Mom and I in the year that I graduated
As the holidays approach and traditions and family time are often the topic of discussion, I am so excited to be able to introduce my very first guest blogger. This blogger is particularly close to my heart. As a homeschooling wife and mom and loving daughter to two beautiful people (including one with multiple health issues,) this woman juggled various responsibilities with aplomb for many years in her homeschooling days. These days, she keeps up her busy schedule with a full time ‘day job’ as she works overtime to make her latest business venture successful. The truth is that this pioneering homeschooling mom taught me pretty much everything I know about how to homeschool successfully. You may have guessed by now that I am talking about my own dear Mama! Now, without further ado, here is the blog by Yvonne Root:
Somewhere around here we probably have the video supplied to us by the television station that sent a reporter into our home to discuss the then new idea of home school. We were in our first year of playing school at home. Notice the wording – playing school – I’ll get back to that.
We were in the news!
What an exciting day that was for us. We had answered yes to the reporter’s request to come see our school, to see the one and only student and to see the teacher. The room that had once been our family room had morphed (seemingly overnight) into the school room. The student’s desk and the teacher’s desk, the shelves filled with books, the bric-a-brac of a well stocked school room were all there awaiting the reporter. The one and only student and the teacher were dressed for school. The principle had been called away (poor guy had to work his day job) and was unavailable.
The reporter asked the usual questions concerning – hum, I don’t remember most of what she asked. The only thing I do remember with certainty was the question concerning how we went from being at home as a family to being at school. I could have shown her the door frame and said, “That way is the kitchen and that is home, this way is the school room and this is school.” Instead I offered an even more disgustingly silly answer. I told her that I changed hats. In one hat I was the mom and in the other hat I was the teacher.
This is one of those moments I look back on and think, “Could I have really been that naive? Could I have really been so clueless?”
The education begins
Because I absolutely love the process of learning, (there is a bit of irony here) I borrowed or purchased every book I could get my hands on concerning home school. Not only the why of home school but the how of home school, the what, where and when of home school became my major focus, became the one concept about which I was determined to learn. (Remember this was before the internet was available to the likes of me and mine – books were where I turned.) Also we were blessed to find a home school support group within a few months of our adventure into playing school and I began to get an education.
But the school sputters
Perhaps because I had only one student I wasn’t as bad as a friend of mine who confessed that in her early days of home school her children students, all 3 of them, were required to raise their hands if they desired to ask a question or add a comment. Yet, in so many other ways I brought my experience of public school into the setting which would be our home school. Continue reading
Homeschool Redux 