Homeschool is a great alternative to the traditional public school system. Studies suggest homeschooling allows parents to instill their own morals and values into their children.
I myself as a busy supermom of five children, have found myself feeling some opposition while my children were attending the traditional public school. Let’s be honest, I have always wanted something different for my children when it came to enrolling my children into the public school system. Antwan and I considered our options and alternatives such as charter schools and private schools.
Private school was immediately off of our list because it was just simply unaffordable.
The only other option for us at the time was the charter school. This was mainly because we both worked outside of the home. Charter schools are still public schools however, they have different regulations that they abide by compared to the traditional public school. Therefore, it was our goal to find a charter school that mission-aligned up to what ours were.
We came across Kipp Jax Charter School here in Jacksonville, Florida.
We then started to do more research on this particular charter school as a whole. We realized that we liked the whole entire mission and values. We made a commitment that we were going to enroll our children in the school. We went through the whole lottery system process and unfortunately, only two of our three children were accepted. This was due to the enrollment process our oldest daughter did not make the list, being that she was in a higher grade the classes were filled.
There we had to reconsider our options. Since the majority of our children we’re accepted, we determined that they were going into the charter school. Therefore, we still needed to find an alternative for our oldest daughter. After refusing to put her into the public school system and not have any other options for charter schools, we were left with the only other option, which was to put her into private school.
She was accepted into a Christian private school. However, after they gave us a tuition bill that would cost us more than our mortgage per month, we refused to enroll her. Literally, after deep prayer and meditation, we decided that we were going to homeschool. As silly as it sounded, we said we were going to do it. This was possible as I was going to begin working from home.
As the new school year started, life was just complicated.
I had two elementary children who are going outside of our home to attend a charter school while having a 5th-grade homeschool student, a preschool student, and a newborn baby all at the same time. Antwan was working outside the home on the other side of town. Therefore, he was responsible for transporting our children, doing the drop-off and pick up our children.
Without the proper instructor on “how to homeschool” I was lost. There were days of homeschooling when I know that I was not an effective educator to our daughter. I feel as though I’ve made so many mistakes. However, I was able to learn from some of my mistakes in the first year of homeschooling. I’ve learned that in the beginning I still adopted the same mentality as a public school teacher. Therefore, I was literally teaching my daughter eight hours a day. That was draining! Draining to say the very least! I did not know any better.
I did not realize that it didn’t take eight hours a day to teach one person.
If you cannot tell, I had to learn the hard way! At first, I was teaching her on curricula that I had research on my own. After finally doing my research and connecting with other homeschool parents, I realized that teaching one child did not require such a long day. I did modify her teachings down to 3 to 4 hours a day. Oh did that save me so much time and energy! However, this was the key, I learned that there was a homeschool community of families that were in similar transitions like my family. This was great because I didn’t feel alone during my transition.
I also learned about Florida Virtual School which is a free online public school for students residing in the state of Florida.
Curious to know what the program consisted of, I researched it and quickly enrolled our daughter. Immediately, I thought this was a great alternative because it was accredited and it would relieve some of the pressure and stress on me with gathering the curricula. Honestly, I didn’t feel like I could homeschool. I thought it was so difficult even though other families didn’t share my same experience. Therefore, once I heard of this, I was all in.
Florida Virtual School allows students to work at their own pace and in their own time. However, I have learned that the school year is broken down online into two segments. There a segment one and segment two. Therefore, students are able to enroll as a homeschool student under their flex program or as a full-time student. Being that our daughter is registered with the state as a homeschool student, I was able to enroll her as a 5th-grade flex student. This means that we as her parents we were still deemed responsible for keeping a student record annually (her grades and reports).
At first, we typically did not like Florida’s virtual school.
The system was different and new. We did not have a clue on how to schedule out the courses. Therefore, I signed my daughter up for five courses, the basics (math, science, ELA, social studies, and Spanish). I know that was insane! This was my daughter’s first time taking any online courses and not only did I sign up for one online course but I signed her up for five of them.
Yes, as you can imagine it was absolutely horrible trying to keep up with the schedule.
This was totally new for our family. However, we were determined to try different things to figure out our niche. After trial and error, I begin working on her schedule that will fit my work schedule. Being that I work from home I still had to be consistent in my homeschooling. We managed to figure things out and complete the year successfully (whoa).
Again, I’ve made a lot of mistakes, however, I take them as lessons learned. It was our first year at it and all of the experience did was made us stronger for the next year. We learned a better way!
If your thinking about homeschooling and don’t know where to start, I encourage you to begin doing some research.
Look into the protocols in your area on homeschooling. Understanding the rules and regulations is truly important. I encourage you to not be afraid of making mistakes because trust me, you will! However, mistakes will allow you to learn and grow.
Homeschooling is awesome, yes hard some times but awesome! In the first year of homeschooling, I was able to bond again with my oldest daughter. It was great. She was able to get some one-on-one time with me (when the other two littles were sleeping.
I also encourage you to stand up for your children!
My daughter revealed that she was being bullied at school and although I worked in the same school, I had no idea! Remember, your children are your greatest asset. If you don’t stand up and advocate for them, who on earth will?
If you like this post check out the other post Why We Choose to Homeschool.
Until next time, be blessed and know that you guys are purposed for the life that you live in. Please know that you have what it takes to homeschool your children. Please know that you are your children’s greatest teacher.
