When I first began homeschooling, I thought I knew exactly how I wanted it to be.
I designated a room in our apartment as the homeschool space. I had my husband install cute shelves I saw in a Pinterest post so our books could be displayed face-out along the wall. I hung a schedule, a number line, an alphabet poster, and a clock on the wall. I bought a curriculum for every subject. I even printed out the state standards for my child’s grade-level, put them into a binder and studied them, highlighter in-hand.
My homeschool was going to do it all and my child was never going to fall behind. Because that’s what homeschool should be, right?
Fast forward eight years, and four more children to educate, and none of those things I started with are still around in our homeschool today, including my original ideas about what homeschooling “should be,” Alhamdulillah!
Well, actually, I still have books, lots of books in fact, but they don’t get stored face out and good luck trying to find the one you need when you need it (hint: if it’s not under one of the kid’s blankets, check under the seats of the van).
The Many Faces of Homeschool
Whatever your reasons are for wanting to home educate, you may be wondering what it can look like. Here are just few of the variations:
- I know homeschoolers who dedicate learning spaces in their homes;
- and tons more who learn wherever the family happens to be gathered.
- I know homeschoolers who educate using lots of structured curricula;
- and many who don’t follow a curriculum at all.
- I know homeschoolers who believe homeschooling only counts when it happens inside the home, within the subjects and schedule that their state dictates;
- and others who wholeheartedly believe in home education as a lifestyle and learning as something that happens all the time, in every place, irregardless of whether the state has an established standard for it.
- I even know homeschoolers whose homeschool is actually an RV and they travel around the U.S., learning on-the-go.
Long story short: your homeschool can look like whatever works for your family.
Figuring Out What Works
But how do you know what will work for your family, especially when you’ve never homeschooled before? Where is the magic formula that will guide you step-by-step to ensure that everything will be okay?
There isn’t one. And I wouldn’t believe any person, blog, social media account, or Pinterest page promising otherwise.
Your family is unique and your children’s learning needs are unique as well. Trying to force-fit yourselves into a one-size-fits-all vision of homeschooling that doesn’t account for your specific needs, lifestyle, personalities, family dynamics, responsibilities, practical and emotional capacities, etc., is likely to backfire, resulting in overwhelm and frustration for all.
Instead, I offer a simpler approach: good old-fashioned trial and error.
Be open to trying things out. Be open to things sometimes working out wonderfully and sometimes crashing and burning. When something doesn’t work, try not to see it as a failure of homeschool (that’s just unnecessary pressure and often misplaced blame), and instead look at it as you now being one step closer to learning what does work for your family.
Give yourself time and grace to learn as you go.
I dumped my wall schedule, posters, clock, and rigid standards mindset within the first year of homeschooling. It turned out that these things I thought “should” be part of a successful homeschool were really just holding my children and I back from being able to enjoy our learning journey together. I had imprisoned myself in a vision that didn’t align with who we were as individuals or as a family.
This brings me to my second approach: instead of looking for someone else to give you a magic formula, focus on getting to know and honor yourself and your children.
Who are you? What kind of learning do you enjoy? What types of experiences suit your personality? What areas of interest ignite your curiosity? What hobbies, skills, or causes are you passionate about? What culture, heritage, and values are you sharing with your kids? What types of recurring responsibilities do you have? What kind of work schedule are you managing? What current stage of life are you in that might impact your time, patience, and presence with your children?
Learning what works for your unique family means building your homeschool around who you actually are, not around how you think homeschoolers should be.
Defining Intentions
The homeschooling world is vast and the options are plenty. It’s very easy to get lost in the noise of it all.
Figuring out how to approach home education in a way that works best for your family means starting with your intentions. Really ask yourself: Why are you here? Why do you want to homeschool? What do you hope homeschooling will do for your children and for your family?
How you answer these questions can help to determine a lot of next questions and steps for how your family pursues home education in general.
For example, if you’re homeschooling because of an emergency situation with your family that has forced you to remove the kids from school and travel abroad for a time, then you may only need to figure out how to manage resources while your children remote learn until they are back in school.
This is a drastically different situation compared to a family who is exploring homeschool because they want to pursue alternative education as a lifestyle and have no intentions of putting their children into a brick and mortar school system.
Maybe the pandemic turned you on to the idea of homeschooling when your child’s school was closed for in-person learning but you learned that remote learning via the school system (what many long-time homeschoolers nicknamed pandemic schooling) didn’t suit your child’s needs. Now you’re here to explore other options that give you more freedom in scheduling and curriculum.
Whatever the reasons, whatever the intentions, whatever the goals, process them. Have a family meeting and write it all down. Include your children in the discussion and get their perspectives and goals as well. Decide as a family how you will pursue this journey and what you want to get out of it, inshaAllah.
When you finally begin, if pathways or choices get overwhelming, come back to your intentions and goals. Remind yourselves of why you’re here and what you are trying to achieve. If something isn’t working or no longer applies, reassess as a family and try something else.
Do what works, inshaAllah.
Melissa Barreto is a homeschooling mother of five children and the Co-Founder of Wildflower Homeschool Collective, a homeschool organization based in Northern New Jersey.
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