Friday, July 31, 2020

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.)

10 comments:

Ed said...

I see paragraphs!

I'm not sure what we are going to do yet and time is running out. I think there are three and a half weeks left now before "school" starts. Part of me wants to shelter our kids and home school them until this mess is behind us but I have a feeling, I'm not going to be the ideal home schooling teacher and I know the responsibility would fall in my court. Although we are one of the "hot" states, almost all activity is in the large urban areas and not where we live which was really hot back in May. So the other part of me wants to send them to school and see how things go. I think it would be an easier choice if both of my kids were in elementary school but my oldest will be starting high school and that is a whole different game.

And so I'm kicking the can down the road for now.

Bob said...

Do you have an option for virtual learning? Most of the school districts around here are starting back in-person, but also offering online, which means the parents don’t have to teach as much as supervise. I think you have to commit to a grading period or semester, you can’t go back and forth.

Ed said...

We do, I think, but my understanding is that it has to be state approved unless the positive testing rate is over a certain percentage. There is also a hybrid model where kids are virtual two days a week and on site two days a week. The virtual learning aspect last spring was poor at best and largely unstructured but hopefully if we have that again, the kinks have been worked out and it is better.

Part of what makes kicking the can down the road so appealing is I think schools are doing the same thing right now as I have seen very little about what is going to happen in a few weeks other than the private school on which I sit on the board.

Kelly said...

We really haven't heard much about the Home Schoolers during this pandemic... a group I consider totally different from those who've been using virtual learning through their schools (public or private).

I home schooled our son for his senior year in high school (2006/2007) for reasons I won't go into here. Looking back, it's something I think would have worked quite well for our younger two from the very start. If I had it to do all over again....

Bob said...

The traditional home schoolers have been carrying on, I suppose, as usual since they’re already having school from home. I made reference to them as a lead-in to what I really wanted to write about. The people I’ve known who home-schooled mostly did it quite well and they have intelligent, well adjusted adult children. I applaud them. Neither my wife nor I were inclined to do it long-term, but as I said here, as a brief interim solution, it worked well.

BrightenedBoy said...

Having such a relaxed teacher sounds like most kids' dream!

Incidentally, this brought up some interesting memories for me; I'm about your children's age, and in the fall of 1997 I was starting 4th grade. It occurs to me now that everything school districts are dealing with because of this pandemic would have been inestimably more difficult had it occurred at any other point in our history and that my generation, as the last to enter school before the Internet became a pervasive fact of everyone's lives, occupies an odd bridge point in history. Your kids spent their elementary years in one world and their high school years in another. So bizarre to think of.

Bob said...

And that doesn’t apply just to education, BB. Think of the millions of us now working from home and how that would hardly have been possible 20 years ago. Just as my children and you witnessed the world change dramatically while they went through school, so did I as I progressed through my career. I remember my first computer at work (linked to a mainframe!) with interoffice email. I asked the question why I would send an email to someone I could walk across the hall and talk to!

(And yes, my wife’s teaching style would have been a dream come true for many students. As I said, though, it rather traumatized my daughter. Now a teacher herself, she still gives her mom grief about it!)

Jeff said...

It is interesting how we (and our children) have different styles and personalities. I have seen some parents begin to form "pods" for teaching and we've even entertained the idea of making space available for a parent to teach 4-6 kids at a time. But I'm glad I don't have kids to worry about this at the present.

www.thepulpitandthepen.com

Debby said...

We've been trying to work out the details of home schooling here. I don't know if really, school is much better prepared to deal with this than they were last spring, but I feel like WE are ready. William is lonely though, and I worry about him.

Andrew said...

We homeschooled our kids for a number of years when they were younger. Good memories.

Soon my wife will be starting teaching face to face, while my district is completely remote (for the first term).

I will never take a normal classroom for granted again. :)