School

vs. 

(free stock photo)

Our family is a blended family, and as such we have our own story to tell.  I used to homeschool my oldest until she was in 2nd grade.  At that time, I was gearing up for a divorce and trying to figure out how I was going to make it financially (child support only goes so far).  After some deep thought, I put my daughter into school and I took my teaching degree and put it to work in the public schools.

It was the best scenario at the time for us, and so I sent my baby off to school while staying very involved with her learning.  We still did lessons at home (obviously not as often), and kept up our summer learning (I believe in year-round learning, just with a much slower and sporatic pace in the summer).  Because I was teaching in her school, I was able to keep up with what she was working on and provide further opportunities for learning in our free time.  I was able to see the process from a different angle.  Was I crazy about what I saw in the public schools?  Not particularly.  Don't get me wrong, I did see learning going on there.  I also saw a lot of wasted time, dumbing down, and important subjects passed over in favor of the Subject Flavor Of The Year (ie. one year there might be a focus on math, while social studies and science would get pushed aside more). 

And don't even get me STARTED on  how nature and the natural world are left out. Today's public-school students are lucky to have 20 minutes outside a day, spent mostly on cement play-yards and a few pieces of mass-produced climbing/swinging equipment.

What was particularly disheartening to me as a teacher was the treatment of the staff.  There is such little support by the administration.  A good principal and vice principal team can make such a big difference in how much support staff feels (and unfortunately, our team was...shall we say...less than ideal). I rarely got anything resembling praise for my hard work (nor did anyone else I knew), and it was often only my sheer love of working with the kids that kept me motivated each day in the face of the stressors teachers face. 

Please realize that I do not blame teachers for the poor results our kids are getting.  The teachers are often doing the best they can with the time they have and the resources available to them.  They have a curriculum to follow and a great deal of pressure to push the Subject Flavor Of The Year nearly at all costs.  They often have a higher teacher-to-student ratio in their classrooms than they should, making it even harder to reach individual kids.

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If you've ever noticed, when you have 25 kids in a room with only one teacher...and that teacher turns her back to work with a student, the other 24 kids then must choose to continue to stay on task, or to go crazy.  This limits teachers quite a bit, and leaves some kids feeling neglected and pigeon-holed into a box.  Standardized tests come along to make such a child feel defeated (because they simply are not prepared for the tasks asked of them on the test).  When parents do not get involved, these uninvolved parents often feel that it is the teacher's job to do it all, and that learning stops at 2pm with the ring of the school bell.  What needs to happen is for parents to realize that schools ARE flawed, but if public schooling is the choice that is made (whether voluntarily or not), then we can be part of the process.  We can volunteer our time, we can keep learning going after the school bell rings, and we can be involved.

Now here I am: remarried with 2 more young children.  My oldest is 12, and having been in the public schools for the last several years, she wants to continue to go to public school.  She knows this means that I'll still supplement her learning with at-home activities, and she also knows that I will always be in touch with  her teachers(even if I am no longer working in the schools).  I'd love for her to come home and homeschool, but her happiness is the most important thing.  If there is anything that gets "pushed aside", I'll make sure we cover it at home.  I'll speak to her teachers and see how I can help as well.

Now that I have returned home, however, I plan to homeschool my 2 youngest.  I hope to homeschool them at least until middle school, but we will take it one year at a time.  The point is not to be inflexible and rigid, demanding a homeschool-only environment just so that we can put a label on ourselves that reads "Homeschooling Family".  I believe that whenever there is learning going on in the home, that IS a homeschooling family.  Many families combine home learning with a few community classes. Some families send their kids to school for a few classes and do the rest at home.  Some are involved with charter or private schools, some work alone, some work as part of a homeschool co-op.  Whatever works best for each family, child, and situation is what should be the focus.