My background in education
I attended college at Appalachian State University, where I graduated with a degree in elementary education. Following graduation, I was a public school fourth grade teacher for two years.
After marrying my husband, we moved to a different part of NC for his work. He was hired as a children’s pastor there, and I interviewed for and received a job as the fourth grade teacher at the church’s private school.
Once our first daughter was born, I made the choice to become a stay at home mom. I had always planned on and dreamed of being a stay at home mom. I felt blessed and excited to be able to watch her grow up firsthand!
With a change of jobs for my husband, we moved back home. As our girls grew, the time came for them to enter preschool and they joined our church’s program, which met for a few hours, five days a week.
“Do you plan on homeschooling your girls?”
I can’t tell you how many well-meaning individuals asked me if our long-term plans included homeschooling the girls!
And my answer was always the same: “I could never homeschool after being a classroom teacher!”
To be completely honest, it seemed nearly impossible. Like any other well-meaning mom, I scoured the aisles at Dollar Tree and found supplies that Pinterest told me I could use to preschool-homeschool my young kids. We tried so many various activities but they always flopped and I felt discouraged and like I had failed.
Because of my time in classroom settings, I wrongfully assumed that homeschool should look like a school classroom. No matter how many fun posters and workbooks I bought, my preschoolers were not buying it.
Enter: Covid
Eight months in to our oldest daughter’s kindergarten year in public school and our middle daughter’s first year in preschool, Covid shut everything down and turned our lives upside down. All of a sudden, I found myself homeschooling.
Funny how that works, isn’t it?
At the start, I was not sold on the idea. We were doing virtual school for what we thought would be a couple weeks. You know how that story ends: the entire school year ended up wrapping up online. Many children thrived on virtual school. Our child was not one of them.
She and I spent what felt like entire days at the kitchen table, hunched over the laptop, with one or both of us in tears because it felt so stressful and difficult to accomplish kindergarten online. Please, please, please hear me on this: it was not the school’s fault, nor her teacher’s fault. “Unprecedented” became everyone’s favorite word to throw around during the pandemic, and I think the school system did what they could to continue education. I don’t suppose most schools had previously considered what they’d do if students had to learn online for the remainder of a school year due to a world-wide pandemic!
The time came to finish out the school year and decide what first grade would look like. I had told my husband many times, “I wish I could just teach her my own curriculum in my own way,” as we struggled through virtual school.
We anticipated that the 2020-2021 school year would be much like the previous, with online learning at least a portion of the time. After much discussion and prayer and research, we took the plunge. We decided that I would go for it, buy some curriculum, and start homeschooling for first grade!
Our homeschool today
Obviously, we have this whole homeschool thing figured out and everything is smooth and perfect now that we’ve had three years to work on it, right?
Well. No.
But we are learning day by day, month by month, year by year!
We decided to mix things up a bit (haha) and have another baby! That baby is now a toddler, and he has taught us how to be flexible in our homeschool day. We might start at the table and end on the floor, surrounded by toy cars and dinosaurs.
Some days look like me working with one daughter while the other entertains our little guy.
Some other days, we do what we can. It eventually becomes clear that it’s just not going to happen that morning. We pause and pick back up after lunch while he’s napping.
And I believe that all of that is perfectly fine.
Lessons learned
Is this how I had pictured our school days being structured? No, it’s honestly not. Regardless of how chaotic the days seem, the girls remain largely unbothered my their little brother’s interruptions and I’m reminded of how blessed I am to have [typically] patient and sweet and understanding daughters.
As of the time that I’m writing this, we are on our summer vacation. The girls completed third grade and kindergarten a couple weeks ago. We are now enjoying free time, outings, and adventures that come with summer break. I know that next year will bring new challenges, new blessings, and a new figuring-out-of-things with our little guy.
It’s stressful at times, and I’m not always the gracious homeschooling mom that I like to think that I am in my head, but there is grace from God and grace from myself. As parents, we are always learning in this thing called “life.” That may look like packing up your kids and hustling them to the school bus every morning, or clearing off breakfast dishes on your kitchen table and laying out your workbooks for your own school day. There is no one right way to do it, and we can have grace on each other too as we compare our own stories!
Your turn
Tell me in the comments: Where are you in your own homeschooling/education journey? Do you have any questions about homeschooling, any fears or hesitations?