Home educating is wonderful; inspirational, exciting, fun. Like being let out of a prison you never knew you were in, freed up to make your world your educational oyster with pearls of learning to discover. It’s unimaginably liberating.
But it is not easy. Apart from all the usual considerations like, how will they learn? How will I manage being together all the time? How will they socialise? Will they be failures? Etc. there’s also the need to summon up the courage to do something different from the crowd.
Maybe that’s one of the biggest challenges: Finding courage; finding the courage to be vulnerable. Whenever we start something new or different to the norm we feel vulnerable – and home educating is certainly new to most. Vulnerability is not a nice feeling.
But don’t let that stop you. Feeling vulnerable about home educating is not necessarily a bad thing. This is because it puts you in the same shoes as your learner consequently helps you remember what it’s like. Any sort of learner is vulnerable, but most of us forget that, being so far removed from our school days (if we went of course).
In order to learn you have to accept there’s stuff you don’t know and that’s disempowering. Kids are always put in that position, we expect them to accept it, yet equally forget how uncomfortable that can make us feel, especially in the hands of an insensitive teacher. Not knowing stuff can make you feel awkward, inferior, even stupid as some are made to feel in school. None of this is helpful.
With home educating you have the opportunity to make it different for your kids. You can be vulnerable together! You can be intuitive and sensitive and encouraging – that’s the climate in which everyone, kids and adults, learn best.
As you learn and find your way into home educating you may feel scared and anxious and doubtful and hesitant. You may fear what everyone is going to say, fearful of ‘doing the right thing’. Everyone always does. But those who didn’t let that horrible feeling of vulnerability stop them have gone on to raise intelligent, educated, social and hard working young people who contribute to society as much as any child educated in school.
So blessings for the courage to be vulnerable. When you take the step and make the switch you are truly courageous.
Be proud, and if you don’t feel confident, hold judgement and bluff! That way you’ll help yourself (it really works) and you’ll help others to find the courage too.
Good luck!
(There are many pieces in my books, especially the latest; A Home Education Notebook, that will help you with the above concerns so it might be reassuring to have one to hand to help you over those tricky moments. Also see the book below; although not about home education it’s still an interesting read).
Ross Mountney's Notebook 