how home schooling has brought peace to this military family....

We made the choice to home school 5 years ago but continuing to home school has not been so much about perceived failings of the public school system but more about the needs of our family.  This is not about how one way is better than any other and it certainly won't convince someone who is committed to a public school education to commit to home schooling.   Although, I pray it might pique their interest.  This is about how home schooling has brought peace to our military family.  My mission as a mom, like all moms, is to raise educated, intelligent, respectful, responsible world citizens who seek to follow God's word.  Taking absolute responsibility for this in the midst of deployments, moving cross country and overseas or dealing with multiple school systems in one school year has brought peace to many stressful areas of my life.

Did we start home schooling because I knew or suspected that it would bring peace?  Nope.  Not at all.  We started home schooling for the same reason that many do.  We were unhappy with the exposure our children were receiving in school.  Once we left, I discovered many things that fell in to place.

1.  Transitions (ie the human version of playing pickup sticks).  If we had stayed with public school our children would have been to five different schools in four years.  With each change they would have had different teachers, different systems, different standardized testing preparations, different school cultures and expectations.  These changes and the ability to adapt is part of what creates an amazing military child and along with you I celebrate these successes!  However, I saw that we didn't have to do that to raise amazing military children!  With home schooling, they have one curriculum, one set of teachers and moving from school to school is as "simple" as moving from house to house.  The quality of education do not change with each move.  Have you wondered why math is so much easier for your child at duty station X than it was at duty station Y only to find out at duty station Z that it was because the quality of education was less and now your child has to peddle hard to catch up.  Continuity through transitions brings peace to this concern.

2.  Records.  Who has moved from school system to school system in the middle of the year, particularly high school, needing to bring old text books, syllabi, course standards etc so that the receiving school will grant appropriate credit?  Who has stressed about their high school student not having credit accepted at the receiving command's school?  Who has sat in the Base School Liaison Officer's office realizing that your child's academic relies on the decisions of others?  Me too.  There is plenty of paperwork with home schooling but the variables do not change with each move. 

3.  Where are we going next?  How many of us have had a conversation with our military spouse pleading not to go to Duty Station Outinthemiddleofnowherepleasedonttakemethere because the schools are awful?  This completely removes that conversation and frees the military member from that one VERY important consideration as we are the first and best teachers for our children. (oops...I said I wasn't going to try and convince you to home school)  Home schooling makes the human version of pick up sticks less stressful and more fluid.

4.  Consistency.  I do believe that exposure to different people and different expectations are good for a child.  Military children are exposed to this effortlessly as they move from school to school.  Sometimes, this is good and sometimes not so good.  I can recall one school district that insisted they only did Gifted and Talented testing in the spring.  Since we had arrived after testing had occurred in late May, we would have to wait until the next Spring for testing and then my students could join GATE their second school year in that district.  Um.  No.  We were only going to be there for 2 school years and after that go through the whole process again.  After many meetings and a few temper tantrums I got them in the program right away (using squirreled away test scores and papers from previous schools...see #2) but who needs the stress?  It shouldn't be so hard to maintain a consistent level of education. 

5.  Standardized tests.  Wait.  I home school AND believe in standardized tests?  Yes, yes I do.  Each year my children take a standardized test from the same company and the same set of standards.  So, if their test scores wax and wane I do not need to wonder if it is due to a different test or a different curriculum it is an actual indicator of their learning and sets training points for the future.
As an added benefit, I found meaningful, fulfilling employment in the home school industry and am able to pursue a career at home.  Since then, I have met many home school moms who work in their area of expertise (including my primary care physician) while home educating their children.  So, this isn't a choice that excludes individual pursuits of the one who educates and can be a blessing to the whole family.  

Over the next few weeks, I am conducting a series of webinars on this topic through Landry Academy and encourage you to check here for those.  I will address;

1.  5 ways home schooling has brought peace to our military family

2.  Moving/PCSing while home schooling?  Here's how.  

3.  Home school record keeping for the military family (or anyone changes their home state) 

4.  Home school success and deployments 

More later...I am really excited about this project!