Looks like the Carnival of Homeschooling is coming to HomeschoolBlogger next week!  Gena wants to know the why's and how's of our homeschooling endeavors...so of course y'all know I have to give my two cents (or a nickel's worth, even)!

Crack open a cold one (or warm one, depending on your weather...I'm on cocoa today myself!) and get comfortable, because I'm sure I'm not the only one who will answer at length.  See ya at the Carnival!

~~~WHY I Homeschool~~~

In 1990, as a sophomore in high school, I had already run the guantlet when it came to education.  Thanks to the good ol' US Army, I attended more than a dozen schools, both public and military-sponsored.  Most of my real learning, however, was done at home by my mother's side.  When I was a tot we were stationed in Germany and lived on the economy (in other words, offbase, not in military quarters on base).  Our landlords and neighbors spoke very little English, and my mom spoke virtually no German.  She didn't have tv, and of course this was before VCRs, let alone DVD players.  (Yes, I just heard you young'uns gasp out loud!)  So my mom did what she could to fill our days...she read to me.  And then she walked with me outside in the landlords' garden...and then she read to me some more.  And some more.  And yep, you guessed it, SOME MORE. 

Needless to say I was talking, reading and writing at  more-than-mildly young ages.  (And no, I haven't shut up or stopped writing since.)  Fast forward to the '90s, as mentioned, and you can understand why I was not too particularly impressed by the high schoolers around me who slogged in from the weekend hollering about the "keggers" they had crashed and who had broken up with whom in front of everyone...for the 423rd time that semester.  When my school district created a brand new plan called "Running Start", which would allow me to trade 2 high school level courses for 1 college course, paid for by the school district, and earning credit at both places, well yeah, you bet your knickers I jumped at the chance!

That's where I was surrounded by folks who WANTED to learn...at the community college that had just opened a few months prior in my town, on the school district's nickel.  I met dads who were there for career advancement courses, moms who had just found themselves single and looking to "catch up" so they could get jobs, and a limited number of folks in their late teens and early 20s who had figured out the cost-effectiveness of getting an AAS at a much lower tuition rate and then transferring to a BA or BS program at the universities nearby.  In other words, I finally found myself around people who really did their work, who really wanted to be there, and who didn't waste my time and everyone else's acting like idiots in class.  (Okay, there were still one or two of those too, *grin* but they learned to tone it down.)

It's also where I first learned about homeschooling.  Because I was 16 and in college, and the "Running Start" program was so new, no one had heard of it.  Several people I met assumed I was on the fast track thanks to being homeschooled; that's how I first learned of the concept!  How funny it is to me now that my mom and I have realized that while I attended public schools, I learned at home.  We were what you could now call "part-time" or "supplemental" homeschoolers and didn't even know it!

So let's fast-forward a bit more...to 2000, when my (then-) husband and I decided to try for our first child.  I had already been doing supplemental home education with my step-daughter for several years and before we even conceived our daughter we had names picked out (yes, I am way too obsessive about pre-planning...hush!) and we knew I would homeschool the child.  Needless to say, when people ask how long we've homeschooled it's a good giggle when we say "since before conception".  As a police officer, his reasons for homeschooling were based on the violence he saw in the schools while on duty, and the growing amount of political correctness in the classrooms and the red tape the teachers (God bless 'em, they need it!) had to wade through every day.  With class sizes in the city he works for making it even worse, some of the schools were more like zoos...on the zookeepers' day off when the animals, all of them, have gotten loose.  In other words...sheer craziness.  These external factors made him say "YES...we will do this...this is best for our children".

My reasons for homeschooling are more internal.  I believe, based on my experiences, that the small student-teacher ratio (especially the preferred one-to-one!) benefits both parties.  I believe in striving for academic excellence, and I know full well that no teacher on earth can offer my child every single subject I want her to learn.  Unless you know of a public school that offers classes in hunting, fishing, home and personal security, self-reliant living, patriotism, dog training, Latin, Greek, American Sign Language, owning and operating a business, auto and motorcycle maintenance, and about a gazillion other things...for every age and grade, every year?  Nah, didn't think so.

So we took the leap, had the baby, did the homeschooling, and then, a year ago this month, I found myself a single homeschooling mum.  WHOA!  Talk about a shocker!  The good news, for those of you who feel home is best for every child, no matter what the parents' situation, is that I am still homeschooling, albeit more alone than ever before.  The best news is that we still agree strongly enough on this educational choice that it was written into our parenting plan during the divorce, and though my ex-husband is not an active participant in the home education process, he is verbally supportive both of my efforts and the excellent education he sees me providing to our daughter.  (Did I mention that his other ex-wife homeschools as well, after numerous conversations with me about it when their daughter was of kindergarten age?  Go figure, huh?  Five years later, it's still a learning lifestyle for both my family and hers!)

So there's the WHY of it all ... Next up, the HOW.