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Our journey home
Our journey home started in 2005 when my son Jordan started school at 5 years old. I had been working part-time evenings and weekends in a call-centre since he was 4 months old, but a few months before he started school, I had decided to give full-time work a try. We were tired of our evenings and weekends being taken away by my job (I worked about 25 hours per week), and thought that perhaps working full-time hours during the day was the answer.
So we had enrolled the children in a Christian daycare centre, and I had started a new job. I was in the job for about 2 months when Jordan started school. I was working from 11am to 7:30pm Mon - Fri, so I would drop him off in the morning, drop off my daughter Aliyah (then 3 1/2) at daycare, and then off to work. Then my husband (who finished work at 5pm) would drive from work to daycare to pick up Aliyah, from daycare to after-school care to pick up Jordan, home to cook tea and get the children ready for bed on his own. Needless to say, this was very stressful for both of us! It was usually dark by the time I got home, and the children were already in bed or asleep. And all this for an extra $200NZ ($132US) per week after daycare and after-school care and holiday program costs!
Jordan did not do well in school. He needed more one-on-one attention from the teacher, and needed to be more 'involved' in the running of the class-room than was possible. So, he was disruptive in class and frequently began to get into trouble at play-time. I began to dread dropping him off in the morning - there was always some-thing they 'needed to discuss' with me! After a couple of months of this I was stressed, weary and burnt out! I basically had a 'meltdown' at work one day - I just started crying and crying! After a few weeks of discussions with my husband and with my employer, we decided that I would leave work and be a stay-at-home mum. We didn't know how it would work financially (you can't live on one income these days - right?) but we just felt that it was some-thing we had to do for our family.
Now over the years, an aunt of mine had regularly sent me a copy of Above rubies ( www.aboverubies.org ) magazine, I had read about home-schooling and being a 'keeper at home' and although I had initially felt a little uncomfortable with some of the things they talked about (like trusting God for the size of your family, and Godly submission), there were many things that really spoke to my heart. I had this 'idea' of home-schooling growing my heart, but I just didn't think I could do it, I wasn't sure, I didn't know ANYONE who home-schooled - was it even legal?
I didn't mention my thoughts to my dh, I was a stay-at-home-mum now! That was enough for me. After a few months, my husband was getting more and more stressed at work (this had been building for a few years!) and finally one day we decided that he needed to quit - we had been discussing moving from Auckland to a smaller city for some-time, but it was difficult to find an out-of-town job from there. So we decided that he would give in his notice and we would take a risk. So shortly after Christmas 2005 he left work and we handed in notice for our rental home. We had no job, and no home to go to. We didn't find a place to live until 4 days before we were due to move out!
So we moved to a tiny rural village about 1/2 an hour out of Rotorua. My husband found a job through our new next-door neighbour, after about 2 months of being unemployed (we were broke!). It wasn't a job he wanted, but we needed the money. Anyway, to cut a very long story short, the man he worked for had a very bad reputation (he deserved it!) and he made life very hard for my dh, although he worked very hard for him (the company was in trouble, and he took out his frustrations on my dh). My husband would come home incredibly stressed and weary.
Meanwhile, Jordan started at the local country school (about 64 students!), he would catch a bus close by at 8am and return at 4pm every day. He did a lot better at this school, he had a great teacher, and a class with only 14 students. At the end of the year Aliyah turned 5 and started school too.
At the end of the year, dh had had as much as he could take at work and needed to leave his job (before he lost it completely - his patience and his marbles!), and we missed our family back in Auckland. Our children had friends that lived in the village, and I was becoming increasingly concerned about what they were being exposed to. Many of the people living in our tiny village were unemployed, they swore like troopers, drank alcohol every day (often getting drunk) and none of them were Christian. Aliyah's best friend came from a family where the parents were not married, they both had children from previous partners, they smoked, swore and would have HUGE fights (verbal & physical) on a regular basis (including several times when Aliyah was there). We knew that we had to get out of there!
I had begun to start thinking seriously about home-schooling - there was no way I was going to put Jordan back into a class with 30+ students! My dh was resistant to the idea at first, but the more we talked about it, the more we both felt that it was the right thing to do for our family. I know now, that God had planted the 'seed' of homeschooling in my heart, and it had been steadily growing there for the past few years! So I took the plunge and applied for an exemption from school (required in NZ in order to home-school).
So dh managed to find a building job back in Auckland, and we packed up and moved in Feb 06. We put our things into storage and stayed with my in-laws, thinking this would only be temporary. After 4 days on his new job, it fell through - we were now unemployed and homeless! It took 3 months before dh found a job and we were able to move into a place of our own. We were very blessed and grateful to be able to stay with my dh's parents, but my MIL (who is a teacher) is very anti-homeschooling and this made it quite a stressful time, although thankfully, they are Christian, and my FIL told her to 'keep out of it' LOL.
I started out our home-schooling journey trying to do 'school-at-home', with miserable results! My son was very turned off learning and hated to do anything that resembled 'school work'. I found Charlotte Mason (see www.Amblesideonline.org for more info on CM), towards the beginning of the year, and the more I read, the more I thought 'wow, this is what I want to do!". I was blessed to be able to attend a conference in May 06 where Sally Clarkson was speaking, and purchased her book "Educating the Wholehearted Child". I LOVE this book! It absolutely encapsulates how I want teach my children, I want to have a 'Lifestyle of Learning', incorporating learning into our everyday life, not separating 'school' and 'home'. More recently I was blessed to stumble upon Cindy Ruston's blog (see link under 'my friends' ) and her writings on 'Homeschooling the Easy Way!. Through her blog I found an amazing group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HomeschoolersFLYingInChrist/) of supportive home-school friends (who are also Christian and FLYbabies too!), who have uplifted and encouraged me so much!
So that is our journey so far. We have been home-schooling now for the grand total of 9 months! It's been a bumpy journey, but we have learnt SO much! I hope to use this blog to record the ups and downs of our home-school, and give anyone who wants to see, a glimpse into our "Charlotte Mason" home-school.
God Bless! |
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