When I was young I assumed that I would homeschool my children. I fully believed it was the "right" choice in all circumstances (oh, the naivete of youth) and that it would come naturally to me and be easy. It turns out, God has a sense of humor and enjoys using it to humble His children ;). I can say that when it finally came time to dip my toes into the world of formal education, I freaked. I suddenly had millions of doubts, and agonized over whether or not it really was the right choice for Sparrow.
After all, I am not the most organized or disciplined person in the world. Out of my many failures and besetting sins, laziness and slothfulness are my arch enemies and a constant fleshly struggle. To teach another, one must not be constantly spontaneous but have goals and routines and plans. There wasn't quite the abundance of materials when I was in school; now there is a plethora of not only materials but methods and schools of thought on education. I felt totally lost, and totally apprehensive. How do I wade through the vast, VAST resources at my fingertips and choose the right method and materials for my oldest?
Another concern I had was finding like-minded people and friends for Sparrow. You see, when I was growing up, we were involved in plenty of co-ops and lessons and activities so we never lacked for social stimulation. To my great surprise, there was both a lack of types of co-ops that I had when I was young and an abundance of BIG homeschool groups. I like homeschool groups like I like church...small, involved, and personal. Complicating this was the fact I was the only mama I knew that was homeschooling. NONE of my other local friends with kids were. Growing up, we went to churches where homeschooling was the norm. So I felt alone and isolated. And Sparrow is an incredibly social soul, and very gifted in the art of making friends. I wanted to encourage those hospitable, evangelistic traits in her.
Kindergarten was a hard, hard year in which I questioned our decision over and over. Despite trying out several groups, I just couldn't find a good fit or any firm friends. We took classes at the rec center, but Sparrow was frustrated by a lack of consistency in the friends and people she encountered. I was totally lost when it came to interacting with my daughter in a "this is school" fashion, and worried whether I'd be able to be a good teacher for her. I felt like a failure constantly.
By the end of the year, I decided to do some real soul searching and praying and figure out what I was doing wrong. Maybe *I* was wrong, and the right thing for my child would be a private or public school after all. Maybe I was just not the type to be a good teacher. Maybe I was harming myself and my child by trying to hang on to a principle that just plain didn't work for us in reality.
Oh, how I cried, and begged God for wisdom. How fearful my heart was! And yet through it all, my husband and I felt strongly led that homeschooling was the way for our kids. By the end of summer, I had made some important discoveries and revelations, and had found a solution to my social problem. By the end of first grade, we had made friends and had begun to find a good rhythm, and I knew we had made the right decision. And as we just wrapped up second grade, I am more confident than ever in our synergy as a family of learners and in our abilities to succeed, with God's help and blessing, in this endeavor.
So what changed?
The first thing that changed was a big ol' cosmic spanking. I realized that instead of allowing God to work through the task given me to die to my flesh, work through my weaknesses and become strong, I was giving IN to the weaknesses. One thing God has consistently taught me through parenting my own children is that parenting is an enormous opportunity to learn how to put others first. To learn how to give up my rights (not in a bad way, but in a self-centered me-first way), to die to myself, to give of myself, and to trade my weaknesses in for strengths. I've long said that I find it a shame when moms and dads parent their newborns out of what's best for the parents and not what's best for the newborns, because they lose a tremendous opportunity for personal growth as well as subconsciously teaching their children that their needs aren't important compared to mom or dad's desire to sleep or not be attached to a suckling child.
What a hypocrite I was to shirk my responsibilities to my children because it was "hard"! Because I didn't feel "up" to the task! Sparrow and I are a lot alike, so we butt heads sometimes. Yet, who else truly understands her but me? Not a teacher she gets to know over the course of nine or ten months, not the neighbor down the street. Sure, sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees when you are in the midst of it, but that keen awareness and understanding I have of my child (heightened by my own self-awareness) is not rivaled and cannot be duplicated. My husband and I have a better understanding of her learning needs and her needs in general than anyone else. It is better to have the outsider's perspective add to mine, rather than my perspective add to the outsider's objective and yet incomplete one.
God promises us grace and strength in Him for the tasks He appoints to us, so for me to say I was unable was a lie in a way. Furthermore, I realized that I was losing out on a tremendous opportunity for personal growth. I could throw up my hands and say "let someone else deal with it!" or I could let God mold and change me through my parenting challenges into someone LESS lazy and slothful, and someone more appropriately ordered and organized. The easy road is almost never the right road, after all. And it HASN'T been easy. There are things I am still working on, and getting better about. But every year has been a vast improvement, and I quite enjoy our journey...even the hard parts.
It is easier for me to shirk my responsibilities as a parent than it is to parent, and easier for me to shirk my responsibilities as a teacher than it is to teach. Another thing I realized, however, is that teacher and parent are one and the same. However you choose to access an education for your children--public, private, or home--you begin teaching them from the womb on. While sitting down with textbooks and purposefully learning about the Declaration of Independence is a little different than the organic learning that happens as you go about your day, there needn't be such a distinction and delineation between the roles. While I do believe that discipline in such matters and structured, formal schooling is a good thing in measured doses, I have come to embrace the unschooling side of myself and try to approach all of our educational experiences as organically as possible. Instead of having a 'time' of learning in the mornings, I want us to develop a culture of curiosity and to be always learning and thirsting after wisdom and knowledge. Instead of compartmentalizing our lives so crisply, I want learning to be natural and simply a part and process of life that takes many different forms.
Key to this was me embracing that I was already doing this, if imperfectly. I read to my children, discipline my children, point out the wonders of the world...just add some math drills and guided learning topics and voilà! School! Secondly, I realized that if I really wanted this ideal for my children, the ONLY place it could *effectively* take place was in our home. I truly felt that putting her in a 7-8 hour school day plus homework would not be joyful learning, but drudgery. And I just couldn't bring myself to do that to her.
Once I had taken the pressure off of myself--that I needed to look at my weaknesses that held me back from doing a good job as an opportunity for growth, that I did NOT have to do it all by myself and be perfect at it from day one (like any teacher is perfect!), that I was already doing it anyways, and that it could only happen with me--all of the other reasons I had for wanting to homeschool in the first place began to make more sense. But that is a topic for another day.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3.5
Part 4
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