This was originally written as an email to someone who supports our homeschool plans. As I started writing, I realized that this sums up my idealogy about homeschooling and thought it might be a good segue from the past posts on this blog into the future. I’ve been very inconsistent with posting here because so much of what I deem “blog-worthy” goes in other places: prayer requests, my notebook of journal entries for my children, text messages. I might take a different avenue with this blog from here on out to make it more relevant and less redundant to what I’m already doing. I don’t have to decide anything tonight, but here’s the email I sent earlier:
I’m so excited about starting “school at home” as I’ve been telling the boys. I’ve really been talking up having school at home, trying to convince them that seeing their Daddy for longer in the evenings is better than waking up so early in the morning to get off to school, and that being able to see Grandma Hall every week is more important than sitting in a classroom being still for 7 hours a day. I’ve told them about taking field trips and about how we can continue to go to Bible Study Fellowship, which I know has taught them so much over the last 4 years.
They have done so well in preschool this past year, and they love learning new things and pleasing their teachers. They are so smart, and diligent (almost to a fault! Their teachers keep telling me they have to urge them to move on.) They play well with others, but they are masters at working independently. I’m excited to teach them all about gravity and geometry, as well as Christopher Columbus and how to spell onomatopoeia (no spell check needed!). They are so eager and excited to share what they found out with my husband, Blessing, and Grandmas. I don’t want them to be stifled by tests, pressure to stay ahead and always moving forward, or held back by their peers. I want to be able to spend a week studying ants as we watch them on the back porch, or have a field trip to our friends’ house when they need help with moving. I want them to discover that learning is fun, and shouldn’t be a chore.
This weekend I attended a homeschool conference in KC. We were able to pick out all our curricula and plan what we’d like to teach for the next year. I got more out of the conference than I thought I would. Last year I was completely overwhelmed, didn’t know what to pick or how to choose and had no idea about the legal side (or logistics side), so I got a LOT out of the seminars. They had a track just for new homeschoolers which included some encouragement (anyone is qualified to homeschool), some legal advice, and some of the nuts and bolts of how this even works. I gobbled it all up and came up with my head about to explode.
This year, I felt like I was ready to go, and just needed to add a devotion strategy. I picked my seminars out of what I desired to learn, not what I felt was absolutely essential, and I got so much out of it! I went to 2 seminars by a gentleman based on his book called Pitchin’ a Fit: Overcoming Angry and Stressed Out Parenting. Wow, that was written for me! I left his seminar (it was the first one of the conference) and jokingly told my friend, “I can go home now.” I attended another seminar on dealing with strong-willed children (Blessing!), and a great seminar on raising gentlemen with practical tips and etiquette norms that aren’t so normal anymore.
The most important realization I got out of attending this year’s conference was that my husband and I are the best-equipped people to teach our children, and that God chose each of them for us, and us for each of them. When I was attempting to teach full-time for the local school district earlier this winter I had forgotten that. I thought that as long as they could go to school with me, and I saw them for music class each day, it would be okay. Then I subbed for one of the music teachers and saw how bad it could be for them to be in the public schools. (Some of) The teachers didn’t care about how much they learned in music or really, if they learned anything. The kindergarten class was literally crawling around the room 5 minutes after they were supposed to be gone, and their teacher couldn’t even get them to behave. I do not want my children in that situation if I can help it, and I can!
This is probably far more information than you expected to hear back from me, but all this is to say, thank you for supporting our mission to homeschool. I know it will be hard, I know it will be inconvenient, and I know there will be days where I wish I could just put them on a bus for 8 hours, but that is not what God intended for them, and that is not what is best for them. He did not promise us easy passage, but the destination is worth it.
Today's encouraging verse: You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:6-8
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