Hi! I’m Meg.
I’m a Christian, a wife, a mother and a homeschool teacher. My
husband and I have been married for 13 years. We have three
children: our oldest son is 12, our daughter is 8, and our youngest
son is 4. We have just started our 8th year of
homeschooling… and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I
didn’t always have that frame of mind.
I’m what you
might call an accidental homeschooler. I never intended to
homeschool. I didn’t even want to be a stay at home mom. I had
plans to finish up college to get a Bachelors degree in biology and
to go on and get a single subject teaching credential. However my
transfer request to a state school fell through because of some
strange circumstances. Then I got pregnant with our 2nd
child. After some prayer I realized that God had other plans for me.
After finishing up my last semester at a community college, I became
a stay at home mom to our son, and shortly thereafter our daughter.
When my oldest
son was four years old he started attending the local Head Start
program (a public preschool). He loved being around the other kids
and his teachers seemed nice. However things were not all sunshine
and lollipops. Behavior started becoming an issue. My son had
told me how he got to be the teacher’s special helper at lunchtime.
In reality, this meant he had been talking too much during lunch and
needed to sit next to the teacher in order to be controlled. Several
times his teacher informed me about fights he would get into on the
playground. Fights? At four years old? What? Apparently a friend
taught him to say, “You want a piece of me.” Yes, that’s just
what I want him to be saying. Then one evening I sent our son to his
room for a time out. He got upset and started yelling profanities at
me. What!? My baby is cussing me out? I was shocked to say the
least. We don’t use that kind of language, and I’m pretty sure
PBS doesn’t either. I knew it had to have come from his school.
My husband had talked with his teachers, and they said they would try
to be more aware of what the kids were saying.....So comforting. Then
one day that spring my husband went to the preschool to pick up our
son. He witnessed another boy doing something…well… quite
inappropriate with our son. That was it. That was the last straw.
We were done with all of the negative influences. We pulled him out
of the public preschool that very instant.
When my husband
came home he told me that he had decided that we should homeschool.
What? Homeschool? I didn’t want to do that! That would ruin all
my hopes and dreams of going back to school. Surely private school
would be better. The church we were attending at the time had a
wonderful private school. Some of my friends had kids that attended
there and they all loved it. The only problem is that it was
expensive. But surely God would provide, right? My husband’s
heart was stuck on homeschooling. Mine was stuck on private school.
So, I prayed for God to either change his heart, or change my heart.
He ended up changing mine.
I knew it was
what the Lord wanted us to do. Once I started looking into our
options for homeschooling online I started to get more and more
excited about it. I had spent countless hours online researching the
ins and outs of homeschooling. Curriculum options. Co-ops. State
Laws. Everything. Although I was really excited about homeschooling,
it was making my head spin. Then I found a charter school. It was
run by the California State Department of Education. The way it
worked was I was under the direction of a certified teacher and we
would use the curriculum that the school provided. They did the all
the record keeping, I did all the teaching. There were even on site
classes the students could attend. And best of all, it was free. I
received all the resources I could ever need. Once a month we met
with our teacher to turn in work samples and to get advice and
guidance. It was a match made in heaven.
In the first
years of homeschooling I loved that the materials were just handed
over and I was basically told what to teach. I was new to
homeschooling and I loved the direction and support that the school
provided. But as the years moved on I started to see how their
curriculum choices weren’t necessarily the best for my son. He was
bored with the Language Arts, he was struggling with the math, and
Social Studies wasn’t working out either.
Just about this
time we ended up moving to a different county and we had to change
things up. But in no time, I found another charter school that I
like even more. With our new charter school I can pick the
curriculum that I want! Sure, there was a list of vendors I have to
choose from, and we can’t order any religious materials, but there
is still freedom of choice.
Even though a
large portion of my family has worked in the public school system, I
had my reservations. After all, I was publicly educated and I
turned out alright. Sadly, public schools today just aren’t what
they used to be. We didn’t like the bad influences our son was
getting, even at the age of only four. I love the freedom of
homeschooling. I get to choose the curriculum my kids use. I get to
choose the speed at which we go through the material. Learning isn’t
cookie cutter. What works for one child, won’t always work for the
next. I have even seen that in my own kids. Throughout most of
the year my husband works from home. This gives us incredible
flexibility with our schedules. We can do day trips and midweek
trips on a whim. We have even enjoyed taking our school with us on
vacations.
For us,
homeschooling is about freedom. Freedom to study what we want to and
the way we want to. Freedom to choose who we socialize with.
Freedom to choose when and where we do school on any particular day.
Freedom to be us.
I have always
liked this quote by Stephen Moitozo:
“Because
homeschooling is not…
The same kids
In the same room
Doing the same
thing,
…at the same
time,
In the same way,
To achieve the
same results
Because they are
the same age.”
Thank you for
reading, I hope you have enjoyed our story. I don’t have my own
blog…yet. However, I do have about a bazillion Pinterest boards,
you can check them out here: http://www.pinterest.com/shanksalatte/
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Thanks for sharing your story Meg!
Find more Homeschool Diaries Posts HERE
XO Danielle
Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube Channel!
I am a Christian and was totally educated in public school. The ill will and snobbishness toward the public schools today really bothers me. I feel I benefited greatly from going to a large high school with advanced, general, and practical classes, several kinds of labs, opportunities to be in band, orchestra, clubs for any interest, year book staff, debate team.......the list of what was available is nearly endless.
ReplyDeleteThe class discussions in the advanced classes were so mentally stimulating. This was partly because we came from different backgrounds and cultures.
School is supposed to prepare us for life. In the adult world of work, we have to know how to live by our own beliefs while getting along with and working alongside many different kinds of people.
My religious education came from my parents and my church.
The public schools, paid for by all and available to all, helped to make this country great. They helped keep us from having the kind of rigid, class system that exists in some other countries.
I agree with Paula's comments above. I support homeschool as an option, but I also think that we should be careful to avoid sweeping generalizations about the "horrors" of public schooling. I'm sorry for your bad experience and I think it's great that you have found an alternative, but I hope you do not simply reduce all of public schooling to "bad influences." Considering that the majority of my (wonderful, kind, and compassionate) classmates at my Ivy League university went to public school, I don't think that's fair or accurate.
ReplyDeleteThat said, when my children have unsavory experiences at school, I am grateful for the teaching opportunities that they provide. I trust that their teachers redirect the students toward appropriate behavior, and we, at home, discuss the situations in light of our family values. In this way, I believe I am empowering my kids to become independent and value-driven members of society. They'll know how to make right choices even when I am not around, which, naturally, will be less and less as they grow.
I personally attended public school and was home schooled. For me, I succeeded at home and fell behind in public school. For some, public school does not work at all because its a one size fits all thing, especially since the no child left behind was initiated. My little ones aren't old enough for school yet and I honestly haven't decided what I'm going to do. For me, high school was a horror story, we dealt with bomb threats, fights that left its marks down the halls, teachers with grudges against my family due to my uncle, etc. Where my little family lives now, Preschool through 12th grade are all on the same plot of land. The crime rate in this town is minimal. We have small classroom sizes and I teach nutrition class so I am in the school all year long. There are so many factors as to how well a child will succeed in either setting. Just because you did well in that setting, doesn't mean your children will.
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