Homeschooling and Community

Homeschool mom - you are NOT meant to be alone!

You were meant for community and your journey, whether just beginning or years in the making, will be richer, more rewarding, and simply more FUN if you engage with other like-minded individuals who are seeking to educate their children in a non-traditional manner.

Like many families, our first taste of homeschooling came about as a result of the school shutdowns due to the pandemic. We fell in love with the idea of being our children's primary teachers but the thought of making this change permanent was more than a little daunting.

As we researched all of the available options we quickly came to realize that embarking on this journey alone was not the only option and, in our opinion, definitely not the best option! Although still new to homeschooling (two years in August!) we have found that connecting with an established community provides a number of benefits.

Finding a homeschool community might not initially be easy, but it is worth the effort, time, and energy.

A Family New to Homeschooling

Our first year of homeschooling was done simply at home and without any type of outside organization. While we learned a lot and grew closer together as a family we realized that we all missed the interactive piece of school, parents, and kids alike.

At the end of year one, I began to research the various options for co-ops and other homeschooling groups that were available to us in our area.

We chose a local Classical Conversations community, but I believe there are a number of benefits that are common across ALL homeschool groups.  

• Access to more experienced homeschooling families who have seen and experienced many of the challenges that we are facing as newbies have been invaluable.

Simply having someone to ask how to best structure your days to what to focus on has made a world of difference.

• Built-in peer groups for our children are also a huge plus.

We all want our kids to have friends and one of the flawed arguments for not homeschooling is that your children won’t be socialized. Our experience couldn’t have been further from this! One of the greatest benefits we have seen is that our children have been able to navigate interacting not only with children their age but also with children younger and older.

• Doing life with like-minded families is important.

We specifically chose a Christ-centered community when we decided to be a part of Classical Conversations.  It has been invaluable to be involved in a community of like-minded believers.  It has also allowed us to grow in our faith as well as our education and really learn to connect the two together in ways I hadn’t learned as a child. 

Having families walk alongside us who are raising their children according to Christian values and principles has made our homeschool year much richer.

• Shared resources and curriculum have also been very beneficial.

There are a plethora of homeschool curricula out there.  It can be difficult to know what will be best for our children and while looking at curriculum online is a great place to start, it has been great to share the resources of more experienced families.  

There is something about having the physical access to materials that have helped us make the best decisions about which curriculum to pursue, and being able to do this without spending a lot of money up front has been an added bonus. 

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Being in a community with friends who share common values and who are pursuing the same goals when it comes to educating our children is so uplifting! Although we have all come into this homeschooling community from various backgrounds and for different reasons the shared ideals of educating our children on our own and not simply conforming to what the school system says we must do provides a shared bond.

This year alone we have taken field trips, had picnics and park trips, dinner with other families, mom’s nights out, group cookouts, and even a much-needed mom’s retreat weekend away.  

I thought it would be beneficial not only to share my thoughts about homeschooling in community but to provide some responses I received from my family when I asked them why homeschooling is better in community.  

Let’s Hear From the Family Members:

Luke, age 12:

It’s better because your parents can know the other kid’s parents and hopefully become life-long friends unlike in public school where your parents don’t usually even know the other students.  Getting to spend time with my mom in school learning together also made it fun. Also with a co-op you get to have more field trips than you would likely ever have in your lifetime in public school!

Eliza Jane, age 7:

likes making new friends and having mommy get to come in your class when you are at school!

I also asked my husband, who doesn’t necessarily come with us each week on community day, but definitely hears all about our experiences when he gets home at the end of the day. 

Jonathan said that he noticed much less anxiety in me as the teacher, primarily because I have been able to see other students who are years ahead in the program and are thriving and that our children can be very successful in this environment. 

Secondly, he also noticed how excited our kids were to see the people that whom they have developed relationships. He knew that the kids would have a good education being homeschooled, but to see them developing socially and the positive interactions they’ve had with other kids as well has been a great benefit.

While homeschooling can be done effectively alone I would argue that finding your people will make the experience that much more enjoyable for both parents and kids.  I also feel it will help you avoid that all too often feeling of burn-out that plagues parents trying to be both mom or dad as well as teacher.  

We aren’t meant to homeschool alone!  Find your people,  engage with them and I’m confident you will find more support than you can imagine.

Are you in a homeschool community? Are you looking for one?

Tell me about it in the comments below.

This post is from Homegrown Learners contributor, Allison. She is a wife and mother with a passion for reading. With a background in Early Childhood Education as well as experience working in Corporate America, the events of 2020 exposed her to the rewards of teaching her own children at home. She hopes to encourage anyone who has ever been anxious about taking this leap with her own personal successes and failures during her family's first few years of homeschooling.

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How to Stay the Course with a Classical Homeschool Education

This post is about staying the course with a Classical Education.

The author, my long-time friend Betsy, has educated her children all the way through in Classical Conversations. I love, however, the way she writes about CC and how it has been a guide and a springboard for educating her children to the best of each of their abilities.

Classical Conversations isn’t your master - it is your guide.

Because I have blogged so much about our experiences in Classical Conversations, I wanted to bring you this perspective and voice from a homeschooling mother who has so much to offer about homeschooling in the Classical tradition.

(Take it away, Betsy!)

I never intended to homeschool.

We stumbled into it because competitive gymnastics threatened to take all of my son’s free time. (Then we dropped gymnastics and kept homeschooling.)

Thirteen years later, we’re still at it. This year I’m graduating my second child from Classical Conversations—my son started in Essentials, and my daughter at the beginning in Foundations. My youngest started at 4 and she’s currently in Challenge 2. I am so thankful God led us to homeschool with Classical Conversations. It hasn’t been easy, and there have been many times that I wanted to quit.

I’ve learned along the way that I just have to keep learning not only what a classical education looks like but also how God has perfectly designed my children. The fruit of those two pursuits has been worth the effort.

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Educate Yourself

The beautiful thing about homeschooling is that you don’t have to know everything to homeschool your children.

But, you can’t stay there! The good news is that working through the material with your student will also provide an excellent education for you.

Curriculum is a Tool, Not the Boss

One of the easiest ways to get derailed in homeschooling is by being ruled by a ruthless curriculum. Well, that may be a little harsh, but in mid-January, some of the materials you gushed over in August might feel like they’re turning on you.

Your student is unique! It’s helpful to remember that a curriculum is made for a generic course of study. Use the curriculum as a tool to accomplish what you want to teach your student. This gives so much freedom to follow interests and curiosities as you go.

It’s really helpful to have the framework of a curriculum so that you know what to study, but not feel tied to complete 100% of the text. Public schools don’t use textbooks that way, so feel free to teach your children even if it deviates from the prescribed plan along the way.

A Classical Conversations Guide is Not Perfection

I have loved that Classical Conversations has opened so many doors in educational pursuits that I would have never chosen on my own. But, I will say that I did not cry when Covid shut down Mock Trial for my youngest.

The beauty of homeschooling and pursuing a classical education is that you can scale the work to educate a human and not produce another perfect classical student—that kind of goes against the premise of a classical education!

It felt so much easier in the Foundations years to do my own thing at home because it was just memory work. Once we entered the Challenge years, I struggled at first with having a vision of my own without just adopting the guide’s vision. It took me a couple of years to start asking myself important questions like:

• What is the heart of this assignment?

• What tools do I want to equip my child with so they can be a lifelong
  learner?

• What is the first layer of learning in this skill?

We review ideas so many times in Foundations, but it’s harder to see the layered learning in the Challenge years.

While it is important to work with excellence, every skill introduced in CC comes back around again. The industrial model of education says that you have to “get it” on your first try because that’s the only time you’ll ever have the opportunity to learn it.

Classical education works in layers. Just keep adding another layer of learning until mastery. Andrew Pudewa often quotes the Japenese proverb, “Ten thousand times and then begins understanding.” We need more than just one pass at an idea to master it. So, let the first time be the first pass and let go of the expectations of perfection.

Seek Out Multiple Sources

The freedom for me to deviate from the curriculum or a Classical Conversations guide came from hearing from multiple voices on the subject.

• I loved Leigh Bortins’ books like The Core but it was just the beginning of my own education on the subject.

• The Great Homeschool Convention’s Classical Homeschooling Track opened my eyes to a world of other amazing resources for learning about classical education.

• I could sit and listen to Andrew Kern’s contemplation of nature and be inspired to cultivate wisdom and virtue in my children.

• Martin Cothran would give me a list of good books to read and inspire me to read outside of the CC Challenge booklist.

• Andrew Pudewa encouraged me to let my youngest read with her ears

• Christopher Perrin and Sarah Mackenzie opened my eyes to new aspects of classical education as they taught on the topic of scholé in learning and Teaching from Rest

While Leigh Bortins gave me a strong foundation in classical education, the bigger picture of the classical tradition empowered me to become an artist as an educator.

Learn Your Student

While it’s great to have a good curriculum, we train humans, not robots. Every student will respond a little differently to the material.

There are so many variables that impact the overall education that no two students will have the same experience. And there is something very beautiful about that. So, it’s important to learn your student.

Look for What Gets Them Excited

Teenagers can be both easy and difficult to read. They can look disinterested in everything, or interested in a new idea every minute. I have found it helpful to watch what they do more than what they say.

In my son’s sophomore year, he was passionate about becoming an eye surgeon like his grandpa. He loved how his grandpa was helping restore sight in medical missions. As I watched my son work through his schoolwork that year, I noticed that he put the least amount of effort into Biology.

Interesting.

A loss in the family that year distracted me from being as engaged in his learning as I had been in the past. So if I just begged, “Will you please just work on something?!” I noticed that he always picked up his Latin
books.

Strange.

So we had a talk. I told him about what I had noticed in his preference for language over science. Through conversation, we discovered that he loved the idea of restoring sight, but maybe that could be done with language in a spiritual sense and not just with science in a physical sense.

This discovery gave him permission to fully pursue his passion which led to us starting Latin with Andy, an online learning library of resources to help others learn Latin.

Push Them Where You Can

In creating this Latin resource, I made Andy go back through two Latin textbooks he’d already finished. Am I a mean mom or what?

While the Classical Conversations guide can sometimes assign too much work, there are other times when the workload is not enough. If Andy really wanted to pursue language, he needed those ten thousand repetitions that Andrew Pudewa talked about. I required more of my son and he flourished.

You can’t push them in every subject equally though. At least I didn’t feel like I could and still maintain a relationship with my children in the end.

Scaling the work in some areas to give time for excelling in others is a great way to cater the curriculum to your child.

Feel Free to Deviate

My girls didn’t have the same affection for Latin that my son displayed—and it’s okay! They learned a lot from him, which made their Latin studies easier. My girls lean more toward artistic pursuits than academic ones.

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We use Classical Conversations to keep us anchored and accountable for reading, writing, and arithmetic, and then we’ve felt the freedom to pursue painting or songwriting—and my artistic soon-to-be-graduate also got the presidential scholarship and an additional art scholarship to study graphic design at her college of choice.

It doesn’t have to be an either/or situation.

The heart of a classical education is to produce liberated thinkers: ones free to flourish in life because they are free to think and discuss with wisdom and virtue.

Betsy Strauss is an unexpected homeschooler and blogger mother of three, who is in a relationship with a sweet man for life. She loves reading books, drinking coffee, and learning anything with her kids.

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