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Future plans for "COVID" homeschoolers: continue homeschool or return to public/afterschool when you both work?


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Hello! Just wondering if others are in the same boat as my family and what your thoughts/considerations are for next year.

We are new to homeschooling our 6 year old this year due to the difficulties with virtual learning last year. We all love it and I feel like I have discovered so many wonderful programs and ideas to enhance his education that I never would have known about if not for homeschooling this year. I think in an ideal world we would keep homeschooling and add my 4 year old girl into the mix when she's ready. 

But, my husband and I work in professional careers (me 75% time, he works full time). We spent so much time and effort preparing for these careers it doesn't really seem viable for one of us to stay at home. It has only worked out this year b/c we still have a 4 year old that's home most of the time so our nanny has been able to care for her and then teach my son at home while she's at preschool three mornings a week.

It doesn't make any financial sense at all to keep homeschooling. My husband has been looking forward to next year when we can enroll her in kinder and him in 2nd grade and reduce our child care expenses for the first time in many years (we have 4 kids total). But, I have read so much over the last few months that really confirms a lot of the problems I have seen with public school. I've also seen how well various home education approaches address or alleviate so many of those concerns. 

So, I am looking into different ideas for afterschooling/enrichment but that seems tough b/c basically we'd be using school for child care and then trying to pack in the "good stuff" after school when he's already tired and worn out.  I wondered if anyone out there is in a similar situation and has come up with a novel solution?

If you afterschool, what subjects do you focus on? I really like the classical tradition so I thought maybe read more history in these early years, incorporate Latin, grammar, logic as he grows up? 

I know there is an after schooling group and I will look there for ideas on that, but also just wanted to see if any current home schoolers have come up innovative ways to make homeschooling feasible when both parents work typical 8 a-6 p schedules, so we can't do the shift thing like nurses, police officers, firefighters, etc! 

Thank you for any suggestions.

 

 

 

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To be brutally honest, we choose to homeschool our 4 kids despite it making no financial sense whatsoever.

My husband and I are both engineers with bachelor and masters degrees from fairly prestigious (expensive) universities. We spent considerable amounts of time and money educating ourselves, but currently only my husband works. I stay home educating our kids.

It is a huge financial sacrifice...but it is one we have chosen to make. We have offset it somewhat by moving to a low cost of living area so that we can keep our expenses as low as possible. And one of our educational priorities, though certainly not our top one, is making sure the kids will be strong contenders for scholarships when they reach college age.

Bottom line, I agree with you that trying to "fit" homeschooling around full time work schedules would probably negate the benefits you most want out of homeschooling. I'm sorry if that is not what you want to hear.

Edited by wendyroo
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The are a number of doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, etc on here. I can't imagine homeschooling made financial sense for any of them, it didn't for me. I chose it for other reasons and I've continued it for yet different reasons.

From the outside I would say that afterschooling rarely works long-term. Between b&m school and extracurriculars and free time there just aren't enough hours in the day! I would suggest you pick one topic of high interest to your children and focus on that - history could be ready a section of Story of the World and a chapter of a related literature book or a picture book entry night, or science could be group lessons from BFSU (only if you personally are science minded), or a subscription to a science kit, foreign language you could learn as a family if you don't already speak. One thing that b&m schools struggle with is continuity from year-to-year and you could probably provide that for one subject.

Edited by SusanC
what I had was not making any kind of sense
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43 minutes ago, SusanC said:

From the outside I would say that homeschooling rarely works long-term. Between b&m school and extracurriculars and free time there just aren't enough hours in the day! 

I think this is a typo.  I think she meant to type afterschooling, bc homeschooling obviously does work extremely well lonn-term.  🙂

I agree with the other posters.  You won't be able to achieve anything other than stressed out kids who are having to meet expectations from every direction with doubtful gain.  Bedtime stories, watching movies in a foreign language and working on together as a family....those are great ideas b/c they are family-oriented ones and not focused on just one child needing to do more.

Is homeschooling worth sacrificing an income?  Only you can decide that.  Plenty of families, mine included, believe so.  We have 8 kids and have graduated 6 of them from our homeschool.  Every single one of them has been able to achieve their adulthood goals bc of the opportunities homeschooling gave them.  Homeschooling has opened up unique opportunities to pursue areas of interest that have in turn opened up other doors for them along their path to adulthood.  I would not trade the yrs with my kids and our learning adventures for anything.  Homeschooling is a part of our family life and our relationships and their relationships with each other are more precious than gold.

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My younger son will return to brick and mortar high school when it is safe for him to do so. I haven’t decided what to do with my daughters yet. Most likely, my older daughter will return for high school but remain home through 8th. 
 

If I hadn’t quit my previous profession to homeschool I could have easily covered a nanny, tutors, and a housekeeper. I don’t homeschool for financial reasons. 
 

If you look at my signature, you can see I was previously afterschooling. I chose to do so only in math and phonics because we all needed time to do things outside of school. Now that I am homeschooling full time again I can see that there was a definite trade off. Academically, the children who went to public school are weaker than if I had continued teaching them. I don’t know that I can label that as something I regret doing, but it is a thing I am dealing with and weighing when I consider my post-pandemic options.

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3 hours ago, dahmdr said:

But, my husband and I work in professional careers (me 75% time, he works full time). We spent so much time and effort preparing for these careers it doesn't really seem viable for one of us to stay at home.

I started laughing thinking about this comment.  It makes me wonder what the stereotype is of families who homeschool if the premise is the above doesn't apply to most homeschooling families.  Independently wealthy or uneducated living in poverty?

As seen below, it is the norm, not the exception.  ( I didn't include my specifics, but yes, I am also a college grad who isn't working outside the home but definitely working full-time--homeschooling that is!)

3 hours ago, wendyroo said:

My husband and I are both engineers with bachelor and masters degrees from fairly prestigious (expensive) universities. We spent considerable amounts of time and money educating ourselves, but currently only my husband works. I stay home educating our kids.

 

3 hours ago, SusanC said:

The are a number of doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, etc on here. I can't imagine homeschooling made financial sense for any of them, it didn't for me. I chose it for other reasons and I've continued it for yet different reasons.

1 hour ago, Plum said:

 We both chose to sacrifice in order to homeschool.

 

1 hour ago, prairiewindmomma said:

If I hadn’t quit my previous profession to homeschool I could have easily covered a nanny, tutors, and a housekeeper. I don’t homeschool for financial reasons. 

 

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4 hours ago, dahmdr said:

So, I am looking into different ideas for afterschooling/enrichment but that seems tough b/c basically we'd be using school for child care and then trying to pack in the "good stuff" after school when he's already tired and worn out.  I wondered if anyone out there is in a similar situation and has come up with a novel solution?

I knew someone on a babywearing forum who basically used school as child care and did a fair amount of enrichment on the weekend 🙂 . People also report that the "worn out" thing gets a LOT better at older ages, so they can actually do more after school as they get older. (We pulled DD8 from school after kindergarten because we had discovered that afterschooling wasn't going to work.) So you could look for a school with minimal homework, so you really could work with them at night. 

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I “afterschool” but my kids mostly do not participate in any after-school activities.  Right now one child has an activity on Saturday mornings, and that is a new thing.  
 

I supplement.

 

I have to have peace with what is happening in school and focusing on particular areas of greatest need.

 

My kids have all had areas where they need extra help, and that is my focus.  I leave things alone that are going well with public school.  
 

What I see is that most people like to have their kids participating in activities, and then there are truly only so many hours in the day.
 

My kids are more introverted and need a lot of quiet/personal time and take a lot of time to calm down for bed.
 

After school activities are pretty much not possible here, the only way to do them would be to home-school and be able to have more control of the day.


I think look at the big picture.  What are your priorities and goals.

 

What do your kids need.  
 

What do your kids enjoy.
 

What kind of things go really well when you spend time on them 1:1 or as a family.  

Edit:  I think it’s important to consider what kids are getting and missing at public school, in order to be balanced.  This can change every year because it depends on the grade, the teacher, the child’s interests, the child’s personality, etc.  

Edited by Lecka
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3 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I knew someone on a babywearing forum who basically used school as child care and did a fair amount of enrichment on the weekend 🙂 . People also report that the "worn out" thing gets a LOT better at older ages, so they can actually do more after school as they get older. (We pulled DD8 from school after kindergarten because we had discovered that afterschooling wasn't going to work.) So you could look for a school with minimal homework, so you really could work with them at night. 

OTOH, in my experience, older students also have more they want to do after school. My younger kiddos don't really do many extracurriculars, and certainly none in the late afternoon or evening. My oldest (a homeschooled 6th grader), though, has a lot going on in the "after school" hours. He has his guitar lesson and comic book drawing club. If Covid had not struck, he was going to join a math circle at the local university. The rec center sports classes for his age are always after dinner. By late middle school or high school, some kids will also be trying to juggle a job.

Our local middle schools don't let out until a bit after 3, and the bus would drop him off just before 4. That doesn't leave a lot of time for friends, free time, dinner, a bit of homework, extracurriculars, AND afterschooling. Especially if you are trying to get them to bed at a reasonable time so they can make the bus at 7:15 the next morning.

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Another thing — I am home with my kids in the summer for the most part, which makes summers a good time to have some kind of educational goal/project. 
 

So I do have that as a block of time.  
 

And again, for the most part my kids don’t participate in much outside of the house, so it is possible — but I think this is based a lot on them not wanting to do other summer opportunities, or some things being outside of our price range, etc.  

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7 minutes ago, wendyroo said:

OTOH, in my experience, older students also have more they want to do after school. My younger kiddos don't really do many extracurriculars, and certainly none in the late afternoon or evening. My oldest (a homeschooled 6th grader), though, has a lot going on in the "after school" hours. He has his guitar lesson and comic book drawing club. If Covid had not struck, he was going to join a math circle at the local university. The rec center sports classes for his age are always after dinner. By late middle school or high school, some kids will also be trying to juggle a job.

Our local middle schools don't let out until a bit after 3, and the bus would drop him off just before 4. That doesn't leave a lot of time for friends, free time, dinner, a bit of homework, extracurriculars, AND afterschooling. Especially if you are trying to get them to bed at a reasonable time so they can make the bus at 7:15 the next morning.

Yeah, that's a good point. 

At some point, time-wise, something's gotta give. For us, the "something" was school, because we wanted social time, appropriate academics, and plenty of play time. Given that appropriate academics for my 8 year old include algebra and appropriate playmates are 7 year olds, I couldn't figure out a way to work around school. 

But I did think about it 🙂 . And maybe if my kiddo's social and academic constraints weren't so far apart, I could have made it work, I don't know. 

Edited by Not_a_Number
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25 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I knew someone on a babywearing forum who basically used school as child care and did a fair amount of enrichment on the weekend 🙂 . People also report that the "worn out" thing gets a LOT better at older ages, so they can actually do more after school as they get older. (We pulled DD8 from school after kindergarten because we had discovered that afterschooling wasn't going to work.) So you could look for a school with minimal homework, so you really could work with them at night. 

Not most of the high-achieving ps students I know.  They are run ragged with AP workloads and ECs.  My kids' friends have had hrs of homework and are focused on creating themselves in the image of the desired college admissions profile.  A lot of these kids arrive at college burned out bc of the loads they carried in high school. (a couple of our kids' friends were up until 1 am doing homework more nights than not during high school. )  Their college friends have told similar stories. 

Less involved students may have more time (unless they are working jobs, dating, etc that means they will be time crunched for other reasons.)

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5 hours ago, dahmdr said:

It doesn't make any financial sense at all to keep homeschooling.

Homeschooling never makes financial sense.  People who are successful with homeschooling long term are those for whom it is a passion or a necessity (or both).  They sacrifice in the financial realm in order to reap homeschooling's benefits.  

If you are interested in afterschooling, I found that a reasonable way to do it is to focus on content--so, read alouds, which kids find fun--and piggyback skills onto homework assigned by the school.  

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2 minutes ago, EKS said:

Homeschooling never makes financial sense.  People who are successful with homeschooling long term are those for whom it is a passion or a necessity (or both).  They sacrifice in the financial realm in order to reap homeschooling's benefits.  

If you are interested in afterschooling, I found that a reasonable way to do it is to focus on content--so, read alouds, which kids find fun--and piggyback skills onto homework assigned by the school.  

Oh, you're telling me. If I wanted to make maximal money, I'd have gone to work for a hedge fund. I have a math Ph.D and fancy math contest results... they were literally recruiting me for years. You have no idea how much money I'm passing up here 😛 . 

(Even if I didn't want to do that, and I didn't, I could have made PLENTY at, say, Google.) 

Edited by Not_a_Number
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50 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

People also report that the "worn out" thing gets a LOT better at older ages, so they can actually do more after school as they get older.

I disagree with this.  Or maybe it gets better and then gets worse again.  I afterschooled my younger son at age 5 (easy), again at ages 10-12 (trickier because there was quite a bit of homework from the school, but still not impossible), and again at ages 14-16.  By the time he was in high school, the afterschooling consisted of me augmenting the assigned work and no supplemental stuff.

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Just now, EKS said:

I disagree with this.  Or maybe it gets better and then gets worse again.  I afterschooled my younger son at age 5 (easy), again at ages 10-12 (trickier because there was quite a bit of homework from the school, but still not impossible), and again at ages 14-16.  By the time he was in high school, the afterschooling consisted of me augmenting the assigned work and no supplemental stuff.

Yeah, I meant "gets better in elementary school." I'm sure it's harder in high school. 

Sorry, my kids are little, so I wasn't thinking that far ahead! 

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10 minutes ago, EKS said:

Money...sanity.  But the rewards are priceless.  Truly.

Hah. I know what you mean.

I do miss the external validation. I really do. An 8 year old just doesn't express her appreciation the way my coworkers might 😉 . And she tests my patience more. 

I love doing it, though. And I do ultimately find it extremely rewarding. But I can't pretend it wasn't a hard decision. 

Edited by Not_a_Number
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1 hour ago, EKS said:

Homeschooling never makes financial sense.  People who are successful with homeschooling long term are those for whom it is a passion or a necessity (or both).  They sacrifice in the financial realm in order to reap homeschooling's benefits.  

If you are interested in afterschooling, I found that a reasonable way to do it is to focus on content--so, read alouds, which kids find fun--and piggyback skills onto homework assigned by the school.  

Bingo.

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1 hour ago, Patty Joanna said:

 

In the decision to come home, we did the math on childcare/nanny, the extra costs involved with my working (work clothes, commute, frequent housekeeper, eating out more, and all the things we bought just because we could.  Then I looked at what I earned, after-tax take-home pay (not gross) and it turned out that after we deducted the expenses...it just wasn't all that much for what it took out of our lives. 

 

My mom wasn't a homeschooler, but she did become a SAHM when she did this same cost exercise and found out that she was making $12/week.  She was actually amazed because she had a fairly decent job.

OP, best of luck with your decision.  Even if you end up not doing homeschooling long term, I'm glad that you're enjoying it for now. :)

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6 hours ago, 8filltheheart said:

I started laughing thinking about this comment.  It makes me wonder what the stereotype is of families who homeschool if the premise is the above doesn't apply to most homeschooling families.  Independently wealthy or uneducated living in poverty?

As seen below, it is the norm, not the exception.  ( I didn't include my specifics, but yes, I am also a college grad who isn't working outside the home but definitely working full-time--homeschooling that is!)

 

 

 

Adding to the list, my husband and I have three advanced STEM degrees between us, including two doctorates. My husband also did a post doc. And we didn’t pursue any of them at the same time. So a long time with low income while pursuing higher education.

I will say that perhaps the financial sacrifices were easier for us because we never really had money until after our son went to college and we both worked full time for the first time in our marriage. We spent so many years living on little money that we were used to very frugal living. It likely would have been harder had we both been working full time and were accustomed to the lifestyle that allowed and then one of us quit or drastically reduced hours. I am also fortunate that my degree and experiences were quite marketable, so I wasn’t too affected by time off. Plus, I never had huge career aspirations. I’ve turned down promotions more than once. And we accrued very little educational debt, as most of it was paid for by scholarships,fellowships, or employers. So that made living on one or 1 1/2 incomes easier.

Edited by Frances
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From your handle, I’m guessing you are an MD?  (Correct me if my assumption is wrong!)

There is a Facebook group that may be of interest to you: Homeschooling Physician Moms. There are some relatively recent threads (last few months) about why people have chosen to forego their practice and homeschool, or switch to part time and homeschool. There are also some who have homeschooled and then gone back to work.  There are many, many COVID homeschoolers on the group, and there has been at least one thread asking questions similar to yours.

My 2 cents: Afterschooling can work, but I agree with others that you’d probably want to focus on just one or two subjects lest you burn your kids out. And, it may mean foregoing other extracurricular activities. 

What are your goals in homeschooling?  Is the goal to provide a “better than brick and mortar school” education?  If you live in a good school district, I’d say that goal may come back to bite you :).  Homeschooling is hard work and there will be many days (or long stretches of time) when you may feel you are not doing a good job (or your kids may make you feel you aren’t doing a good job).  Are rigorous academics the goal? If so, you can accomplish this as an afterschooler if you focus on 1 or 2 areas.  You mention the appeal of a classical education (Latin, history, etc) — Is the goal to give your child a classical education? There may be local private schools that offer a classically oriented curriculum.  There are also hybrid schools (they usually have the kids in brick and mortar school 2 days a week, home for learning 3 days a week) in many cities that you could look into. Is the goal to develop strong family connections and a strong family culture that includes shared pursuit of learning and inquiry into the great questions? If so, then prioritizing your time at home makes sense.

You asked about possible alternative scenarios for afterschooling / homeschooling:

1.  Consider hybrid school (also called university model) - the 2 days at school, 3 days at home model I mentioned above. Perhaps there is one near you.

2. Is it possible for you to go down to 0.5 FTE? If so, at least in the early elementary years, you can definitely have a rich homeschool and work part time.  You can have a nanny help with some subjects on the days you work. 

3.  You don’t have to homeschool M-F. You can make weekends school days and let two of the weekdays be the child’s “day off.”  (Keep in mind that mean no rest for you. You can do that for a period of time, but you’ll want to think through a longer term plan or an exit / transition strategy because burn out is real and it is nasty and takes longer to recover from than one might think.)

best wishes to you and your family as you navigate these questions!

 

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Homeschooling definitely does not make financial sense.  Although we are fortunate to be comfortable on one income, we do make sacrifices in order for me to stay home.  We feel that the benefits for the children and our family as a whole outweigh the financial gain.  I would never choose to do this while working full time--no way.  That would put my kids at a real disadvantage and I can't imagine the stress of juggling a career and the kids' education.  As my kids have gotten older (now 12 and 14), we have added some outsourced classes little by little and they have become very independent with those.  I could see starting to work part time when they are both in high school IF they are succeeding with mostly outsourced classes.  I could definitely not have done that when they were in elementary school and still have provided them with the rich, hands-on learning experiences that filled our days.  

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27 minutes ago, JHLWTM said:

What are your goals in homeschooling?  Is the goal to provide a “better than brick and mortar school” education?  If you live in a good school district, I’d say that goal may come back to bite you :).  Homeschooling is hard work and there will be many days (or long stretches of time) when you may feel you are not doing a good job (or your kids may make you feel you aren’t doing a good job).  Are rigorous academics the goal? If so, you can accomplish this as an afterschooler if you focus on 1 or 2 areas.  You mention the appeal of a classical education (Latin, history, etc) — Is the goal to give your child a classical education? There may be local private schools that offer a classically oriented curriculum.  There are also hybrid schools (they usually have the kids in brick and mortar school 2 days a week, home for learning 3 days a week) in many cities that you could look into. Is the goal to develop strong family connections and a strong family culture that includes shared pursuit of learning and inquiry into the great questions? If so, then prioritizing your time at home makes sense.

You asked about possible alternative scenarios for afterschooling / homeschooling:

1.  Consider hybrid school (also called university model) - the 2 days at school, 3 days at home model I mentioned above. Perhaps there is one near you.

2. Is it possible for you to go down to 0.5 FTE? If so, at least in the early elementary years, you can definitely have a rich homeschool and work part time.  You can have a nanny help with some subjects on the days you work. 

3.  You don’t have to homeschool M-F. You can make weekends school days and let two of the weekdays be the child’s “day off.”  (Keep in mind that mean no rest for you. You can do that for a period of time, but you’ll want to think through a longer term plan or an exit / transition strategy because burn out is real and it is nasty and takes longer to recover from than one might think.)

These are great suggestions.

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13 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

An 8 year old just doesn't express her appreciation the way my coworkers might 😉 .

When my dyslexic son (the older one) was maybe 12, he actually thanked me for teaching him how to read.  One of the most amazing moments of my life.

More recently this same son has told me several times that my teaching was what made him a good writer.  It's weird because while I was homeschooling him, I never felt like we were making much progress on his writing.  But in college he ended up getting a minor in writing and rhetoric, and he got As in all of those classes.  These days I actually have occasion to edit documents that he has contributed to for his work, and his contributions essentially never require any changes (whereas I usually have to rewrite the other parts they are so awful).

My point here is that appreciation really can happen, but you may have to wait a while!

Edited by EKS
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Some families can't afford to homeschool; others can if we decide it's worthwhile. Ours has. (The most noticeable hit for me is not adding to my retirement account; the part DH notices most is the increased cost of paying for health care.) We bought our house with an eye to paying for it on DH's income at the time only, supposing I might stop working for some time and he might not continue to get raises.

My BFF can't afford to. They use Story of the World as bedtime reading, Miss 7 takes piano (currently on Zoom), but there's not much else they can do during the school year. (Two parents with three official jobs and one kind of serious side gig.) In the summer, there's a lot of foreign language enrichment, inexpensive travel (not this year obvs), reading books, science activities, etc.

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DH and I both worked outside the home, and sent our kids to our parish school before crisis hit our family.  My guess is that when it's safe we'll send them back. My kids have done well with homeschooling.  They've learned a lot, and I loved having the time with them.  But they did well in school as well, and the very good reasons we had for choosing school still apply.  

In my opinion, there is more than one way to raise kids who have a wonderful childhood, and go on to achieve their goals as adults.  I look at the young adults in our family, all of whom went to school K - 12 and I'll be thrilled if my kids turn out as well as they did.  They're amazing people.  I will also say that when we found ourselves in crisis, the fact that we were a two income family gave us the flexibility we needed to meet our family's needs. 

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We both work full time and send our kids to our Parish school.  I know they will cover the basic skills there just fine.  We have plenty of time at home to dive into the fun stuff:  mythology, history, literature...  That said, I’ve loved having them at home during the Pandemic.  I’m living the dream right now, home with my kids and working full time.  I kind of dread going back to “real” life someday.

 

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Alice is a physician on this forum. You may want to message her for ideas and support.

I was an attorney before homeschooling, but am actually going back to school to become a psych nurse practitioner. I wanted something more flexible that could easily work around our homeschooling lifestyle and more portable so that we could travel. There many ways that you can work a professional life around homeschooling; you may just have to get creative.

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Thank you to everyone for the thoughtful comments. Really, I should have posted this topic as "Looking for Discussion Group on 'Rethinking School!'" I blame S. W. Bauer for challenging all of my preconceived notions about public vs. home education! 

My husband and I are products of moderately good public schools and have always been big advocates for public school. We choose to live in a small, old run-down house in a school district renowned for being one of the "best" so that we could send our kids there.  I really believed the best way I could raise my kids was to work hard, read to them a lot, set a good example for being a lifelong learner, and earn enough money to send them to college. I always trusted that with "good enough" public schools and our efforts at home to read to them and enhance education on weekends they would do quite well (and maybe they will?)

What I am discovering, however, is that even the best of the public schools are constrained by testing requirements, No Child Left Behind, etc. We live in Texas, which calls for testing quite a bit throughout the school years. As SWB noted in her book, so many school days are devoted to test prep and practice, test administration, retakes, etc. and the teachers feel so much pressure to teach to the test. In addition, what we have seen with our older boys is that there is a significant amount of pressure to "pass" students in the name of No Child Left Behind. It is very difficult to hold kids accountable.

Our children have come to expect that each of their tests is but a first try--they always have the option to retest, often until they get a passing grade. I think this is good for students with test anxiety, and I think it's good that they review material they clearly didn't understand, but for one of my sons it has led him to expend the minimal amount of effort required in school and it seems like often the teachers end up lowering the requirements so that all of their students will pass. I could go on an on with other examples from my family and my teacher friends, but essentially it has been very eye-opening to read her book and have a lot of my previously nebulous concerns articulated so well.   

It's tough at this stage to reconfigure or reconsider career plans, child care arrangements, etc.  I wondered if there were others out there engaged in this process as well.  I really appreciate the ideas about private schools (yes we have a well-regarded classical charter in our area), hybrid schools, etc. I have been brainstorming about how to adjust my work schedule as well. 

For now, I am enjoying the opportunity to teach my kids whenever I can and be more directly involved with their learning processes. I'm glad this forum is available for questions, comments and sharing of experiences.  

 

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I live in the "best" school district in my small state and I have wondered, idly, what exactly it means to be the best. My district clearly uses college entrance and popularity contest. But I wonder how our best holds up to the best in different states? I guess NCLB was intended to provide some standardization across the country, although that isn't what happened in practice.

 

I have friends who are both doctors and they homeschooler their kids by alternating days they worked and hiring a retired homeschool mom to come in on the 5th day to supervise.

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On 10/27/2020 at 4:48 PM, dahmdr said:

It doesn't make any financial sense at all to keep homeschooling. 

 

You're right. It's doesn't make any financial sense to keep homeschooling. We did it anyway. My husband and I both had professional careers. I actually had a job that would have put me in a better position than his job did and I have two college degrees. We are now in our 11th year of homeschooling. We live on a very modest income and many people would say we can't afford to homeschool. I still don't regret it. I have adult kids and know the years fly by. My son will be graduating this year and I've so enjoyed all the extra time with him.

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On 10/27/2020 at 3:48 PM, dahmdr said:

 

We are new to homeschooling our 6 year old this year due to the difficulties with virtual learning last year. We all love it and I feel like I have discovered so many wonderful programs and ideas to enhance his education that I never would have known about if not for homeschooling this year. I think in an ideal world we would keep homeschooling and add my 4 year old girl into the mix when she's ready. 

But, my husband and I work in professional careers (me 75% time, he works full time). We spent so much time and effort preparing for these careers it doesn't really seem viable for one of us to stay at home. It has only worked out this year b/c we still have a 4 year old that's home most of the time so our nanny has been able to care for her and then teach my son at home while she's at preschool three mornings a week.

It doesn't make any financial sense at all 

You may need to separate family goals from financial goals because it seems as though the are oppositionally served. Then prioritize which is most important. 
 

Financially? Enormous sacrifice. Assuming a minimal salary of $50,000, over the past twenty years is a million dollars, not counting any investment benefits. I can make it even worse financially, obviously more painful by a higher income. If you have a scenario as I do, in which you’re stricken with a disease that leaves you unable ever earn? Worse. And I cannot get disability nor the medical insurance that accompanies, not can my children collect social security when I die. 
 

That said? Our family goals trumped our financial goals. All this and I’m still not sorry. Knowing what I know? I’d still choose to homeschool. You can’t have the money back lost over twenty years. Neither can you gain the hours and days spent relaxed, unhurried, spent together, exploring together, learning together homeschooling. I don’t want to make a difficult choice harder, but I earnestly believe no one can have both and we must choose. To sell it otherwise is a disservice. It’s totally okay to make either choice and it’s okay to say we prioritize financial goals (and the benefits increased financial standing gains) but I think it is too easy to tell someone they can have the best of both worlds when a compromise is a compromise and not the same. ❤️ 

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I took 15 years off from my career and just went back to it last year. Now we are homeschooling again but I have my parents who are watching my little kids while I’m at work. Homeschooling at nights and on weekends is exhausting. 
I’m very happy I took all those years off to homeschool the grown kids but am not going to do it forever with this set of kids. I do need to contribute to retirement and for now I’m providing our health insurance.

In order to stay home all those years we purposefully bought a small off grid house in the woods that was very cheap to live in.

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