Chapter 7 - Homeschooling Alone
(I preface this blog with – I have discussed this post with
my husband, he has read and approved it.
He will tell you that he has grown through the last 5 years in many
ways. He is the dad that goes and talks to the other homeschooling dads to
encourage them to help and support their wives.
The Lord has used homeschooling, in part, to change his heart. Praise
the LORD!)
Summer in the country was so relaxing and peaceful. Through
craigslist I discovered a lady selling school desks just around the corner from
us, and bought 3 to set up my own little school room.
I decided to start school on August 20th since
that was the day that the public school was starting. I had been studying those teacher books all
summer so I got out the work books and I gave each kid their work. We got up at 8am and were in the school room
by 9am since that was when the public school would start. Painstakingly, I went through each lesson
with each child. We took lunch at 12pm for 1 hour and then we went back at it
until 3pm, because that is what the public school would do.
By the end of the day my poor kids, ages 6, 7, and 8, were
fried. Exhausted, I began questioning
the day. Was I doing this right? Well,
maybe we should add a spelling test on Fridays because that is what they did in
public school…. And maybe I should let them out a little earlier….. maybe I
should go back to the library and get some more books… maybe I could do more
with my older son since he needed more science stuff…..
At the end of the day the house was a mess, there was no
dinner, no laundry was clean and my husband was rather puzzled at the state of
his castle. Day after day this continued
until he finally confronted me with the age old ‘What did you DO all day?’ The children were rebelling against this new
way of schooling. One would skip their work and sit all day, appearing to
quietly study, while doing nothing! Another hid unfinished worksheets under the
couch, while the other screamed that he hated me and wanted to go back to
school.
I began to realize that there were not many other
homeschooling families in our neighborhood, and I needed some serious
help. I joined a support group which met
about 30 minutes from my home. The
ladies there were very kind, but I quickly discovered that no one was going to
drive out to the middle of nowhere to help me out. They had occasional meetings and daily
emails, but even the emails were completely overwhelming. When I offered to host a mom’s night, not
only did no one come – but they called and said they weren’t coming (the day of
the event) and they were going to have it at another location, more convenient
to them.
In November, after emailing and asking for help, again, and
getting a few – ‘yes it is hard but it’s worth it, so just keep hanging on’
emails, I was completely discouraged.
Even those who had encouraged me to home school were now so far away
that they couldn’t come over to help.
So I gave up. I re-enrolled my kids in public school.
Discouraged with my husband’s complete lack of support,
overwhelmed by the questioning family members, frustrated beyond belief with my
children and feeling like a complete failure because my first grader could not
read, I quit.
You read that right. The co-op leader you now know, the homeschooling
cheerleader, and super mom extraordinaire (HA), threw both hands up in the air
and quit. To put the cherry on top, my
'support' group promptly kicked me out because I was no longer homeschooling!
In January, we got a call from the school because my oldest
had explained the adult earth theory to his science teacher, in the middle of
class, while being taught evolution. The
teacher responded by saying ‘Well, scientists have studied this.” To which my
son replied ‘Then those scientists need to be more Godly.’ My inner mom was jumping for joy and
shouting 'YES!' It was clear that public school was not going to work when my
child came home with a D in science, after completing the work with the correct
answers rather than the ones the teacher had taught. The science teacher
demanded a conference and I refused to go. I handed the letter to my husband
and told him that he could deal with it, or not, and I did not care one way or
the other. This was a terribly rebellious attitude and was not overly helpful in resolving this situation, however, I was completely at my wits end.
Drason went to talk to the science teacher. The science teacher was clearly educated
beyond his intelligence. So, Drason
removed Macguines from school again.
Drason could see that I wasn’t able to home school alone. (I have come to learn that no one can!) So he
offered to help. He started by just
spending time with Macguines, which made a difference in the boy’s attitude
right away.
This time I was going to do better. Heck, it was just one
kid! I could do this. About 3 weeks into homeschooling part 2,
again trying to copy the public school method of instruction, my child was
bored and I was bored, so we put away the school books and just played.
The next day we got up when we felt like it, I cleaned house
and he played math games on my computer.
Then I cooked dinner while he read some books that he actually
liked. Amazingly I didn’t feel
frustrated and he was pleasant too! We
stopped doing the workbooks all the time and took time to just do fun stuff
together. We went on trips to the zoo,
to the library, to Dawes, and we just enjoyed hanging out with each other. In the evenings he would spend time with Drason recounting his day and what he had learned. More than once I heard Drason say things like "Wow, you guys learned a lot today!" Hearing this praise made my heart swell!
Looking back, I could not tell you what educational goal we
met or what facts we learned. That year we learned that no one could home school alone, we
had to home school together.
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