16/40 - Home-Schooled

Over the past few years, the pandemic and continuous strains of the virus have had more and more people working and doing school from home. They've figured out how strange it is to wake up and work in the same room. They've figured out that at the same way they are working from home they are also living in their office.

Starting in 6th grade, I was home-schooled. I graduated from home school before going off to college. Managing everything from home again has felt very familiar for me. Something that comedian John Crist perfectly explained in mid-2020:

Being homeschooled is one of the best things that ever happened to me.

I first heard about homeschooling from my friends at church. I asked them what time they started and finished every day. They told me they started around 9:30-10:00 and finished around 2:00-2:30, whenever they were done with the day's work. That sounded way better than my 7:30 am arrival at school and finishing at 3:30.

So I asked my parents to homeschool me and my siblings. They didn't immediately say yes so I pulled out the big guns: God and prayer. For a period of time, I convinced my siblings that any time we were asked to say grace for dinner, to say this:

Dear Lord, Thank you for this food. Let us be homeschooled. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Eventually, my parents told us that after this next school year, we'd be pulled out of our local school and start schooling at home. We were all pretty excited but had no idea how it would all really play out.

Unique Parents/Teachers

My Mom graduated college as a Recreation Major. She learned how to be the best camp counselor, run a camp, and make everything fun. She brought all of that to everything we learned. When we were studying the biology of the ear, we made an ear you could walk through in the living room from bed sheets and toys and tools we found around the house that represented each part of the ear. When we studied American history, we went to DC for a week. When we studied birds, we toured North Texas finding State Parks with bird sanctuary programs.

My Dad was our "principal" but also taught our Bible class. We called it Wisdom Search. For over a decade, every morning at 7am, the whole family would come to the kitchen table and work through a passage that Dad had prepared for us starting earlier that morning. We did whole books like Revelation and the Gospels and studied Biblical characters lives. The only time we ever got to sleep in was when he was away on business.

Self Paced

Very quickly, one of the huge advantages we unlocked was the ability to move quickly when we understood things and to really take the time to dig into the subject when we didn't. In traditional school settings, the teacher will teach until the majority understand. But there is a certain percentage of the class that has already processed the lesson and another percentage that isn't ready to move on.

Unique to the Student

My three siblings and I all come from the same upbringing and moral foundation, but when it comes to how we learn, what we expect out of life, and the way we choose to spend our, I am not sure there could be four different humans. Our individuality is likely more pronounced because we never had to conform to fit into a specific archetype of schooling. We all did it differently.

• Me: The Entrepreneur - I started my lawn mowing and landscaping company Reliable Lawncare when I was 12 mowing lawns in the neighborhood. In Texas, the grass starts growing in March, so I was about to get out and canvas the neighborhood to start mowing lawns before any of the other kids were done for the spring semester. My mom let me work in the mornings and do school in the afternoons, especially on hot days. I learned more about the real world and how to do business with adults through Reliable Lawncare than I realized when I got to college and studied finance and business.
• My Sister: The Media Mogul - She always loved TV and Film more than the rest of us (She typed out an alphabetical list of every movie and TV recording we had and shared it with friends in case they wanted to borrow one of our VHSs) She interned for our church pastors radio broadcast two days a week and did her school on the other days.
• My brother: The Jock - He never had troubleth with school and was often done way ahead of schedule. He took the extra time to work out or travel with his baseball team for games around North Texas.
• My brother: The Creative - He moved at his own pace as well and spent way more time reading and taking photos than the rest of us.

Family Bonding  

We started homeschooling when I was in 6th grade, my sister was in 4th, my brother was in 1st, and my youngest brother wasn't born yet! All that time together at home and working on different assignments together throughout a week really forced us all to find a way to get over annoyances and petty arguments quickly. I am still really close with my sister and one of my brothers and I attribute a lo of that to the connection we made "at school."