Homeschooling Story Part I

Every August moms everywhere are celebrating "back to school". We home-school. So while we do enjoy getting back into our regular, full schedule and activities, our celebration is somewhat muted as there is no BIG change to our lives and routine.

I must confess to occasionally feeling a wee bit envious of the "back to school" revelry. So to comfort myself, here is part I of my homeschooling story.

I knew one homeschooling family when I was a young teenager in California and I was horrified at the very thought of homeschool. Why would anyone do that to their kids? How mean! And to my sister and I, they were "weird". We were sure they would not be weird if they went to school.

Then as an older teenager in Virginia, I met a really friendly homeschooled girl who was a part of an LDS youth singing group. I asked her if she liked doing homeschool and she said she loved it. Nice girl, but homeschool was still way too weird.

At BYU I met Abe and found out he was home-schooled during his high school years. He got into BYU, with a scholarship no less, and seemed to be a really great, social, smart, "normal" (as in not weird) guy. How could this be? His four older siblings all did public school for their school years, with the exception of a short private school stint for one brother. His parents began home-schooling Abe and his younger siblings when Abe was going into ninth grade.

When Abe and I talked about getting married I knew some of his older siblings were beginning to or planning to homeschool their children. I didn't want to marry under false pretenses, so I made it very clear-- I WOULD NEVER HOMESCHOOL!!!! He said he was fine either way. He did really like me, after all!
But I realized that this homeschool thing was going to be a part of my life (because Abe's family would now become my family) and I would need to be prepared with arguments as to why I WAS NOT going to homeschool. At the time I was taking a Sociology of Education class and for my project I decided to research homeschool. I talked to a family in our ward who home schooled and she directed me to books and essays and the Utah Home Educators Association. I brought Abe into my class as "Exhibit A-- a home schooled person-successfully functioning in the wider world". It was my first look at a different way to think about education and I thought, "Well, okay. I can see that there could be some good things with homeschool, but I would never want to do it".

Then I had my first baby.

To be Continued. . .