Stepping Stones
Seven Suggestions for the New or Aspiring Homeschool Parent
Mrs. Kathleen M. Sonnek
In a roundabout way, our homeschool journey probably began with Davy Jones. And by that I mean the music and television star of the 1960s and not the legendary pirate, although both probably make about as much sense.
If you’d told me as a young, free-spirited adult that I’d someday have four children and homeschool them all, I would have asked politely if you needed psychiatric attention. I’d only heard of homeschooling maybe once in an oblique sort of way and thought it was perhaps something you had to be Amish to do. It was certainly not on my bucket list, sandwiched in between “Write a Pulitzer-prize winning story” and “Maybe knit a sweater.” What I didn’t realize at the time was that my heartfelt desire to contribute and create was going to manifest itself in an unexpected way.
Enter Davy Jones.
In 1993, my engineer husband and I and our seven-month-old son had newly moved to Decatur, Illinois, and I was writing for the Arts & Entertainment section of the State Journal Register. Davy Jones of “Hey, hey we’re the Monkees” fame was doing a show in Decatur, and my editor asked if I’d be willing to cover it. Although it was a few decades past the height of Jones’ teen-idol days — and I was only a toddler at that time, anyway — the mystique around this irresistible British actor and singer endured. With his comic timing and boyish charm, he was the darling of the Monkees, a mod rock band manufactured by Hollywood as an American counterpart to the Beatles. The group had toured thirty-eight countries and sold one hundred million records, and the madcap television sitcom that was created to capitalize on their wholesome but zany image was still in syndication. Their eight snappy Top-40 hits included three number ones in “The Last Train to Clarksville,” “Daydream Believer,” and, their biggest hit, “I’m a Believer.”
So yes, of course, I would be delighted to obtain the interview.
Except that, as of the day of his performance, his manager still hadn’t returned my calls for an appointment with his client. Eventually, I went to bed and accepted that this story was not going to happen. Then, at two o’clock in the morning, the phone rang at our house, and a decidedly non-British male voice, with an apparently exuberant group in the background, announced, “Mr. Jones will see you at 10:00 a.m. today.”
Now, as those of you who have welcomed babies into the world are aware, unbroken sleep can be a rarity for quite a few months after the blessed event. But this time instead of — or in addition to — being summoned nocturnally by a seven-month-old, I was being summoned by a forty-seven-year-old appealing, but aging, rock star. In the brief and bleary hours between the call and my leaving for the interview, I debated which questions to ask, shouting out from the shower possible options, while my dear husband took notes for me on the other side. I also nursed our son, made breakfast for all of us, found something suitable to wear, sprinted out the door, and then sat down to a lovely interview in which Davy Jones of the Monkees explained to me everything I ever needed to know about British monarchs and nineteenth-century culture, thereby instilling in me an intense longing to homeschool my children and teach them all about the Victorian Age.
Actually, no.
It was an entertaining interview, which covered the glory days of the Monkees and did not disappoint in charm or content. But something also clicked in that moment. In the whirlwind of preparing for the interview, engaging in the interview, and writing up the interview, I realized that I’m the kind of person who can only focus on doing One Major Thing well at a time — and the thing I most wanted to do well for the foreseeable future was to spend undivided quality and quantity time with our son in the beautiful and tender days of his youth.
I’m the kind of person who can only focus on doing One Major Thing well at a time — and the thing I most wanted to do well for the foreseeable future was to spend undivided quality and quantity time with our son in the beautiful and tender days of his youth.
So that was the last interview with anyone, famous or not, for about thirty years. I’m grateful to the effervescent Mr. Jones for inadvertently showing me what I really wanted, which was to engage in a full-time, deep immersion course in family life. And in the months and years that followed, I got what I wanted, especially in the context of unhurried time with our son: lazy, meandering days spent touring the neighborhood and parks together; weekly trips to the library; finger painting; singing silly songs; learning to use the vacuum cleaner (him, not me); making cookies together; building, building and more building with Legos; playing with soap suds in the sink; watching ants crawl; and learning basic civility because, in many respects, we were both growing together.
And what started with the interview began to evolve, without my even realizing it. Five years later — now with two more children and one on the way, and our son comfortably ensconced in a private-school kindergarten setting — we decided to uproot everyone mid-year and move north to my husband’s state of origin. We wanted to be closer to his family and to preserve our own from the grasp of corporate domination over and intrusion into family life, which was becoming an ever-increasing concern in his career.
With that move and a later random, fortuitous meeting with a homeschool mom, we found ourselves unexpectedly drawn to something neither of us had ever considered before. The family we met that was our first formal introduction to homeschooling had no special credentials in education or psychology to recommend them to this endeavor. What they did have was a pleasantly calm, focused, and engaged way about them. The children were articulate and eager, the home peaceful, the parents unified and totally committed to the family enterprise.
In fact, the entire package was so appealing that we did some research, became convinced, and dove in.
Reader, we homeschooled for seventeen years.
So, as you can see, there was a series of stepping stones, which gradually led us from awareness, to informal teaching, to formal teaching. It felt like a natural progression, and it was. You may be wondering, however, what else qualifies a person to do such a thing. I would propose a combination of enthusiasm, guts, and naïveté. In other words, the unassailable belief that you can do this seemingly wild thing; that you can have a calm, purposeful life with your children, and that you can educate them yourself — because, as it turns out, you can.
If you, kind soul, have embarked on such an adventure or are considering doing so, I herewith offer a few thoughts for your consideration.
1. Make this decision from a place of passion and excitement over the positive transformational quality of this lifestyle. Your kids will essentially be getting a loving, one-on-one quality education with outstanding character formation that is simply not possible in the typical school venue. This attitude is preferable to the fear and despair over dismal aspects of the current educational system that involve concerns about curriculum choices, responses to pandemics, school shootings, social-media bullying, and the historically dreadful deficiencies in school lunch programs. These are all natural catalysts for a conversation on the topic, but the ideal is not purely a reaction against the bad, but rather a motivation toward the good. If you feel enthusiastic about the positive aspects of this life and consider yourself to be spiritually, psychologically, and emotionally ready to embrace it, then proceed in joy and wonder.
2. Go with your strengths and realize that you don’t have to know everything about everything in order to homeschool. At its essence, homeschooling isn’t about depositing your vast accumulation of acquired information into the waiting vessel of your willing offspring. Yes, it is good if one or both parents are confident and competent in the major disciplines of math and grammar or are at least willing to reacquaint themselves with these subjects in order to acquire proficiency. And it is great if both parents can be involved in teaching, even if not always to the same extent.
With my engineer husband’s math and physics background and mine in the liberal arts, the demarcation was pretty clear and, when the end-of-year standardized testing came around, it was always a friendly rivalry between us as to whether the kids’ math or language skills would be higher. I think he even tried to bribe a couple of them to throw a few questions in the grammar and vocabulary sections so the math section would come out ahead, but his nefarious plot always failed. Their language scores still always exceeded their already-respectable math scores.
In any case, by all means, teach to your strengths. Especially with all other subjects — such as history, literature, religion, art, and science — it’s about making great material available to them and then helping them engage with it, with you as their academic coach.
For those subjects from which both spouses recoil — perhaps biology and its requisite frog dissection — consider if the subject is really a necessary one. If it is, realize that as homeschooling has become more and more mainstream, there are often local co-ops available in which parents can pool their expertise in teaching different subjects. Or find a biology curriculum that appeals to you and appears to hit all the high points. If it turns out that the ten feet of snow you received on your pond one winter has killed all the koi and frogs, scoop a couple off the bank, throw them in the freezer for later, dissect them and then check it off your list. Not everyone is called to be the county coroner.
You may also find that a child displays an aptitude for a non-core subject that appears to be decidedly outside your and your spouse’s wheelhouse. Neither my husband nor I ever felt even remotely qualified to teach drawing and oil painting although our youngest child exhibited a tremendous ability and interest in this area early on. So we ended up enrolling her in the online Art Instruction Schools, available at the time, which boasted instructors such as cartoonists Charles Schultz of “Peanuts” fame. Our daughter enjoyed this program so much that it became a stepping stone on the path to her pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree in oil paint.
Finally, don’t underestimate the value of learning alongside your child. That eleventh paragraph above, consisting of one sentence (go ahead, I’ll wait while you find it), is a riff on the first sentence in the last chapter of Jane Eyre, the classic novel by Charlotte Bronte, something that — even as an English major — I’d never read before studying it with my own kids. (And, if our oldest should ever bring it up, we did not read Pride and Prejudice five times and watch the six-hour BBC version twice.)
3). Have a plan for the year and work your plan. Kids can smell fear, and having a general idea of what you will be teaching and the books and methods you will use to teach it — for this academic year only — helps everyone’s confidence level and peace of mind. Begin by setting the date of your academic calendar for your own sanity and also because the school district will likely request this information when you inform them that you will be homeschooling. Our academic year always began the day after Labor Day and ended by Memorial Day, the bookends of summer. Write down your plan and let everyone know that these are the dates when we will be inundated with knowledge.
Pencil in field trips and extracurricular activities, which can also include playing cards with an elderly neighbor on Friday afternoons. (Have the big kids help the little kids tromp through the snow, through the ravine, and up the hill to get to her house for cards and too many cookies before dinner.) Dance classes, sports, 4-H, music lessons . . . write it all down to get the big picture and then see if you need to cut something for sanity and family harmony. Decide on the curriculum and have everything ready well before you need it. It’s so much more pleasant for everyone if you have greater plans than time, rather than greater time than plans.
And remember that a plan is only as good as its ability to be adjusted in real life. Some days might not reflect what you had hoped to accomplish academically, and you may need to change math programs on the fly because what clicked for one student is causing hyperventilation for another. Remember, one of the advantages of homeschooling is the ability to tailor your kids’ education to their particular gifts and strengths and avoid the cookie-cutter approach necessary in teaching the masses.
4. Take advantage of the freedom that homeschooling offers. We occasionally took snow days when the school district did because who doesn’t love the excitement of an unexpected day off? Hooray! — an opportunity to re-enact all the sledding scenes from Calvin and Hobbes. On the other hand, getting downstairs to the kitchen table — or wherever class is held — is typically not hindered by snow piling up outside, which is why we also took a few spring days because it is a truth universally acknowledged that the antsy-ness levels increase as the days grow warmer. And consider taking class outside. There is something really lovely about everyone trooping out the door to read on a blanket, under a tree, on an exceptionally beautiful early spring day.
5. Don’t feel you have to stop just because they are going into high school. So often, this is when all the years of hassling them to get their work done so that, pretty please, we would not be homeschooling into June or July, begins to really pay off. They are becoming interesting, articulate people who can engage with you on ever deeper logical and rhetorical levels — and why would you want to allow someone else to reap all the benefits of that? Our kids all took the ACT a year early as high school sophomores in order to enroll in a few PSEO (postsecondary enrollment option) classes tuition-free at a local private college in the fall. This allowed them to have instructors other than their parents — especially for a few courses that are difficult to replicate effectively at home, like speech and theater — and to receive both high school and college credit at the same time. It may or may not be for you, but it’s worth checking the availability in your state.
6. Consider joining local and national support groups. The Home School Legal Defense Association (hslda.org) is an excellent group if you have any concerns about how homeschoolers may be perceived or treated in your state and, as a member, you are entitled to their legal assistance should the need ever arise. A quick internet search will also reveal resources in each state — for example, in our neck of the woods, the Minnesota Association of Christian Home Educators (MACHE) and the yearly Minnesota Catholic Home Education Conference and Curriculum Fair — that are available to walk you through reporting requirements, educational strategies, and curriculum building.
7. Commit to a year, not to a lifetime. Some things require a lifelong commitment — marriage, holy orders, allegiance to a particular football team — but this isn’t one of them. At the end of every school year, we put it to a vote: Did we want to continue or not? Every year, the vote was unanimous: We would continue. (Your mileage may vary.)
The desire to teach your children at home, like everything else in life, comes from somewhere. Perhaps it’s a desire to create something beautiful and enduring like a peaceful, focused life in which your children can flourish. Perhaps it’s a tugging of the heart that arose at an unexpected moment and little steps unknowingly taken in that direction over time. Or perhaps it’s just the inevitable result of being called to interview a 1960s pop icon while you have a nursing infant at home.
If, after reading these musings, you feel even mildly drawn homeschooling your children and the multi-faceted opportunities that await, consider yourself invited. As our four-year-old grandson likes to remark encouragingly about different things, “There’s nothing scary about it!” Just go with the flow, one stepping stone at a time. I can tell you that it didn’t even require the full seventeen years of homeschooling to realize that, in regard to teaching one’s own children at home: I’m a believer.
