Confession time.
I hate home schooling. Let's just be real clear what I mean by "I hate home schooling."
What I'm trying to say is, I HATE HOME SCHOOLING!!"
I'm pretty sure that I'm also not allowed to admit that. It's against the code of home schooling moms to say it aloud. Which is why I typed it! Ya, loophole!
Before I go any further with this I will say that while I hate home schooling there is no better option for my children. I will not send them to the public school and if I listed all of my reasons for why I wouldn't you'd stop reading this before I got to my "I hate home schooling" post. Also with every breath in me I will fight for the rights of parents to make the choice of how their children are educated.
Now, why do I hate home schooling?
First of all it's hard. I have 3 turkeys in school now and it kind of stinks. Without a doubt if someone is struggling with understanding a concept the other 2 will need help. I cannot help everyone at once and it physically drains me. Besides that I don't always have the answer. For instance, is the letter r the only letter that modifies a vowel? Is that a dumb question? Can we just skip that question in their book and move on to something I can answer? And even though I am keeper of the answer book, it may tell me what the answer to the question is... but not why that's the answer to the question or how I should explain how or what or when or why or who modifies the stupid vowel. And when this happens I will use the trusty Internet to look up the answer. While I'm looking up the answer someone else will have a question that I can answer and I will put the modifying vowel question on hold. I will get up to answer the second question and while I'm walking towards child #2 I will notice that I haven't thawed anything for dinner. So I'll go into the basement to get something out of the deep freeze and remember that I have 4 projects needing to be painted and start on it. In the meantime no one is doing school because mom is AWOL and they have no idea how to answer the question that they're on.
So this naturally brings me to my next point... I am horrible at home schooling. I am obviously easily distracted and not very bright myself. But on top of that I'm lazy. Home schooling constantly exposes my bend towards laziness. I don't want to do art projects or science projects. These take time to plan and almost always make big messes. I hate cleaning up after them and it's much easier just to skip them. I don't need another mess we have enough of them as it is! Plus I hate field trips. Field trips are always during the day when Ben is at work and for some mystic reason always on days when the weather stinks. So that means I have to load up all five kids by myself and then spend the entire field trip reminding Gabe and Jack not to touch anything, to stop running, to remember their inside voices, to stop wrestling... just thinking about it puts me on edge.
Next, home schooling is not living up to my expectations. I always imagined that home schooling would be a Utopian experience where the kids and I would read great works of literature which would naturally lead to us creating art masterpieces and writing works of music that would be enjoyed for generations to come. We would invent things and learn to live off the land all while memorizing the entire Bible. But, not only would we memorize the entire Bible we would live it out and people would have to veil their faces as we walked by because the Holy Spirit would be radiating out of the ends of our hair. Not only would we be incredibly spiritual we would have fun. The kids would become fluent in Latin, Hebrew, Greek and Laughter. Our neighbors would have to call the cops because the laughter and jolly joy making would drive them nuts and all the children of the neighborhood would be knocking on the door begging for me to home school them.
None of this has happened yet. I never expected that these reasonable expectations would be interrupted by laundry, dishes, dusting, vacuuming and life. And never did I count on the fact that if I only draw stick figures and am tone deaf that this would somehow hinder my ability to teach my children these skills. I never counted on all the crying that would occur when someone just doesn't understand that you have to add the ones column before you add the tens column. I never knew how hard it would be to teach a child to read when I pronounce short "e" and short "i" the same way and they pronounce the letter "f" and the letter "v" the same way. Not to mention when older siblings try to help them read and the older sibling pronounces the letter "f" and the blend "th" the same way!! We have not memorized the entire Bible yet. Most days I just wish it was easier to teach the books of the Old Testament... you try teaching a kid who can't pronounce any letter blends or short vowel sounds to say words like Ecclesiastes, Haggai, and Habakkuk! Ahhhhhhh!!!!
Finally the amount of pressure that I feel on a daily basis is tremendous. If I sent them to the public school and they had a horrible 2nd grade teacher there would be hope that in the third grade they would get a wonderful teacher that would inspire them to become a lifetime learner. This third grade teacher might also be able to make up for lost time in the second grade and all would be rainbows and unicorns. Instead my kids are stuck with me. If I don't inspire them to learn they don't get another chance for a better teacher until college ... assuming that they make it that far. Now they don't have the option of being on the rainbow and unicorn trail instead they are on the trail towards orange jumpsuits and the license plate making business.
The good news is that I only have 15 years left of this and most importantly God is bigger than all my failures. He's going to have a lot of work ahead of Him!
I hate home schooling. Let's just be real clear what I mean by "I hate home schooling."
What I'm trying to say is, I HATE HOME SCHOOLING!!"
I'm pretty sure that I'm also not allowed to admit that. It's against the code of home schooling moms to say it aloud. Which is why I typed it! Ya, loophole!
Before I go any further with this I will say that while I hate home schooling there is no better option for my children. I will not send them to the public school and if I listed all of my reasons for why I wouldn't you'd stop reading this before I got to my "I hate home schooling" post. Also with every breath in me I will fight for the rights of parents to make the choice of how their children are educated.
Now, why do I hate home schooling?
First of all it's hard. I have 3 turkeys in school now and it kind of stinks. Without a doubt if someone is struggling with understanding a concept the other 2 will need help. I cannot help everyone at once and it physically drains me. Besides that I don't always have the answer. For instance, is the letter r the only letter that modifies a vowel? Is that a dumb question? Can we just skip that question in their book and move on to something I can answer? And even though I am keeper of the answer book, it may tell me what the answer to the question is... but not why that's the answer to the question or how I should explain how or what or when or why or who modifies the stupid vowel. And when this happens I will use the trusty Internet to look up the answer. While I'm looking up the answer someone else will have a question that I can answer and I will put the modifying vowel question on hold. I will get up to answer the second question and while I'm walking towards child #2 I will notice that I haven't thawed anything for dinner. So I'll go into the basement to get something out of the deep freeze and remember that I have 4 projects needing to be painted and start on it. In the meantime no one is doing school because mom is AWOL and they have no idea how to answer the question that they're on.
So this naturally brings me to my next point... I am horrible at home schooling. I am obviously easily distracted and not very bright myself. But on top of that I'm lazy. Home schooling constantly exposes my bend towards laziness. I don't want to do art projects or science projects. These take time to plan and almost always make big messes. I hate cleaning up after them and it's much easier just to skip them. I don't need another mess we have enough of them as it is! Plus I hate field trips. Field trips are always during the day when Ben is at work and for some mystic reason always on days when the weather stinks. So that means I have to load up all five kids by myself and then spend the entire field trip reminding Gabe and Jack not to touch anything, to stop running, to remember their inside voices, to stop wrestling... just thinking about it puts me on edge.
Next, home schooling is not living up to my expectations. I always imagined that home schooling would be a Utopian experience where the kids and I would read great works of literature which would naturally lead to us creating art masterpieces and writing works of music that would be enjoyed for generations to come. We would invent things and learn to live off the land all while memorizing the entire Bible. But, not only would we memorize the entire Bible we would live it out and people would have to veil their faces as we walked by because the Holy Spirit would be radiating out of the ends of our hair. Not only would we be incredibly spiritual we would have fun. The kids would become fluent in Latin, Hebrew, Greek and Laughter. Our neighbors would have to call the cops because the laughter and jolly joy making would drive them nuts and all the children of the neighborhood would be knocking on the door begging for me to home school them.
None of this has happened yet. I never expected that these reasonable expectations would be interrupted by laundry, dishes, dusting, vacuuming and life. And never did I count on the fact that if I only draw stick figures and am tone deaf that this would somehow hinder my ability to teach my children these skills. I never counted on all the crying that would occur when someone just doesn't understand that you have to add the ones column before you add the tens column. I never knew how hard it would be to teach a child to read when I pronounce short "e" and short "i" the same way and they pronounce the letter "f" and the letter "v" the same way. Not to mention when older siblings try to help them read and the older sibling pronounces the letter "f" and the blend "th" the same way!! We have not memorized the entire Bible yet. Most days I just wish it was easier to teach the books of the Old Testament... you try teaching a kid who can't pronounce any letter blends or short vowel sounds to say words like Ecclesiastes, Haggai, and Habakkuk! Ahhhhhhh!!!!
Finally the amount of pressure that I feel on a daily basis is tremendous. If I sent them to the public school and they had a horrible 2nd grade teacher there would be hope that in the third grade they would get a wonderful teacher that would inspire them to become a lifetime learner. This third grade teacher might also be able to make up for lost time in the second grade and all would be rainbows and unicorns. Instead my kids are stuck with me. If I don't inspire them to learn they don't get another chance for a better teacher until college ... assuming that they make it that far. Now they don't have the option of being on the rainbow and unicorn trail instead they are on the trail towards orange jumpsuits and the license plate making business.
The good news is that I only have 15 years left of this and most importantly God is bigger than all my failures. He's going to have a lot of work ahead of Him!
1 comment:
Kelly,
Your writing is awesome. Thank you for sharing your true feelings with the world! Lol! I think that you summed up my life and homeschooling my kids just fine, Thanks! :o)
Thanks for showing me I'm not the only one who really doesn't enjoy the job of teaching my kids.
Keep it up, and know that you're not alone!! :o)
SJB
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