Why Choose Homeschooling? What is Homeschooling, Anyway?

Why homeschool?

Before we begin, homeschooling is easily not for everyone. What I’m not going to do is tell you that homeschooling is a better option than going to a public school. I’m also not going to tell you why you should choose homeschooling. That’s for you to decide. I’m going to give you facts about homeschooling and reasons why it may or may not be a more successful option for you.

I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this article you have at least some interest in homeschooling. What prompted that interest? You could be sick of the busy work assigned in school that teaches you nothing and would like to have more free time to pursue your interests. Maybe you feel unchallenged – or too challenged – by the rigor of curriculum in public schools. You might only be looking for an end to the amount of straight up annoying things that happen within public schools: fights, bullying, and dealing with people who seemingly hate you for no reason. Determine the reason you’ve become interested in homeschooling. From there, it will be a lot easier for you to decide if you’ll do well as a homeschooler. After you’ve determined why you want to pursue homeschooling, the next (if not the first) natural question, “what is homeschooling?” becomes a lot easier to answer.

Okay. But what, exactly, is homeschooling?

What indeed? It’s whatever you want it to be. There is no real “standard” or “stereotypical homeschool”. The true beauty of homeschooling is in its potential for flexibility and customization.

Homeschooling is customized to fit the needs of the student. It’s up to you or your parent(s) to decide what you learn, how you learn, where you learn, and why you learn it. Homeschooling is choosing to take control of your education. If that sounds a little corny to you, consider the implications of your education in general. If you’re in public school, you spend close to eight hours a day, five days a week in school. This doesn’t include any after-school activities or commuting. You do this for twelve years (I’m obviously generalizing here). Homeschooling allows you more control over what you do with those twelve years.

This is definitely not how it works

Some homeschoolers are taught directly by their parents. This is a rare phenomenon even though it is commonly misconstrued as the definition of homeschooling. One of the main general criticisms of homeschooling is that parents “are not qualified” to teach their children. Homeschoolers can take classes from co-ops, which might be found through a homeschool group and sometimes resemble small schools. Co-ops are groups of homeschoolers who learn together. They designate parents and perhaps private tutors as teachers for classes that take place at a certain location. Many homeschoolers choose to take their classes online. Some homeschool kids take dual credit classes at a college near to where they live. Some hire private teachers. Most homeschoolers use more than one of these approaches, depending on the subject, grade level, or other factors such as availability or cost.

There are a couple things you’ll want to consider no matter why you want to homeschool. 

• If you plan on graduating, you’ll want to keep your state or country’s graduation requirements in mind. If you’re college-bound, you might want to consider shooting for the higher grad requirements. These vary by area, make sure you understand your graduation requirements to avoid unfortunate situations down the road. Visit your state's board of education website for more information.
• There are legalities you'll also need to be aware of. Homeschooling laws vary greatly by state. For example, in Pennsylvania, it's required to submit an Affidavit to the local school district every year. You'll have to work on the required subjects for a certain amount of hours and log your reading material. 3rd, 5th, and 8th graders are required to take standardized tests. All of this information as well as the test scores and some work samples goes into a portfolio that gets evaluated yearly by a qualified professional who ensures adequate academic progress is being made. In Texas, you don't have to worry about any of these things.* You need to understand your state's homeschooling requirements in order to homeschool. The HSLDA's website is a good starting point for accomplishing this.

What do I do for curriculum?

Again, there is no straightforward answer to this. Each of the many styles of homeschooling has different kinds of curriculum. You first need to decide why you want to be homeschooled. Then, choose the style of homeschooling that interests you the most or you’re most comfortable with pursuing. After that, your curriculum options will already be narrowed down significantly.

Keeping graduation requirements in mind, jot down or think up what kinds of courses and classes you want to take. From there, there are a few paths you could take. Common types of homeschooling include:

• Charlotte Mason  (faith based, "living methods")
• What is the Charlotte Mason Method?
• Unschooling  (minimalistic structure, learn by doing and living)
• http://unschooling.com/ 
• What is Unschooling?
• Eclectic  (mixes and matches styles according to child/subject)
• Classical  (rhetoric, logic, literature)
• What is Classical Education? 
• See The Well-Trained Mind
• Virtual school (online public school, not homeschool, but school at home)
• About.com - Online Charter Schools
• Agora Cyber Charter School - Pennsylvania
• Connections Academy - USA
• Unit studies (tie every subject into the current theme or topic being studied)
• Unit Study Approach 

If you do a quick search for “homeschool curriculum”, you will find a good amount of faith-based programs. If this is up your alley, there’s no problem. If you’re looking for secular materials, never fear. There are a lot, you just have to be more specific in your search or use products that are not solely marketed to homeschoolers. Many of the major homeschooling websites will link you to curriculum by subject and grade level. You should be able to find a decent amount of resources that include curriculum reviews and trial versions of different products. If you’d like to do more heavy research before committing to a class or curriculum provider I would suggest using the trials, especially if you’re trying to decide between two similar products.

A popular website that offers occasional discounts on curriculum is the Homeschool Buyer's Co-op.

If you're completely unsure of where to start, homeschool.com has an extensive list of curriculum with reviews and so does homeschoolreviews.com. You might want to consider using free materials as curriculum. If you know anything about MOOCs, those can work great if you're self-motivated enough to utilize them. Look around and try not to get overwhelmed by the amount of choices. Once you decide what type of homeschooling curriculum you want to use (online, physical workbooks, co-op classes, virtual schools) you've done half the work.

Most of the information you're going to find is geared toward parents. A vast majority of the prominent homeschooling websites are outdated looking and mom-ly but they're certainly well-intentioned and most have decent and helpful content. Attempt patience, hopefully in the near future the general presence of homeschooling will update itself. In one of my upcoming posts, I'll shoot you a few ideas to get your parents on board with homeschooling if they aren't already.

* I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not sure how often homeschooling laws get updated so check your state's homeschooling laws and grad requirements before making a decision to homeschool.