The talk about town is that many families are turning their efforts to homeschooling. While I am so excited for families to be home together, I wanted to drop a small thought that has been with me for months.
The experience many parents had with homeschooling a few months back was not the normal atmosphere in which parents homeschool their children. Because parents were frantically tossed into this semblance of homeschooling at the end of last school year, that is not homeschooling. It has been appropriately named crisis schooling. No one was operating as normal or in a purposeful, intentional environment. High anxiety, health fears, job loses and isolation are not a normal context for homeschooling. “This is so stressful.””This is horrible.” “I’m so glad I never did this before.” “I can’t imagine how you do it.” “This is a nightmare.” This perception of homeschooling is inaccurate.
On some level, I wanted to propose that when a family home educates, it doesn’t look nor feel the same way as those intense and stressful weeks did for many families. I heard from several parents that their experience solidified why they never wanted to homeschool. Don’t be mistaken in thinking that homeschooling means confined people, who have no interests and live mostly disorderly, stressed lives; or that homeschooling families are miserable while attempting to school their kids. The notion that those months were “homeschooling”, is just not true nor normal. Not because parents didn’t do a good job, but because the situation was manufactured.
So if your experience was discouraging to you, be of good cheer. Homeschooling is a beautiful, healthy environment for learning.
“Talk together. You’ll find yourself enjoying it!
Relax.
It isn’t all as hard as the experts make out. We are human beings, persons, created to live. To have life more abundantly. Wonder together; grow together. Together share the struggles of knowing that we cannot perfectly follow God’s law. We are fellow-pilgrims. We walk side by side as human beings under the love and authority of Him who made us.” (For the Children’s Sake -Susan Schaeffer Macaulay)
Jump on in, the water is fine!
FirstFruits Family 