By Mikaela Bagdanov
Every calendar year has two New Years. Everybody knows the one in January, where we look back at how we’ve changed in the past twelve months and look forward to how we’ll grow in the next twelve. The second New Year goes by another name: Summer Break. We celebrate our students’ maturity and achievements during the school year and anticipate their next growth journey. For many parents this year, Summer Break prepares a new adventure into the homeschooling realm. Thanks to recent pandemics, politics, and policies, the homeschool community now welcomes many public school parents into its guild of bold adventurers. Do not be mistaken, dear parent-educators, it is an adventure - the likes of which you’ve barely seen.
I worked as a classroom aide in a mainstream school during the distance learning years, and I witnessed teachers’ valiant efforts to maintain the familiar system. To the defense of my former colleagues, the familiar has its place and its purpose. However, the public school system seemed to me like a train track, where students follow a single, inflexible path to arrive at certain standards. My job was to help those students who learned outside the box to learn according to expectations. As a homeschooled student myself, let me tell you - we all learn outside the box. That is the beauty and the challenge of homeschooling.
If public schooling compares to a train track, then homeschooling relates to an all-terrain vehicle. It’s not the same method or experience as following a system. You are embarking on a journey, through murky forests and across scenic mountaintops. Before you lies the quest for your student’s education that will lead to places you never thought to explore. Like all adventurers, you need tools of flexibility and creativity as you uncover the hidden treasure in your students. Here in the homeschooling realm, you have the opportunity to teach outside the box - to follow your child’s pace, to seek out fun assignments, and to re-chart your curriculum as needed. What’s more, you have the resources of your fellow adventurers who have traversed this journey before you and of those who trek beside you.
Bold adventurer, this is a New Year. Look back at what you’ve learned about yourself and your child in public school. Take those lessons, yet also invite new approaches and novel perspectives. Enlist the help of guides to navigate those forests and the companionship of friends to climb those mountains with you. Watch your students grow into the expert life-adventurers you know they can become. Lastly...remember to enjoy the journey!
