Tag Archives: work from home

Thoughts on Homeschooling

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

I did some online research and found (per consensus) that, in the United States, approximately 3% of students (Kindergarten through 12th grade) are homeschooled. That is certainly a less-traveled road.

But it’s also certainly one that, as Robert Frost’s immortal poem deems, has made “all the difference.” I ran into a friend today while walking to the library with Nigel, and she asked how the homeschooling’s been going. I told her that it’s the best decision I ever made.

I often get asked what type of program I’m doing, so I thought I’d describe that a bit. When I was initially researching homeschooling techniques, I discovered that there are as many different ways to homeschool as there are families who do it. The programs vary from highly structured to something called unschooling and everything in between. I decided on a structured schedule with a flexible curriculum. On any given day, Nigel and I work with the following sources: his public school-assigned math book, workbooks from Clas E. Professor, articles on Wikipedia, Kids Discover Magazine, National Geographic books and magazines, CD-Rom programs, educational videos and books checked out from our local library as well as the middle school library, and books from our own collection. We have more than enough material to work with, and aside from what I’ve spent on the books and CD-Roms we already had that we’ve accumulated over the years, this year I spent $20 on a Kids Discover subscription and $40 on workbooks. That’s it! That’s our homeschool budget! Of course there’s the reduced income to consider when figuring the real cost of homeschooling, but it’s worth it. Definitely.

The other thing I did in preparing to homeschool was to go to our state’s department of education website and inform myself about our state’s requirements for homeschooling. I also thoroughly read and noted their detailed list of grade level standards, i.e. what each student is expected to know by the end of benchmark years (3rd, 5th, and 8th grades). My goal is to follow the list of grade level standards because Nigel has expressed a desire to transition back to public school in 9th or 10th grade so that he can attend our local high school. I would certainly love for him to be able to do that, so in designing his curriculum I try to keep up with whatever the state says his peers are supposed to be doing academically. That resource was extremely helpful in figuring out what to teach him. (For anyone interested, here is the webpage with Oregon’s grade level standards for every academic subject.)

It was a bit of work designing my own homeschool program, and some financial sacrifice, but every day I see the benefits. Every day I’m glad I took this road.

Our Homeschool Story

Every family has different reasons why they choose to homeschool. Many do it for moral/ethical/religious reasons. Some do it simply because they love to spend as much time as possible with their children and want to be responsible for their education as well. Some do it out of necessity for the child. Our family’s homeschool story, of course, falls into that last category.

About seven years ago, I attended a special needs parenting workshop on IEP preparedness and advocacy guidelines. The moderator went around the room prompting all the participants to introduce themselves and mention their child’s educational status. I vividly remember a woman seated by herself who explained in a tired but accepting voice that due to mainstreaming problems, she would need to homeschool her twelve-year-old son who had Tourette Syndrome. At the time, I thought I could interpret the exhaustion on her face, the frustration, the resignation. I thought, because I was a single parent with an autistic six-year-old, that I knew how she felt. I remember at that moment being thankful because Nigel showed such great potential that I wouldn’t need to consider homeschooling in the future. On some level, I didn’t even want to consider it because I thought it was something I wouldn’t be able to do. But now when I remember that woman’s face and her voice, I comprehend on a deeper level what she conveyed at the meeting that night, seven years ago.

This is what I need to do for my son. I don’t know how yet, but I will do it. I will make it work.

I know this now because this is how I felt five months ago. Six months ago, as the school year was about to begin, Nigel asked me several times if I would homeschool him. At the time I had not even considered it an option, mostly because, as a single parent, I had to work. How could I homeschool him? I couldn’t be the stay-at-home parent: I was the only parent!

I will write in future posts about all the bullying and social problems Nigel experienced that made me decide to find a way to homeschool him. Within weeks of school starting, his already fragile status in a low-support mainstreaming situation had deteriorated to the point where I had begun to seriously think about homeschooling him. I started researching homeschooling websites in general and looked at our state’s requirements for specific information. But I had no idea how to swing it financially.

Opportunity knocks. I had been working at my job as account manager for an order fulfillment company for almost ten years. My boss walked up to my desk a few weeks after I decided I would need to homeschool my son, and she said that one of our clients, a music label, was looking for someone to handle the royalty calculations for their 45 artists. It was tedious accounting work, but it could be done from home, and did I know anyone who might be interested? My spine tingled; I hadn’t told her yet that I needed to find a way to homeschool Nigel.

I took the job. And after several weeks of hiring and training my replacement at the office, I begain homeschooling my son. I am so glad he asked me to do this. It is a dream come true for both of us.