A Little History

I realized today one of my first posts, about anything of substance, was about my opinion on the subject of homeschooling. I decided I would give a little history of how I came to my convictions regarding this subject to help you better understand my passion.

I am a second-generation homeschooler. My parents homeschooled me all the way through high school. If you had asked me back then if I was going to homeschool, I would have said NO! Why? The answer, more than likely, would have been lame. Something about how I wanted to play high school sports and how I did not want to deprive my children of that. I also was not going to be a stay-at-home mom and was going to marry rich. Those who know me know how that turned out. :-)

After being married for almost four years, we had our first child. That started my change of perspective about a lot of things. PJ and I made some hard financial decisions in order for me to stay home with Kayla. I stayed home with her while PJ continued his degree and was working full-time.

PJ was a product of the public school system; therefore, was extremely passionate about me homeschooling our children. I was not totally on board, but decided I would start researching the subject. To be honest, it was mostly to talk him out of it. I thought I could find enough information about why public or private schooling was a better option.

When Kayla was around one, I went back to school. My goal was a nursing degree. Thanks to the sacrifice of my mom, I was able to go back full-time while she watched the baby. I did not realize that, although my intention was a nursing degree, God had other plans for my continued education.

Due to the many years I had been out of school, I had to take some remedial math classes. Although I hated math in high school, much to my surprise, I soon found out I was pretty good at it. In these classes, I noticed there were a lot of graduated high school students. I wondered why so many graduates had to start over right out of school. As a matter of fact, a lot of them even dropped out half way through. (FYI, this class was probably the equivalent of what my 8th grade sister is doing right now). I was somewhat disturbed that while I was flying through the material, these kids could not even keep up. I knew that this was not a reflection on my own intelligence; though that would have been nice. It was enough of a shock that my research of education choices became even more of a passion.

Around the same time, I was in a speech class where one of the assignments was an argumentative speech. I decided I would do mine on homeschooling. To make a long story short, during that semester at college, I went from one extreme to another. I no longer was attempting to find a reason not to homeschool, but realized there was no way I was ever NOT going to homeschool. I came to this conclusion, at the time, because I was concerned over the quality of public education. Now I believe there are many more reasons to keep my kids out of public school, and I keep finding more as the years go on.

I never finished my nursing degree. I was only a year and a half away, but we decided to have another child instead of waiting until I was done with school and established in a career. Despite not actually having a degree, I know that I am more than qualified to educate my children. Some may say that you need a degree in order to teach. My mom is an example of that falsehood. She homeschooled (on her last right now) seven children while holding no official degree. So far the success of her children: business owner, computer science major, philosophy major, pastoral intern, stay at home mom/homeschooler, another daughter accepted to nursing program, and two more to go. The more important thing to my mom is not that her children are successful scholastically, but that they are all serving the Lord, serving the local church, and passionate about their family, God, doctrine and truth. She is reaping the benefits of her labors.

I am passionate about homeschooling because I know it is what God desires for my children. I know it will be hard and there are some days I look longingly at the yellow school bus taking little ones away from their home, and I think about how much easier that would be on me. That is why I still research and I love to write about it. It keeps me strong in the hard times and solidifies my beliefs about why I am doing what I am doing. Even if no one ever reads this blog, it has served its purpose.

Tomorrow I will post a testimony I did for a Debra Bell conference at our church about homeschooling.


(The picture is mom and dad holding Kayla in the hospital)