I am a second generation homeschooler, which means I was homeschooled from third grade until I finished highschool and I am now in my eighth year homeschooling my own two boys.
I was homeschooled in the 90s when homeschooling was becoming a normalish thing, but it was not as popular as it is now. Homeschooling wasn’t unheard of but still considered weird. This was also a time where we were only starting to hear about the internet, and definitely did not have access to information at our fingertips. When my parents first decided to homeschool, the first thing my mom did was check out a stack of library books that told her how to get started. As you can probably imagine, this wasn’t the most up to date information. The only other way to find out homeschool information was to join snail mail newsletters that were sent out once a quarter or maybe once a month, or to find local homeschoolers and ask them for information. Now that last option, was a little bit like the game of telephone. Information gets passed from one person to the next until it finally reaches the end of the line and it is nothing like the original message. This is basically how homeschool information was passed along. Some of it was good and helpful, some wasn’t.
With this lack of information homeschoolers had to kind of just wing it and hope they were doing it right. And my parents definitely had to figure it out as they went. When I look back over my educational experience there were things that were good, but there are also things that I know now that I wish my parents had known back in the 90s. So I am going to share with you the top five things that I wish my parents had known about homeschooling.
1. You Can Learn Beyond Textbooks
I am not a textbook learner, and never have been. And when we started homeschooling it was in the middle of my third grade year, and I was starting to get tired of school anyway because third grade is when our school started introducing textbooks. At Christmas break my sister and I were taken out of public school, and we were really excited about it, things were going to be fun, our education was going to look different. Then I was handed a pile of workbooks and textbooks and told to learn. While there were things about being homeschooled that did look different from public school, I think it was hard for my mom to let go of the school mentality and she thought that the academics needed to look like public school. Now looking back I can see that, but back then I just thought homeschool was boring. But I am a person who loves to know things, I’ve always been this way. I would spend hours studying things on my own, but none of that counted as school. I was supposed to do school from textbooks and I found most of them pointless. But due to the lack of information that I already mentioned, so many homeschoolers were questioning, am I doing this right? And when you are unsure, you revert to what you know, which is usually the public school model. So I am going to let you know today, that all of those fun alternative learning experiences count as school. If you’re child learns best from a textbook, great then give them a textbook. But all of those alternative methods of study, book readings, documentary watching, and experiential learning count.
2. Just Like My Sister’s Clothes, Homeschool Hand Me Downs Were Never the Right Fit
My sister once bought a pile of colored jeans and she topped these off with matching plaid flannel shirts. Yeah, super cute right? So when she outgrew these fashion forward outfits, guess who got them? Yours truly. They may have been quite fashionable when she wore them and they were vibrantly colored and fit correctly, but definitely not by the time they were passed to me. Well, curriculum was kind of like this. She would finish with her books and my mom would set them aside for me and those books were never the right fit for me. We had very different fashion sense and learning styles. So, all that to say, look at each of your kids individually and adapt your curriculum to meet each ones needs. What this will do is empower them because they will achieve success at their own individual level. Just like it would have been awesome to have my own clothes and feel like a fashion rock star, our kids need the opportunity to feel like academic rock stars. Success causes motivation and more success. Engagement with their learning brings success. Getting the right curriculum fit will lead to more engagement, which will lead to more success.
3. Just Because Another Mom Says It’s the Perfect Math Curriculum, Doesn’t Mean It Is
This goes for any homeschool subject. When I was homeschooled my mom was convinced that Saxon math was THE best math program because so and so in our homeschool group said so. People listed all the merits of why this was the best program, and so this is the program I was stuck with for many years. If you use Saxon, this is not meant to be discouraging, because for some kids this program is great. The repetitive nature of Saxon math really helps some students, but for me it was math torture. So just because someone says that a certain curriculum is the best, doesn’t mean that’s going to be true for your family. The inverse of this is also true. Just because someone says it’s bad, doesn’t mean it really is. There are very few curriculum resources I’ve found that I’m like, eek, no one should use that, but it’s very few and far between. Again, and I know this is a recurring theme, but we need customize education to fit the needs of our child.
4. You Don’t Need a State Blessed Piece of Paper to Graduate a Homeschooler
This is one of those things that I think came along with lack of internet, so a lot of parents just had minimal information and even rumors to figure out how to homeschool. Back then, a lot of homeschoolers were so intimidated by the idea of writing highschool transcripts, and finding a program that issued a diploma or going through the GED process, that they would just put their homeschoolers back in public school for highschool. Now, my parents didn’t do this, but they really lacked the knowledge of the right way to graduate a homeschooler. My sister did a program through Christian Liberty which was a correspondence program where you send all of your work into this private school in Illinois, and when you met requirements, they issued a diploma, which we found out as adults isn’t an actual accredited diploma. I tried Christian Liberty for a year and was like nope, so my parents thought the only other option was to get a GED. Well after hearing enough people refer to the GED as a good enough diploma, I refused to go that route. We knew people that would issue diplomas to their kids, but it was sort of looked at as not a real diploma. Now my parents had this image in their minds that I wouldn’t be able to go to college, or get a job, but none of that was an issue. I literally have only ever had to say I was homeschooled and I graduated, and that has always been enough. My “fake” diploma has never been a problem for me.
Here is what you can do as a homeschool parent. You can write your child’s transcript, you can choose what to require in order for them to graduate (at least in Colorado you can), and you can issue and sign their diploma and yes, it’s a real diploma. These are all legitimate ways to graduate a homeschooler. You do not need a state sanctioned or blessed piece of paper to make them legit highschool graduates. You’ve taken the responsibility for their education up to that point, and you get to graduate them.
5. Don’t Fear the Homeschool Police
I almost called this point The Homeschool Police are Not Coming After You, but I understand that some homeschoolers find themselves in a situation where they are wrongfully accused. These situations are not that common and definitely not the norm, but they do happen. Sometimes you have a nosey neighbor or even a family member that doesn’t understand homeschooling and calls the authorities on you. I think we have to acknowledge that we live in a tattle tale society and sometimes things happen. My point is, even in the midst of these situations, you don’t have to move forward fearfully. You are doing the right thing by homeschooling your kids. You have the right and the authority to make decisions for your kids regarding their education. You have the right tochoose how to educate your kids, you have the right o buck societal norms, and you have the right to tell the so-called professionals, “Step aside, I’ve got this.” You have the right to be a parent. If you are doing the right thing, you don’t need to homeschool fearfully. And if a situation arises, you have this community and an army of homeschoolers that will have your back. There are also organizations on like CHEC which is a state wide organization that is heavily involved on a legislative level, or HSLDA which I encourage you to become members if you’re not, because they will have your back on a legal level. But remember, you are allowed to homeschool and you’re not doing anything wrong by going against societal norms. So homeschool without fear.
Closing
Homeschooling is an awesome adventure and you will make mistakes along the way. It’s okay. Perfection is not required to homeschool. I have had a great life and I am thankful for the investment my mom made into our homeschool experience. And yes, when your kids are grown there are probably going to be things that they are going to wish you had known, but that’s okay. They will gain a lot even from imperfect parents and an imperfect curriculum and an imperfect homeschool experience. In the end, it will still be all worth it.
