It is what we believed would be best for our family during this season of our lives, and is not a forever plan for our family.

     If you had asked us years ago, before or immediately following having children, what we thought our children’s educational future would look like it would have included public school….no debate. I was even one of those people who cringed at the term Home School. Who are these crazy cult like peeps sheltering and brainwashing their kids. Don’t they know how socially inept these kids will be?!?! I am thankful to say that God has humbled me in my judgments, and many others for that fact.

     So what began this change of heart and thinking, besides God himself? Well, as schooling began to be on the horizon we found ourselves wondering what this was going to look like for our kids. I began researching districts and information to learn more. In addition to all of that, our eldest Dean was really struggling with obeying and had a very strong willed nature. We were quite unsure of what this would mean for him in a school setting and fully believed it was not a teachers job to get our son to obey. That was our responsibility. We are very happy to say that the majority of those behavior issues, and rebelliousness have been resolved in our little man’s heart and behavior! It has been an amazing thing to watch God soften his heart and put in him a desire to obey. This led however to us sharing our concerns about our son and school with others and we began hearing from a more and more of them about home schooling. It seemed as though many people we knew were either planning on home schooling or already did. We were still insanely hesitant about the whole thing but decided to hear some of them out, do some of our own research, and pray about it.

     That took place for about a year or two before we finally made our decision. To be perfectly honest, we could have truly gone either way. We saw wonderful things that our local public school offered, and we also saw the added benefits of home schooling. We also saw many downsides to both. It seemed to be nearly tied in the pros and cons. I shared my concerns with Matt. I was very overwhelmed to have to partake in this decision not really seeing a clear right or wrong. So Matt offered to release me from my struggles and just make the decision for our family and carry the weight of that. I am so thankful he did because I would probably still be wrestling that one out. My mind is not a very quiet place and can be ever so indecisive. He said we would work together and try this out. If we got into it and thought it truly wasn’t working we could either try to go about it differently and see if that worked, or we would could just put them into public school after all. So that is where we stand as of now.

     Here are some of the components that got us excited to home school:

1. It offers us a freedom to teach our boys, not only through book study and structured learning time, but also though travel and experience and that was huge to us! When Matt gets offers to travel for work, we can all go as a family and use it as a great way to incorporate the new places and cultures into their learning.
2. It also offered us more of a means to be part of our kids education. With Matt working during their school hours and me home with all the young kids, we wouldn’t really be free to volunteer in their classroom and be part of that aspect of their life, and we strongly desired to.
3. Another part that was big for us was the freedom to design a curriculum around their personality and learning styles. The point of this is to cultivate a love for learning and to create a good basis for their lifelong learning to stem from. We want to see them succeed at learning not fail.
4. We can also accelerate or decelerate their learning speed as they need. Dean is more ahead and seems to pick things up quicker and this won’t confine him to a Kindergarten curriculum if he is on a 1st or 2nd grade level. It will also allow us the freedom to slow down the pace until he is fully able to understand a concept before we move on. Ensuring he really gets it.

     In all of this, we do acknowledge that this means more work on our part. We will have to add school lessons, teaching time, and correcting to our daily responsibilities. This was a huge area I struggled with as I am no Super Mom and my husband already has a seemingly full plate. When I shared these concerns with Matt and others they all were very encouraging, sharing their beliefs that I could manage it all. Appreciating their confidence I still doubted. Matt however didn’t desire for me to handle it all. He shared how he wanted to be part of making the monthly lesson plans, teaching the kids some of their lessons, and attending field trips. This was all very reassuring as I realized I wouldn’t be the only one carrying that load. Another area that we will have to be more intentional about is in making efforts to keep the kids well socialized. We have a good head start on this being as though we already have a built in friend group for each of them with all their brothers. We also are constantly getting together with friends and their kids in large masses through parties and church. But we do want them to have more. We imagine this will be through sports, extra curricular activities, community events, volunteering, travel, and much more.

     Our approach will probably be more of a structured one as that seems to be a necessity in our busy lives if we ever want to accomplish anything, whether that be school for the kids, time for Matt & I as a couple, his work and school, our home projects. We have a lot going on and really have to be disciplined with our time management and organization- which can seem like an oxymoron in a family of five with three little boys.

     The latest element we were introduced to through this process was the many different styles of home schooling. Some of which are actually connected to the school districts. Matt and I researched more and found many programs in our state that merged the benefits of both. We ended up narrowing down the programs we were interested in and got excepted to one. It is known as HEP (Home school Exploration Program). They offer quality educational support to home schooling families in their program. This is through district teachers that are made available to work with us. To help us to design lesson plans based off of the curriculum of our choice, with the goal of having our child meet all of the State grade requirements. We also are allowed the opportunity to use many of the districts online resources and curriculum libraries. In addition, we are given an educational expense fund allowance based on our enrollment status and credit numbers. This allowance covers curriculum, and activities such as art classes, music lessons, YMCA memberships, sports, tutoring and so on. They also cover field trip expenses for the child and attending adult. This program allows us the freedom to home school our kids, while minimizing the financial burden, but also allowing us to tap into the resources of the wonderful teaching staff. This seemed like a great opportunity for our children and our family, and we are very excited to begin it this fall.

     We fully acknowledge that this is going to be a lot of work and would never say this is the only way. This is just what seems to be the best decision for our family at this point and we are not closed minded to the fact that this may change down the road. With all that said, we are excited for this opportunity for our family. We will be sharing and posting about this journey more as time goes on. Curriculum we enjoy or didn’t find so helpful, fun field trips, activities we enjoyed, and tips on things that helped this process or hindered it. Keep checking back to see the latest news for our family and this journey.