Why Homeschool ??

Our family's road to the adventure of homeschooling

      I first became interested in homeschooling in the summer of 1991. We were living in leased housing, near an Air Force base in Germany. My oldest son, Trevor, a gifted child, was bored and restless at school. His "special" Gifted and Talented classes consisted of logic puzles and glorified Arts & Crafts lessons. He was performing a full 2 years ahead of his classmates in Math, yet the school was reluctant to accelerate him. My younger son, Kevin, seemed destined to follow in his brother's footsteps. We had already been to parent-teacher conferences where we heard that he was finishing papers in 5 minutes that were meant to take 20, and that he was ahead of the other students academically, but behind socially. The teacher seemed almost resentful that she had to scrounge up supplemental enrichment material for Kevin to work on while the other children finished their assignment. And now we were getting ready to send our baby, Erin, off to school !

      At this time, we had a neighbor who had four children, varying in age from 10 to 2. She was actively homeschooling all but the youngest. These children were the most well-behaved, polite and gentle children I had ever known. There was little sibling rivalry, they did not "back-talk" their parents, and they were proud to live a Christian life. But, more importantly, these children truly loved to read and to learn. I was very impressed, and I spoke with their mother about homeschooling, but I was too timid to take the step and actually begin homeschooling my own children. I felt I "just didn't have the patience or ability to be a good enough teacher".

      Within the next year, our situation improved. The school agreed to accelerate Trevor from 5th to 6th grade, Kevin had a more agreeable and challenging 2nd grade teacher and Erin was doing well in kindergarten...thoughts of homeschooling drifted from my mind.

      We returned to the US and our next assignment in New Jersey. The two younger children were enrolled in a very small base school, and Trevor was enrolled at the Junior High off-base. I became intensely involved in the elementary school, volunteering and serving as Secretary of the PTO. Being in the school almost every day helped me to keep an eye on the kids' education, but there were still a few times when a nagging doubt told me they were not getting all that they could out of school. Trevor continued to do well, and he was offered some more difficult courses, which at least kept him busy, if not completely challenged.

      The next year saw a big change in our lives, I was offered a full-time job as a educational assistant (teacher's aide) in Erin's school (Kevin had moved up to the 4th to 6th grade school, but he was only a short walk away). I was assigned to a first grade classroom, and I did everything from working with learning delayed children to grading phonics papers and helping with lessons. I learned so much from my time in Miss Lipsky's class, and from the other teachers at the school. It was an eye-opening experience. I could see the frustration of trying to teach 25 children of all different abilities and levels, and how some children were left behind, while others yearned for more interesting assignments. I also became more confident in my ability to actually teach children, and became more patient with their shortcomings.
At the same time, Erin began showing some signs of rebellion in school, getting in trouble for acting out, and doing lackluster work, just enough to get by. But she was happy, Kevin's grades were great, and I enjoyed my work.
I stayed for one more year at this school, now working in a 4th grade classroom with Mrs. Kelly. Here I saw the strong "pull" of peer interaction, both negative and positive. I also learned more about handling lesson plans, instruction, and how to reinforce a struggling or reluctant student. For Kevin and Erin things stayed on an even keel, but then we were given orders to Massachusetts, a new school system, and the next stage of our family life...

      Since 4th grade, Kevin had been placed in the gifted and talented program at the schools he attended. However, in the "regular classroom" enrichment materials were not always made available, and Kevin was often bored. In fact, one teacher "diagnosed" Kevin with ADD and told us we needed to "get him on" Ritalin, When we looked into the situation, we found he was not allowed to do anything but sit and wait when he was finished before other students, he was not even permitted to bring a book to class and read quietly. Placed in that situation, I'd squirm too !
Kevin was small, skinny, unathletic, and up until 6th grade, he cried easily. He is also an extremely loving, empathetic and cooperative boy, and most teachers found him a joy to have in class. But you know what this meant; he was labeled and marked as the one who the bullies were to torment. Kevin's self-esteem has always been strong, and this caused more problems. Rather than back down from the bullying, he stood up to it and escalated the fighting. In the new school, Kevin's life became a near daily occurance of threats and emotional battering from a few bullies that the school could not control. In all fairness, the teachers and principal did what they could, and Kevin's friends stood by him, but these bullies knew where they were safe to come after him.
After one exceptionally bad week of torn book covers, a bully trying to shake Kevin off of the rope in P.E. class, and threats of how they would get him and hold him under water in the creek on the walk home from school, I'd had enough. We decided that to take Kevin out of the public school system and allow him to learn at home, without the distraction and distress caused by the bullies. Perhaps not the most "noble" way to handle the situation, but we felt it was the best decision for our family and for Kevin.

      For our daughter, Erin, the decision came about differently. At first, we were not even considering taking her out of school along with Kevin. She is very social and school was "fun" for her. However, we were still seeing some unsettling things about her academic performance. Erin always took the "easy" way out. If a teacher asked for a 3 page report, Erin would write in huge letters, or would use the biggest font she could get away with to make 3 pages. She would not strive to go further than what was expected of her, and she often said she didn't understand something that was giving her difficulty and give up, rather than buckle down and try to work out the problem. In New Jersey, the teachers did their best to encourage her to try harder, and not to settle for "just okay".
However, when we moved up to Massachusetts and into an OBE (Outcome Based Education) school, things went from bad to worse. Erin had this "system" figured out immediately. She dawdled her way through class, saying she needed more time to work out an assignment. If she waited long enough, a teacher or another student would often "help" her (translated as: do the work for her). There were few deadlines and little punishment for late work. Even if you were failing, staying after school for extra help was "optional". In Math, as long as you made a good guess, and backed it up with a reasonable explanation, you could write any answer you wanted (Fuzzy Math). This was right up Erin's alley, and she exploited it to the max. When her standardized test scores for math computation and basic skills fell over 30 points in less than half a year, we knew something had to be done.
At the same time, Erin had fallen in with a group of rather nasty girls, who teased and bullied other girls. I think she saw the way Kevin was treated and decided it was better to be the bully. The girls in her little group talked about the "R"-rated movies they had seen, discussed smoking and "fooling around" with guys. Not the best influence on the new girl who just wanted to fit in, and Erin's changing attitude was unpleasant and distressing to us. We decided that Erin would be homeschooled as well.

      A more compelling reason that we began homeschooling is what most people would call "religious". My husband was recently saved and I have returned to the Christian church after years of backsliding. This has become an important part of our lives now, and we hope to instill Christian values and Christlike behavior in our children.
Our main concern here was the "values clarification" model most schools follow, using the humanistic model of "natural goodness", which believes that children should form their own moral standards by using "inborn virtues" (often based on Rousseau's vision of "The Noble Savage"). This does not follow the Biblical model at all, which teaches that man is fallen and we need to fight every day against the temptations of the world. The idea of our children sitting around "rapping" with their peers about such important things as drugs, sexuality, and when it is all right to break the law is not the way we would like their values to be formed.
I know that we cannot shield the children from the "real world" forever, and this is the last thing we are trying to do. Both Kevin and Erin socialize happily with kids in the neighborhood, and in our homeschool support group, but we are more comfortable knowing that they will be learning moral values and a Christian way of life in our homeschool.

DID YOU KNOW ??

All of these people were homeschooled as children:

George Washington	Abraham Lincoln	Woodrow Wilson
Theodore Roosevelt	Thomas Edison	Fredrick Douglass
Margaret Mead	Andrew Carnegie	Mark Twain
Charlie Chaplin	Andrew Wyeth	Pearl S. Buck
George Washington Carver	Albert Einstein	Agatha Christie
Noel Coward	C.S.Lewis	George Bernard Shaw

© donna donnell-1998-1999-2000-2001

The Donnell House
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