Before I had kids, I imagined that my participation in their education would be my helping them with homework after a long day at school. I wouldn’t correct their homework as perfectly as my mom did, but I would be there to answer their questions and help them when they got stuck.
But life happens not in the way I intend it.
Soon after I gave birth to Simone, Michael entered the Coast Guard. I made the connection that Simone would become a military child who must move to a new school every few years. I worried more about her social situation. Will she be welcomed or bullied at her new school? How will she handle having to leave the friendships she’s established. Will she want to stay with her high school friends and thus prompt me to stay at a base longer than Michael (i.e. the family will be separated?) I didn’t yet think about what she would be learning. I soon did, however, when I realized we could be sent to the South!!!
I had heard a statistic about California’s education being ranked as low as Mississipi’s. Since this had been addressed on the news, I assumed that the reporter was trying to say the two states were not producing well-rounded academic kids. I then imagined that Simone might be stuck in a poor public school depending where we’re stationed! So after researching the No Child Left Behind test scores of each state, I found that it would be advantageous to be stationed north of the Mason Dixie line instead of south of it.
But Michael has long warned of the inability to predict the direction of your military life. We could put in a request for all yankee states and not get a single preference based on what the coordinator (called a “Detailer” in the Coast Guard) decides. When I started thinking seriously about how I would safeguard my kids from below-standard education, Simone was 3 and Max was a few months old.
I went to the Library for help and found a couple influential books. One called And the Skylark Sings With Me: Adventures in Homsechooling and Community-Based Education and the other was Hard Times in Paradise. I picked up the first one because the family who wrote about their daughters’ education were major travelers and they were still able to get a well-rounded, if not exceptional, education. The second one was actually not about education at all. It was about a family just merely trying to survive. The children in the book happened to be homeschooled and I thought it was a grand idea, but not one that Michael would like. Boy was I wrong! Instead of my just afterschooling the kids, Michael thought it might be great if we homeschooled them starting in middle school! Wow wow wee wow! We were envisioning a grand and ambitious schooling career for our kids and I was super-excited!
But life happens not in the way I intend it.
Soon after I gave birth to Simone, Michael entered the Coast Guard. I made the connection that Simone would become a military child who must move to a new school every few years. I worried more about her social situation. Will she be welcomed or bullied at her new school? How will she handle having to leave the friendships she’s established. Will she want to stay with her high school friends and thus prompt me to stay at a base longer than Michael (i.e. the family will be separated?) I didn’t yet think about what she would be learning. I soon did, however, when I realized we could be sent to the South!!!
I had heard a statistic about California’s education being ranked as low as Mississipi’s. Since this had been addressed on the news, I assumed that the reporter was trying to say the two states were not producing well-rounded academic kids. I then imagined that Simone might be stuck in a poor public school depending where we’re stationed! So after researching the No Child Left Behind test scores of each state, I found that it would be advantageous to be stationed north of the Mason Dixie line instead of south of it.
But Michael has long warned of the inability to predict the direction of your military life. We could put in a request for all yankee states and not get a single preference based on what the coordinator (called a “Detailer” in the Coast Guard) decides. When I started thinking seriously about how I would safeguard my kids from below-standard education, Simone was 3 and Max was a few months old.
I went to the Library for help and found a couple influential books. One called And the Skylark Sings With Me: Adventures in Homsechooling and Community-Based Education and the other was Hard Times in Paradise. I picked up the first one because the family who wrote about their daughters’ education were major travelers and they were still able to get a well-rounded, if not exceptional, education. The second one was actually not about education at all. It was about a family just merely trying to survive. The children in the book happened to be homeschooled and I thought it was a grand idea, but not one that Michael would like. Boy was I wrong! Instead of my just afterschooling the kids, Michael thought it might be great if we homeschooled them starting in middle school! Wow wow wee wow! We were envisioning a grand and ambitious schooling career for our kids and I was super-excited!
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