“The only thing in his sock drawer is a sandwich!” my brother said as he frantically prepared for school one morning. It was Holy Week, and he was looking for socks. He couldn’t find any in his dresser, so my mom told him to look in his brother’s drawers. He found only a sandwich, forgotten by our exhausted brother one night after services. We were trying to juggle the demanding work of private school with the many services we had during that week.
A few months ago, I wrote about common homeschooling myths. Now, I want to talk about the homeschooling reality, specifically, why we really homeschool.
I made the unusual switch from public school to homeschool for high school. Typically, many teens decide to do the vise-versa, wanting a “normal high school experience.” There seems to be this common belief that you can’t have a standard and exciting education when you’re homeschooled. I’m here to talk about why I switched and how such stereotypes terrified me at first.
Two years ago, I made the decision to leave public school to pursue a classical homeschool education. This was a difficult, but ultimately extremely edifying process. I chose the online homeschooling route: taking classes with online Christian academies. I was very unsure of what to expect when I first began this journey, so I hope this article will offer some clarity and encouragement to those exploring homeschooling, specifically the online option. I will elaborate on the reasoning behind my switch to classical homeschooling, the Orthodox homeschool pedagogy, and its effect on my spiritual life.
In the Prologue of Ochrid, St. Nikolai tells a story of a monk talking to St. Arsenius about reading the Holy Scriptures. If you want to read the whole story, you can find it in the reflections for May 8th. The exhortation given by St. Arsenius to the monk is to “just read.”
The centrality of our educational philosophy parallels the ethos of this same idea. While the exchange centered on the power of scriptures despite our lack of understanding, it has a similar mechanical process to the way we learn in general. We put in the work, and the results will come.
It is Holy Week, and like most of us my family is pushing through, attending daily services. Only complication: my husband and I work on average 50 hours a week, and our kids attend public school. By Thursday, my eldest, a second grader, is falling asleep in class. He tells his concerned teacher that he is tired because we have been in church every evening. To which his teacher replied: “Tell your mom school is more important than church.”
Hearing that from my child did something to me.
I love to write stories about our life in Alaska; homesteading; homeschooling; home birthing; business; entrepreneurship; houses; finding out that Christ truly loved me; breaking myself of soap operas, then TV, then talk radio, then Facebook/Instagram, and finally radio music. I love writing recipes, specifically good fasting ones (hopefully I can write a cookbook, God willing!), and generally giving people practical advice on all of these topics–oh and making sure to include lots of run-on sentences! I have dreamed of being the next Orthodox Christian version of “Dear Abby”, not that I’d be very good at it: I seem to love sticking my foot in my mouth and have strong opinions on most everything....much to my husband’s chagrin.
Today, I am writing the story of how my husband tricked me into homeschooling our kids.
Why are many Orthodox families turning towards homeschooling their children?
As the Director of an online school for homeschooling families, I talk with many parents of homeschoolers, and I also work directly with their children, so I have a unique window into the lives of these families.
It’s important to recognize that families across the nation and the world choose homeschooling for a multitude of reasons.
