Free at Last

Sheesh! Had I known I would feel this great about homeschooling I would have done it full out without a glance back six weeks ago instead of trying the charter school!  But it sure has been a powerful learning experience.  And of course I did learn some great things and obtain some great resources from the charter school.  But WOW! Oh how I love KNOWING that what I am doing is right! I know this is the right choice for me right now. It is still taking time for a lot of the shackles on the mind to fall off and continue 'unschooling' or 'getting off the conveyor belt'. It has only been two weeks, after all, and no I don't have all the answers yet nor even any very specific plans.  But I can feel the hand of the Lord so strong.  Tiny little thoughts, little negative thoughts that used to eat at me, now just roll off my back and I just think "It's all going to be okay". It's okay if I'm not perfect.  It's okay if I'm not identical to 'that' mom.  Doing my personal best really is the best. It is so empowering to have the Lord on your side.

Something that I guess shouldn't surprise me, but that I wasn't really expecting, is how close Cowboy and I are already - how much this has strengthened our mother-son relationship.  Also how happy and comfortable he is with it all.  I mean that was a really great school he was in and he had made a lot of friends.  It really was a difficult choice for me and of course how he would feel about it all was my number one concern.  But I finally got to the point where I just couldn't deny any longer what I knew I had to do.  He felt that and he knows that and I was able to share that with him enough that he trusts me. I'm really grateful for that.

Why? Why did I pull my son out of a perfectly-great-hard-to-get-into-charter-Montessori school so that I could homeschool?  Well, I hope it is pretty clear already that it is because I FELT so strongly that I should that I couldn't deny it anymore.  Specifically, though, at the kindergarten orientation I prayed very hard that I would feel peace if this was the right option for him and us.  I did not. Frankly, I felt pretty sick.  I could not mentally figure out why this could possibly NOT be the right option, so I explained away that sick feeling as a few other things: sending a kid away for the first time, worry about hubby missing more work than we had planned that day to watch the younger kids, insecurity/not knowing what to do right then, etc. etc. And went ahead with his beginning at the school.  Unfortunately there was a six week waiting period until parents were allowed into the school to observe.  Not that it was necessarily the observation itself that caused me to change my mind.  On the contrary, the observation revealed nothing I disliked about the school, teacher, or classmates.  It simply led into the conversations with my mom and husband that eventually helped me (and them) realize how much I really did want to homeschool and how much I really KNEW that I should.  But maybe that six weeks wasn't so unfortunate.  Maybe I really just needed that time.  Maybe I really did need to feel that insecure and unsure for that period of time to have those feelings to contrast against how I am feeling now.  The longer experiences are the harder they are to forget sometimes.  It also seems like a bit more of an aware choice.  I know exactly what he is missing out on.  And I'm still okay with it.

And then of course there is all sorts of new philosophy and understanding and views I have now on education that have been part of this whole study journey of the last year or two.  Yes, even my homeschooling method is going to be pretty nonconventional.  I'm definitely going to be doing Thomas Jefferson Education (TJED), a.k.a. Leadership Education.  A few key points are: People educate themselves.  No one can educate someone else.  People often educate themselves when they are inspired by someone else to do so - someone else who is educating herself. CHILDREN need to focus the first years of their life on learning right and wrong, good and bad, true and false.  Anything else is simply a means of teaching those three ideas.  If focus is put in the wrong areas it becomes a distraction to that child developing their CORE values.  And learning is awesome! Seriously!  It should not be forced, treated as drudgery, contrived, ruined...

So, I'm just really happy.  Life is good.  I will hopefully be getting around to posting some more details and experiences and truth (because it really is helpful to me to put thoughts into written words), but I might just be pretty busy loving my kids and learning.

What are we aiming for?

I'm just going to accept the fact that my blog posts are never going to be like the organized, thought out, flowing and connected posts a lot of us are used to reading.  I hope you can accept that, too.  It will probably just be snippets here and there about some of the stuff I'm learning on my path to help my children gain their own educations.

Here is an interesting couple of lists.  Which one are you aiming for with your kids and what kind of educational atmosphere do they line up with for you?

Type A
rote thinking
conformity
fitting in
submissive obedience to superiors
memorized "correct" answers
clique socialization
employee mentality

Type B
great lessons of history
classics in all fields
abilities/skills of creativity
ingenuity
independent/analytical thinking
persuasive communication
artistic/technological innovation
entrepreneurial initiative
service and leadership

I hope I can create the best combination of homeschooling, charter schooling, public schooling, etc. to help each of my kids in their own individual way learn what, how and when they need to.

Homeschooling

I am going to home-school my kids.  I may or may not send my oldest Cowboy to a charter Montessori school this Fall in addition to homeschooling.  He will be old enough for kindergarten.  I had never considered any alternative forms of education such as charter schools or homeschooling until it came to sending my very own first child off to someone else's tutelage. I guess I thought about it because I am slowly learning to think about things before just jumping in and following what the crowd automatically does in most situations.  (See previous posts on birthing options).  Yes, it is sort of sad that it has taken me until well into my twenties to REALLY start thinking this way.  I guess I have always had a thread of non-conventionalism, but now it is becoming a little more research-based and prayerful. 
This is actually one of the reasons I am so passionately interested in home-schooling: I would like my own children to REALLY start thinking earlier than I did.  I find it a whole lot easier to obtain my own individualized, valuable education now that all that schooling is out of the way (high school diploma, bachelor's degree).  I feel so behind.  My mind is constantly blown lately with how much there is to learn out there.  I can't read enough books.  I feel like I am constantly starving for knowledge.  It is awesome!  Learning is the most amazing, powerful, singularly important thing in this life.
I am so, so grateful that in the frazzled search of "Which school can I send my innocent, amazing firstborn to?" where this whole thing all began, that someone happened to introduce me to a lady who home schools her children and she 'happened' to say one of the most powerful statements I have ever heard: "That book changed my life."  And she was willing to let me borrow that book.  What book?  "A Thomas Jefferson Education", by Oliver DeMille.

Much more to come.