Plan A

People sometimes ask me if I plan to homeschool Zoe through high school. My stock answer is "Our plan is go with whatever is the best option at the time."

But since we decided to homeschool, when Zoe was like one and a half, our Plan A was to homeschool all the way through. I am pretty much convinced that there is no school option that would be better.

What do I think constitutes an education and a wholesome, appropriate, "good" childhood?

I want Zoe to be challenged educationally. (At this point it means for her to be working at least four grade levels ahead.) When I went to school, both the crappy public and privates schools I attended, I was bored most of the time. The material was too easy, trite, and shallow. What a waste, huh? Sometimes, as the homeschooling parent, I get overwhelmed with the HUGE amount of wonderful things there are to learn and how we are going to fit it all in.

I want Zoe to actually enjoy learning. To the point where she looks forward to it and considers it an important ingredient to a happy life. Now, I have always felt that way. But school usually stymied my enjoyment. I loved learning despite school. I was the "Hermione" that always raised her hand. I wanted to take topics further, discuss, explore, apply, etc and the other students wanted me to shut up and, sometimes, the teachers didn't appreciate my "rage to learn" either.

I could go on and on.. but you get the idea. I had a pretty crappy education. I want more for my daughter.

Okay so I know there are GOOD schools out there. I lived in Los Angeles, which has more private schools than any other city in the country. I know there are lots of good public and private schools that do wonderful things for kids.

But there is NO school (except one that we will get to later) that I have found that lets the kids work 4+ years ahead. Zoe was accepted into the Mirman School in Los Angeles. That was the school for "highly gifted" children. You actually had to have the test scores to get in, so HG wasn't just some kind of judgement call.

That was for Kindergarten. I also applied to a few other very hard to get into schools for Zoe. She got into all of them. One told me that they couldn't handle her and she should go to Mirman. I appreciated the honesty. One told me they could give her a two year grade skip but that she would be physically dwarfed by the other second graders (some were eight.)

And Mirman... they were kind of annoying. They were famous for "teaching each child at their level" but in reality kids could move ahead in reading and math and otherwise were about one year ahead of grade level. When I tried to pin them down about what they were going to do specifically with Zoe, like how would they accommodate her doing third grade work, they got snippy with me. *shrug*

In the end I told Zoe that if we enrolled her at Mirman she would go to school 6 hours a day plus an hour each way for the commute and then they have 30 minutes of homework times your year. So by second grade (which is your third year) it is an hour and half. So she would have to give up all but one of her extra-curricular activities. At that point her extra-curriculars were piano, gymnastics and Shakespeare. She said "no way."

Which brings me to another homescooling Pro - kids have the flexibility of time to do more extra-curricular activities. Until this year, 5/6 grade, Zoe was getting all her school work done in the 3 1/2 hours before lunch. That left plenty of time to try different activities and stick with a few. There is no way she would have time to do 2 - 4 weekly extra-curricular activities and down time to play and relax if she were in a traditional school.

Here I come to another homeschooling Pro - teaching one kid, or even 3 or 4, takes a lot less time than it does to teach a full classroom. It takes about half the amount of time. There is no time spent commuting, waiting for the bus, standing in line at the water fountain, standing in the lunch line, standing in the bathroom line, waiting for your turn to address the teacher, moving down the halls from one classroom to another, etc. But wait! You might say 'But those were my favorite part of school!" Well, how sad is that?

So, what was your favorite part of school? Maybe it was talking and playing with your friends. Maybe it was recess, but how many schools even have recess these days? Maybe it was talking in the classroom but you could end up getting in trouble for that. I know I always did.

We have been very fortunate to have a very full homeschool social calendar. When we lived in Los Angeles Zoe has a 5 -6 hour weekly play date with her homeschool group which had about 100 kids. She had a shorter playdate once a week with the kids in her science class. And I rotated playdates twice a week with her seven or so best friends. And there were the neighbor kids. Usually socializing was a problem of too much, never too little.

Since moving to the midwest we have found a wonderful homeschool playgroup. Zoe has 2 - 3 hours of totally free play time a week with that group. Then she has two more hours of play time with a different group that often does more organized play. And we have a couple play dates during the week. AND she has half a dozen neighborhood friends that she gets together with regularly - to play pretend, or soccer, to build things.

One thing that is different than many schools "social" time is that she gets to play for hours using her imagination. Their play is almost entirely self-directed, even games of soccer, basketball, and dodgeball. But parents are nearby to help, to guide and to generally keep it from falling into the scary Lord of the Flies dynamics that some of us remember from regular school.

You might ask 'What about learning in a group?" Again, there are a plethora options. Since we have been homeschooling Zoe has had classes with groups of kids in gymnastics, ballet, swimming, soccer, art, musical theatre, voice-overs, Shakespeare, astronaut training, science, a type of girl-scouts club, choir, (I'm sure I am leaving some out) and about a dozen week long or weekend summer classes.

That should cover the concern of children getting to work with different teachers and not just "mom" all the time.

Another pro of homeschooling is that Zoe gets to know a diverse array of children. Not just the kids in her neighborhood and not just the kids in her grade. Both of our homeschooling groups have had a mix of ages, socio-economic backgrounds, race, gender, ability, religion, etc I think that is important. Zoe should see all kinds of children as playmates/peers.

Again, I am sure there are schools that also do great at all these things. I have looked into LOTS of schools. But, the sticking point for us is the "challenged educationally." So far no school has been able to offer Zoe as good of an education as she can get at home.

There is one school that I have my eye on. But it is in another state. Zoe could go once she is ready for middle school and, since it is on the campus of a university and has full access to the professors, libraries, labs, etc she can start taking college as classes as soon as she is ready. We call that school Plan B.

Otherwise I do plan to homeschool Zoe until she goes away to college.