Evergreen School: One family's homeschool experience

Blame my parents for reading out loud to us all the time and teaching us all to read before we entered kindergarten. :) Since much of kindergarten and first grade was basically dedicated to teaching us how to read, we were bored silly most of the time. My first grade experience in particular was terrible and I later found out that this was when my parents started considering alternatives. At that point, they were thinking more in terms of private school, but the costs were prohibitive and my mother's visits to the local schools did not leave her with much confidence that our experiences there would be significantly different. Then second grade came and I had a marvelous teacher and the whole idea fell by the wayside for awhile.

Right after I finished fourth grade, we moved to a new school district. It had been my parents' longtime dream to live in the country, but the new school proved even more incapable of dealing with "gifted" children than the first. Among other things, my sister's teachers wanted her to skip a grade, which my parents believed would be too disruptive so soon after the move. So when the first day of sixth grade (for me; fourth and first for my sister and brother) came around, the three of us did not get on the school bus.

Initially nervous about our ability to teach ourselves, we got a pre-packaged correspondance curriculum from a private school in Maryland called Calvert School. We did Calvert for two years, initially via correspondence and later on our own. As our confidence increased, we began more and more to follow a style of homeschooling called "unschooling," which is very (sometimes excessively) unstructured and based on the student's interests. In areas where we did not have strong interests, such as math, we continued to use textbooks. On subjects where we did have strong interests, such as history and literature, we increasingly followed our own interests. Calvert had given us a particularly solid foundation to build on and we were able to narrow our focus without missing the big picture far earlier than many public school students, who might have to wait for college or even graduate school, to study some topics as in depth as we did.

Homeschooling is the best thing that ever happened to my interests in history and literature - freed from the confines of deadly boring textbooks and one-classic-novel-a-semester schedules, I devoured history books and classic literature like candy throughout my years at home.

Our year of living in Washington DC was a big help with this, as we were able to visit many of the historical sites and museums around the city, and as far afield as Pennsylvania and South Carolina. Our family had always used trips as educational experiences and this became even more pronounced after we started homeschooling - along with our day trips in the DC area, we toured many Civil War era battlefields, followed the Oregon Trail by car, and more.

When I reached high school, we began to be concerned about how to prove to colleges that we were learning anything, as well as how to study trickier subjects like laboratory science. We got around this by enrolling in courses at our local community college. I also enrolled in online AP classes through PA Homeschoolers, although my sister and brother chose not to use this option. These, combined with my PSAT, SAT, ACT, and AP scores, were apparently more than enough and I got into all four colleges I applied to with substantial scholarships.

The big S-word. For some reason, people almost always ask about this first. I have to admit I am not exactly the poster child for homeschool socialization. I'm a natural loner who lived in a rural area for most of the time I was homeschooled. I made friends in my ballet classes, horseback riding lessons, theater classes, community college classes, and at the nursing home where I volunteered, and noticed no great problem adjusting when I moved into a college dorm, but I like to be alone a lot anyway and didn't miss seeing friends every day. Some people might, although a little creativity and flexibility goes a long way and I don't think homeschoolers will be inherently more lonely than public school students. I also question how many homeschoolers live 10 miles from their closest friend, as I did!

I think homeschooling actually has one great advantage over public school in that it is possible to be exposed to a far greater range of ages and personalities than the average public school student, and to interact with adults on an equal basis much earlier than public schooled students. When I was a teenager, I counted as friends people ranging in age from 8 to over 80. How many public schooled students can say the same? It can also be easier to find friends based on similar interests. I noticed this effect particularly with the friends I made at the theater - who talked a lot about being marginalized as "geeks", "goths", and "nerds" in high school, but were respected and liked in the friendlier environment of the theater.

In addition, I adapted much better than many of my public schooled peers to the more Socratic teaching style of college life precisely because I was accustomed to dealing with adults as equals and being responsible for completing my own work without nagging or reminders from teachers.

I firmly believe that socialization is what you make of it. It has nothing to do with whether you are stuck in a room with 30 other people 8 hours a day.