Thinking about home-schooling? What to know in advance
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“I could never home-school.” That’s what I hear most frequently from folks when I tell them about how our family spends our days.
How I reply depends on how much time and energy I have that day to dispel myths or debate the merits of home-schooling versus private or public schools.
But the short answer is this: Yes, you can. Home-schooling is basically just full-time parenting and not nearly as stressful and challenging as many people think. And it is incredibly rewarding. I’m a mother of six who has been home schooling for the past five years; my oldest, in fourth grade, has never gone to school.
Home-schooling doesn’t require parents to recreate a schoolhouse in their living room, but it does require a radical reevaluation of the purpose of school, and what a good education looks like.
Dawn Duran, an adjunct professor at Purdue University, told me it all comes down to how we respond to the question, “What is a teacher?”
Duran, an expert in the educational philosophy of the 19th-century British educator and reformer Charlotte Mason, explained that Mason saw a teacher as a “guide, philosopher and friend.”
“The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend; and is no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding,” Mason said.
Contrary to popular opinion, home-schooling parents don’t have to be an expert in every subject they teach and don’t have to have a college degree. They merely have to be able to put their child in touch with books and people who have mastered their topics and who passionately and effectively present the subject matter, Duran said.
Similarly, Maria Bell, a home-schooling mother of four in Virginia, told me, “Home education doesn’t require the highest qualifications or academic degrees. Students thrive in this environment when both teacher and student, mother or father and child, ‘put on the humble inquirer,’ as Benjamin Franklin wrote, and approach their studies with the aim to grow in knowledge.”
Even some educators with graduate degrees agree with that assessment. Becky Aniol, a home-schooling mother of four in Atlanta who holds a Ph.D. in education, told me, “The idea of a ‘qualified’ or ‘certified’ teacher is an invention of the last 150 years. ... The truth is, if you can read, you are equipped to teach your children.”
How to get started
The first question I always get from those interested in home-schooling is this: How is this even legal? The answer is: It’s legal in every U.S. state. But the more complicated question is, how does one jump through the hoops necessary in order to be in legal compliance with state and local education officials?
It kind of ironic, given worsening test scores nationwide, that the public school systems usually oversee home-school compliance. The rules vary by state, however, with some states requiring testing, annual meetings or portfolio reviews, while other states require literally nothing, not even notification of parents’ intent to home-school.
The best place to find answers on the “how” is to visit the Homeschool Legal Defense Association’s website, where there’s a list of regulations for each state, including requirements for state-mandated testing, teacher qualifications and immunization requirements.
The website even has the forms parents need to fill out, when required, to notify their respective school districts of their intent to home-school.
According to Census Bureau data, about 5.4% of American children are home-schooled this year, while 85% attend public schools and 9.6%, private. While there are modest differences between different surveys, there’s evidence that the number of households home-schooling has doubled in the past few years.
Related
The reasons people choose to home-school are varied; many parents of special needs or gifted children find themselves home-schooling in order to create an individualized learning plan for their atypical child; others want their children to follow a curriculum more in line with their values than what is being taught in public schools. And many just believe they can do a better a job than public or private schools and want to spend as much time with their children as they possibly can.
As for how home-schooled children do compared to those in public schools, test scores for the ACT and SAT indicate that the average home-schooled child marginally outperforms their public school counterparts. Because not all states require standardized testing, it’s difficult to use other testing metrics to do a comparison.
A passion for learning and kids
The problem of the modern American home-schooler is a good one to have: There are so many opportunities, field trips and curricula out there, it can be overwhelming to choose from them.
My oldest daughter, who is in fourth grade, takes an all-day nature class once a week, five Zoom classes in various Jewish subjects, a sewing class, a tae kwon do class and an art class, in addition to participating in a Shakespeare co-op. (In home-schooling, a co-op is exactly what it sounds like: parents bringing their children together for a social or learning opportunity.)
My daughter would also like to continue Irish dancing, but there’s no more time in her day.
Alexi Laffoon, a home-schooling mother of four in Southern California, also experiences the time crunch, given all of the opportunities available to home-schooled children. She told me, “We only do lessons formally a couple times a week; and if something more appealing or interesting presents itself when we’re supposed to do lessons, I generally postpone what we were going to do in place of the better opportunity.”
She continued: “For example, on Tuesdays we usually do lessons and then we go play with friends later. But we have an opportunity to take a trip to a fire station on an upcoming Tuesday, so we’ll find another time to do our lessons. Maybe we’ll do them on a Saturday afternoon, or a Monday night. It definitely doesn’t have to be every day, or at the same time of day.”
Home-schooling parents also help each other out. Laffoon, for example, created a co-op to provide educational opportunities for children; helping parents out is just a side benefit.
The co-op has grown so large that Laffoon recently rented a space in Santa Monica to accommodate the number of students enrolled. Her “Soulshine Co-op” provides participating families a place for kids to hang out (and parents to get a break) three days each week. Given its location in southern California, the kids at the Soulshine Co-op are able to take advantage of hiking, art, surfing and project-based learning in math and science. Laffoon doesn’t have a professional education background; just a passion for learning and for kids.
Cindy Rollins, a home-schooling mother of nine over three decades, the author of multiple books on home-schooling and host of “The New Mason Jar” podcast with Dawn Duran, reassures home-schooling parents that they don’t have to be perfect and can even learn something themselves in the process. “Homeschooling is a two-fer deal,” she told me. “Not only do our children get educated, but we also get the chance to repair the ruins of our own education or even just plug up some of those gaps.”
