Confessions of a Homeschooler

I can hear the jokes now; my senior prom was held in my garage and the DJ was my dad, I have the shortest commute to school in America since I walk to the living room from my bedroom, and last but not least the lunch lady really is my mom. That never gets old. Ever.

My friends used to make fun of me. They would tease me that I’d never get into a good college. That all changed after I got my acceptance letter from Stanford University.

My homeschooling began when I was in 8th grade at a school near Sacramento, California. I had started out in a private Catholic school for girls, but my parents removed me after the school began having accreditation problems. The public school was tough. I’m not a snob and both my parents were total hippies in the 60s and were now making a lot of money from running an online ad agency from the house, so I think I was brought up with a good attitude. So I didn’t complain about the huge class sizes with more than 30 kids in them, or the way I got bullied by other girls in the gym during P.E., or the way my textbooks were always falling apart when I got them. The list went on and on, and even though I didn’t like it I didn’t complain. I just dug in and tried to get the best grades I could.

When my school had an open house with parent/teacher conferences, my mom and dad both came to visit. I’ll never forget the way they looked when they walked in and saw how crowded my home room class was. I showed them my locker and my books and – swear to God – the cover of my social studies book literally fell off as I handed it to my dad. He was so cool. He just picked it up, put the book in the locker and said “It’s time to go.”

On the car ride home, my parents talked about how they needed to do something. But do what? Send me back to the private school? It might be closed because they weren’t making state requirements. Boarding school was an option, but I didn’t want to go. I love my parents a lot and the thought of being sent back east was not cool, “I’m not Harry Potter you know” I said.

Homeschool seemed like a good idea but we really didn’t know that much about it. Not that my mother and father were educated: he has a bachelors in journalism from the University of Washington and my mom has a masters in communication from U.C. Berkeley. For the rest of the month they got more information on homeschool programs and at my middle school, things kept getting worse. A teacher was put on suspension for inappropriate contact with a student and all the TV news people showed up and camped out front for a week.

During that same week a group of girls beat the crap out of this one girl in the locker room and videotaped it. It wound up on YouTube.

For my parent’s, that was the last straw.

Adventures in Homeschooling

The first day of class was… well… weird.

My mom met me in the kitchen. We had bought a laptop for our “educational experience” and we proceeded to talk about the five courses I would be taking as well as the school week. It worked like this: I would spend six hours studying at home for three days a week, then for lab courses like chemistry or biology I would go to the “co-op” where other homeschool families took their kids.

While mom would teach me the units on classical literature, dad would sit with me and help me with my writing. For math we hired a tutor – thank God – and he would sit with me one evening a week to help.

A lot of people ask me what it was like, being homeschooled and I have to say I loved it. I missed out on prom and some other things, but I can’t say I really missed all the other crap that happens at high schools these days. My friends might tease me about being homeschooled, but every one of them wishes they could have had the experience I did.

Hopefully this website will give you an understanding of what homeschool is and isn’t, and how it can help you or your kids get a better education.

Thanks for reading my huge block of text, and good luck!

-Paige