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Homeschooling Hazard: How To Avoid The School District Meanies!

Jan 26 '05 Write an essay on this topic.

The Bottom Line It's your choice and if you choose to homeschool then stick to your guns and don't let anyone bully you around!

You would think that trying to take a positive stance in the area of your childs education would be something that anyone in the public or private school system would welcome. Sadly, parents who choose to homeschool, make use of charter or satellite schools or hire private tutors are often looked at as controlling people who are sheltering their children from “real life”. Take a tour of most schools and you’ll see one of the prime examples of why more and more parents are choosing to do it themselves. There are drugs, crime and bullies everywhere but is that something that your child needs to come in contact with when they are in school? How safe is a child supposed to feel when they arrive at school and have to have their bags x-rayed or walk though a metal detector? What about the parents that can’t afford a private school? I knew from the start that homeschooling would be something that I would do with my boys and even thought two of them are still away at a private school overseas, they are two to three grades ahead of where they should be. I got a lot of emails from people after my recent editorials about homeschooling asking how to go about doing it so I decided that I’d write one about the basics of how to set up a homeschooling program that will work best for you and your child.

Knowing What’s Best For All Concerned

Don’t leave your child out of the decision, after all they are the ones that are going to have to make this transition and it might be a little hard for them to adjust to the freedom that a homeschooling schedule can allow in a childs life. Ask them if they want to homeschool and make sure they know that it isn’t a party; there is work to be done and tasks that need to be accomplished but it won’t be as constricting as conventional schools. If they are in fifth or sixth grade you can also check into a charter or satellite school that will allow them to complete most of their daily work online. The k12 Academy is one of the best online and virtual schools available and their program is 100% free. All you have to do is fill out the paperwork, have your child take the placement tests, wait for a teacher to be assigned to you and you are set. The teacher is there if your child has any questions there is someone there to guide them. That goes for mom and dad too, you won’t feel overwhelmed or bogged down if you have help of an online school like this.

For younger kids finding some type of network for homeschoolers in your area is the best way to go. They offer a lot of support and can really make the early learning years an enriching experience. You can arrange field trips, play groups and outings that are fun and educational. If you are planning on homeschooling from the start then the world is your oyster and you won’t have to deprogram your child from the routine that they may have fallen into at a regular school. This brings up an important topic, decompression. Try to think back to when you were in high school and having to get up with the alarm the same time every morning, rushing to and from classes, having to sit in a room for 45 minutes at a time and trying your hardest to fake a sick day every now and then. Now read something that my oldest son wrote about homeschooling in his newspaper when he was interviewed about five months ago.

“… Everyone thought that homeschooling was a joke. My brothers and I would be at the grocery store with our mother and someone would see up there; inevitably they would look at us like we were aliens and ask why we weren’t in school. The one thing my mother always did was prepare us for the harsher things in life and sometimes that meant turning the other cheek or laughing off a comment. One day a woman said she was going to call Child Services because we weren’t in school. I smiled and asked her if she knew what homeschooling was and she was shocked that I had the audacity to ask her something. I guess kids don’t have the same Freedom of Speech that adults have in the United States. I asked her if she knew all the States in the Union and she looked at me blankly and said, “What Union are you talking about?”.

We were never told when to get up in the morning or when to go to bed but we did have rules about what needed to be accomplished for the day. We learned how to manage our time and balance homework, chores and our private time when we were all pretty young. By the time I was ten years old I was teaching my mother HTML codes, helping my brothers with their math and still had plenty of free time to be a kid. I don’t feel that my childhood was robbed of me or that I was constantly being forced to do school work, if anything my mother made learning something that was fun.”

So, there, you have it, out of the mouth of babes.

Remember to listen to your child. There may be days when they don’t want to do the work and that’s fine. You can make education a 24 hour thing or they will get burned out. My boys thrived on math and science so most of their free time was spent doing things that related to those two things. I used to wish that they would find something like soccer or football appealing but alas, they preferred books to sports. Lego’s were a great source of fun for them but at the same time they were always using them for something educational like trying to replicate a building to learn about how it was built or doing a DNA strand. If you listen to your child and know what they are in to then you can know when a break is needed. If they want to play a video game or watch a movie then do their school work that’s more than fair but you have to remember that you are the parent and when you say “turn off the tele”, that means turn it off, not ask for fifteen more minutes.

The Usual Story

If you do decide to take your child out of a regular school to homeschool them you may encounter a lot of bull from the school. Don’t let them try to sway you or change your mind or use the oldest excuse, socialization [or the lack there of], as a reason for you to leave your child there. So why are schools so hard to deal with when it comes to homeschooling? One single, little, tiny word. Money. Every time a child is taken out of school they lose Federal money that is allotted for each child that is registered at the school. Now, if your child is only registered for one day that still counts towards their overall enrollment number so they still get money but if you are continuing with homeschooling year after year they see nothing. I have seen a growing trend over the past few years, more and more parents are turning towards homeschooling, satellite schools or charter schools for their childs education and this could be for any number of reasons.

You will have to check the rules of your state to know all the details but in most cases all you have to do to sign your child up for homeschooling is to do the following:

1. Officially withdrawal your child from the school that they are attending and tell them that you are homeschooling. You may want to wait to do this until you have submitted the necessary papers but you can withdrawal them at any time for any reason just as long as you make it clear that you are planning on homeschooling them. Some school districts will fight you tooth and nail on this but stand your ground and be firm. Remember, you are the parent.

2. Fill out and notarize a form [you can get this online] that states that you are planning on homeschooling your child. You will need to provide the address when the schooling will take place as well as you name and phone number. You will also need to attest that the child is receiving medical care and has had his or her shots [there is a medical or religious exception form that you can fill out if you chose not to have your child immunized].

3. Create an objectives list; essentially all the things that you plan on teaching your child during the school year. These can be obtained online and you can customize them to suit your needs. The more detailed you are about what you plan to teach the less of a chance you have on anyone questioning your curriculum.

4. It never hurts to make a copy of your high school diploma to add in with the papers. That is all that is required to homeschool your child. A GED or other certificate will also do. This will show that you have the ability to teach your child. If you do not have your diploma you can submit your high school or college transcripts instead.

5. Keep copies of all paper and send the originals to your local school district office and please, send it with a signature confirmation or delivery confirmation so you have proof that it was delivered.

Some school districts will send you a confirmation of the homeschooling agenda and say that it has been approved, others will just send a paper saying that at the start of the next year you will have to file the paper work again. You will want to keep track of what you have taught your child as well as projects they have done, any educational films they watched and events they attended. This is just to cover yourself in case someone says that you aren’t “really” homeschooling. I won’t get into the darker side of what can happen when you don’t follow the procedure but you can read about the horror stories online at any of a number of homeschooling sites. You may want to have the number of your local homeschool defense fund in your area; these are people that offer their legal services at little or no fee to help those who are being harassed by a school district for their choice to homeschool. If you are ever approached by a truant officer or someone that claims to be from a school district, make sure you ask for their credentials and get their name, contact number, office they work out of etc. Almost every state has provisions for homeschooling and if you are allowed to homeschool and are teaching your children then there is no reason why you should be harassed by anyone.

The Bottom Line

Whether you choose to go the Christian route or do it yourself, homeschooling is something that you have every right to do but you do have to follow the rules. The school district loses money every time a child goes out of their system so of course they are going to try to strongarm you into keeping your child there. That isn’t to say that all school systems act like this or that they will come knocking at your door but it never hurts to cover all the bases and make sure your child isn’t traumatized by someone asking them a ton of questions about what they do all day. If you think that all this is overwhelming or something that you won’t be able to handle, please, seek assistance from online virtual schools, charter schools or homeschooling networks. These places are, in most cases, free of charge or tuition and will be able to help you with planning classes, locating other homeschoolers in your area and placement testing.

If you have any questions, please leave them in the comment section of this editorial so I can answer them. Chances are that others may be thinking the same thing and this can help get out accurate information to people who are thinking about homeschooling, have questions about it or are just curious about how it can benefit a child.

As always, thanks for the read!

~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~

© 2005 Freak369

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