Congratulations!
You've made the decision to educate your children at home!
This one choice will affect every area of your life, from your daily interactions with your children to your finances to how you manage your time and daily household tasks! I just KNOW that you have considered ALL of the possible changes and you have scoured the family budget and “crunched the numbers”. You have asked for advice and searched the internet for possible curricula. You have contacted your county’s school board and you have researched Florida state laws concerning home education. You are READY! : )
OR, maybe you’ve only just made the decision…. and the rest seems exciting and a little bit scary!
In either case, you’ve made a choice that is destined to have long-lasting, positive repercussions for your child’s academic career and for your family’s relationships.
I applaud you for taking that first step!
Every family’s home education journey is as individual as their family! There are a myriad of reasons why families decide to home school. Sometimes the decision to home educate is born out of negative social interactions that their kids have already had in the typical classroom setting (bullying, shaming, undue student violence, or the perception that schools may not be as safe as parents would like them to be). Sometimes the choice to educate children at home may be due to a calling parents have to instill in their children a specific set of family values; values that are foundational and are held dear due to a family’s faith or culture. Sometimes the choice to homeschool is attractive because of the flexibility parents have to teach in a way that honors their child’s unique developmental pace, personal interests, and individual learning style. Whatever your particular reason is for making this important decision, you must know that you are not alone on this journey!
In fact, you are far from alone! Parents homeschooled their children long before home education became a more mainstream idea in the 1980’s. Check out this list of individuals who, throughout history, were educated at home for some or all of their school career, and notice the variety of strengths represented in this short list : Leonardo da Vinci, Noah Webster, Thomas Edison, Theodore Roosevelt, Agatha Christie, Alexander Graham Bell, Walt Whitman, Helen Keller, Louis Armstrong, Sandra Day O’Connor, Simone Biles, Tim Tebow, Serena and Venus Williams, Ryan Gosling, Condoleezza Rice, Justin Timberlake, and the Jonas Brothers — and these are just a few! You are joining the ranks of dedicated homeschool educators across the nation who are nurturing and rearing their children to become adults who are kind, compassionate, faithful, socially and politically aware, industrious, creative, and who are passionate about their chosen careers and who continually learn and grow!
Not only are you joining the long history of home education, you are making this decision at a time when so many other parents are making informed decisions to educate their children at home. Due to the Covid -19 pandemic many parents have, during the past year, simply chosen alternative ways to provide their children a quality education, with homeschooling being one viable option. Consider the recent growth of home education in the United States according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, a survey “designed to provide near-real-time information about the social and economic impact of the COVID 19 pandemic on American households”. From the spring of the 2019/2020 school year to the fall of the 2020/2021 school year there was a 5.6% increase in homeschooling among U.S. families. That brings the total percentage of families who homeschool to about 11.1% of all families that have children who are of school age. In raw numbers, that’s a total of about 4.5 to 5 million families who have chosen to home educate their children. (HSLDA, 2021) Being that most of these families are educating more than one child, the true number of individual students being educated at home is projected to be much higher (HSLDA, 2021).
So, WELCOME to the homeschool community of parent teachers! If you haven’t already, get connected to other homeschool families in your community. In the state of Florida, a convenient way of contacting your local homeschool organizations is through the Florida Parent Educator Association webpage (https://fpea.com/groups). While you are there, check out information concerning the FPEA Florida Homeschool Convention which happens each spring. It’s a great place to be encouraged by numerous speakers and other homeschool families. It also is a great place to learn about and to explore hundreds of curriculum choices and hands-on learning materials for kids of all ages!
As always, if you have questions concerning homeschooling, please feel free to contact me by clicking the “Contact” button above! I look forward to hearing from you!
Works Cited
“100 Famous Homeschoolers.” AOP Homeschooling, 22 June 2015, www.aop.com/blog/100-famous-homeschoolers.
DeGeurin, Mack. “17 Famous People You Didn't Know Were Home-Schooled.” Insider, Insider, 29 July 2019, www.insider.com/17-famous-people-who-were-home-schooled-2019-7.
Dentel, Dave. “Census Data Shows Phenomenal Homeschool Growth.” HSLDA, 13 Apr. 2021, hslda.org/post/census-data-shows-phenomenal-homeschool-growth.
Eggelston, Casey, and Jason Fields. “Homeschooling on the Rise during Covid-19 Pandemic.” The United States Census Bureau, 22 Mar. 2021, www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/03/homeschooling-on-the-rise-during-covid-19-pandemic.html.
Toledo, Bella. “15 Successful People You Didn't Know Were Homeschooled.” Colour My Learning, 30 July 2020, www.colourmylearning.com/2020/07/15-successful-people-you-didnt-know-were-homeschooled/.
