When I was in elementary school, I went to a private school where my grandparents, somehow, were able to send me. We were not a wealthy family, by any means, and my mom and dad worked jobs that paid them as lower middle class, and we had what we needed.
Dad worked as a laborer at a steel mill in a furnace, making metal products like nails and fencing. My mom worked for the city probation department. My grandparents were less financially able than my parents but were generous and able to contribute to my education. I remember them paying about 250$ a month for my schooling. Today, 30 years later, that same school costs about two times as much a month, and the other private schools in our region cost 4 times as much.
I did not waste my grandparent's generosity nor my education. In school, I was fortunate to be a learner. No one ever pointed it out to me or told me so. I just loved books and learning, and anything and everything you could teach me. I was a dry sponge trying to soak up all the information I could find, like a thirsty person seeking water.
I used to think that my teachers were endless encyclopedias of ever flowing information. Otherwise, how could they come up with new daily lessons for every subject, day after day? I thought they were demigod geniuses who could think up an hour’s worth of teaching every day for every topic. I was amazed.
One day, when I was in my 20’s, I bought a set of books for my firstborn, to teach her letters and numbers. It just so happened that the books were from Abeka, which were the same books that I had in my own childhood school. I liked their content a lot, and the character-based teachings, so since I was already very familiar with those textbooks, I used them in my own teaching for my kids.
As I got to the elementary grade textbooks, I had the teacher’s guidebooks, and would look at them for pointers in the daily lesson plans. I would read over the notes and sections for a subject, like history. The teacher notes for the lessons were verbatim, exactly written like a script for a parent or teacher to read aloud to a class or a child. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me, because every day’s scripted notes for teachers/parents were exactly the words I remembered my teachers saying to me in elementary school — and it hit me…. They were reading scripted notes all those years!
This was an enormous lightbulb moment for me. I had a revelation that anyone who could read a script or a set of notes, could read the material to their children, the same way that my teacher’s read it to me. My teachers were undoubtedly capable and smart, but they were reading me a script all those years! What about my teacher’s magnificent mind? It all started to make sense. My mind was also just as magnificent.
This means that you too can teach your child, with the same guidebook notes that schoolteachers use — or any book you like. The playing field has been leveled, and you are on level ground with the education system, because the resources are there for you just as they are for them. In fact, you have an advantage over the education system, because you are the only expert on your child the world will ever know. You know them better than they know themselves, and no one is better qualified to decide what, how, and when they learn, than you.
Educating a child became far simpler for me that day. I have educated my own six children for 20 years, and I wish everyone could experience the freedom that comes with doing education differently.
We do not structure our days like a public school, because we are not a public school. We are a private home school with our own goals. We prize character, nature, music, and developing interests. Those goals make our day look something like this:
Character Training
Studies
Nature
Music
Your hobby/element/interest
Suffice it to say, you do not have to teach 8 standard subjects yourself. Do not believe the lie that you have to be all knowing and teach things like Calculus, Chemistry, Physics… we do not have expertise in all things. However, technology is a resource, and what a resource it is! You do not have to teach things you do not know. Technological resources exist to cover everything. There are online options for everything, including sites , tools, apps, videos, courses, etc. We have never lacked for a resource in 20 years. Co-ops are also a main resource for many families.
A Co-op is a group of families who have similar values and the adults teach subjects they are knowledgeable about, sharing the load of education with other families. Some meet once a week, some every day. We have enjoyed a local fine arts co-op that teaches music classes, art, drama, theatre, etc. once a week and has all the usual events that a student could ever want to go to. They also have sports teams that compete with local schools. The resources are there all around you, with co-ops and technology tools.
Have you ever wondered, how do people homeschool and how do they actually make sure their kids know what they need to know? Have you been told any of the main myths about home education, that send people running from it? Here are my rebuttals to those myths: https://medium.com/@crystalstafford35/6-myths-about-home-schooling-58a290881a69
Have you ever wondered why it is that we can go through 12 years of the public school system and be trained by it but say that we don’t feel prepared to go through that same set of books with our kids? Why would we want to send our kids back to an institution that failed to prepare us adequately to help our own kids? It doesn’t make sense if you think on it.
Mentoring your child really easier than you think, when you have a guidebook or plan. For any curious parent who may want to give a more free, more individualized education to their children, I wrote a guidebook for you.
The main point of it all is that our children are created as individuals with abilities and talents, personalities, interests and needs that are unlike anyone else. They are one of a kind. That individuality should be preserved at all costs, and it is nearly impossible to retain it and keep it from being damaged or lost when they are in a system or way of education that teaches them to conform and doesn’t give them time for using their abilities and skills. Children who are very young have been clinically tested and found to have genius capabilities of their own kind. But after going through 12 years of the school system, only 10% were found to have retained their unique abilities and skills at the age of 18. This is because when children are forced to do things that consume all of their time, that don’t involve their giftings or skills, they become dormant or inactive.
Children need time in their interests to create, explore, and be free. If they don’t, they lose the ability they were born with. They learn to forget.
If you would like to know the specifics of how to make it work, what a day looks like, and where to start, I have two books for you. One is short and sweet, the other is longer and more intensive. They come as Ebooks and print books.
The short and sweet guidebook, is “Where Do I Start? A Homeschool Guide Book” on Amazon, here : https://a.co/d/3pPuHWa
The longer book is “Liberated Learning: Rethink Education, Change the World”, on Amazon here: https://a.co/d/6PPvK0k
I want you to know, whether you read my book or not, that you are the right person for your child. There is a reason that they were given to you, and not to someone else. You have something important that they need for you to pass on to them. Like the butterfly effect. see here: https://youtu.be/mo6fBAT8f-s
Maybe it's a belief in them that they can do what they were born to do. Maybe it is an ethic or idea that you are supposed to instill into that child. You can build them up like no one else can and give them the rare opportunity to create the kind of life they want to live. A life that is outside of the confines of a system that is lagging far behind their capabilites. Your child does not have to be one of those who are left with far less than they deserve. We are fortunate and gifted to have the amazing option to create what we want our family and life to look like. We do not have to fall in line in a cookie cutter system designed for a population. We can be individuals who develop our one-of-a-kind abilities to help build the world and give it the variety it so desperately needs.
Our children’s individuality has the innate potential to change the world, and for that reason alone, it is worth all the effort we can give to see it happen. That mission will change the world for the better, in a thousand ways and for a thousand generations. I’m hoping for that kind of world in the future, where our children become the adults who have the strategies and insights that no one else has, because they were allowed to think freely for themselves.
When you give your child, the freedom to learn differently, they will be an adult who thinks outside the box of the culture, and for that difference I will gladly pay the price. I am confident that this is the way we create the best possible future, as stewards of our children and their potential.
Xo
Crystal
