Things About My Carol: Part 8: "She Had Always Hoped To Raise Weird Kids"

The things Carol was most looking forward to were growing our own crops, making our own hemp clothing, living in a commune-like environment, becoming uber-fundamentalist, and having kids with such impaired social skills that people would think that we were raising a couple of dullards.

So, we obviously chose to homeschool.

Jessica could do 19th-century primary school work while wearing the prairie dress she had made in seamstress class. Michael could study animal husbandry while taking care of our two pigs, Copernicus and Amelia (he named her after Amelia Earhart with the confident hope that, one day, pigs could fly.)

OK, so nearly none of the above is true. But you wouldn't necessarily know that based on people's assumptions about homeschool families 30 years ago when we embarked on, what would turn out to be, a 9-year odyssey. It was as late as 1992 before homeschooling was even legal in all 50 states. Imagine that. In America. Up until the mid-1800s, most children were taught or tutored at home. We began in 1995... Jessica's 4th grade year and Michael's 1st grade year.

Our migration to homeschooling was almost entirely for pedagogical reasons. Our school system was making a radical curriculum change in the next school year to include, among other changes, a "whole language," top-down method to teach reading (as opposed to the familiar bottom-up, phonics foundation method) with little real assurance that it was a successful method to teach language arts. We felt it was sorta important for our kids to be able to capably read, comprehend, spell, write, etc. and weren't looking to experiment. The more we learned about it, the more we were not interested in this new, "innovative" method focused on immersive, individual discovery, language as a social activity, and diverse literary events that used some of the techniques found in English-as-a-second-language (ESL) and English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classrooms. To us, it also smacked of a teaching philosophy that was somewhat ideology driven rather than results driven. At least, that's how we saw it.

The more questions we asked during the multiple town hall curriculum meetings, the more our questions were evaded and the more we were gaslighted and lied to.

By the way, the reading wars persist and whole language has fallen out of favor in many systems while the education experts continue to wrestle with the shameful problem of why so many kids continue to read below grade-level. Terms like "the science of reading," and "three-cueing" (which is now banned by law in as many as 19 states,) and "balanced approach to reading" are tossed around by teachers, university education professors, education standards authors, and curriculum providers. We were in the camp that believed that learning to read does not come naturally, particularly with the English language. Reading requires a structured and protracted process. 

So, the Toomeys decided we needed to make a change. Our options were to move to a different county, private school, or, as we later discovered, homeschool. After much research and consternation (and no small amount of prayer,) we chose to teach our kids ourselves. [Current Georgia Homeschool Requirements]

Carol didn't want to homeschool two kids at the kitchen table though. She wanted a dedicated schoolroom space. As I peered into our backyard at the building formerly known as my workshop, I realized that I had some remodeling work in front of me. Carol said if we were going to do this we needed to do it in a way she thought was both appropriate and in a way in which she could feel confident. (I'm not suggesting kids cannot be taught at the kitchen table but, that wasn't for us.) 

my remodeling supervisors

I gutted our 10' x 20' backyard building and installed new flooring, additional windows, new door, wiring, insulation, sheetrock, trim, paint, and acoustical tile ceiling with recessed lighting. We bought a window air conditioner, heaters, three desks and chairs, corkboards, real slate chalkboard (later covered with white markerboard,) copier, file cabinet, mini-fridge, bookshelves, educational posters and other media, computer, TV monitors/VHS players, headphones, etc., etc., etc.. When it was finished it sorta looked like a mini-version of a real classroom... but a homemade version.

40 days into the 95-96 school year (Michael's 1st grade)

We had chosen and invested (no small inve$tment) in a video-based curriculum that allowed both kids to individually watch and listen to actual classroom instruction following along with their textbooks. We utilized the provided quizzes and tests, teacher keys, and all the collateral material needed for instruction. In our early years, the lessons were on VHS tape but later changed over to DVD (big improvement...higher quality and easier searching.) Both kids had a bible class which sometimes they wanted us all to watch after I got home from work because the classes were excellent and were so well taught. 

You know what they say about '80s and '90's Christian parents... (see video) 

In the earlier years, Carol handled 99% of the instruction but, as Jessica got into more advanced math and science subjects, I stepped in to help as needed. After 7th grade, Michael asked to attend public school as he was not, after 7 years, as enthusiastic about homeschool and also wanted to play team sports. We had told both kids that they had a say in whether we continued homeschooling them. We had a one-year-commitment-at-a-time attitude. Jessica chose to continue all the way through to graduation.

Jessica 9th grade, Michael 6th

In high school, Jessica eventually got to analytic geometry (aka coordinate or Cartesian geometry.) She initially hit a wall as did I because I had never taken analytic geometry. I studied Euclidean plane geometry in 9th grade but this was different... sorta like a combination of algebra and geometry. I contacted a high school math and physics teacher friend (Masters in Mathematics) but he too had no real experience with it. While searching for a tutor, Jessica told me, "I'm going to back up to the beginning of the course and see if I can figure this out" (an advantage of home school.) To her credit, she did, in fact, figure it out as proven by her performance on the subsequent quizzes and tests.

Carol was in her element in that classroom and loved going through elementary school, middle school and high school all over again (maybe more so than her first time through.) Watching your own kids learn academically every day is not something most moms get to do. Carol was determined that we were going to provide our kids with a quality, well-rounded education to include out-of-classroom learning. (We even required them to learn to diagram sentences because, we figured if their parents had to endure it in school, they should too.) They frequented our public libraries and took weekly PE classes that were held at the local Y. Organized sports were through church and the Y, piano lessons for Jessica, and guitar lessons for Michael helped round out their education. Both were active in youth choir at church. Jessica was joint enrolled her senior year taking classes at Augusta University. That said, we knew that what we were doing was considered by some to be weirdly unorthodox. We heard some passive aggressive criticism in the beginning.

checking out new materials at the '99 Curriculum Expo

Homeschool provided significant flexibility for our family. Ten days of educational field trips were necessary each year since our curriculum intentionally included only 170 days of course work. We were also not constrained with taking family vacations when everyone else did. We were in control of our calendar. We could vacation to places like Disney and other major attractions during times when it wasn't super crowded with other school-age kids. Like Jessica's geometry experience, we also had the ability to speed up or slow down the course work as each might need. We could specifically tailor the learning to what was needed. And school lunches were home-cooked.

(One blog is woefully inadequate to even minimally summarize what 9 years of homeschooling was like. But this will have to suffice.)

Regarding the "lack of socialization" that is often a weak criticism of homeschooled kids, anyone that knows Jessica or Michael can likely testify that they did just fine in that regard given all the sports, arts, and church activities in which they were involved along with having so many friends. And most kids' healthy socialization comes from the loving, caring adults around them anyway.

You know what one of the toughest parts of homeschooling was for Carol?

It was the initial breaking of the news to her parents that we were pulling our kids out of public school. We did not know how they would react. You may remember from a previous blog that they were both career school teachers... mostly in public schools.

So, the day we went over to their house in the summer of 1995 to nervously tell them that we were going to go off the traditional rails and teach the kids ourselves, you know what they said?

"Thank God."

That was all Carol needed to hear and she marched on and never  wavered or looked back.

She had work to do... she needed to go produce some weirdos.

Jessica graduated homeschool with honors

P.S.  Jessica was accepted to all 3 colleges to which she applied (Berry College, Mercer University, and Georgia College & State University...the one she ultimately chose)

Michael, who graduated from Westside HS, followed in his sister's footsteps and also attended GCSU, the only school to which he applied.

(Colleges like homeschooled students)

Carol did a great job. No surprise there. (And both our kids are excellent readers... and are refreshingly weird.)

Our sad little school house- 21 years after graduation and 17 years after we moved... in disrepair from neglect and fallen tree damage

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