A viable option

Because of the pandemic and the closing of schools back in the spring, many parents became defacto home school teachers. They didn't ask for the job; it just happened.

There is a faction of parents who do, in fact, choose to home school. Best I remember, it became a thing not long after I became a parent for the first time in 1984. And while we have known a lot of folks who chose this option for their childrens' education, and we have the utmost respect for them, it was not for us.

Except for a brief period of time in the fall of 1997.

We knew we would be moving from Arkansas to the Nashville area. I was, in fact, already working here and commuting back and forth while Wife stayed back to try and sell the house. She had been a business owner for a number of years, and had sold the business in anticipation of our move. So she was not employed at the time.

Ideally, we would have already been in Middle Tennessee by the time school started, but it didn't work that way. The real estate market in Little Rock was not exactly thriving and we had a rather odd house, so there was very little activity.

(Long story, but we finally decided to rent it to a family that needed temporary housing, and rent a house for ourselves in the suburb where we now live. But that didn't happen until mid-October. It took three years to sell that house!)

Our two older children, who were going into sixth and third grade, respectively, had been in a private school in Little Rock. We decided, when we moved, we would try public schools, having heard how good they were where we would be moving.

But when school started in mid-August, and we still had not moved, we were met with a dilemma.

Would we go ahead and start them in the school they had each attended since kindergarten, and pull them out that fall? That option would mean we would have to pay tuition, so it wasn't exactly attractive. Would we let them essentially play hookey until we made the move, which would mean they would be behind when they eventually started school?

I think it was Wife who came up with the idea of home schooling for that interim period before we moved to Tennessee. While we knew we would not consider it long term, we decided it was a viable temporary option.

Since this was before everything was online, she called the school district where we would be living and got the curriculum for sixth and third grades. She even bought some of the text books.

While we were the most unlikely of home school families, I must say Wife did a good job. By the time we moved, both Older Son and Daughter were right on schedule, if not a litte ahead.

The classroom part, however, was not without a few glitches. For Wife and Older Son, it was a dream. They are both lovers of life, and socialization was much more important than a rigid schedule.

On some days they might start around 9 a.m., but on others Wife might decide to let Older Son, who was just beginning to fall in love with golf, go play a round and do school later in the day. Some days she might decide to let everyone sleep in and start school later in the day. And some days she might just skip it.

Again, this type of schedule (or lack thereof) was a dream come true for Older Son. For Daughter, however, this was not an acceptable arrangement. She expected school to start at a set time each day, with breaks for recess and lunch.

A flexible schedule did not work for her, and she took every opportunity to express her frustration to me either on the phone or when I was home on weekends.She was very concerned she would be behind when she finally got in real school.

There was also another little guy in the mix at the time - Younger Son, a very active four-year-old at the time. Daughter did not like it a bit that he was allowed to be present, and very much present a distraction, during school time when she was supposed to have been learning.

That period of time lasted about three months and, as I said, it accomplished its purpose. Our two school aged children were well prepared to continue their educations and even Daughter begrudgingly admitted it.

It has become part of family lore and makes for good story-telling.

(Thanks to Ed for your assistance in getting blogger to work better for me. I'm still not thrilled with the changes, but your suggestions were helpful.)