Who Teaches a Homeschooler?

**Before I start this blog post I just wanted to have a little party... I finished the second draft of my research paper on Milton's similes last night, and it's 2500 words long citing 12 different sources, and yeah, I'm pretty proud of it. It's not done yet by a long shot, but at least I've got it to a point where it's not a complete disaster. :) Anyways, on to the real blog post.**

One of the main questions I get is “Who teaches you, your mom or your dad?” For years my answer would have been ‘my mom’, since she stays home to teach us while my Dad goes off to work at the university. For all my highschool years, however, my mom did very little teaching. Basically, I learned everything on my own.

The math program I used for grade school

How would this work? There are so many programs written especially for homeschoolers. We used Apologia Science which came with text books, dissection kits, instruction clips on a CD and an answer key to make it easy for parents to mark the tests. My English and History courses were written for homeschoolers, and my math was from Singapore.

At the beginning of the school year I’d sit down with my mom and pick out all the books I was going to use throughout the year. Then I’d make my own rough schedule so I’d know how many chapters I’d have to do every month to get finished in the year. Normally I actually stuck pretty close to this schedule and most of the time I was done school by April or May.

Grade 10 Biology

When I tell people this, about how I basically ran my own schooling, the most common response is “I couldn’t do that.” I don’t think that’s true. What’s so much harder about teaching yourself than learning from a teacher? I’ve heard so many horror stories about bad teachers who make no sense or who grade poorly. Learning directly from books eliminates that problem. As for deadlines, you make your own, and if you have trouble keeping them then your mother will just have to remind you… This can also be a good thing because it teaches independence in preparation for University.

This isn’t to say that homeschooling is for everyone. I know a lot of smart people who went to school and are doing well in University (much better than me, in fact.) Homeschooling is not always a superior choice. However, it’s always a viable option. I believe that everyone is capable of teaching themselves.

Homeschooling Q&A

Throughout the years of I’ve had so many people ask me questions about homeschooling. It’s about time I answered these questions in public form. Please note that these are just my answers; other people may do things completely differently. Here’re a couple of the most common:

Do you do your school in your pyjamas? Believe it or not, this is the number one question from other kids. My answer is No. I don’t see what’s so appealing about the idea of doing school in my PJs. PJs are great but I find that I do my best work whenever I’m all dressed, hair done and completely awake. For some reason it’s easier to slack off when you’re wearing pyjamas.

One of my best friends (left)  and me (right)

Do you have friends? Right now, yes. I have so many amazing friends both here on PEI and in Ontario. The thing is, it hasn’t always been this way. Up to my teen years I didn’t have many friends and I was always trying to find a real ‘kindred spirit’ (to quote Anne of Green Gables). This is the problem of having a small homeschool group; there simply aren’t as many people to be friends with. That being said, our homeschool group is fairly small as homeschool groups go, and it's rapidly growing. My younger sisters and my friends in Ontario have no trouble finding friends in their homeschool groups.

My Mom (and teacher!) and me

Does it feel weird to have your parents teaching you? Well, no. That’s the way it’s always been.  My mom has been teaching me for as long as I can remember. By the time I hit junior high I was doing most of my schoolwork from textbooks, so I was actually teaching myself. It was a bit different to learn from professors in University but I didn’t find it hard to adjust (probably because all my professors are amazing.)

Do you think homeschooling prepared you for University? Definitely! Even though I’m just 17 I’m taking three second year courses and one third year and keeping up fairly well with all the work. I’m not saying this because I want you to think I’m some sort of super genius or something, because I’m certainly not. This is just proof that homeschoolers do well in University. All the work I did by myself in my highschool years prepared me for hours of study in Uni. Most of all, homeschooling taught me to love learning. I can honestly say I look forward to going to class every day.


Hopefully I'll be posting more of these Q&A sessions on future Saturdays. If you have questions of your own, please to post them in the comments. As for any fellow homeschoolers, feel free to elaborate on anything I've said. I'm interested to hear what you do differently.