Homeschooling

Maybe you have heard of home schooling before, or heard others mention it and wonder what it is or what it is like. Some of you may know friends who do home school, but don’t know what it involves. No matter if you are familiar or not, I am sure with the current situation in our local and state public schools that it is a good subject for consideration and discussion just as it has always been in many peoples minds. I will be glad to tell you my experience with homeschooling as I am a graduated and now adult result of my parent’s home school education.

To begin, my parents were a big part of the homeschooling movement many years ago back when I was just born in the 1980s. At that time they realized, with other parents, that the public school system did not always offer the teaching format, values, and consistency that they felt was important to them in their child’s education. This motivated a group of parents to come together under the name of CHEO, Christian Home Educators of Ohio, in order to cooperate in putting together curriculums, events, and others systems to support the parents who had decided to home school their children. My parents decided to home school all of my 6 other siblings, one older sister, and 5 younger brothers and so this was an ideal format for us to be involved and have other youth to interact with.

My mother took the lead role in our education since she was a stay at home mom during my younger years and had the most time to dedicate one on one with each of us. Our typical school day started at 8:30am and we covered all the regular topics that students do in public school. From math, English, science, and history, to name a few, we went through both Christian and public school textbooks for our learning. We used the same tests that are used in the regular text books, as well as additional pop quizzes and other tests my mom would formulate for us. We also took the SATs (standard achievement tests) at the end of every year to move up to the next grade. Our grades and curriculum achievements were submitted every year to the state for their records to prove that we were indeed covering the required material and passing our grades.