Day 4: My Second Impression of Homeschooling

I have worked in the food and beverage industry for most of my life and even while I was working in the public school system, I continued working in a restaurant as a server, a bartender, a hostess, and a manager-on-duty.  I did this because I found that working in the school system with my position of an Educational Technician was unstable - there was no pay for vacations nor holidays, we were not allowed to contribute to the decisions made for the student's education, and there was no job security as when a student that we were assigned to graduated or was no longer attending school, we were sent home.  I was also working in the school system at a time when I was able to see the effects of the No Child Left Behind Act and how special education students were forced out of the Life Skills programs and into mainstream classrooms.  On a daily basis I watched teachers, students, and parents struggling to make the changes required to satisfy this law and it never worked - everyone was beyond stressed and this created an emotionally charged environment.

For me, the end point is when I was working with two students - one was graduating that year and the other would be graduating the next - and because my main student, the one who was graduating, made it to graduation and left school, the administration pulled me out of my one-on-one work with the second student who actually needed my support more than my first student.  When they called me to take on a new student for the following year, I declined and instead of going back, I decided to go into managing a restaurant that I had been working in for some time.

During my second year of managing the restaurant, I had a 20-year old girl on my staff that was working on her Masters degree.  When she was not at work, she was focused on her education and her future so she wasn't into the same social activities that the other staff were into.  I remember her being bright, cheery, really pleasant to be with, and up for challenges.  She was also able to fit in with the other staff despite her outside interests and activities being different.  When she told me that she was homeschooled, I became excited because I had been curious about homeschooling and homeschoolers and this is something that I wondered if it would be possible for me to do for my youngest child, Hunter.  She worked for me for two years and it was great getting to know her, learning about the homeschooling process, and seeing how someone who was homeschooled interacted with others and their environment.  See, there's this myth that homeschooled kids aren't 'socialized' or aren't able to function with stability within the system and I found out from this girl in real time that this definitely was not true.

Working and playing - a daily thing in our restaurant

During her second year with us, her mom came to work for our company at the front desk of the hotel so I utilized the many times that I had with her in one-on-one communication to ask questions about homeschooling laws, requirements, procedures, the time investment, curriculum and what I could potentially expect to see based on her own experiences with homeschooling her children.  See, homeschooling tends to look like this HUGE thing - like this big deal or a commitment that goes beyond what we think we can give to our children but this mom assisted me to see that it's actually quite simple and more convenient for some parent's schedules.

Out of all of this, though, what stuck with me the most is when the mom shared with me that by the time children are 8 years old, they start teaching themselves.  She told me that the only part I am actually required to provide are the 'morals' or principles.

To be continued.

Day 3: School Won't Change Who Your Child Is (And Neither Will You)

In my last post, Day 2: School From A Parent's Perspective, I left off with when I realized that my oldest child was not academically prepared to be successful in a private high school environment because my child had limited exposure to text books in her elementary school and the high school expected that a student be responsible for answering their own questions about the material by utilizing and researching the information provided in the text books.

There was a small part of me that blamed the elementary school for not providing books for the students and thus showing them how to use books to find information and self-educate. This is in-part due to me seeing throughout the years how well paid the teachers were as they drove really nice cars and lived in beautiful houses.  So this point of children not being provided with the same educational resources that I had during my education process was confusing and I often wondered why the teachers had so much more and the students had so much more less.  And though I was in-part in blame back then, I now have an understanding of how our system currently works where resources are not equally shared so within this, for the few to have a high-quality life, many others must go without.  It is the same in the public school systems and the children being the one's to go without is an unfortunate consequence of our acceptance and allowance of this system. Which brings me to my next point: My known responsibility as a parent.

My two children - one 7, one 25

Regardless of my attempts to blame the school system for my child not being educated to a private high school standard as well as my own, I knew that I was the one that was ultimately responsible for her not succeeding.  I was the one that gave up, I was the one that accepted the authority of the system, and I was the one that very much wanted to believe and have faith that the situation with my child's education would work itself out.  I'm sure that many can relate with the guilt here - the knowing that you could have done something to change the situation, decided not to, and then saw that consequences of that decision.  Admittedly, I carried around that guilt for a long time and to some extent, that guilt influenced my decision to homeschool my youngest child and to give him the quality education that I saw my oldest child missing out on.  Looking back, I see that despite my attempts to utilize guilt to victimize myself and trying to continue to give up, my sense of responsibility for the lives I brought into this world was much stronger and later I was able to utilize this guilt as a point of making changes.

I took this picture of my oldest in her study hall.
I was fortunate to be able to be a part of her high school years.

So, at the time that my oldest child was frustrated with the private high school, I was working as an Educational Technician at a public high school and I saw that it would be cool for us to be there together. My daughter agreed and joined me during her junior and senior years.  She says today that it's one of the best decisions that she made.  From a parent's perspective, I agree as it was definitely cool to see her relax, have fun, enjoy the education that she WAS prepared for and focus on art, theater, and being social which were things that were important to her.


Understand, my oldest child grew into an adult that is stable, responsible, committed and has a strong work ethic.  Private school would not have made her more successful and public school did not hold her back from being successful because she is an individual that sees clearly what she wants for herself and comes up with plans for potential ways to make these things happen.

For parents and future parents reading this, realize that the school that you are able to provide for your child - whether it's private, public, charter, co-op, or homeschool - is not likely to change who your child is.  What I have found that changes with the child in response to where they get their education is their beliefs and perceptions about self, others, and the world and how they automatically respond to what they're seeing with their beliefs. This is a point that I see surfacing quite often so we'll go deeper into this as the blog progresses.

With her husband.
They met in their second grade classroom.