Clueless Homeschoolers

It was an innocent enough accident. Kids break their arms. It happens. What stayed with us was the other part. There were no aides around to help a first-grader with a broken arm, so a little girl from his class walked him to the nurse. My wife went to talk with the principal, not to make trouble, just to ask what could be done. She’d have gladly come in and helped once in a while. There were no threats or even anger. It was just a concerned mom asking the principal, “What can we do about this?”

His answer: “You can’t threaten me!”

That blew her away. A mother offering to help, and the man heard an enemy. That was one of the sparks that lit the homeschool fire for our family. When something similar happened with our second son, the flames grew hotter. He was in kindergarten and his brother was in his second year of first grade.

I don’t even remember the final straw. When the decision came there was no real hesitation. We jumped in with both feet.

This was over thirty years ago, when homeschooling was just getting popular and the lanes weren’t well defined. The reactions were mixed. The principal threatened us, though nothing came of it. One teacher was kind and handed us some resources to get started. Some friends and family cheered. Others thought we were arrogant and too ignorant to teach our own kids. Honestly, in some ways they were right. We had no clue what we were doing. The one thing we knew, beyond a doubt, was that we didn’t want what the public school was offering.

So we flailed for a while, like every new homeschooler does. My wife met another homeschool mom and they started having play days and walks and trading resources, which grew into a little cooperative. We moved a couple of years later and she started another one. We received hand-me-down materials from families with older kids, which quietly filled in for our ignorance.

Over time our habits settled into something simple: good books on whatever we wanted the boys to learn, and reports on what they read. Math was harder, but we found books, and by the early 2000s online courses took that load off us.

Here’s something that really surprised us. Once we were freed from the school’s schedule, the time spent actually “studying” shrank. We discovered that everything was a learning opportunity, not just the coursework. Our boys experienced things during the day that kids stuck in a classroom couldn’t. Some days they came to work with me. By the time they were teenagers they could put up a barbed wire fence. They were, simply put, incredibly easy to raise. Part of that was that they were easy kids. The bigger part was that they had far more exposure to adults than to peers.

Both of them tested out of high school through our state’s program and earned their diplomas early, then spent a little time at the local junior college. Our philosophy of education grew organically. By the time our oldest was moving out we could finally put words to it. Gather the best resources on a thing worth learning, and have them write about it so you can see how they’re coming along. The writing showed us how well they were really engaging, and it gave me the chance to correct it. That was their English class. Except for math, where they soon outpaced us.

The results are the part nervous new homeschoolers need to hear. Both married young and gave us grandchildren early. Both have can-do attitudes, have learned how to learn, and will do whatever they set their minds to. They both exhibit good critical thinking and discernment skills. The artificial boxes of “expertise” that keep so many of us in our lanes simply don’t exist for them. They went straight from learning into building their lives, and both are doing very well. Their marriages are strong, and their own children, also homeschooled, are well-behaved.

We’re old hands now, and we help younger families when we can, because we see how hard it has become to give a child a good education in this culture. A while back we realized modern technology let us do more than offer friendly advice. So we built GraceHaven Academy, a K–12 curriculum that works the way our homeschool did: rich material on things worth learning, and lots of writing so you can see what your child really understands. You stay fully in the loop and in control of what your children study, and it’s priced so any family can use it. There’s reading for the littlest ones and adult studies for Mom and Dad too.

You’ll figure it out faster than we did. We had no clue what we were doing, and our boys turned out much better than just fine. If you want a head start, come see what we’ve built at https://gracehaven.ai/academy

Blessings,
JK Johnson