Recently, I've been asked this question a lot. Most people assume that because two of my sisters homeschool their kids and have for years, that I must have always done it also. Not so. In fact, my children attended public school for most of their lives (except the little ones). Jenna was the one who first peaked my interest. She was struggling and I decided it was time to try something different. So we went with Connections Academy. Great program. It isn't homeschool though. It's online public school and the work load (for me, the teacher) was tremendous. In my opinion. I guess it didn't help that I was pregnant and sick. I had taken them all out of school and they all were attending CA. At the time "all" meant Jenna, Haley and Faith. Wyatt was 3 and Braden was just 1. I was NOT impressed. I re-enrolled them after the Christmas break. That turned out to be no good either. We'd moved and the school they had attended previously, which was one I liked, was too far away. This new school was run by a tyrant who thought I was too opinionated (go figure!) and didn't like me much. Needless to say, the kids suffered. So I tried again and transferred them to Enterprise Learning Academy in Duval County. Loved it! By now, Wyatt was starting Kindergarten and had the best K teacher of all time! I loved her! Jenna though was pulled out and began FLVS, online virtual school. For her, that has been a huge success. Since they service only 6-12th grades, we decided they would go to public school K-5 and FLVS thereafter. And then we got re-zoned to another school. A new school, but one I wasn't keen on them attending. It serviced K-8! Since middle school was one of the main things I wanted to avoid, I was not thrilled. By now, the economy had tanked and we were closing our business and moving anyway, so we decided that while we were in limbo we'd homeschool them all again and see how it went. This time "all" included Wyatt. Guess what....yep, I was pregnant again...and SICK! But it still wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. In fact, I actually enjoyed it. It was easier to be sick enough to make it hard to leave the house, if I didn't actually HAVE to leave! When Ella was born having them all at home made it easier to do Dr appt's with a newborn, which for me is pretty frequent. I think they just like me! Anyway, we made it through the year and decided it wasn't as hard as I'd thought. I liked it.
I won't get into many of the other reasons I chose this route except to say that I'd had enough experience with several schools to see that the public school system is broken. It's not the fault of the teachers and administrators. There are some who contribute majorly to the problem (like the tyrant principal before mentioned) but for the most part, the teachers especially are well intentioned, good people. It's the gov't. They have their hands in every piece of the pie. The pie would taste better without gov't interference. Left to their own resource, most teachers would do a better job teaching than they are now being allowed to do. We decided that fixing the school system would take more time than we had and two of our children were suffering. To me, "No Child Left Behind" meant mine. I decided that my child would never be left behind if I could help it and I found that I could!
And so, our children are homeschooled. I'm enjoying it more than I ever thought I would. It's taught me to be more organized, which had always been one of my goals. It's taught me to enjoy those little people Freddie and I brought into our lives more than I thought I could. It's taught me more about me than anything else I've attempted to date. Plus, ever heard the platitude, No Pain, No Gain? Aint that the truth!
