Amy, who has left me a comment before to say that she lives near me, and I forgot to respond to her (that's where that whole one sixteenth thing comes in, see?), wants to know how all these homeschooling bloggers (or are we blogging homeschoolers?) came to homeschool.
First, you must understand that Jeff and I are different. Neither of us has ever wanted an ordinary life. We do things differently. You must also understand that we have always, separately and together, had a strong interest in education. Even in elementary school I used to design imaginary schools and curricula. Really. And Jeff and I used to dream of running a college. Our way. (After college, I enrolled in UTD's teacher education program. I got through most of it, and nearly earned a certification to teach secondary school English before I dropped out.)
When Connor came along we didn't know anything about being parents, so we tried to do things the mainstream way. Probably predictably, things were horrible. My OB was terrible. It was a lousy birth experience. And much of the conventional advice I was given on taking care of our baby just brought us all grief. That was our catalyst into looking into different ways to have babies, to be healthy, and to raise kids. And to do everything else.
In other words, homeschooling is, for us, a very natural outgrowth of who we are and how we like to do things. We like to take responsibility for our own lives and do our own thing. We don't like trying to fit into a mass-production system. We don't like giving up things as important as education to people we don't know and who have goals that are not compatible with ours. WE brought these children into the world, and WE want to be the ones to care for them and educate them.
It's also a natural outgrowth of my interest in education. This stuff is fun. Why would I want some other teacher to have all the fun?
So I can't remember when we first started seriously thinking of homsecshooling. Sometime in those first five years of Connor's life. The more we researched, the more clear it became that homeschooling could work, and through homeschooling we could accomplish the goals we have for our children, and our family. By the time Connor was supposed to enroll in kindergarten, we were firm in our decision. It was still scary, but we knew we weren't going to send him to school.
Posted by Steph at November 10, 2003 09:04 AMThanks for sharing that Stef! I find reasons for homeschool vary from family to family, but yours are rather close to my own. I love to learn, and with homeschooling I have the opportunity to learn from my children. What an incredible reward! It's amazing to see how they often teach me a new way of looking at something, simply because they have no preset ideas about how a subject should be learned.
Well I digress, but wanted to say thanks for sharing your family's reasons..
Posted by: Nancie on November 10, 2003 10:58 AM