THANKS, TAMI for including this post in the Carnival of Homeschooling.
(Photo from week 1.)
This week I’ll share the results of our Homeschool Experiment. If you’ve been following along this year, you know I’ve given you periodic updates and Tales of a Fourth Grade Guinea Pig — which was usually written by D. I did this partly to celebrate tangibly the pretty cool stuff we were able to do as a homeschooling family. I’ve also revealed a lot of our struggles along the way.
However, you may not know the reason why we began this journey.
Families have many legitimate reasons for homeschooling, but ours are not primarily the most common reasons. We’re not doing it for religious concerns, or because of negative influences in public schools, or because we think the system is incorrigible. (In fact, my husband is a public school principal.) My kids are ages 8 and 10, which isn’t the most common time to start your kids’ education at home. C (my 8-year-old son) and D (my 10-year-old daughter) had each attended public school since kindergarten.
Last August, my husband got a new job and would no longer be able to drive the kids to the school where they were open-enrolled. This meant our only options were to quickly move to the district where he would be working, or send them to our resident district. Last summer we pondered — at length — our choices and finally just decided to enroll them where our home is located. We knew it wasn’t a high-achieving school, but it was only three miles from our house, and we thought — while we took the year to organize our life and make a long-term commitment somewhere — it would be fine.
It wasn’t.
The first couple months of any move to any new school would be difficult, but I find it remarkable how different the atmosphere can be in one school, versus another. This one is located in a small community, where there isn’t a lot of moving in or out, and the kids felt like each grade level was one big clique. In some ways, outsiders will always be outsiders in this situation. Also, the curriculum didn’t line up with our former school, so the kids repeated a lot in the first six weeks. And the discipline in the school was very poor. There was a lot of budging and running in the halls and shoving in the stairwell. Our old school was nothing like this.
Our kids were very unhappy. At recess, they played with each other. Why did it never occur to us to begin the year homeschooling? Looking back, it was absolutely the most obvious, most appropriate choice. But we never even saw it. We were too wound up in thinking about our other options.
So after six weeks, we mentioned the possibility of homeschooling, to our kids. And then there was no turning back — they wanted it NOW. I had even suggested they could stay until the Halloween party, and they said, “No, let’s just quit now.” We spent our first week in chaos, while I surfed the blogosphere for homeschooling advice. Ree, from Pioneer Woman turned me onto Sonlight, and I followed much of this curriculum through the year. I found many blogging friends — as well as real-life ones — over the past year, and have been so touched by everyone’s generous help.
This week I’ll share the results of this year-long experiment with homeschooling. I’ll write about the joys, the struggles, and the future for us. And I’ll end the week with a collaboration of efforts between homeschool bloggers. We’re all posting our best advice for new homeschooling families, and including it in a Mr. Linky, for easy future access. I hope this will provide valuable insight to parents who are considering, or just starting to homeschool their kids. If you’re a homeschooling blogger, please join in! And let me know if you announce the project — I’ll link to you. For details, click here.
Thank you all for joining me for results week. More to come!
HOMESCHOOL EXPERIMENT RESULTS SERIES:
WHY WE STARTED
the JOYS
the STRUGGLES
the FUTURE for us
UPDATE after we Quit Homeschooling
Family out of Sync
Other Homeschooling Experiment milestones:
The Beginning
Week One – Starting with a Frazzle
Five Steps to Drive Yourself off a Cliff
Week Two – Just when I thought I knew what I was doing
Week Three — Let there be CRAFTS!
One-month Review
D’s Review at One Month
Week Five – Stress and frustration
Week Seven – Flip-flopping curriculum
Note to self – Consider having low expectations some weeks
Two-Month Review — Some aha moments
Three-Month Review — Not all peaches and cream
Four-Month Review — Loving ancient history
Five-Month Review — What I underestimated
Six-Month Review – Let’s Just Skip this Month
Seven-Month Review — Curriculum review
D’s research paper — Save the Earth Saturday series
Tales of a Fourth-Grade Guinea Pig
All posts about the experiment — including WAY-COOL FIELD TRIPS!
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6:20 am
Aw, honey. That’s too bad what your sweet babies had to deal with. *sigh*
As a “temporarily retired so I could stay home with my babies” public school teacher (LOL), I still feel very conflicted about the whole homeschooling thing. I saw things that worked. I saw things that didn’t. I saw amazing teachers and administrators and I worked under or aside of a few of the others.
I saw amazing changes in kids. I remember many of the “a-ha” moments that keeps teachers getting up each day. But, I also remember being a rookie and being coerced to give money to our state’s teachers’ union PAC. I remember being told who I had better vote for by my union. I remember thinking how little I had in common with the people I worked with when listening to conversations in the teachers’ lounge. *sigh*
Unfortunately, the negative stuff I remember more and now that the potential students are MY kids (LOL), I find myself less willing to cede their education, development, and sweet, gentle souls to someone else.
7:11 am
Thanks for your thoughtful comment, Beth. Yes, as public school educators, we do have a different perspective, don’t we? And there’s such a range of talent and opportunity within different districts. I think it’s remarkable how the atmosphere in a school system can vary so much from building to building, or town to town.
7:19 pm
[...] This is Part 2 in my Homeschool Experiment Results series. You can also read Part 1, Why we started. [...]
9:17 pm
[...] This is Part 3 in my Homeschool Experiment Results series. Read about Why we started, and the JOYS. [...]
6:18 pm
[...] This is Part 4 in my Homeschool Experiment Results series. Read about Why we started, the JOYS, and the STRUGGLES. [...]
7:31 am
[...] HOMESCHOOL EXPERIMENT RESULTS SERIES: WHY WE STARTED the JOYS the STRUGGLES the FUTURE for us [...]
9:23 pm
[...] During our homeschool experiment (links are at the bottom of the page), we’ve benefitted from so many bloggers’ advice and ideas. I’ve generated my own tips throughout the year as well. So I’m hosting this “HOMESCHOOL TIPS AND ADVICE” project to collect links for new homeschooling families, or those considering it. Please write a post to share your own tips, and announce/link to this post, so your readers can find all the great tips as well. Then post your PERMALINK here in Mr. Linky. If you don’t have a blog, please feel free to share your tips and advice in comments. I’ll leave this post in first position, while I’m on vacation over the next week. Thanks! [...]
11:31 am
[...] HOMESCHOOL EXPERIMENT RESULTS SERIES: WHY WE STARTED the JOYS the STRUGGLES the FUTURE for us [...]
8:42 pm
I thought about home schooling, but I honestly don’t think I have the patience to even attempt it.
6:28 am
Hello,
I clicked to this link from the Carnival this week. I believe I have the link corrected now.
Thank you for participating in it.
Have a blessed day! Tami
8:07 am
Homeschool Experiment – Why We Started
Here’s the first in the Homeschool Experiment Results Series. There are many other links included too, which take you through our families entire year of homeschooling.
This is an honest representation of our experience – well worth the read, if you…
9:13 am
[...] Six weeks is precisely the amount of time it took us to decide to quit public school last year. That’s when we started homeschooling. We just attended parent-teacher conferences last Thursday, and were very pleased to reconfirm what we thought we were experiencing in our first weeks back in a public school setting: our kids are doing very well. [...]
9:24 pm
[...] While we seem to have made a smooth social and educational transition to public school, I’m finding other transitions to be difficult. Lucky for me, Shannon decided to turn Works-for-me Wednesday inside-out this week — we can ask for advice, rather than giving it. Because of the disastrous start to the school year last fall, I’ve spent a lot of energy making sure the kids had a great start this year. And they have. But I underestimated the impact it would have on our family’s interaction, for me to go to work part-time, and for my kids to begin attending public school. [...]
1:07 am
[...] Homeschool Experiment Results – Why we started [...]
9:47 am
[...] EXPERIMENT RESULTS SERIES: WHY WE STARTED the JOYS the STRUGGLES the FUTURE for us UPDATE after we Quit Homeschooling Family out of [...]