Posted in Homeschooling

Since my oldest is about to graduate, I guess I am feeling nostalgic.  So I was reflecting on why we began homeschooling in the first place, eleven years ago.

My husband and I both had horrible public school experiences.  When it was time for our oldest to start school, we wanted him to go to private school.  I researched all the private schools in our area and found out several things: one, they are all REALLY expensive; two, none of them were really what we wanted.  We settled on the Catholic school at our church, but had a difficult time getting him registered.  Frankly, the school seemed more interested in receiving their money than in educating Catholic children.  I told myself, "Well, they are a business, they have bills to pay, what else can they do?"  And it was then that I had a vision of a Catholic school, operating on faith and trusting in God for the money they needed, and I knew I could never put my son in our church's school.

Public school was left, so we decided that would work.  During his kindergarten year, I was finishing up my master's and pregnant with my daughter Gabrielle.  I went on the field trips and volunteered in the classroom every week.  I knew all the children and most of the parents.  Everything seemed to be fine.

For first grade, he had a wonderful Catholic teacher with whom I became friends.  However, now I had a new baby, and I couldn't volunteer as much, so I wasn't on top of what was going on.  There was one boy that Robert had problems getting along with, and at one point, they were both sent to the office for fighting.  Towards the end of the school year, an incident happened that shook us all.  On the playground, Robert and this other boy were arguing.  The other boy grabbed Robert, pushed him up against a brick wall and began shaking him so that his head hit the wall repeatedly.  Robert hit him back to get free.  An adult on the playground reported Robert for hitting the other boy, and because it was his second incident, he was suspended.  This happened on a Thursday, and I was told on the phone that he could not come back to school until Monday.

Now when I was in school, suspension was something that happened in high school, possibly junior high if you were really bad.  But first grade?? Come on!  I went to the school to pick Robert up and found him sitting in the office.  When I said we needed to go home, he said he needed to get his stuff and then said, "Well, I can just get it tomorrow."  Stunned, I realized that no one had explained to him that he was suspended, what that meant, and for how long.  So I explained to him.

The following week, my husband and I met with the principal.  He apologized for not explaining to Robert and said that it had been very busy that day.  We made the point that explaining to a first grader that he had violated the rules and was being suspended ought to be higher on the priority list.  We asked why the other boy had not been punished.  No answer. We asked the identity of the "informant." No answer. We asked what Robert should have done in this situation.  We were told that the school had a policy of "zero tolerance" for violence, and that Robert should have gone to an adult to ask for help.  We asked exactly how he should have done that, since the other boy was holding him against the wall.  No answer.

We also asked about other things that had been concerning us: why the children did not say the Pledge of Allegiance or learn any patriotic songs, and why there was no American flag in the classroom.  The answer was that there were many international students in the school, and they did not want to offend them or make them uncomfortable.  Our reaction was that they came here to this country and put their children in our public schools, and they should expect that their children would learn American things.  If we put our children in school in Germany, we would expect them to be taught the national anthem and other patriotic things.

My husband and I left this meeting with the principal completely unsettled by his answers.  We began to realize that when we dropped our son off at school every day, it was like dropping him off in Cuba.  He had no rights at all.  He couldn't defend himself from attacks.  We weren't there to make sure he was safe.  And further, we were worried about what they were and weren't teaching him.  Perplexed, I began asking a few friends for advice, and one of them said, "Have you ever thought of homeschooling?"

We began looking into it and liked what we saw.  We attended a panel discussion on homeschooling and got the book I Am a Homeschooler out of the library. While discussing homeschooling one night at the dinner table, Robert asked us if he could be homeschooled.  We had already decided to do it, so we said yes.  I was happy that it didn't come down to us taking him out of school against his wishes.  Since it was so close to the end of the year, we had him finish out the year and then just not go back.

When I spoke to his teacher, she said that she was absent the day the incident on the playground occurred, and that it never would have happened if she had been there.  She was thrilled that we had decided to homeschool, and said that she spent most of her time dealing with discipline issues, and children who really wanted to learn, like Robert, got shortchanged.

We also called our extended family members and told them of our decision to homeschool.  When I told my mother, I started by saying that we were very concerned about what had happened at school.  She said, "Me too!"  I then said that we had researched homeschooling and had decided to do that instead.  She replied, "Oh, I've read about that too recently, and I think that's a wonderful idea!"  She has always been very supportive of our homeschooling.

My father had never been supportive of public education, even while he let my sisters and I attend.  He had been saying for years that the public schools should be shut down, so, obviously, he had no problem with our homeschooling Robert.

We were more concerned that Roger's mother would have a problem with it, as she had been a public school teacher and most definitely did not believe that the public schools should be closed!  So my husband called her and told her, and then said, "Are we going to have a problem about this?" and she said no.  She did say things like "Well, you don't know if you will keep homeschooling" for many years, but eventually she gave up. On the whole, our families were supportive, and in that, I know we were blessed.  But we would have done it without their support if necessary. 

It was only later that I realized that my vision had come true: we were now a family school, giving our children a Catholic education, operating on faith and trusting in God for whatever we needed.