Home-schooled Kid: Did I Miss Out?

Grace Rood
Junior - Elementary Education major
University of Northern Colorado, Greeley
E-mail rood5559@blue.unco.edu

School had a large impact on my life. Until I was eighteen, I did not experience education in the traditional sense. My homeroom was my bedroom; I had economics in the kitchen and science class was often held outside. I studied the usual subjects: math, reading, science, history, and English. I also studied some non-traditional subjects: Bible, canning, sewing, and cooking. My mother taught me to love reading. My father taught me how to find answers to my questions, and my siblings taught me how to explain concepts in a way they could understand. Being taught at home offered me experiences that I would not have received if I had attended a traditional school.

Unlike children who attended traditional schools, I was around my mother, siblings, and other adults all the time. While I did have friends my own age, I interacted mostly with adults. Because my school schedule was flexible, often I found myself helping an elderly person with yard work or cleaning. My father's boss asked my brother and I to help sort cattle or watch gates when the pens were being cleaned during the morning and afternoon.

My mother taught me until I reached junior high and then my father took over. He assigned the subjects my brother and I would study for the year, bought our textbooks, and helped review for and grade our tests. But we were responsible to make our lesson plans and finish our textbooks within the school year.

At the beginning of a school year, I would find out how many sections or chapters a textbook had. Then I would figure out how many sections or chapters I would have to complete each week to finish the book. At the beginning of every week, I wrote in a day-planner what sections I was to cover on what day. At a traditional school a teacher would do this for his or her students. Making my lesson plans while still in high school has prepared me for making lesson plans for my students when I become an elementary teacher.

The area I lived in, Greeley, Colorado, has a strong agricultural base. My house was only ten or fifteen minutes from downtown Greeley; however, my father worked at a dairy farm and we had many friends in the agricultural world. Because our school schedule was flexible, my brother was able to work for a sheep rancher and learn mechanical and animal husbandry skills. His boss was his mentor, and they are still close friends. Most teenage boys do not have friends who are old enough to be their grandfathers. If my bother had not been home schooled, he would not have been able to work days and study at night. His boss would have hired someone else, and my brother would not have developed a relationship with him. As for me, the flexibility gave me a lot more time to read. I read most of L.M. Montgomery's novels by the time I was twelve. When I was thirteen, I discovered To Kill a Mockingbird, Roll of Thunder, Mark Twain's novels, and C.S. Lewis' Narnia. I started writing stories to fill the time between trips to the library. My first story was called "Doris the Farm Girl"; it was based on my favorite aunt, Doris, and life on a farm. There was a fire in the barn, and of course Doris came to the rescue and saved all the animals. The second story I wrote was "Sarah McCormic and the Rustlers." At the time prices for Holstein cattle were high, and several calves had disappeared from the dairy farm where my father was a herdsman. I created Sarah, a spunky cowgirl about my own age who had four older brothers and whose mother died when she was born. Naturally, Sarah solved the mystery; someone was stealing her father's cattle and she caught him.

There were quite a few homeschoolers in the Greeley area. Steve Ong, pastor of Victory Baptist Church and home-schooled father, formed a one-room school where home-schooled kids could, for a small fee, take classes at church on Wednesdays. Usually computer, choir, art, and English were the classes offered. The instructors were homeschool parents with teaching degrees or expertise in art, science, English, music, computers, or Spanish. One of the teachers was Mrs. Carol Willis. She taught several English classes and two years of French classes. The two of us hit it off almost immediately. While my mother had given me the basics of writing, Mrs. Willis taught me how to write. She taught me to evaluate my own work and to recognize the weaknesses of my writing style. Mostly, she encouraged me to keep writing. Mrs. Willis graded every one of my papers from the time I was fourteen until I graduated at eighteen. After I graduated from high school, we kept in touch, exchanging topics, ideas, and things we had written.

I think being home schooled helped and encouraged me to write. When I was lonely, bored, tired, or just plain sick of the way my life was going at the moment, I would create a world that I could escape to. I would become "Doris" saving her father's farm or "Sarah" fighting rustlers and earning the respect of her brothers. I wrote letters to my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, reliving trips to visit them. I wrote a lot of papers for history, escaping to a different time and finding out what it would be like to live a hundred years earlier.

My friends ask me if I feel I missed out on some important things because I was home schooled. I usually answer that I did miss the prom and homecoming, and I missed being involved in sports. However, I also missed out on drugs, peer pressure, and embarrassment over my parents, as well as spending two hours a day doing homework after spending eight hours in class. So when I'm asked if I feel as though I missed out on a lot, I answer no. After all, who else but a home-schooled kid can have geometry lessons in a feed bunk with a 4-H heifer breathing down his or her neck? I may have missed prom and football games, but I have had valuable experiences and relationships that I would not have had otherwise. I would not be as close to my brother and two younger sisters if I hadn't spent almost every waking hour with them when I was younger. I would not have had much time with my father if he were not my junior high and high school teacher. Being a home-schooled kid is an experience I would not trade for a thousand prom dresses.

This experience helped me decide to become a teacher. I learned early on that I liked helping my younger sisters learn their lessons, I liked to learn, and I liked to share what I had learned. Because I was home schooled, my biggest challenge in becoming a teacher is I'm not sure how a traditional elementary classroom is run. However, I am determined to overcome this obstacle and become the best educator I can be.

Academic Exchange Extra invites reader responses to any writings in this issue--especially articles advancing the scholarly debate of issues raised.

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