No.

I don't make plans that far in advance. And if it does happen, it won't be til....not any time soon. I can tell you that right now I don't plan for Katrina and Jadyn to ever go to "regular" school.

Whenever people ask me about sending them to school in the future, it makes me wonder what they are thinking. That I can't possibly teach the harder subjects like higher maths and sciences? Since most of these folks don't know my educational background, they are assuming that I am not qualified to teach, at least not at the higher levels and not the more difficult, involved courses. For all they know, I could be a ph.d in something....

Or are they thinking that I am sheltering my girls for now and need at some point to let them experience "the real world"? What about the PROM for pete's sake? Do they think that daily social interaction of the type experienced only in schools, and outside of ones family, positive or negative, is essential to being a well-rounded citizen/person?

I have had 3 people in the last week ask me if I planned to send the girls to school in the future.

Since I don't know which question they actually wanted to ask(could have been both) I will answer both.

#1 How will I teach the higher level courses?

Here is a secret I learned the first year I taught. Shhhhh...don't tell anyone. Teachers have books with all the answers in them. They are called teacher's manuals. OK, so it's not a secret. Most people know that teachers have teacher's manuals. I also know that there is more (much more) to teaching than just knowing the answers. The books I use not only give the answers, they also show me how to teach a new concept, if need be. For the ones that don't, I am intelligent enough to research things myself so that I can present them to my children and help them to learn it as well.  (Does anyone here think that PS teachers actually KNOW all that stuff?? No, they have teacher's manuals to help them, and have to learn ahead of their students in many areas)Working with my girls I can discern what approach to take for any new concept, and change it to suit their learning style. As my friend Beverly says "I only need to be 5 minutes ahead of them!" And in reality I have re-learned and reinforced many things since beginning to teach my girls. Not that I didn't "know" these things, but when you study something to teach to your child, you really learn the why's and how's that you may have missed in your own classroom experience. I hate to think of the things I learned in school, especially the upper grades, when I just wanted OUT of there, just long enough to pass the test (or not) and quickly forgot. And what's more, I am aware of that tendency. Learn, test, forget. Does Katrina remember every part of the cell and what it does? She did a few months ago. Does she now? Probably not. But we have established a meaningful framework to build upon in the future. In other words, if I think it is important that something be retained permanently, you can bet that we will re-visit it again, in greater depth, and with as much real-life meaning and application as I can add. History is another good example. Never liked it. Hated reading about dates, kings, presidents, wars etc. It was so long ago, doesn't even seem real, much less relevant. I started to feel the same way about the textbook history I was using with Katrina. Booooring. Then we discovered historical fiction and biographies. We are developing a sense of (American) history time periods...slavery, the underground railroad, early pioneers, revolutionary times, the plight of Native Americans. We can put faces and personalities with these times and have a framework to use as a point of reference....Quaker girl kidnapped by Lenape indians in mid-1700's...that was before Laura Ingalls Wilder was born in 1867. Laura was born not long after slavery was abolished. I know these things, and more. And so does Trina. And we are learning more with each page we read together. I could go on and on about this, but for brevity's sake, I will leave this alone for now.

#Won't my girls miss out on the great socialization in school? How will they learn to live in the real world? And what about the prom?????

My son (19) who was not homeschooled, told my 9 year old daughter last week that she needed to go to school to learn how to deal with bad people. Let that sink in. Now granted, he is only 19. But that underlying thought that children must be in school in order to deal with difficult people(sometimes known as "the real world") makes no sense at all. Put them in school so they can learn how to deal with difficult (or bad) people? Why not just put them in jail, they'd really have to learn to get along there. Ironically, he told her this when she was annoying him and he was upset with her. Obviously it didn't work for him.

Socialization? Can't recall the times I was told to stop talking. "We are not here to socialize, Sandy!"

Perhaps some socialization in school is positive. Especially if you are very smart AND good-looking, athletic etc. If you happen to be all of these and also kind to the students that weren't perhaps some of the socialization was positive. However if you were average, fat, non athletic or different in any way not appreciated by your peers, forget it. I still say most of the "socialization" you get in school is negative, bad for self-esteem and that school is not a good place to learn how others should be treated.

And where in the real world is school ever replicated? Jobs and careers don't separate people by age. "I work in the 40 year old department, where do you work?" The real world is all different ages, backgrounds and beliefs. My girls are out in the "real world" every time we go anywhere, while their peers languish in the artificial environment created by schools where everyone is the same age within a few months, usually.

more later.....

Originally published 4/14/2005