OUR JOURNEY TO HOMESCHOOLING
I shared earlier this month on social media that we made some very quick decisions right before Christmas break regarding my son Jack’s schooling. These decisions were not made lightly, in fact I’ve laid awake many nights wondering if we were doing the right thing. In the end, I do have a peace about the route that we are taking currently.
I was a teacher in the public education system, in Texas, for 10 years, prior to having Jack and becoming a work-from-home mom. My mom has been a kindergarten teacher in public education for 39 years and my brother is a high school history teacher and defensive football coordinator. Suffice it to say that public education is in our blood.
Colorado is a school choice state, meaning that students have the option to go to schools which they are not zoned for, including charter schools. We chose to send Jack to a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) charter school in kindergarten and were absolutely in love with the school. However, this year presented a vast array of challenges, such as doubling in growth, personnel burn out, poor leadership, and negligence in regards to interventions and accommodations. When Jack’s first grade teacher announced right before Christmas that she would not be coming back for the second half of the year, we knew we had to do something.
The difficulty with school choice is that it is often challenging to change schools midyear. Many of these schools have a year long waiting list. After calling through our list of possible options, we toured one school and when we left, Sean and I looked at each other and said, we can’t send him here. We both just knew that it was not the right fit for him. We prayed, we wrestled with it and we knew that the only option left for us was to homeschool him for the remainder of the year.
I am the first to admit that homeschooling was not on my radar. It never really has been. There are amazing benefits to it and for some families it is a great fit. Jack is also a very, very extroverted child. I knew we could handle the academic portion to finish first grade and get him caught up to where he needs to be, but I was very concerned about the socialization aspect of homeschool. There are lots of co-ops and programs available for homeschool families, which vary by state. What I found was that many of the co-ops were very expensive for 1 semester and/or did not accept students mid-year.
Here’s what I can say today, we are figuring it out. Yesterday kicked off week 3 of homeschool and I feel less like we are drowning in the deep end and more like I’m doggy-paddling. We’ve figured out a daily schedule that is structured but not rigid. To combat the socialization factor without a co-op, we sought out some activities that we knew Jack was interested in. Now he’s able to be involved in Soccer and a Lego club in addition to the regular activities we were already involved in. The library has been one of the best resources, they have so many science demonstrations and classes for kids that I would have never known about if we weren’t homeschooling.
That about sums up where we are today. While this isn’t the path I thought we would be taking, I’m very very grateful that we asked questions and when the school he was in no longer lined up with our expectations and convictions, we had the courage to pull him and take a different path. It’s not an easy path by any means and it’s probably not a path that we will stay on forever, but for the time, for this season, we are walking it faithfully and obediently.