Another question for former public school teachers...

[Eleni]

Why are you homeschooling? What led you to make this decision for your children?

 

:lurk5:

[Ali in OR]

I taught math at an excellent public school some 20 years ago now. Not sure that had any impact on my decision to home school. I home school because I love living a learning lifestyle with my kids. We have decent public schools here. But they don't study Latin or Greek, they don't really study history in elementary schools, they don't necessarily foster a love of learning or build a foundation for life-long learners. They cannot even mention God in the classroom, and while I wouldn't say we home school for religious reasons, I do appreciate that my kids' education is shaped by their parents' values and not the state's values.

 

My kids are likely to go the public school for high school. I am not anti-school. I just like what we do better for this time in our lives.

[Hillary in KS]

The longer I taught, the more I realized that the schools in our area weren't doing as good a job as I could do at home.

 

We couldn't afford the private school I would have chosen, otherwise we may have gone that route.

 

So we began homeschooling.

 

Over the years I've noticed other benefits: social, spiritual, etc. But in the beginning it was all about academics.

[Chelli]

I taught for 5 years (8th grade American History). I LOVE that age group...I know, weird :tongue_smilie: Anyway, when I had my first dc, I knew that I was going to stay at home with my children until they were all in school, then I would go back to work. When I was pregnant with my 2nd dc I substituted in some area schools for extra money. That was when homeschooling became the route I was going to take! We don't live in a good acadmeic school district, but I could have worked with her after school to push her academically.

 

What shocked me was how in just 3 years since I had left the school system the change in the student/teacher and teacher/parent relationship. There was NO respect for teachers by either the students or the parents. The classes were chaotic and the teacher's hands were tied about controlling it, the teachers were frazzled, all the children were taught was what they needed to pass THE test and there was no "learning just for fun" at all. The language and actions that students used towards their teachers and each other was appalling. We are trying to raise our children to be respectful and well-mannered. I felt like that there was no way my dc could learn in this environment (I could barely think at all!) and I would spend all of our downtime trying to untrain bad attitudes and habits.

 

My oldest dd7 has been homeschooled from the beginning, never even gone to a preschool class. She is kind, courteous, and speaks to everyone. She doesn't understand the "girl" drama that some of the little girls at our church get involved in. She thinks that a "bad" word is "stupid." I love her innocence about things because I know that she is still a little girl instead of a little girl trying to be a big girl. I don't regret homeschooling in the least.

 

BTW, I will NEVER go back to teaching in the public schools again. I'm thinking of going to law school once the kids get older :D

[ravinlunachick]

I never really intended to homeschool, although in the back of my mind, I always thought it would be nice to have that option. I quit teaching when DH's job moved us out of state for awhile. When we returned, I thought I would go back to the classroom, but jobs were becoming scarce by that point. Then we had our (surprise) third child, and dh lost his job, and it was no longer cost-effective for me to work. I couldn't have covered the cost of daycare. When my oldest dd was in kindergarten, dh and I had several run-ins with the school, and the incompetent teacher she had, and we started to joke about homeschooling her. First grade came around, and she was struggling and not getting the help she needed, and our path was clear.

 

Now my certificate has expired, and given how education budgets are being slashed around here, I don't guess I'll ever go back into a public classroom again. That saddens me, but I try to find the positive side--DH has a good paying job now, which means I can comfortably stay home to school even our youngest.

[Occasionally]

I just feel like right now I can give my kids more of what they need than the schools can. The fact that I have my teaching certificate also happens to make homeschooling in PA easier (using the private tutor option they have here.)

[rlugbill]

I'm not sure if my motives are any different from others. However, I do know education of all kinds. I have visited and worked in all types of private and public educational settings. Studied education and I'm still interested enough to waste time on these boards posting about it. I am some sort of education wonk.

 

I have seen what works and what doesn't. I have seen how schools form children. I notice and examine everything that goes on in a child's life.

 

Many parents are trusting and haven't really examined what is best for their children. They just assume that the schools are run according to the best practices and are good places for kids. The same way they assume that the politicians run the government according to the best practices and are looking out for the public good. Same for health professionals. Same for grocery stores and restaurants. They are looking out for the public good and acting to help us.

 

But, none of that is true. All of those things are run for their own benefit, not for our benefit. And the same goes for schools.

 

So, why homeschool? Because it's better. Better education. Better environment.

 

However, I must add that after homeschooling through grade 7, my dd will attend a great private school in our area. She is an only child and really wants to be around other children. Also, she is involved in lots of extra-curricular activities at this point and it means lots of running all over town, whereas at school, the activities are right there.

 

If it wasn't such a great private school, we wouldn't do it. There are "good" public schools here. Upper-middle class neighborhood, good test scores, well-equipped schools, great programs, etc. Most people would be more than happy with them.

 

But I am a former teacher and know what goes on even in "good" public schools. I know that there are drugs at the school, including cocaine and heroin. I know that my dd would be sexually harassed in school. I know that she would be teased and ridiculed for various things- her body, her clothes, her interests, etc.

 

She would be immersed in an anti-intellectual environment where interest in learning is frowned upon, and coerced into learning about stupid tv shows, rock stars and media celebrities, and told that cheerleading and playing football are really important but not math, reading or writing. She would learn about drugs, getting drunk, and sex from a strictly teenage perspective, and benefit from all the wisdom and experience of the most disfunctional 16 year old drug addicts and burnouts.

 

Because I know all this, I know I don't want my dd to go there. I also know that there will be a little of this at the private school, but not nearly as much as at the public school. At the private school, it isn't uncool to be smart or to study.

 

I hope this answers your question.:tongue_smilie:

[DawnM]

Because I have a Special Needs (oldest) son who would be social eaten alive in the PS setting. Because my second son is a follower and even though he is a great kid, I would worry about him making some wrong decisions if not led properly. Because my youngest son has some hand and feet deformities that nasty little buggars in the public school point and jeer about.

 

And most of all, because I love my children and I feel it is the best decision for them socially, morally, academically and spiritually.

 

Dawn

[Murmer]

Because I know what happens in public school...I know the politics behind it, I know the teachers that are close to retiring and don't care, I know about the parents who don't care what their kids is doing because it is free babysitting.

Because they teach to the lowest denominator...and even good teachers are limited in time, energy and knowledge

Because who knows my kids better than me, why waste my time teaching 30 other kids while my kids sit in daycare or someone else's classroom.

That is why I will homeschool.

[jujsky]

I taught high school for a year out of college. Being a teacher is what I wanted to do since my sophomore year in high school. I volunteered in classes, did substitute teaching in college. I loved it! It only took one year in a cruddy district to change all of my idealistic views. In that year, Columbine happened, students dropped shotgun shells randomly around the school, they took a hamster out of one of the science labs and played soccer with it in the bathroom until someone finally stomped it to death, my students would brag about all the things they were stealing from the Wal-Mart warehouse they were working, the curriculum and standards of the school were a total joke -- not at all what I was accustomed to -- and the kicker in this violent, substandard, horrible school was when one of the top students in the senior class was suspended because she brought mace to school, someone took it from her and sprayed another student in the face. Nothing happened to the trouble-maker who took it out of her purse and actually assaulted the other student with it :glare:

 

With a few exceptions, NH schools suck. They're awful. There are only 3 in the entire state I would even consider sending my kids to.

[Dmmetler]

Because I know how hard public school teachers work, how spread thin the teachers are, and I felt that the best thing I could do for the PS system was to take my very asynchronous child out of it so that the teachers didn't have to try to accommodate her needs on top of everyone else's. There are so many families who NEED the public school, it seems wrong to send a child that would need more than 1/24 of the class's resources if I have a better option available.

[Sandy in Indy]

After spending 5 years teaching middle school Language Arts, I knew I did not want my kids in the public school system. I didn't even HAVE kids at that point! I thought I'd send them to a private school--and we did that for a while with my older 2. It was a small school that kept getting smaller and smaller and pretty soon my dd was home 2 days a week. It wasn't a big leap to homeschooling.

 

While I was a ps teacher, I took on several homebound kids. I was given 3 hours **a week** to teach them the basics. All of those kids came back to school ready to step back into the classroom. Sadly enough, their classes weren't progressing any faster. I knew I could do much, much better than that!

[MaMa2005]

I'm already retired from teaching so I have the time! Seriously, DH is a HS teacher and we have just watched things go so downhill in the PS. The lack of respect for teachers, from students/parents as well as the administrators, was not an environment in which we wanted to expose DS. Also, when we realized that DS was PG, there really wasn't another option except to homeschool.

 

We actually were looking for private schools that could meet DS's needs and were quite frankly (and I appreciated it) told by a number of school administrators that homeschooling was our only option. Schools just aren't designed to deal with a child like DS.

[Rosie_0801]

Dh was the teacher, and I was trying to convince him to let me homeschool. I did manage to convince him, but a previously homeschooled girl in his year 11 class deserves much of the credit. He was so impressed with her maturity, work ethic and, get this ;), her social skills, he even wanted to use her first name as our daughter's middle name!

 

A couple of years of having to teach to the test had him irritated enough that it wasn't hard to imagine there were better things for his own kids to be doing. The kids' godfather was completely against homeschooling except for year 11 and 12 because, as he said, they are a complete waste of time. Eventually dh decided that if homeschooling high school (years 7-12 here,) was the way to go, we might as well start from the beginning so our getting the hang of it would be done when the kids were small and it didn't matter much.

 

 

Rosie

[readinmom]

Why? Many reasons...

 

Communication was a joke.

 

DS14 core teachers used profanity, belittled many of the students.

 

DS was put in a special "prepare for the state test" class because he was 5 points short of being "proficient" in math. This was the eye opener. The environment and kids were the likes that my son would have never been associated with otherwise. Apparently, they assumed all the kids came from bad homes, were dumb, whatever. They used the Freedom Writers cuririculm (books, movies) which we most definitely did not sign off on. No matter what we did, we could not get him out of the class. It was a district "rule". He lost the one subject he loved (art) because of it.

 

Finally pulled him after a very bad day with teachers. (profanity)

 

Honestly, he can finish in two hours what would take all day in that classroom.

 

In the end, we are all responsible for what our children learn. It was his decision to leave, but I had wanted it all along.

[Eleni]

My son was put in that prepare for the state test class too. He has had to go to School one hour earlier twice a week for 4 months to learn testing skills. This is his first year in school and "they want to make sure he has the skills needed to test since he never has"

I have stopped forcing him to go.

[Michele B]

Because I know how hard public school teachers work, how spread thin the teachers are, and I felt that the best thing I could do for the PS system was to take my very asynchronous child out of it so that the teachers didn't have to try to accommodate her needs on top of everyone else's. There are so many families who NEED the public school, it seems wrong to send a child that would need more than 1/24 of the class's resources if I have a better option available.

 

Very interesting perspective! :001_smile:

[WiseOwlKnits]

Because I know what happens in public school...I know the politics behind it, I know the teachers that are close to retiring and don't care, I know about the parents who don't care what their kids is doing because it is free babysitting.

Because they teach to the lowest denominator...and even good teachers are limited in time, energy and knowledge

Because who knows my kids better than me, why waste my time teaching 30 other kids while my kids sit in daycare or someone else's classroom.

That is why I will homeschool.

 

:iagree:

 

I liken it to the waiter who won't eat at the restaurant where he works. Seeing what goes on "behind the scenes," I could never put my kids through that.

[Greta Lea]

Why are you homeschooling? What led you to make this decision for your children?

 

:lurk5:

 

The day of the Jonesboro, AR middle school shootings was THE DAY and THE MOMENT I made my decision. Then a few days later, I told dh that I had been thinking and praying about homeschooling and would he pray about it(forgot to mention that our oldest was only about 4yo at the time). Then he said the most amazing thing! My dh, who NEVER, EVER just chit-chats with people at work about their private lives, had been talking to a homeschool dad about it. I knew then that we would be homeschooling.

 

Now, what has made me continue has nothing to do with school shootings. I feel that my children are getting a better education at home. My boys do have learning differences, but even if they didn't, we'd still be homeschooling.

 

By the way, my boys are in 10th and 7th grade this year.

[Aubrey]

I planned to hs before I began teaching. My mom wanted to hs me, did for about 6mos, & then got scared out of it by the local ps. I hated school & from 1st g on, I spent the long hours waiting for everyone else to catch up daydreaming about how I'd do it one day when I had kids of my own.

 

Even in college, the margins of my notebooks were futile attempts to organize history into coherent 4-year cycles. I was quite relieved when I found out SWB had done it for me. :D

[Koerarmoca]

I taught PreK & K5 for 3 years. It was really mind blowing to me that some of the children had NO foundation for education as if their parents had never even cracked open a book and read to them. I wanted to devote all my energy to teaching my own at home. I have done private school with them and some public and recently pulled them out of a private school to homeschool again. We have just had so many things going on in our lives that at times I had to work and couldn't afford to just stay home. We are in a position to be a one income family again and I hope we can keep going this way for a long time. I do know for sure I will never go back to teaching in schools again. My oldest dd however I think will make an excellent teacher if she goes that route she really has a knack for handling younger kids and they flock to her.

[Meriwether]

I always intended to homeschool. My years teaching high school would have convinced me though. There were some really poor teachers, school violence, s*x in the stairwells (my students saying the day after I caught a couple, "but Mrs. ---, don't you know that's where all the kids go to do it?").:001_huh:

[Amy in KS]

The longer I taught, the more I realized that the schools in our area weren't doing as good a job as I could do at home.

 

We couldn't afford the private school I would have chosen, otherwise we may have gone that route.

 

So we began homeschooling.

 

Over the years I've noticed other benefits: social, spiritual, etc. But in the beginning it was all about academics.

 

:iagree:

My situation is almost identical. I taught in an excellent school district, yet I felt that I could do better at home. As much as schools try to individualize, it isn't the same as teaching kids one on one.

 

Like Hillary, I've seen many other (not so little) benefits that we hadn't even considered at the beginning: social, spiritual, flexibility, family time.

 

I also decided to homeschool for social reasons. I taught middle school, which I LOVED. However, I was highly discouraged when I saw so many kids being faced with so much peer pressure 24/7 (all the screen availability really amplifies the pressure). There was far more pressure to drink and have sex than I remember in middle school. I remember middle school as being awkward and some kids did try things, but most of the heavy peer pressure was reserved for high school. I want my kids to have a childhood before they have to worry about all that.

[babysparkler]

It just killed me to send my son to school every day knowing that I could do a better job teaching him than the teacher that was assigned to him. It just made sense to homeschool.

[Angela Beshears]

Because I know what happens in public school...I know the politics behind it, I know the teachers that are close to retiring and don't care, I know about the parents who don't care what their kids is doing because it is free babysitting.

Because they teach to the lowest denominator...and even good teachers are limited in time, energy and knowledge

Because who knows my kids better than me, why waste my time teaching 30 other kids while my kids sit in daycare or someone else's classroom.

That is why I will homeschool.

 

:iagree: Well said. I was a high school math teacher. I helped coach a mathletics team, where I saw how some of our brightest students were not given the opportunities to learn in the classroom what some of their private school counterparts were. Public schools are definitely spending way more money and resources on the lowest level- and when I say that, I'm not just saying those with learning difficulties, but those who do not care. It drove me crazy to see these kids who had so much potential and drive get brushed aside.

 

But really, the main reason was the values or lack of values really, that were reinforced by the culture of public schools. Rules not enforced or watered down, disrespect completely ignored or shrugged off, until a teacher was in tears. Then administrators would scramble to make things right. Parents were more concerned about grades than their child's work ethic or character. This was a very good school, mind you, and there were some major exceptions- wonderful students and parents that made me stop every once in a while and shout for joy! But they were too far in the minority.