Making the decision to homeschool.

My husband and I have 5 children, ages 14 to 4. I have a BS in Biology and a Masters of Science in Nursing, specializing in Nurse Midwifery. My last job was managing a maternal child health program through the local health department covering two large counties in SC. I quit a little over 4 years ago to stay home full-time with our children. My husband has a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering. He also has a Medical Degree and currently works as a physician. By all available metrics we are successful products of the public education system. We both went to public high schools and graduated from public state universities for our university, grad school and med school degrees. We have done well academically and were frankly model students. So why did we make the decision to take our children out of public school, bring them home and educate them ourselves??

I wish I could say that it was one simple thing that led us to this point, but the truth is that my disillusionment with the public school system had been building for quite some time. Here is a rough timeline of events that led to our decision.

1) It began in SC, where my 2nd son, who had difficulties with attention and impulsivity, told me that as a punishment for impulsive behaviors he was being denied recess. This absolutely did not make any sense to me. T is not a bad child. He has trouble sitting still. He’s a boy and he needs to move. School is not a place for little boys who need to move. They only are given 20-30 minutes of recess and his teacher was taking away the only time he was allowed to move all he wanted because in class he was moving too much. I wrote an email, was told my child was lying and promised that T would not be denied recess as a punishment.

2) We moved to WV and that’s when the real problems began. In SC my 2 older sons were in the advanced math and language arts classes. This meant that they were a grade level ahead in these subjects. They were also in separate enrichment classes based on their test scores. I was not aware of the difficulty I would face in getting my sons in the correct classes in WV. This is where I learned that in the public school system the squeaky wheel is definitely the one that gets the oil. I called. I emailed. I sent notes. My sons need to be tested. They are in the wrong math and language arts. They have already learned this stuff last year. They are just repeating what they have already been taught and aren’t making any progress. Please, put them in the correct classroom. I can’t put into words really the level of bureaucracy and red tape I had to go through to just get my sons in the correct grade level for math and language arts. It was infuriating. It took months and months. Practically the entire fall semester they were waiting on testing and IEP meetings and such. 3-4 months were wasted learning material they had already learned in SC because of the snails pace in WV. I thought about children with parents who both work full-time jobs. How do these parents manage to cause enough of a fuss to get anything done in the school system? But finally, FINALLY it was fixed. They were finally put in the correct grade levels for these subjects and I thought it was over. Wrong.

3) The next year the school again mistakenly put T in the lower level math. He was in Math 5 when he should have been in Math 6. Again he was back to learning what he had already learned. Again I had to work with the school to get T in the correct math class. It wasn’t as arduous this time because we had the end of year testing from last year proving that he had already mastered this material, but it was a process nonetheless.

4) During this same time my 3rd son, B, was having significant trouble reading. B has always had slower language development. He began speaking later. He was less talkative than his peers. B was having difficulty decoding words. We had meetings. He was put in reading intervention classes. He was sent home extra homework just for him, because if he’s not getting it more homework will surely fix it! (Wrong.) Towards the end of the year we had a final meeting. I asked the team of teachers I was meeting with about the possibility that B had dyslexia. I had begun to suspect this when I was reading with him at home. He didn’t approach words the same way that his brothers had when they were learning to read. He would sometimes say the ending sound or even the middle sound first and then go to the beginning. Even looking at a sentence sometimes he would say the words in the wrong order. Spelling was very difficult. He would often get the letters correct but they weren’t in the right order. I was told that they don’t test for dyslexia anymore, so it didn’t matter if he had it or not. They would be using the same reading program regardless. It was decided that B would repeat 1st grade. Okay, I said. He’s the youngest in his class. Maybe this is just what he needs.

B’s second round of first grade was an absolute waste of time. The time he spent in reading intervention was increased. He made minimal progress and at the end of the year his reading level was only maybe 1 level above what it was when he started 1st grade he first time, 2 years prior. More than this, B was now convinced he was stupid. He may not be a talkative child but he’s very perceptive. His peers had progressed, but he had not. He knew the scores he received on his spelling tests, which were all failing. He knew he had to go to special classes. When we would do homework with him and he would get a word wrong, he would repeat, “I’m stupid, stupid, stupid!”. Testing at school caused a lot of anxiety for B. The tests seemed to be all of the time. They tested spelling, sight words, reading and then the standardized tests which seemed excessive to me. It seemed they spent weeks talking up these standardized tests. B was an emotional mess about school. Naturally he hated it. It was at this time I had started to think about homeschooling. I decided to sign B up for 2nd grade anyway, just to see, and then take them all out for the next year.

B started 2nd grade and it was immediately a disaster. Every morning it was a struggle to get him in the car. He hated it with a passion. I received almost daily notes or calls from his teacher. B was talking in class. B wasn’t sitting in his seat. B was asking “Why?” too many times and arguing with the teacher. The final straw came when I received a call from the principal telling me that B had said “shit” in class. He was in big trouble apparently. The principal had me scold him over the phone. She made him tell me what he did. She made him apologize to me. B came home off the bus that day and immediately said to me “Mom, I didn’t say that. The boys that sit next to me said ‘Hey let’s tell the teacher that B said the s word!’ So they did! I knew if I told her I didn’t do it that she would think I was lying and then I would just get in more trouble. So I told her I did it so I wouldn’t get in trouble for lying. But I didn’t! I didn’t say that!” He had no reason to lie about it because I wasn’t punishing him at home and he knew that. I believed him. I feel like you know your children, especially at that age, and can get a sense of when they’re telling the truth and when they’re not. I felt B was telling the truth. The bullying was the last straw for me. I made plans to withdraw him that day. I told him we were going to finish out the week but that I was submitting my paperwork to the Board of Education and that we would be homeschooling.

B’s transition to homeschooling and really recovery from the public school system is a blog post in and of itself. (In short, I will say that after the 1st month home he stopped saying he was stupid. After a few months in an Orton-Gillingham based phonics program, a program specifically recommended for children with dyslexia, he was reading.) After I brought B home I began to do more research into homeschooling. I learned about classical education and met other parents who were successfully homeschooling their older children for college prep. I learned about ways to take AP classes when homeschooling. I learned about dual enrollment with community colleges. I learned about how to write transcripts and tackle college applications from a homeschool setting. I started to really think about the freedom and flexibility homeschooling could provide all of my children. I started to think about how little time children have during the school year to be outside in nature, exploring their world. We starting attending a co-op of other kids who just spent time outside exploring and learning about nature in an unstructured environment. I picked up books by John Holt and John Taylor Gatto. I watched lectures through Classical Academic Press. I decided to bring home my kindergartener at Christmas break. I decided to bring home my 2 older children at the start of the next school year. I didn’t think I would be a homeschooling mom. For years I thought those women were crazy. I looked forward to a time when all of my children were in school and I could go to hot yoga classes and book clubs alone in the middle of the day. Yet here we are- and I love it.