Let’s Talk About Homeschooling Successes

If you’ve been over to my facebook page in the past day or so, you’ll see we’ve had a rough time of it. Last week DD was under the weather and slept for a couple of days. This weekend LD came down with a virus and spent many hours hunched over a bowl. Unfortunately for LD, he tends to get illness-induced asthma.  So the nasty virus also progressed into a full blown asthma attack.  A couple of hours of treatment at the doctor’s office couldn’t bring it under control so we wound up in the ER yesterday. And even with the treatment he was still sent home (safely) last night with a lot of wheezing in his lower lungs, but with plenty of meds to get it under control.  This morning I had to get up early to take kitty in to be neutered.  Then I went back home got the kids ready and was back out the door early for another doctor’s appointment for LD. Now even I have a tremendously sore throat. Yes, it’s been a rough week or so.

So with all that going on, I’m going to put off the second Technology post until next Wednesday. I have it about 2/3 done but have a few more things I need to research and check out — and really want to do a good job on that post before I share that here. In the meantime, you can read the first Technology in Education post here if you missed that. I’m really excited about this next post as it shares a lot of tools that homeschoolers can use.  I came across a number of useful (and cute) tools out there and I’m excited for my kids to try some of them out.  So again, hope you don’t mind waiting til next week for Technology in Education-Part 2.

So onto another topic.  Yesterday I saw someone’s blog post that was just deflating. It’s called An Open Letter to Lazy Homeschoolers.  Perhaps I wouldn’t have found it so bleak and discouraging if it weren’t for our own lull in homeschooling.  I can tell you, this week hasn’t started off in a stellar fashion. Because my normal weekend preparation time was eaten with sick kids, I don’t have as much planned as I usually like (um, like practically nothing except the basics). So when I read the post, it actually made me feel bad. What I found so disheartening about it was the finger pointing at — well, I’m not sure exactly who she’s pointing fingers at (though another reader readily pointed the finger at unschoolers).    In my mind, it’s the general educational journey that matters. The route each homeschooling family takes is different. The obstacles each child faces as he/she tackles this thing called “learning” is different.  And even the outcome is different. One child may become a doctor another may excel in the arts.  I’m in no position to tell any family that their way is *lazy* or *wrong.* I have yet to meet a homeschooling family that doesn’t impress me and make me wonder if we’re doing “enough.” Each homeschooling family I meet challenges me to think about coming at learning from a different angle (Should we join a co-op? Are the kids doing enough self-directed learning?  Do we need to do more book reports? more writing? more foreign language study? and on and on).   Families are different, styles are different but we’re all on a homeschooling journey together. I hope we homeschoolers don’t tear each other down, point fingers and cast judgment, but help celebrate the journey we are allowed to take called homeschooling.

This seems  to be the perfect time to share a graphic with you. I was contacted by Peter back in March and he said I was welcome to share the graphic he and his team developed with all of you.  It celebrates many of the positives of homeschooling.  Anyway, I have WAY too many friends whose (brilliant, wonderful, motivated, amazing) kids attend public school to agree that mine will “dominate” or “take them down” but I do like how this graphic presents many of the statistics about the successes of homeschooling:

Created by: CollegeAtHome.com

If you are interested in seeing some of the educational statistics about homeschoolers for yourself you might want to visit this National Center for Educational Statistics: Digest of Educational Statistics about homeschooled students which is where I suspect he and his team got a lot of the statistics they use in the graphic above. Another source of homeschool statistical information is the National Home Education Research Institute and you can read some Research Facts on Homeschooling by Brian Ray, PhD.

One last thing before I go.  I have a number of homeschool interviews in the works.  As many of you know, I’ve been interviewing parents who tackle homeschooling in wide a variety of ways and styles:

• Homeschooling in Australia (And see April’s homeschooling series: Interview with an [Australian] Home Educator at Learning Alongside)
• An Interview with A Homeschooling Dad
• An Interview with a Christian Classical Educator (Part 1) and (Part 2)
• An Interview with a Montessori Homeschooler
• Homeschooling Through a Virtual School
• An Interview with Erica of Confessions of a Homeschooler

In a couple of weeks I have a new interview coming with an unschooler and beyond that an interview with homeschoolers where both parents work.