Hi everyone, I am currently a licensed social studies teacher and I am currently working on a post-graduate degree in gifted education. I personally do not like many things in today's public school systems. My wife and I are seriously considering homeschooling our grandson who is currently in the second grade. I am visiting this site both to research for that reason and also for professional reasons as I am interested in why others choose to home-school their children. Hopefully I will learn much on this site. Terry
Welcome! I'm a product of public school, a teacher, and a member of a family who is full of teachers on both sides. We homeschool for two reasons... (1) because our district can't meet our needs, and (2) to have a learning environment that puts God first. I have two boys who are both twice-exceptional. (You probably know what 2E means, but for those who don't, it means both gifted and learning disabled at the same time. I'm not sure if this forum allows newbie members to view signatures, but their info is in my signature.) My 9 year old was reading phonetic words at 22 months and chapter books at age 4. He begged us to let him start school when he was 3.5 yrs old, so we bought a kindergarten homeschooling kit from Abeka, only to realize he already knew all of that. We bought 1st and 2nd materials, but he knew most of the 1st and finished 2nd by the time he was 4. We called the district when he was 4 to see about having him start a year early, but they said no. We asked about a gifted program, but they said all they had was a pull-out program for kids who are 8+ years old. They told us "all kids even out by 3rd grade", but that didn't make sense to us, because he was already starting 3rd grade at home. We would have to lock him in a closet for 4 years to make that statement true. When he was 6 (old enough for the WISC, since we were told WPSSI isn't reliable for PG kids), we flew him to GDC in Denver for comprehensive testing. That's when we found out the full scope of what was going on, gained membership in the DYS program, and it solidified our decision to homeschool. (By the way, my "3rd grader" is now in 6th grade ... yeah... they don't "all" even out, do they?) Homeschooling was already on the radar for son #2, but we wanted to give the district a try anyway because he's extremely social and loves being with other kids. They told us that he would have to be placed in special ed at a school outside our neighborhood because of his hearing impairment. They said they don't allow special ed kids to participate in gifted programming. Obviously that's stupid, so he's homeschooling, too. My 6 year old kindergartener is in 3rd at home. He hasn't gone through the process to become a DYS member yet because of his hearing, but he clearly qualifies. We might do that in another year or two. Square pegs and round holes, right?
Our son has adhd. By 4th grade (we'd held him back a year at home because he was not ready for kindy, and so did parents of 3 other boys with birthdays in the fall), I was tired of being "a pioneer" for adhd. These veteran teachers acted like they'd never had an adhd kid before. Some of them actually doubted that adhd existed - insultingly so, to my face. We pulled him from public after fourth grade. He was always ambivalent about homeschool, always felt happy for all the free time but always felt like he was "missing something" by not being in public school. I was a school social worker on the multidisciplinary team and the major breadwinner at the time, so we homeschooled evenings, weekends, holidays, and summers. I felt compelled to retire as soon as I was eligible, for my mental health - public school was driving me crazy. I could see where it was headed, through OBE, NCLB, RttT. I was tired of a system that quit trying to teach 14 year olds how to read, when as an adult literacy volunteer I could see that adults in their 60s could learn despite never going beyond second grade in school themselves. When my son's older son was old enough for school, they put him in public kindy, where they were promised all the kids would be reading by end of the year. He wasn't. He started first grade, and had nothing but trouble. A week into school, I asked him how school was going and he said, "My teacher hates me." They were always getting bad conduct notes, and notes saying he didn't have his homework when his mother knew he'd done it. He was getting Fs on ridiculous assignments of "rigorous vocabulary" which required him to read and fill in blanks with words like "invigorating" and "sweltering" when he could barely read "Jan has two socks." The school was doing nothing about bullying by bigger kids on the bus and on the playground, and refused to talk to my son about it at all. When his first report card came home (about 8 weeks into first grade) with failing grades, they bit the bullet, and my DH and I became our grandson's "boarding school". He lives with us two weeks at a time, and we homeschool. He's in 4th grade now and scoring in the 90s percentiles on the achievement test I give him at the end of each year. After I retired, I opened a little private school that was a sort of mashup of public school and homeschool. When I started, and gave placement tests, kids coming out of public school to me scored about a year behind in one of reading/language arts or math, and about on level in the other. By the time I quit, they were scoring three to four years behind. The last 3 kids I enrolled had been through 7th grade, and passed with flying colors in their classroom grades and the state tests, but I had to place them in 4th grade math and 5th grade reading. My son and daughter-in-law have made up their minds firmly that their younger son will never set foot in public school. We will homeschool him as well. Would have started for kindergarten this year, but they need to move over here by us, and we're hoping they can accomplish that before next school year.
Hi Terry Welcome to the site. I went to school for education (was a certified Social Studies and Math teacher). We choose to hs our eldest because of a social situation in the ps and then choose to hs our youngest because we really examined the school (curriculum and environment) as well as praying about it and feeling that this was what God wanted us to do. I can say that my education background has been the biggest hindrance in my homeschooling. Homeschooling is nothing like being in a classroom setting and that is truly the beauty of it. Being able to reshape what we are learning and customizing it to my daughter has been wonderful. She has learned so much more than she ever would have in a public school. I keep the material at her level, advancing her when appropriate and slowing down when needed. She is not limited by her grade level but only by her ability. I am a big believer in field trips so I make sure we do at least 2 a month. I also love the fact that there is no homework. Once the day's lessons are done (which sometimes drags out depending on her mood) the day is done. This leaves more time for family activities and allowing her to enjoy extracurricular activities with out all the stress of still having to do homework. So I guess the motivation behind homeschooling was the ability to choose the curriculum but also to free us from the constraints of the ps. I can truly say it was the best decision we made.
