Homeschooling Adventures - From Our Readers

It was Spring of 2000 when I first heard of someone who was home-schooling. I was waiting for my prenatal appointment and some other parents were talking about it. I had a 14 month already and was due with my second in 5 months. I have to be honest, my first thought was that these people were off their rocker. I had never even heard of such a thing. Was it even legal.?

However, I must admit the idea intrigued me, so as soon as I got home I logged on to my computer and started browsing websites. Mothers message boards at first, and I began to see how many of them were saying they home-schooled.

With my daughter being so young, I didn’t give it too much thought after that. It was tucked away in my mind but I didn’t mention it to anyone.

November came, and so did my second daughter. Seemingly healthy, we brought her home from the hospital and tried to settle into life with a 19month old and a newborn.

However, soon after, something went horribly wrong. My baby stopped eating and wouldn’t even take a pacifier. Her eyes were empty when she looked at us. There was something terribly wrong.

My first thought was that somehow she had picked up a virus– we called the pediatrician who recommended we go to the Emergency Room so off we went. After almost 4 hours, we were seen. Nurses didn’t seem very concerned. I was getting frustrated. Finally a doctor came in and admitted her for dehydration.
Tests were ordered for spinal meningitis, and other infections. I asked that a simple X-ray be done first before they put my little baby through a spinal tap.

They did that and the results were unexpected. One side of her heart was enlarged and the other side had stopped working. She had been born with a congenital heart defect, coarctation of the aorta, and would die without surgery.

Thankfully, she had her surgery at 10 days old, and besides a few after surgery issues , she is now a happy and healthy 3 year old.

I believe that was the turning point for me as far as home-schooling. With a baby who I had almost lost, and a 20 month old who could recognize the entire alphabet, numbers ,colors etc. , I started to look at home-schooling as an option for our family.

I started telling my friends and family who, although they had mixed opinions, mostly supported us.

The tragedy of September 11th, and the realization of how precious time and life is really clinched it for me. That doesn’t mean I never had doubts or wasn’t nervous about really doing this, but as time went on the fears started to go away. I listened to other parents talking about different pre-school issues they were having and realized that was not for me.

Now two years later, my girls are happy to be homeschooling. They tell me that they do not want to go to school, but they want to stay home with each other. They are happy, well adjusted normal children who know how to socialize with young and old alike. They are energetic and love to learn. We are able to learn just about anything that interests them. If something is not working for us, then we change it.

My 3-year-old is done with preschool skills, and my 4-year-old has almost completed a kindergarten curriculum.

We do not have a certain time of day when we do "school" work. I tend to try and incorporate most learning into everyday situations: grocery shopping, running errands, talking to each other, playing educational games, and reading. My girls enjoy workbooks so we incorporate them into our schooling as well.

They do everything that other children are doing as far as craft classes, swim and gym classes. They are in an excellent classroom with only 2 children per teacher, and they spend most of the day playing with play-doh, their dollhouse, baby dolls, blocks, reading books, Barbies , doing crafts and more. Counting 50 Barbie shoes or 50 blocks is still counting and its so much more fun!

I know that I have made the right choice for my children and my family. Children grow up so fast in this crazy world, why rush it?

Andrea Macia
Massachusetts

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The first 42 days of Home Schooling


Our first home schooling experience was in Israel and it lasted 42 days.

It started while in the middle of her 6th grade when we pulled our daughter out of school. We did not know anything about home schooling at the time. In Israel it was not really a viable option. Pulling out of the public school system was an act of desperation and protest. It was the result of the town’s refusal to let us move her into a private school that we thought would better suit her. She stayed home for 42 days. By then, as a result of many talks with town officials and some publicity, we were given the permission to register her in the school of our choice.

Those 42 days were an eye opener; they were also a terrifying experience. Suddenly we were not in the main stream. We were outsiders, looked upon by friends and family as weird, a little crazy, irresponsible and most of all, breaking the law. Home schooling in a place were there aren’t any guidelines…support groups,,,yahoo groups… is a very lonely experience. But by the end of this period we found out that something very deep and unchangeable has happened, we gained freedom. Freedom from so many ideas and misconceptions that we accepted as part of our lives never bothering to check or confront. We also found that we were not alone, there were others out there doing the same thing facing the same questions, and willing to share their experience with us.

When we decided to pull our youngest daughter in the middle of a school year. It appeared as a sudden and uncalculated act but the truth was that we were observing her for some time. We saw that she was unhappy - the way only parents know that something is wrong. On the outside she was an A student and took part in the school activities. We thought, naively, that it is enough that we as caring parents will make the decision. It turned out that we were wrong. We were informed that only a professional evaluation would satisfy the board of education that there is actually a reason to authorize a change of schools.

Pulling out of the public school system then was an act of desperation and protest. These 42 days were however the window through which we saw for the first time the new terrain that we set up to discover a year later. This was the beginning of our journey into what was at the time an unknown territory for us, and is now, 3 years later our choice. Staying with home schooling was a long process of learning, connecting with other people and taking responsibility for our daughter education instead of leaving it in other people hands. Our home schooling did not start that year, in Israel, we started it a year later while living in Idaho and are doing it ever since. We are more confidant better able to plan and less confused and worried about the consequences.

Home school anywhere is a journey in which you have to be active and aware, others have done it before you but the journey is never the same, for everyone has to write his own story and draw his own road map and that is the challenge and that is the beauty.

* In 2001 when this took place there were only 30 home schooling families in Israel. You needed to get a special permission from the Ministry of Education, a permission that took up to a year to obtain and was only good for 1 year. The Ministry of Education issued this past year 61 permissions. . All in all there are about 100 families organized in 2 groups. Some families choose to home school without permission.


Ariela Zucker
Maine