Home schooling

What home schooling really looks like? Of course, my view can only differ from most of the parents taking this path towards their children’s education. Why mine was that distinct than the other parents? Plenty of parents decide to teach their kids at home, but the choice of education is evaluated by the both parents. If we agreed together with my late Husband, I did not have any support after his passing.
I feel the whole home schooling process would have been much easier with him around.

In my case, if it was something I dreamed of doing, I did not know it was possible in the US until a conversation covered this topic. Let me explain. When I grew up in France – my native country – it was not something parents could do unless there was a medical reason for the child or some other exceptional cases non-related to the medical field. Those permissions were really rare.

I was on the phone with my Dad who, back then, told me home schooling was something that could be done in France then, which before was not something really feasible as I just mentioned.
I divulged this information to my Husband. He replied it was allowed in the United States to home school. I expressed I would have really wished to do so, but that I could not. He wondered why not. Well, my native language is not English. He responded I will be fine home schooling our son, if it was what I wanted to accomplish. Our son was too young to be home schooled at the time though. Nevertheless, that was it, I was planning on realizing one more of my dreams, becoming the personal teacher of my own child. I already gathered information for future use.

At the age of 3 something, our son knew his English and French alphabets, and had the knowledge of writing “PAPA” on his own. I was not really home schooling him yet, just taught him a few things here and there, and started showing him the writing process in capital letters. It must be around this time he began to know how to write his first name. Writing PAPA was the easiest.

After my late Husband passed away, I decided to follow on home schooling, which was really tough on me, because of the additional chores I had (the ones my Husband used to do like fixing things around the house, the yard maintenance, etc..). I was mourning, which made it way harder on me. I am unsure whether or not I did make the right choice to continue on home schooling, but there were good moments and difficult times.

The type of home schooling I made for my son since a very early age evolved with experience being his teacher. IF you do NOT purchase all the lessons, but use your own, the time spent in preparing them is adding to the teaching. In the beginning, I was doing it all by myself. Then, I purchased the materials (books, DVDs, and anything else needed). Of course, all was out of my pocket. I still had to pay a fee for the local school expenses in my property tax bill. Nothing was coming back to me such as some help to pay for all the needed materials to teach my son through the numerous years of his grade years.
The advantage was I could teach him extra topics not listed in the compulsory curriculum. Online, there is a suggested list of books to choose from which I referred to. I appreciated to be free in our schedule. My son could acquire the lessons I gave him at his own pace. He had more time to play than most of the other children, since while the other kids had to travel to school back to home daily, mine was already done with his homework during school time, and he had no additional homework then. Since he was already at home, all he had to do was to get to his toys when he was little after his home school day.
I enjoyed to have my son home away from the bad influence of certain kids. I did not have to worry about the violence at school. I knew he was safe at home. Also, it allowed us to spend much more time together than most parents can do with their kids, because of their own job and the school schedule.

At some point, he spent some time at the local public school too, but it did not last for long, since I was back home schooling my son again. Mainly, he has been home schooled rather than schooled. I also
had included very early in his life a high prevention of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. He never touched or was interested in any, still at the time I am writing this, and he is a young adult now.

There were drawbacks. It was not all good to home school. Grading surely takes extra time, then reviewing the points of where the child did not understand such element(s) of this or that lesson. There were a lot of times where it was overwhelming for me, especially that I had to be the mother (of course), the teacher, still had to take care of the numerous pets, the chores, going to the grocery stores (since I only could grow some food during the warm season), fixing the meals from scratch, and so forth.

I modified my manner of teaching multiple times, testing what was the best. Improvisation was also something I have tried on a few times, new ways of teaching that were fun, more engaging in the curiosity of a young mind to wish to discover more of a topic. It was very challenging at times.

One of the advantages is teaching your own child you know very well, so you can think of ways each topic would be more interesting to him if taught of a different manner. I agree with making funny lessons can also help learning more easily, bringing new material (not only bought, but looking around in my house). To be honest, some lessons were even boring to me, so I really had to make more efforts not to show it, but to try to make them interesting. It’s easier to do this when the child is little, mine started 1^st Grade at 5 years old, but when you are having a teenager to teach, it was not always that easy to me. Believe me!!! It was also fascinating on some new lessons we both enjoyed more to make extra researches. I always pushed my son to look for more information on everything he could concerning his education. It is something that became very familiar for him to do. I am satisfied that we got the access of the Internet from home, which facilitated home schooling, so many resources are on there. When it came to reading French, I reused my own class books from Paris on which I had learned how to read French myself as a child. This alone was wonderful to me. Oh yes!!!

The flexibility in the schedule was positive as well. I tried to keep it the closest to the public school system. This said, many times, during the day, we had to go to places, and usually the home school hours lost during our trips were done ahead. It could be some additional time after a home school day, in the evening, during the weekend, or on a holiday. Sometimes, I even could take with us some lessons to teach while on our trip.

Home schooling could also mean more isolation for both the student and the teacher. The work attached to being a parent and a home school teacher was so huge that I could not go to many places all the time, although we had to go to some anyway. It’s better in this case if the child has an extra-curriculum outside the house such as a sports, arts class, musical lessons, or so.

I’m a very organized person in life, it means in my head, my choices, my plans, my work, my house, and so forth, thus home schooling followed this rule of organization.

IF it was to be redone, would I opt all over again for home school? Well, considering I already have all the material, and I know how to do it, I actually would enjoy it all over again. This said, I only have one child, and I have many more projects now that I had at the time. Some of those that I had postponed until my son be older, others that I believed were not realizable for me, but finally yes they are now with time and dedication, plus new ones that I really want to complete. So, my life is way too busy to home school again. There were days I hated home schooling, because it was hard all by myself especially added to all my other responsibilities. Still, I enjoyed many other days. Teaching classes to my son had made me realized one more of my dreams, to be a teacher for little kids. I was interested in several professions, but this one, even if unpaid and taking on my personal time, was a very good job to have, home schooling my own child. If I was younger, at the same age I started home schooling him, yes, actually I could do it over and over.

Besides the negative traits of home schooling, it enriched our both lives. And when Covid-19 occurred, we were safe without to have to be with others or transiting anywhere.