Homeschooling for 9 Years: Lesson Number 1 of 3 - Homeschooling Is Not Easy

Lesson 1 of 3 - Homeschooling Is Not Easy

The kids have grown, I mean, not into full adulthood yet, but they have grown into older kids, bigger - taller. A seventh grade daughter and a second grade son which I fondly call The Daughter - The Son. One is an independent learner, the other one, the younger one, needing moderate supervision. "And we are thriving and not just surviving in this jungle we often call home?" Thus, I would often convince encourage myself with these words. Nine wonderful years full of God's daily graces and now we're running on our tenth year! Indeed, God's grace has gotten us this far. And our learnings, the life-lessons we acquired as we journeyed the less-travelled path of homeschooling in the Philippines...priceless. We wouldn't have it any other way.


A Little Disclaimer

Hear me on this one. My heart sincerely prays that as I open the door of our little homeschool through this platform, may the Lord Jesus Christ be the focal point of my e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. here...the before, the after, and in-between. And when I say, "through the grace of God," may it truly sound like it's "through the grace of God" alone, period. I take no credit for those nine long years of thriving and not just surviving. Therefore, I am comfortable in saying that I am not an authority in homeschooling. My Hunny and I are life-long learners or homeschool-hackers if that's acceptable. We both have a truckload of mistakes and mishaps along the way. We' re a work in progress. The fact of the matter is, we're still here and we're still doing this. Our learnings are invaluable. It may not have come by leaps and bounce  ( ? ) but hey,  like our own children, we've also grown.  So, when asked real quick, what we've learned from our homeschool journey, here are my most important three.

Lesson Number 1
Homeschooling Is Not Easy


Our first few years of homeschooling didn't come as easy as ABC especially on our first year. We went independent. Meaning, we went ahead doing school at home with Moi, The Mom as our then Unica Hija's primary teacher. The Daughter then just turned four years old and was an early reader from six months ago. We found this an advantage on the areas of Language Arts and Math because the Doll can read and understand instructions on her own and worked with minimal supervision. But "school," as we all know is not just about reading and comprehension. So, with open arms we embraced that wide spectrum of home-educating our own child ranging from character building, academics, to life-skills. 

Our first year felt like conquering a new frontier where the land was barren which needed to be cultivated for planting. We plowed through the fallow ground and watered it with tears of joy and tears of dismay. It had been a ferris wheel ride! She was young and smart and she wasn't also ready for doing "big" stuff and we expected much from her. You know the embarrassment of guilty first-time parents like us when we expected too much from our panganay, our first born? But aren't all first-time parents like that? When we over-stuff their brains with too much information and when we over-teach them with concepts to learn so that they can out-do other kids their age, a cut above the rest? Our patience was put to the test, put to the test ( repetition intentional) daily. We were afraid of failure; we were afraid to be criticized because we thought that as homeschoolers, we ought to live up to a certain level of sophistication and excellence and aren't we suppose to out-perform our conventional school counterparts? So, we thought. Talk about paranoia! But despite our shortcomings as parent - teachers, at the end of every loooong day... one thing remained that kept us grounded in our commitment to home-educate our child; our desire to become our child's primary influence on character building and to lead her to our  Lord Jesus Christ. 


On our second year, homeschooling got even better! We started loosening up a bit. I was five months heavy with our second child when The Hunny and I finally decided to enroll The Daughter at a homeschool provider accredited by the Department of Education based in Manila. What does this mean? It simply means that when one is enrolled in the homeschool program, the homeschool provider, being DepEd accredited, provides all the necessary school records when needed, for example if the parents decide to enroll their kids at a conventional school. The parent-teachers on the other hand, are required to submit their child's quarterly portfolio which is a compilation of samples of student' s day-to-day activities at school. Worksheets, quizzes, tests, videos of conversations with your child, recitals, stage performances, swimming lessons, photos of field trips, the works! So, accountability is at work here. 


We were then assigned our family academic consultant that guided us in our homeschool journey. It was a huge blessing to be under a homeschool program like this where we get encouragement from other Filipino homeschooling families like us. We get to pray for one another, we get to see we're not "lone rangers" in this path and that there are also families like us who go through the same challenges everyday, families that walk the same walk and talk the same talk. So, it's a blessing to be assured that we're on the same boat! We also get to swap books with other families on the program, buy or sell pre-loved items. Most of our books are published in the US, it was the most prudent thing to do especially when you're a one-income-family, you have more than one kid to teach, and you're on a strict budget. We had the bonus of being able to ask our academic consultant basically anything under the sun! And because we're based in the province, we were categorized as a "remote family" where we received one - on - one consultation via mobile or land phones, SMS, email, or Skype. We felt we're in good hands. 


The first few years were our most memorable years, our "fidgety years!" Our biggest challenge was to create a rhythm around our daily activities since "school" wasn't the only activity that we do. We're also involved at our local church where I serve as worship pastor and D-group mentor while The Hunny travelled a lot bringing home the bacon. So, we have school, home. But most of the time we're not literally "just" home finishing our worksheets. After a while, we started to pick up on our own rhythm until we  kinda got the hang of it, and things started to fall into place. 

Tomorrow, maybe? 

Lesson 1 of 3 - Homeschooling Is Not Easy
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