It’s 9am. I’m on a barstool at the kitchen counter surrounded by letter tiles and notebooks. The remnants of cheese grits for breakfast are strewn about. My husband and daughters are standing by the stove in front of me working on the day’s science experiment. The smell of vinegar fills the kitchen, wrinkling my nose as it is poured into scalding milk. I normally hate the smell of vinegar but today it makes me smile. Today it smells like a family adventure. Today it smells like knowledge.
They are attempting to make something that resembles plastic. Did you know you could make plastic out of milk and vinegar? I didn’t. I’m still not sure it will work, but our science book says it will. So we give it a try. As they pour the plastic curds into a strainer lined with cheesecloth, my daughters hum a tune that I recognize as our hymn for the term:
All Creatures of Our God and King
Lift up your voice and with us sing;
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Praise praise the Father, praise the Son.
And praise the Spirit, Three in one.
Oh Praise God; Alleluia
When they’ve molded their curds and the plastic is left to cure, the girls and I will gather our books and snuggle on the couch. We’ll drink Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Spice tea and read the Norse myth about how humans were created out of the ash and alder trees. Then we’ll compare it to the Genesis story we read yesterday about how humans were formed out of dust. We’ll practice math facts and Spanish words and they will teach me as much as I teach them. Maybe more.
It will be a beautiful day of learning.
Five years ago I was in the front yard with my friend Kelli talking about our Kindergarten plans. Her oldest is the same age as mine and we were just weeks away from the start of school. We lived in a rural town that had some of the best schools in the state. I was telling her about the rigorous school selection process that reminded me a little of sorority recruitment. After visiting six different elementary schools, all with different educational philosophies and curricula, my daughter landed a spot in our first choice. An art-based school, it was everything I dreamed of for my kids. “Every subject incorporates art somehow,” I said. “They use a social-emotional curriculum that will help her learn how to interact with others; and how to control her own feelings. It sounds perfect. But Kelli—I can’t shake this feeling that I’m supposed to homeschool.”
“Well maybe you should listen to that,” she replied.
I prayed. I talked to homeschooling parents. I talked to parents of kids in school. I researched curriculum and educational philosophies and prayed some more. My husband agreed to try homeschool for Kindergarten and see how it went.
Now, we’re in our fifth year of intentional homeschooling. We’re homeschoolers by choice. Not homeschoolers out of necessity because a pandemic turned the world upside down. We didn’t choose to homeschool out of fear. We made a purposeful decision. But it never fails. Society always sows seeds of doubt in my mind.
Several months ago I was sitting at the counter talking to my husband, bouncing my knees up and down as I thought about the morning we had just had. It was a particularly trying day where no one wanted to do the things I had planned. Lessons didn’t sound exciting to my children; arguing with me about playing with Legos did. I had a set of poems I wanted to write and was struggling to find time to get them done. “If I put them in school, I’ll have time to write. Really write,” I said to him, stirring honey into the Paris tea brewing in my cup. He looked at me and said, “Yes, but you would miss your kids. Is that really what you want?” I tapped the spoon on my mug nervously and looked at him with what I imagine were the most confused eyes I’ve ever worn. “I don’t know what I want anymore.”
A few weeks later I was talking with a mom at our town’s homecoming festivities. A mutual friend had just introduced us and she was asking the normal get to know you kinds of things. When she asked the normal “Where do your kids go to school?” I quickly replied, “Oh, we homeschool.”
“Well, that’s an interesting choice,” she said; “what do you mean we homeschool?”
I was completely taken aback. Since the pandemic hit, people’s response to “we homeschool” has been nothing but supportive. “Oh, you are so lucky,” people say. “This is the perfect time to homeschool,” is another common response. I have never had someone tell me it was an “interesting” choice. Nor have I had anyone question my use of we. I wasn’t sure how to respond.
I covered my uneasiness with a kind smile and hastily told her I did the planning and most of the teaching, but my husband did help at times. I was grateful when someone walked over to say hi to her, allowing me to excuse myself from the conversation and sit with the question all alone.
Many days passed before I finally had an answer to the question: “what do you mean, we homeschool?”
The next week I walked down the stairs to my husband’s basement office. Making sure I wasn’t interrupting an important call, I whispered, “Hey, can we talk about whether or not we want to send our kids to school this year?” In the days that followed, we talked about our options. We looked at private schools that focused on the arts. We looked at the public school down the street. And nothing felt right. Nothing felt more true to who we are as a family than the way we have been learning together for the last five years.
We homeschool because we want a different life than the one society pushes on us. A slower life. A life where we have time to engage in hard things together. A life where we learn together. A life where we love one another and experience the world around us in a way that we wouldn’t be able to do with a normal school schedule.
Some days are harder than others. Days when the doubt creeps in and I wonder if my kids are missing out. But no education is perfect. We can do things at home that they will never be able to do in a school environment. And there are wonderful things about school that they’ll never get at home. No matter what we choose, they’ll miss out on something.
The truth is we homeschool.
It’s a decision we make, as a family, every single year.
I can’t imagine them being gone for 7 hours every single day.
I love learning alongside them. We learn together. Every single day. I may come up with the curriculum, but my kids teach me as much as I teach them.
We are modeling lifelong learning.
Crafting and implementing curricula. Learning together fills my cup to the brim.
I love spending my days with them. They are the most wonderful children to be around.
Watching them make connections between the things we learn is one of the best parts of being their Mama.
Homeschooling feels right. Homeschooling feels true. Homeschooling feels like us.
There may come a day when they ask to go to school. The connection with their friends—who almost all attend public school in the city where we live—may outweigh the connection they feel at home. They may long for something different. If that day comes, we’ll talk through it as a family. We’ll talk about the good of each choice—and the bad. And we’ll decide together what feels right.
This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in this series "True".
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