One huge myth that pervades discussions surrounding homeschooling is this idea that parents are not“qualified” to educate their own children. Many detractors of homeschooling mistakenly believe that parents must possess certain “qualifications” in order to homeschool. In spite of studies that show that even parents with only an eighth grade education can successfully homeschool their children (Nheri.org). In my last blog post “Three Myths About Homeschool That Needs to Die”, I said that you don’t have to have a lot of money or a Ph. D to homeschool, you just have to be willing to do so.
But what does it really take to homeschool? In my opinion, your attitude definitely determines your altitude. Here are three qualities I think are beneficial to homeschooling.
You Have To Be Committed.
There’s a saying within the teaching community that you really shouldn’t settle on teaching as a career until you’ve taught for at least five years. That’s because the turnover rate for teachers is at its highest within the first five years and those early years are likely to be some of your hardest. There’s so much to learn in those first years. Classroom management. Dealing with the demands of the school district and administration. Managing a diverse body of students and parents. Fine tuning lesson plans and best practices in the classroom. The list goes on.
It hasn’t taken me five years to turn a corner with homeschooling, but I can promise you that the first two years of homeschooling were difficult. The only thing that kept me in the game, especially on my most difficult days was my commitment and my husband (who has been down with this homeschool gig from Day 1 to 1,000). I had to really believe in what I was doing, understand why I chose to homeschool, and push through.
Homeschool is not for the faint of heart, but in my opinion its also not for those who aren’t fully committed to doing it. If you look at homeschool as some kind of experiment or something nice to try until it becomes difficult, you’re likely defeated before you start. I said what I said. Most people think just getting started with homeschool is the most difficult aspect of it–i.e. Learning the mechanics of how to teach. But as your kids grow and their needs change, your homeschool life starts to change with it. You have to be committed to going through the changes and the tough times, because you truly believe in why you’re homeschooling.
You Need To Be Resourceful
There are so many resources available for homeschooling these days its mind-numbing. It’s easy to mentally drown in all the bright, shiny curriculum kits, latest manipulatives, cutting edge apps, and subscriptions. But, true resourcefulness is being able to decide which resources best align with your homeschool goals and determining whether or not you will realistically utilize them.
Resourcefulness, of course, exists beyond a traditional classroom model. As homeschool parents we also have to find unique ways to give our kids opportunities to learn about life whether its starting a garden, joining a club or co-op, volunteering, entrepreneurship experiences, or mission trips. Often we have budgets to maintain so a resourceful mom figures out how to make all of these wonderful experiences at a discount. Us moms have to constantly search for discounts, homeschool days, group rates, and other ways to save money, yet gain the experience.
Don’t sleep on how difficult from one day being able to find out about activities for your kids by a flyer or a pinned note coming home to now being a personal concierge. Constantly having to track down, dig up, and prioritize enrichment activities can be exhausting. It helps if you are someone who is resourceful and likes to research things from the start.
You Need To Be A Learner
Recently, I decided that I wanted my girls to read Animal Farm. I’d read the book myself in high school and generally knew what it was about, but I chose to re-read it in order to refresh my memory. After re-reading the book, I realized that my girls needed some background information to give them context for the book. They would have to understand and differentiate between capitalism, socialism, and communism. They would also have to have some background information on the Russian Revolution and the roles of Czar Nicholas the II, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky. That’s a tall order for background information, but luckily there’s Youtube videos that cover all this info concisely. Even though I discovered the vast array of video resources, I realized that it would be helpful for the girls to have note pages to complete as a study tool. Yes, there are a lot of resources available to aid you in educating your children, but you still have to modify and or extend those resources to maximize their usefulness. That takes work on your part as a homeschool parent. Sometimes, it takes learning or re-learning information to make it more beneficial. I read Animal Farm in my youth, for example, but the connections I can make and the ideas I can help my daughters elucidate, now as an adult, are far greater.
At times, I think this may be a huge barrier to many parents considering homeschooling. We still have the public school mindset that we simply sit our kids in front of a computer or put them in a class and someone else will do the heavy lifting to get them to a certain level of understanding. But, homeschooling requires us to do the heavy lifting. There are certain topics or areas where we can be completely hands-off and our kids will absorb what they need. But there are those areas which will require us to sit and learn alongside our homeschooler. It will require us to facilitate, research, modify and edit resources to maximize their usefulness. Ultimately if we want our kids to be lifelong learners who are naturally inquisitive, it helps if we can lead by example by learning alongside them.
You have to be focused.
There is always going to be people who disagree with homeschooling. No matter how many stats you throw at them, no matter how well homeschoolers perform on standardized tests, no matter how personable and well-rounded a homeschooled child is, some will never be convinced. Because they want to believe what they want to believe. Some detractors could be relatives, some could be friends, others could be strangers on social media that spout all kinds of ignorant, baseless drivel that should never see the light of day (I’ve seen these posts too! Can’t you tell?) I do believe homeschooling families should be vocal about their decision to homeschool, so that there isn’t only the opinions of detractors out there controlling the narrative. However, we can’t let the haters discourage us from our chosen path. As homeschooling parents we have to embrace why we homeschool, focus on the what’s important, and leave some detractors to argue with themselves.
Likewise, there is always other homeschoolers we can look across the yard at and believe their grass is greener. I think its good to see what other homeschool families are doing because we learn and grow from each other. But when looking crosses over to envy or feeling like our own sandbox is not so nice, we need to refocus. Focus helps us moms keep the main things the main things. It helps us to reserve our energies for our kids and the things that matter, and it helps us to keep us doing what God leads us to do rather than what someone else dictates we should or shouldn’t do.
What qualities do you think a homeschool mom needs?
