Homeschooling Honor – Don’t Blow It For The Rest Of Us!
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As homeschooling numbers grow across the country, one thing can be said to be true. The reasons are changing that are leading others into a decision to homeschool. So is the average homeschooler, if there ever was such a thing. With that increase comes a higher responsibility and calling to do our jobs with integrity and honor so that our witness is not maligned and our presence in the surrounding communities is one of esteem. It takes diligence and perseverance to raise future leaders who are strong academically and socially, but in a homeschooling family, having a solid and praiseworthy homeschool program should be an expectation, not an option.
Be sure that you are using a solid curriculum in your homeschool program and be sure that as a part of your program, your children are learning to manage and process information. Learning is not just about piling up facts or completing worksheets, but in reality, learning is about the ability to retain, recall, and apply information to new situations. Application of information is critical. If we stop at only recalling data, then we have left off a valuable piece of true learning and have only prepared ourselves for trivia games. Students need to know the implications of what they are learning and how that information relates to the bigger picture. For instance, if I only teach the dates of the Civil War, but do not layer that piece of information with the impact of the Industrial Revolution, then my children will not see the connections and therefore not fully understand the world around them.
Keep records and examples of your students’ work in order to add authenticity to your program. Issue grades and periodic reports of your child’s progress in each course. You can even scan samples and keep electronic copies for validation of credits. This will save space, but keep the records accessible. This becomes especially true for high school. These records should include days of school operation, portfolios of any special projects, copies of any outside evaluations by coaches or instructors, and copies of exams or standardized tests. Should something change unexpectedly in your homeschooling plans, you might need to provide evidence of work done and doing this as you go along is much easier than trying to recreate the work later.
Additionally, part of an honorable homeschool program is to stick to a schedule. You can set your schedule in any fashion that you like, but be sure to have an identifiable set of school expectations. That may be days that you do school, hours of school, summer breaks or no summer breaks, etc., but students should have a clear sense of what is expected of them each day so that they have the ability to learn to plan and manage their time while also growing in wisdom. A child left to his or her own schedule will sleep until noon and never get any schooling done. What will you do with him or her at age 25 if this pattern continues? For his or her benefit, you owe it to your student to give order and structure to your homeschool program.
Others are watching your homeschool program – perhaps with a curious eye, perhaps with an envious eye, or perhaps with a critical eye. Your personal integrity is on the line, but so is the authority of homeschooling in general. Your goal, at least in part, should be to create strong learners who are academically growing, efficient in their study methods, and engaging with the world around them so that your children can become effective, thriving, successful adults who contribute to society later on. If you include this goal, regardless of the core reason that led you into homeschooling, then not only will your children be much stronger for it, but homeschooling as an effective educational option for others will be the stronger for it!
Mrs. Camille Rodriquez is a wife and mother, with experience as a pastor’s wife for more than a decade and as a homeschool mom for almost 20 years. Visit her website at National Homeschool Academy.
“A child left to his or her own schedule will sleep until noon and never get any schooling done. What will you do with him or her at age 25 if this pattern continues? For his or her benefit, you owe it to your student to give order and structure to your homeschool program.”
I find this statement particularly sad coming from a person who spends a considerable amount of time with children. This implies a lack of faith in the very people who need it most. Perhaps this is why you expect the child to still be dependent on you at the age of 25.
I can also say from my experiences with many children that this is simply not the case. Adult imposed structure is highly over-rated. In fact, children who are given the opportunity to plan and structure their own time learn time management skills as they go. When a child (or anyone, any age) is motivated by following their passions (rather than an arbitrarily imposed one-size fits no one curriculum), then such measures become unnecessary. Children learn self-discipline, responsibility and self-respect not by being controlled by others, but by learning to make choices and also by making mistakes.
I speak from experience. My children as well as many others I have had the experience of mentoring have all achieved well beyond their more structured peers. A few who later went to school in the regular system invariably stood out as the most organized students in their classes.
Yes, it takes a little more time to explain to relatives, friends and critics, and isn’t nearly as pretty as the pre-packaged curriculum, the alarm-clock life, or the nice graphs and bell-curves of the standardized tests. However, there are many of us who decided to trade in the superficial for a deeper kind of life-long learning when we decided to travel on the homeschooling path.
Good advice – especially that about sticking to a schedule. Thanks!