The Assignment:
Take time this week to write about YOU and your feelings of trials and triumphs with homeschooling. Touch on when you first heard about the concept of home schooling and whether you tip-toed into the idea or just jumped in and never looked back. Share your schooling as a child and how you compare it to what your goals are for your children.

Warning: You get me talking about how we came to homeschool and I get a bit long winded. So beware. This could take you a while.

I don’t remember exactly the first time I heard about homeschooling, but I do remember thinking that I could never do it. It wasn’t the lack of knowledge that I feared but the lack of confidence that I could provide my children with an adequate education. I was convinced that that was the job of someone else. Then God intervened and I was offered a part time job teaching Spanish to high school students at a private school. My daughter was 2; my middle son in PS kindergarten and my oldest was in 6th grade at the school. Having no formal training I wasn’t sure I could do it but felt it was where God wanted me to be. So I gave it my best. The following year I was offered a full time position as the high school teacher. Again, stepping out in faith, I accepted it. I found that I loved teaching and really had a heart for high school kids. The following year my oldest was in my class. That was hard because I knew what he was capable of and was pretty hard on him with my expectations. I taught him and 20 or so other students in 9th to 12th grade. Then I was asked to move to the lower learning center to teach elementary school, 2nd through 6th, in which my middle son was one of my students. I did this for two years and I really enjoyed it, but I began to find the ‘drama’ of dealing with parents too much stress. Also at this time I became very concerned with the teacher that replaced me and with the way she was treating some of the difficult students, my oldest being among them. My husband and I discussed and prayed about what to do. Now all this time I was learning more and more about homeschooling and my mother was encouraging me to do it. So in my oldest’s last semester of his senior year we pulled him out and began our homeschool adventure. I finished the school year at work and homeschooled my son in the afternoons. He had only a few credits left to earn so this was not much of a problem. I gave my notice and the following year began to homeschool my younger two. I really feel that God used that experience to prepare me for homeschooling and to give me the confidence that I could do it. After all, if I could teach other people’s children and had my own children in my classes, why not just focus on my own kids and not deal with the stress.
I went to wonderful public schools when I was growing up with mostly innovative and encouraging teachers. After a bout with sickness and missing almost ½ a year of 10th grade, my parents put me in a private school that used the School of Tomorrow program. I was able to make up the lost credits and some and still graduate in 1981. The school I worked at used School of Tomorrow program, which is why I found it fairly easy to teach. When we decided to homeschool though, I realized that that program wasn’t for my kids. They are more hands on- dig deeper kind of kids. I also found the program lacked teaching some of the basic skills of studying to learn not just to pass the test. I want my children to know what they learn and not to just memorize the facts. I want them to know how to learn and gather information so that they will be free to explore the wonderful world God has placed them in.
I have never regretted our decision to teach our kids at home, although there are days when I surely would love someone else to be teacher.

Proverbs 22:6 is the Scripture that stands firm in our household and is the reason I brought my kids home to learn. Because it is one of my all time favorite passages, we named our school after it and my little e-book business.

Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.

I don’t have any ‘1st’ day pictures, but here are a couple from today.

My son at his desk-9th Grade

My daughter at her desk-6th grade.