Hello!
I’m so pleased to be here today!
You
see, I’m 20 years old right now and I've been homeschooled my entire life.
Today, I want to talk about my story with you all.
My
sister (who is 4 years older than me) went to school for a couple years and I
even went to something close to pre-K. We went to a waldorf school (resource
link: http://www.waldorf.ca/index.cfm?id=19491)
and when it came time for me to enroll, my parents looked at the cost. It was
going to be close to their mortgage per month! So my mom decided to take on
schooling her kids herself.
Truth
be told, I don’t remember much of this, I don’t even remember much of our first
years of schooling but I do remember turning our front room into a school room.
The walls were green and both my sister and I had our own small desks, and
there was a black board. That much I remember.
We had
a daily word, and I remember my mom using a moon to help me remember the letter
“C”. My mother read to us every day and as my sister and I got older we began
reading.
As we
grew older some things changed. We started off going to the school room every
morning at 10:00 AM and having a curriculum. When I was older my mother decided
to go back to school and further her own education, she also decided it was time to change the
schooling more to our style. Instead of leaning about lots of things I didn’t
care about she let me delve into mythology, math, and writing. Those were my
passions and my parents encouraged me to fallow them.
Truth
be told, some of my skills lacked. I always had trouble with spelling and
grammar, and I wasn’t able to read well until I was 8-years-old, but by the
time I was 10 I could read Lord of the Rings. I also delved into the world of
psychology (Do you know many 12-year-olds who know Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs?)
By the
time I was 14 my mother was accepted to university in Ottawa, my sister was
already in Vancouver in acting school, which was her dread. My parents and I,
along with our 4 dogs and 3 cats loaded into a truck and made our way from the
grater Toronto area to the woods of Quebec.
We
stayed in a 150 year old log cabin as we waited for out other house to sell,
during that year I put traditional subjects on hold as I gained more
responsibility and we learned what it was like to be on a farm. With goats,
geese and turkeys everyday was a learning experience. We cut trees for our
fireplace and spent many hours hiking.
It was
then that my writing really took off.
I decided that I wanted to be a writer, and I was going to become one. I
studied writing, I read classic books, and I started improving every part of my
spelling that I could find.
After
two years in Quebec we moved to Saskatchewan. Yes! Again, we packed up our
stuff, and my parents and I climbed into the truck with our cats and our dogs
and made the four day trek and settled into Saskatchewan living!
A lot
of people ask me if I regret not going to school, and the simple answer is no.
I went once with a friend, just for a day, and I realized how glad I was that I
had never gone to school. I realized how lucky I had been.
I've
been so lucky to do so much with my life already. Having family in Ontario, and
having the ability to go visit without worrying about school has meant that I
could visit my family whenever I wanted, as well as stay with them for months,
or fly to Vancouver for a week to see my sister while she wasn't busy. Being
homeschooled gave me the opportunity to work on my writing, and have 5 works
published in two years. It’s given me the opportunity to really bound with my
family and apply myself to the subjects that matter most to me.
But
you may wonder, what will I do without a high school degree? While, truth be
told there are lots of things you can do but I wouldn't know! A couple mothers
after I turned 18 I took my high school equivalency test and passed with above
average!
I
would like to leave with a small word of advice:
Parents,
homeschooling can be hard! I've been able to hear all about it from other
parents but it can also give your children such an amazing learning
experience.
