The Graduate!
We are the verge of graduating our 17-year-old from high school, after a full 13 years of home education; from kindergarten through 12th grade. This is an end of the journey that I didn't envision when we set out. Back then, I pictured an entirely different educational trajectory, and it didn't include home educating through high school.
We are not an anomaly. Our self-selected religious/educational circle has many families who homeschool their kids through graduation. However, it's quite common for families to homeschool for set period of time before transitioning to government school at 9th grade. There is a built-in trepidation about the feasibility of teaching the higher math and science courses that are necessary to meet state standards or prepare for successful completion of standardized tests such as the SAT, ACT, or CLT.
Because of this, those who can afford it send their kids to private Christian schools, which run between $12K and $18K per year in high school for the most well-regarded schools in our area. It should go without saying, therefore, that those parents who choose to outsource high school after homeschool usually choose the public system over a private Christian school.
This retrospective may call into question whether or not we were legitimately home educators for the entirety of our child's schooling, but the law says we homeschooled for 13 years, so we're going with that. Here is a brief snapshot of the things we've learned from our own homeschooling experience as well as from homeschooling in community with other families. I am inclined to group these lessons into three categories: Dashed expectations, wonderful realizations, and unavoidable misunderstandings.
Dashed Expectations
When we began homeschooling in earnest, I foolishly attempted to take my understanding of what school is supposed to be -the very thing we were rejecting!-and replicate it in our home. This quickly proved to be a terrible idea. Our daughter was too curious, too energetic, and had too short of an attention span to sit at a desk for an hour at a time do grammar, reading, or math facts. I had the whole set up in our living room, which we quickly learned was a waste of space. We dismantled it and turned our family room back into the space it was meant to be.
The curiosity, energy, and short attention spans were not learning disabilities, nor were they an indication that our child wasn't interested in learning. They were, however, clear indicators to me that whatever I thought homeschooling would look like, it wasn't going to look like that in our house. In fact, it wasn't going to look like school at all for the first several years. Education? Yes, lots. Schooling? Nope, thank God.
Wonderful Realizations
When our oldest kids began school (through the public system), my husband and I were still in out mid to late 20s. We'd never considered any other option, and we had never in our young parenting lives met any family who home educated their kids. We were highly involved in the public system but we were there, and our oldest kids remained there throughout their school careers. They are all walking closely with the Lord and love learning by His grace.
By the time our youngest set were school-aged, we were older, and if not wiser, more skeptical of the schools. We began homeschooling, with no one walking the journey with us. The first few years were hard, and with soon-to-be graduate as our guinea pig (followed by her sibling two years behind), we educated via trial and error. We spent hundreds if not thousands on curriculum that was a bad fit. We got frustrated and weary, but we never gave up. One day at a local park, another mom struck up a conversation with me and I was introduced to a whole new world. I learned about lots of families who homeschooled together in community. That changed our lives in ways that continue to be a blessing.
No matter what any of the perfectly perfect wives, trad dad warriors, and other know-it-all Internet people tell you, take it form me. You can't, nor should you, take it upon yourself to try and educate your children as a lone warrior. Even if you manage to fill their heads with all the requisite knowledge, there is no substitute for relationships with other families who have been on the journey for a long time, having successfully launched their own kids. Re-read Hearth's post about why relationships matter
And yes, despite the stupidity of the "what about socialization?" objections that most homeschoolers face, there is something to be said for outside interactions, for moms and kids alike. . The postmodern destruction of all relationships beside the nuclear family (and it's done a pretty good destroying most of those!) is why we have a low trust, high dysfunction society. It was a revelation to find the people of like mind and faith who have built relationships with our family over the last 10 years.
Unavoidable Misunderstandings
As we have sent out announcement and invitations to our graduate's high school celebration, complete with the name of the hybrid school from which she will be graduating, some have questioned whether she was, in fact, homeschooled. The answer is both yes, and no. By state law, a hybrid school is little more than a tutoring center that is an extension of our homeschooling program. Most all of our kids' middle and high school education has taken place in such an environment. We have been supremely blessed in our choice of schools because unlike the typical public or even private schools, the plurality of our kids' math, science, and language teachers have been men well-versed in the subjects despite not being state certified teachers. Some parents can handle teaching chemistry and physics well. I would not have done so. Ergo, our kids high school education has cost us several thousands dollars.
Ultimately, even with the added accountability of external teachers and institutions, the responsibility for our kids' education rests with us, and is not a function of the state. While we take pains to fulfill state requirements in the event any our children need to meet those requirements for what comes later, in the state of Florida, this is not a requirement to be considered a full-fledged high school graduate. Most, if not all of our students take the CLT (recently accepted by Florida colleges), and many take the SAT and ACT. Our kid performed much higher than the national average of student test takers, which puts to death the idea that home educated students are somehow less educated than students who ride the state conveyor belt.
Would I do this again?
We're still not done home just yet. We have one more student to graduate in two years, and it has been a whole different experience with that child than with our recent graduate. That's another variable. People are different, and the one size fits all approach of most schools damages many children.
But yes. I would do this again and I look forward, as the Lord wills, to helping my children home educate their own children one day.
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