Our Year of School (After 11 Years of Homeschooling)

At the beginning of last year our family took a big step.  We put our oldest two girls (16 and 14 at the time) into public school.  Every step along this journey we have prayed for God's guidance in what is best for our daughters.  It was a sudden decision, but we realized that if our older girls wanted to "try out" school, this was the time to do it. (We particularly didn't want to wait until year 12 for this experiment, since the stress would be too much!)

So, I thought I'd share what the experience has been like for our family.

First of all, the school is tiny.  Here in Australia, we just have primary school (prep to grade 6) and high school (grades 7 to 12)... except Tasmania, but that's another story!  This year 7 to 12 high school had under 200 students.  For our introverted grade 11 daughter, most of her classes were 6 to 8 students.  I think the biggest class for our grade 9 was 15 students.  This was one of the things that made us happy to try out public school for our girls.  In our previous hometown, public school was NOT an option (among other things, drugs were a significant issue in our area) - we considered a private school, but couldn't really afford it for all five girls, even just for a couple of years each.

So, what was GOOD about school for us was this:
Opportunities we couldn't provide.  Both because of government subsidies and sponsoring by community groups, our girls got to participate in camps, excursions and activities that are beyond our family to provide.  This included extensive skiing for our grade 9 (there was a cost, but nowhere near what it would have cost us ourselves), a 9-day camp in the nearby mountains with cool activities, a trip to art galleries three hours away for our grade 11 girl, sporting competitions, the opportunity to learn new sports like badminton (apart from the skiing, the costs were fully covered by sources outside our family)...  In some cases, as homeschoolers, we find ourselves limited by cost, but sometimes our limitations are logistics.  Schools are working with students all around the same age, and they have extra adults and resources available. Let's face it, managing the needs of a wide range of ages without backup people to help out is TOUGH.  It was exciting to see our girls have a chance to do things that our family just can't do.

A new set of challenges.  I have been thrilled to see my grade 11 daughter try out lino cuts and painting in art.  She has put a lot of work into her art over the years, but has mostly stuck with drawing.  Being in an art class pushed her to try some new things.  Both girls have improved enormously in their writing skill because they have been pushed by someone else.

New skills. In theory, my husband could teach our girls woodwork and metal work, but his health has been a real obstacle for many years, so it was great to see our grade 9 daughter learning these skills.  Visual Communications was another great subject for our grade 11 - she has learnt a whole bunch of technical drawing skills that neither my husband or I have.  To be honest, this had never been an area I considered exploring with her.

A wider social network.  In the beginning, our grade 9 girl loved meeting a lot more people her age and forming some friendships.  There aren't many teen homeschoolers in our area, so she had been feeling a bit isolated.

A break for Mama.  Even though my "big girls" aren't really hard work, I was surprised to find that I felt like a weight had been lifted off me this year.  I was struggling to give everyone in the family the attention they needed, and somehow having just three girls at home for most of the day helped.  I could focus my attention on the young ones in the morning, and then the older girls in the afternoon after they got home. 

So there were some really positive aspects to sending our oldest girls to school last year.  This year, though, the oldest is back at home, and our grade 10 is doing just two days a week at school.  On the flip side, especially as the year progressed, there were some challenges that affirmed that homeschooling for the most part has been the right thing for our family.

So much pressure.  In different ways, both girls felt it.  Pressure to "keep up" with class work.  Pressure to perform to a certain standard, regardless of natural ability or otherwise.  Pressure to appear to be socialising correctly.  Some teachers just couldn't accept that my eldest was happy spending some of her lunchtimes in the library... or that "collaborating" was not going to help her do better at maths. 

Homework and busywork.  Weekly Math and English worksheets were a school requirement for my year 9, but they were rarely marked and seemed to have little relationship with what was actually being learned in class.  Traditionally hands-on classes still had what I consider an unreasonable amount of written work.  The homework frequently interfered with our family life outside of school hours.

Considering all the time spent in class, they really didn't learn much.  I have been very relaxed in my approach to homeschooling (OK, so not in the very early years, but for many years now.)  We have covered the basics at a pretty relaxed pace and I have tried to focus more heavily on "fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom/knowledge" and life skills with plenty of time for interest-led reading.  Surprisingly, considering how long they spent in class, they just didn't seem to learn very much this year, apart from in Math and Chemistry.

It just got in the way sometimes. Although they're old enough to be at home on their own, I didn't like the girls to come home to an empty house.  Suddenly, I was trying to fit outings for the rest of us into an 5 hour window (considering travel time).  That was actually surprisingly restrictive quite often.  Also, trying to organize eye appointments, family holidays, and shopping for clothing got a whole lot more complicated.  They were also quite worn out at the end of a day of school, so I lost two of my best helpers at home, which in some ways put more work back on me.

School lunches. Trying to provide lunches that are nourishing AND enjoyable is so much harder when they have to spend the day in a lunchbox.  Lunch is SO much easier at home!

Socializing was hard.  Not all hard is bad, so this was an important challenge for them to face, but both girls found it difficult to spend day after day with people whose conversation revolved around technology (their phones and computer games, not useful technological advances), modern music, celebrities and gossip.  My year 9 enjoyed connecting with more people, but in the end it just got hard.

It got tiring.  By the end of the year, they were really exhausted.  It's hard to define just what it is about school that does this, but I remember being tired all the time as a teen.  Maybe it's being an introvert in such an extroverted world.  I don't know...

So, in summary, I'm really glad the girls had this experience.  We felt that God led us in this direction, just as He had led us to homeschool for all the years to this point.    There were some great experiences in it all, and we have also come to appreciate how blessed we have been to be able to homeschool for so many years.  I do look forward to a day when all our girls are making their own way in the world, but in the meantime, I feel incredibly blessed to have such an integral part in their education.  I am so thankful that we are given the time and capacity to pour the teaching of Godly values into their lives.  I hope this rather long "report" is helpful in your homeschooling journey!