To Homeschool or Not

That is always the question. For me, at least.

When we moved here, we knew the hardest thing we’d be leaving wouldn’t be the year-round sunny weather but the school our older son attended. It was a small Christian academy where students were expected to work hard and have absolute respect for teachers and each other. Chapel was every morning and all the kids were little model citizens as they sat perfectly still and listened politely to incredible, inspirational speakers. Students created fantastically creative architectural models for history day, played instruments and sang in the chapel band, and older grades learned how to take thorough notes and write impressive essays. Nothing but superior work and behavior was allowed, and the teachers were loving yet strict.

Orcas Island has more school options than you’d imagine – Forest School, Montessori School, Salmonberry School, Christian School, public school, and Spring Street School in Friday Harbor via daily ferry commute. We chose the Christian School.

After a year-and-a-half, when our older son was halfway through second grade, he asked if he could homeschool. Homeschool? The thought had never crossed my mind.

He was in a wonderful class at the time, with an over-the-top-dedicated teacher who routinely stayed up until 12 or 1 AM preparing fantastic hands-on activities in every subject for her students.

Homeschool? Really? I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know what I thought about it, what educators thought about it, or how to go about doing it. All I knew was that our son was very intelligent and curious about the world, and I didn’t want to blow his education. But I also wanted to listen to him, as he tends to be a stoic type of person, not one to voice many needs.

Upon requesting his teacher’s permission to remove him, I took him out of school and we immediately began at home. It wasn’t much of a departure from our normal daily life up to that point, in the sense that I’ve always loved educating our kids in every way I could. We’ve always brought home loads of books each week from the library, reading in the rocking chair during the day and in bed at night. I had the gift of getting to stay at home to raise them, so we’d spent every single one of our days exploring the world, learning about nature, and seeking out new experiences. I’ve never let my guard down or taken my own time to live my own life in chunks apart from them. Educating them has always been my life.

Everything probably would have gone swimmingly except for one caveat. Our toddler. He was three and equally interested in the world. But toddlers aren’t built for schedules, routines, and quiet math times. Our older son thrives in a routine, but the younger one didn’t really make that possible. And I wasn’t about to enforce a cold, rigid regime on this little one’s blossoming, life-loving days. So homeschooling bent and morphed around him, and we read books and explored the world, just with added vigor.

This wasn’t the way I wanted to homeschool our older son, though. I knew he thrived on routine and rigidity. He craved science and experiments. I wanted him to have a solid block of time devoted each day to math. I felt it essential to work one-on-one with him on so many subjects that would have to be reluctantly glossed over in the presence of a happy, interruptive toddler. If I can’t do something thoroughly the right way, I don’t want to do it.

After a few months at home, I also felt our son was missing out on the social dynamics of school. Home felt so one-dimensional compared to what I knew he experienced at school.

Feeling unsure about how his teacher would react to the unexpected change again, I asked her if our son could rejoin the class for the rest of the year. Though surprised, she didn’t skip a beat; she kindly welcomed the idea and invited him wholeheartedly back. I was ever so grateful for her flexibility in my experimental parenting.

Our son skipped off to school for the rest of the year, and I was so relieved for his sake. Though he thoroughly enjoyed being at home, I knew this was the right choice for him in this phase of life.

I knew he was still wanting me to consider homeschooling in the future, so from then on I set off on an intellectual journey, reading books and asking the advice of as many parents, grandparents, educators, and children as I could.

Not long after second grade ended, our son attended a one-week ukulele camp here on the island. He came back after the first day and announced that he wanted to go to Salmonberry School, which is about a four-minute walk from the Christian School. What? Switch schools? Why?

Our son explained that he really liked the jovial man teaching the ukulele camp and that he would be his teacher if he were going to Salmonberry in the fall. A social butterfly, our son is not. So when he speaks up about really liking someone, especially a teacher, again, we listen.

I spent almost every minute of every day of that summer deliberating over and praying about what we should do. We hadn’t ever considered switching schools. We loved the Christian School.

But…I listened. When your child, who is normally undemonstrative about interpersonal things, feels strongly about his direction in life, and when he chooses an educator because he thinks he will respond well to that educator, what do you do?

Just a few days before school began, we enrolled him in Salmonberry. He so enjoyed that year, but he had a feeling that continuing a second year there didn’t fit his learning style. Okay. So what do we do, make another change??

We kept him enrolled for fourth grade, but began to see fairly quickly that yes, his personality didn’t gel with the style there that so many other kids blossomed in. The experience involved more socially-interactive dynamics. Class activities were much more student-led. School was less structured and more interpersonal. And while many children thrive in a Salmonberryesque atmosphere, our structure-over-social guy saw no point in the group-building activities, the theater, the literary discussions, etc. He probably needed it the most, but he didn’t seem to take it in at that stage in his development. While some kids were experiencing soul-satisfying bliss, our son couldn’t pinpoint anything he was getting out of it. For a child who absolutely loves learning, it’s essential to find where he belongs so that he continues to love learning.

By that time, I had had a few years to research and read up on homeschooling. The director of Salmonberry, one of the finest, kindest men you could ever meet in your life, had recommended that I read some books written by John Gatto, a former award-winning teacher in New York who retired to then write books about the ills of traditional schooling. They intrigued me and struck a chord. The things he said validated many unspoken thoughts I had been ruminating on over the previous years.

We pulled our son out of Salmonberry a month or so before the school year ended. Because the style was very different from what he needed, our son had not stayed up in math at all, so I knew I had some immediate work to do in catching him up before the next school year began.

When the year ended, I told him that I was finally ready. I felt solid in my opinions about and ability to homeschool him, and I’d give him a couple years. As summer went by, I continued researching materials and books on Amazon and ordered the things I knew he would love. Meanwhile, we enrolled our younger son, who absolutely loved social time in his part-time pre-K experiences, in kindergarten at the Christian School. I asked the Christian School if we could use the empty room next to the kindergarten room to do some of our homeschooling in order to add a little variety to our daily lives. They kindly agreed.

Routine and rigidity firmly in place, we began every morning of fifth grade by walking the little one to his kindergarten classroom and then starting our own studies in the next room over. We did a solid hour of math every single morning one on one. I had remembered being on a field trip on another island a few years before and having a student point out an old math textbook in the school museum. She said, “Miss Edee, you’ve got to come look at this math book that kids used 100 years ago. I don’t know how to do anything in it.” I knew right then that that was the book we would use. It was called The New Stone Millis Arithmetic. I found one on Amazon, and when it came, it had a student’s name in it. That boy must now be around 100 himself. In fact, I bought the third and fourth grade arithmetic book to make sure our son wouldn’t have any gaps in his knowledge before starting on the fifth and sixth grade book. After an hour of math, we practiced for an hour on the electric piano that was in the room.

After math and piano, we’d eat a snack I had brought for us both while reading US history aloud from a workbook. We would then leave the school to go for a 75-minute brisk walk together as I read science magazines aloud. I told our son that I would absolutely not miss my walk every single day, and that one condition of homeschooling was that he would walk with me, briskly, everyday, rain or shine.

Upon returning home from our walk each day, I would fix an uber-healthful and varied lunch and we’d eat while watching a science documentary or a Great Course on robotics or engineering. In the afternoons, he did things like science kits and electronics boards. He read gobs of books and caught up in a lot of language arts that fell through the cracks in previous years. He watched science experiment videos and built a working underwater ROV during his midwinter break, which he presented at the spring science fair in an inflatable birthing tub that we borrowed from a friend.

We never stopped learning. All day, everyday. Not because I’m a Nazi task master but because our son is content in and capable of working nonstop. He thrives that way. Having down time or amorphous-what-do-we-do-now space makes him feel idle and useless.

By the way, I don’t at all thrive in rigid routine, so homeschooling this way was purely for the sake of my son. Loving daily variety and spontaneity, I was proud of myself for curtailing all of my own needs and giving him what he needed instead. From the moment a child is born, that’s what you do as a mom. It’s really hard at first, but years of it get you used to it. Relinquishing expectations of what you need gets easier the more you do it.

By the end of the year, our son had worked continuously and covered three grades of math, methodically doing every problem in the 1920s books. He practiced more than was assigned to him by his piano teacher each day. We read almost the entire US history book one daily chunk at a time, as well as dozens of science magazines and biographies. We walked in either sun, clouds, rain, sleet, or hail everyday of the school year except two. He worked so well as a homeschooler and so hard as a student, and to my absolute relief, he scored very high in his end-of-the-year state tests in math and English.

Planning to homeschool the following year, I finally didn’t have to vex over our education plans that summer. But I learned something I hadn’t previously known. In a conversation with the teacher our older son would’ve had if he had continued at the Christian School way back in third grade instead of transferring to Salmonberry, she told me about how she had planned a significant theme around his interest in mechanical things. She knew he loved experiential science, so she had devised several hands-on engineering projects that would not only thrill him but be great for the rest of the class. They spent that year building various types of machines. Without him. Ugggh. How he would have loved that. Had he known that before we had switched schools, he probably would have never left.

The day before first grade started for our younger one, we attended a Back-to-School night. The sixth grade teacher pulled our older son aside and asked if he would like to try out her class the next morning on the first day of school. She said he’d be welcome to do half-days, full-days, or just field trips with her class, but whichever he chose, he’d have to attend the first week of school with her to learn her expectations. “Can I do that, Mom?” I like to keep all options open. “Of course you can,” I said.

He came home after that first day and said, “Mom, I’d like to go to school full-time. Is that okay?” Mind you, I had all of his books and studies ready to pick up where we left off from the previous year.

“Yes. It’s just fine,” I replied. “But Mom, will you be okay? What will you do with your life?” Ha! “I’ll be just fine,” I said. I trusted his instincts; I had the same ones. We both immediately read this new teacher’s vibe to be one of structure, high expectation, and student accountability.

What took me by complete surprise was that one month into school, our social seven-year-old came home saying that he wanted to homeschool; that he wanted more challenge. By this point, I was an easy yes. I love being with my boys. I love reading books and hunting down the perfect resources. I like the idea of things done well, to the best of my ability, so I greeted the idea of helping him perfect his printing. I loved thinking up audiobooks I knew he would like. And I knew I’d have a ball going to the library to find stimulating books on topics he enjoyed.

I never would’ve guessed it beforehand, but now here I was, asking the Christian School if they’d allow me to homeschool our younger son for half-days in the mornings, then bring him to school for afternoons. I wanted him to continue in his social relationships for the softer subjects of the day. Again, they graciously agreed.

So I got my younger boy unexpectedly back for half-days everyday. He went on to print beautifully – I couldn’t tell the difference between his alphabets and mine (and I write neatly); he listened to the 58 Magic Tree House books, and the nine Little House books; he grew crystals and read beautifully photographed and illustrated books on geology, botany, animals, insects, and deep-sea creatures; he watched documentaries on nature, biology, anatomy, and conservation; he polished stones and had his own garden plot; and he cranked his way through several math and language arts books. His attention span, like his brother’s, was hours long, and he too loved learning.

Our older one enjoyed his school year and got all As, and his teacher forced him to grow socially all along the way. She would not allow him to hole himself up at recess and lunch with a book; she knew he needed to go out and figure out what to do with himself among the other kids. I think he surprised himself – by the end of the year he had no interest in reading during his breaks; he said he actually wanted to be out throwing the football around instead.

But I knew he still clung to the idea that we would still do a second year of homeschool. What threw me for a loop was the idea of having two boys at home. Our younger one had decided he wanted full days of homeschooling for his second-grade year, not just half-days. When a child who loves people and social dynamics decides at the age of 8 that he’d prefer to stay home in a more isolated atmosphere and dig more deeply into learning, that’s something you respect.

I spent all last summer mentally devising the best schedule to make sure both boys got daily time in all of the subjects, at each of their levels, in resources that were stimulating, plus one-on-one time with me in both math and language arts. I like to walk everyday, so I told them I expected them to walk at my pace for an hour each day.

There are a thousand ways to homeschool. You can teach your kids all day or have an online “school” do it for you. You can bond with other homeschool parents and each pick your strongest subject to teach the collective group of kids. There’s “classical” homeschooling, Charlotte Mason-style homeschooling, religious-based homeschooling, and there’s unschooling. The list goes on.

I’m not interested in dry textbooks, or packing in facts and acing tests. When I was a kid, I learned how to ace my classes and move on. That’s what the system wanted from me. My kids love learning, so continuing on a path that promotes a sustained love of learning is my goal. They love to read, love to experience, love to create. When kids gobble up knowledge that feeds them, they retain it. It’s important to them. And when they see their parents interested in all of it too, it carries weight that nothing compares to. In my opinion, other people’s or institutions’ curricula can’t do that.

So with all kinds of resources at our disposal, we embarked on this year. I only have two children. Some moms homeschool their 10 children every year until college, write blogs about it, and still make the time to quaff their hair and post their beautiful five-course meals on Instagram.

Not so at our house. In the first few months of fall, I rarely found a moment to brush my hair. Being emotionally and intellectually “on” without a moment’s break for my brain, I began despising the idea of cooking dinner the minute we finished schooling for the day.

We had more discord than we’d ever had as a family. Children don’t really have a choice when it comes to obeying a teacher, but at home, they test boundaries and overstep time constraints as they are told to transition from one activity to another when starting a new family paradigm. All of a sudden, there were so many more hours of parenting and disciplining to be done in a day, in addition to all of the usual ones.

I began to be on edge. Being beholden to people from daybreak to bedtime was just too much. I’m the kind of person that needs a dose of social interaction, a dose of learning, a dose of exercise, and a dose of quiet time to myself worked into each day. I was getting way too much of some and none of the others. My heart felt a heaviness I could only unload by going on long, silent weekend walks alone.

Over time, I realized that, as with any new activity, you build endurance. As I softened in my expectations of myself to bring every amazing subject I could think of into each and every day of study and exploration, I also found that my brain was increasing its stamina for prolonged interaction and intellectual focus. And just when I thought I’d explode from discordant overload, everything began evening out. Battles subsided. Conflict became scarcer. Peace, for the most part, ensued.

We were learning absolute gobs of fascinating stuff from the get-go. We weren’t held back by the distractions of a 30-student schoolroom. We weren’t truncated by anyone’s time constraints. Sometimes we didn’t even eat lunch until 2:00 or go for a walk until 3:30. I had known the mental endurance of our 13-year-old. While some kids can’t concentrate beyond a few minutes (or less), he is able to keep his attention on something – even of mediocre interest to him – for hours and hours. But I hadn’t known that our eight-year-old could parallel that. At times I almost felt bad that he was working for such long hours, but because he was interested and didn’t complain, I reveled in it, amazed. Now and then he’d go roll around on the floor and mentally “check out.” That was more than fine with me.

But sometimes you know what someone needs before they know it themselves. I felt that homeschooling, at least the way I did it, was way too isolating for our younger one. I felt he was being done a disservice. His community was the Christian School, and he loved his place in it. While he was a little reluctant to mix things up in the middle of the school year, I knew I needed to for his sake. After considering my request to allow him attend half-days, the new principal and the board granted it.

Our lives changed yet again, for the better. He was immediately happy to go off to school at noon each day, and our older son was happy to have one-on-one learning time together every afternoon. While I sorely missed all the learning the younger one had been doing with us, I was happy to have a time constraint put on me. I could no longer put off my walk until 3:30 each day for the sake of their learning; I was so elated to know we would walk everyday at noon after dropping off the younger one.

Life has been much better for all of us in this new configuration.

But what now as we move forward? My two years of homeschooling the older one will come to an end in June. He’s learned so much. He treats me respectfully, for the most part. He’s not been exposed to the Pandora’s box of cynicism, teasing, cussing, bullying, and crassness that’s rampant within the walls of middle school. My husband and I struggle everyday to envision a place that will provide the academic challenge and continued love of learning that he’s so capable of.

The same goes for the younger one. Now that I know what he ‘s capable of, I want him to be challenged and continue loving learning as well.

Homeschooling teaches you just how far a child can go.

I’d love to start a children’s institute for higher learning called TMI – Too Much Information. It would be the precursor to MIT, and experts in all subjects would come and provide the most fascinating, hands-on, challenging environment for kids who love to learn. Our older son has longed for a technical institute since he was three years old, when he announced, “I wov engineews.”

In the meantime, I just don’t know what to do. For now, we’ll keep plugging away one day at a time in our little cozy laundry room of expanded learning.