From the Classroom to the Kitchen Table: What Homeschooling Is and Isn't

I was 21 when I entered the system. Fresh, bright, confident, and utterly naïve. My first classroom was a 10^th grade World Literature class. The state: North Carolina. Pre-Common Core. Plans meticulously written, texts carefully selected. The goal? Full literary immersion for young minds— much like the rich textual feasts I had discovered during my college years.

My mentor teacher took one look at my plan book and said, “That ain’t gonna cut it ‘cause you gotta hit as much of the Standard Course of Study as you can.”  Another cursory scan and, “Too much talkin’ and discussion in there. You gotta hit them standards.”

What did Burns write about “the best-laid schemes o’ mice an men” again?...

Yeah. That.

She meant well, I suppose, but what she didn’t know was that this was the genesis. This was the moment that set me on the path that led me here.

Thus began a long teaching career with cycles of optimism and hope every fall and brimming frustration and desperate prayers to Almighty God by spring. I could do better. I knew I could. And the kids would be better off for it. But I was limited.

Years later, I was teaching at an all-girls catholic school, and I got a glimpse of what learning could truly be. Yes, there were still standards, but they were looser and I felt free.

Then I had my own children and the lights really turned on. I was not going to hand my precious babies over to the same system that I struggled against. And entrusting my children to a private school meant that they would learn their values— whether good or not so good— and not mine and my husband’s.

This is at the core of home education and any homeschooling philosophy.

It is the desire to not only direct your child’s learning but to pass on a set of values and a way of being that are independent of external influence.

What that looks like in practice depends on the family and is only limited by the parents’ self-confidence in attending to the task at hand.

To Curriculum or Not to Curriculum

There’s a hot debate in homeschool world these days about whether formal curriculum is necessary to educate a child, with some parents competing to see how little they can spend as if it’s an Olympic sport— no shame in that game. And your homeschooling philosophy has everything to do with where you land on it. If you’re a classical homeschooler, the answer to the question is a resounding yes because the Trivium’s a thing and it needs to be fed with buildable sequence and structure. If you’re an unschooler, your answer is probably “to heck with it” and it's all about child-led learning. If you follow Charlotte Mason’s methods, it’s probably an interesting in-between where textbooks are for the birds and “living books” are the stuff that itty bitty kid dreams (and grownup dreams) are made of. But if you’re anything like my family, eclectic, you use whatever works for your children: structured texts, living books, playing in the grass on a summer’s day…it’s all education for us!

The verdict on curriculum vs. no curriculum? It depends. Perhaps it’s just a bias, but I believe that there should be some tangible metric for gauging learning, but what and how your child learns is entirely up to you. As such, the measurement of that understanding doesn’t need to be formal curriculum per se. It can be as simple as a checklist or as elaborate as a portfolio.

Technology in Your Homeschool. Tool or Trap?

Online curriculums and virtual K-12 programs offer incredible convenience for busy families. However, they can blur the line between intentional home education and just “public school at home”…with computers. As Head Seeker over at Story Seekers, I occupy an interesting space. On the one hand, I am an avid bibliophile and a staunch supporter of physical books. However, I also know the power of technology to bring readers from all over the world together. The idea is not to allow the technology to do everything while parents take the backseat. Transformative learning does not happen behind a monitor. There should be moments when your child can connect with you through inquiry or just conversation over a good book.

If you want a simple screen-free way to encourage those reading moments this summer, you can download our free Summer Literary Passport. It’s a wonderful tool to not only track their favorite books but a way to spark offline conversations about what they have learned from them. Because, ultimately, you didn’t choose to homeschool so the computer could grow in relationship with your child. You chose to homeschool so that you could.

What Homeschooling Is Not...and Why Freedom Matters

In the end, homeschooling is about freedom for you and your child, and there’s no single correct way to do it. If you are forcing your days (and sometimes nights) into someone else’ s rhythm or rigid framework, you’re losing the essence of the thing. Trust your instincts, break the rules, use curriculum or don’t, try and fail. Your homeschool doesn’t need to look like a traditional classroom or anyone else’s. Because there is no child that is exactly alike and no system that can truly tailor itself to the unique needs of yours.