I’ve had a lot of people asked me what would spur someone to
choose home education “at a time like this”? I assume a time like this means “a
time when my husband is predicted to be absent or nearly absent from family life
for the next several years,” or “a time when I have a grade-schooler, a pre-schooler,
a toddler and an infant in my care”, or “a time when I could begin doing a few
more things for myself instead of being constantly surrounded by the needs of
others.”
To these questions, there are many answers. And today, for our family, I believe there are three central reasons we
decided it was time to come home.
1) Schedule
Phil works a demanding schedule of long days and lots of
weekends, with interspersed days off (these are frequently week days). When we moved last
year and it was still summer, if Phil was off on a Thursday, we had a family
beach day. If he worked through the weekend, I took the kids to get bagels and
then brought them to the park by myself.
When kindergarten started, we suddenly had two rigid and competing
schedules to contend with. Cleveland was M-F, 9am-4pm, while Phil’s schedule
continued to be all over the map. Now on random Thursdays off, we could still
play with Papa, but Cleveland was left out. And if Phil worked the weekend, C
didn’t get to see him. At all. By spring time, we were all feeling drained. In
April, we were fortunate that Phil was able to take his one and only week of
leave during C’s spring vacation. It was a great time for our family. But in
the nine weeks that followed, as Phil slogged through two grueling rotations
and Cleveland was back to “kindergarten as usual”, he didn’t spend one day with
his dad. Phil’s only days off were school days and he worked every weekend.
“Will Papa be home?” was the question of the day, every day, every hour.
Homeschooling allows us to have family time when Phil’s
schedule allows. Now Fridays off can be museum days, pajama party days, and Thursday
night can be movie night or “let’s get frozen yogurt” night. Not only can we
take a weekday “off” to be with dad, we can (and very frequently do) homeschool
on the weekend.
We can maximize our limited family time, and I have some way to
occupy us on a Saturday. Win. Win. Win.
2) Continuity
As we project what our family life will include in the years
to come, moving is a guarantee. As a military family, we can expect to move as
often as every two to three years, likely across the country and possibly overseas.
This raises lots of questions.
How will
my children adapt?
How will school be for them in North Carolina when all the
social studies they’ve learned until now has been about the history of
California?
What happens when we end up in a state that hasn’t adopted the
Common Core standards?
What if we’re in Japan and they’re at a Department of Defense school?
Won’t they have enough adapting to do without worrying about whether they know
the right stuff for the school?
Homeschooling puts us in charge of their learning. We choose
the curriculum. We set the pace. A mid-year move is no problem. We don’t have
to worry about pulling them out of one school, missing several weeks during
relocation, and re-enrolling in a new school. If we need to take two months off
in May and June to prepare for an upcoming move, we can, knowing that we can
pick up school in July.
We ensure continuity because school is no longer an
institution, but a dynamic and mobile part of our family.
3) Customization
When I referenced Cleve’s school experience from last year,
I mentioned that he was learning, and doing relatively well. This is true. He
wasn’t failing and he was progressing in every subject. But at home, I became
aware of several troubling things.
He loves math. He gets math, and he wanted to do more math
than what was offered at school. He had no trouble completing the assigned math
worksheets, but he wasn’t really engaging with the subject matter. So I
purchased a math curriculum and set about allowing him to go at his own pace at
home. Once he finished his assigned math, we were allowed to do “fun math”. His
understanding of math concepts blossomed, and we began this year midway through
our first-grade curriculum.
On the other hand, Cleveland was struggling in reading. The
trickiest part was that he didn’t really
appear to be struggling. He was keeping up with the phonics-based assignments.
But he wasn’t actually learning phonics. Instead of recognizing phonemes, and
sounding out words, he was creating a cache of memorized words in his head.
Essentially, he turned every word into a sight word, learned it and banked it
in his brain. Wow, that’s a lot of brain power to memorize words by sight, and
it doesn’t help you learn longer more complex words as you progress in reading.
With this adaptation, as he advanced in reading, the work
became harder and harder and he got more and more frustrated. In short, he was
reading, but beginning to hate reading. What a terrible thing! I decided I
didn’t care how well he was reading, as long as he was liking it. So we spent
the summer getting back to basics. I reintroduced phonics, and we took it slow.
In addition, I made sure I was reading plenty to him, from a variety of
sources, and including plenty of subjects he was interested in. We continue to
visit the library at least once a week, and load up on books. The change here has
been magical. Cleveland’s not a gifted reader. He’s a good reader who really
REALLY likes books.
We can spend more time on aspects where he struggles, breeze through concepts he understands, and we’re
gifted with extra time on things he’s most interested in. More wins!
The bottom line (and
this was the driving-home point I made to Phil on September 1st):
The choice we have made is to do this life together. We can’t necessarily fall back
on community or location or a particular school district that we absolutely
love to be the primary driver of enrichment in our children’s lives and
education.
What we have is each other.
A little six-sided bundle, in this together, for better or
worse.
The scenery will change for us, but we will remain the same.
For now, we’re better than ever.
