Our Reasons for Choosing to Home Educate Our Daughters

I first published this on June 18, 2012. I updated this article on July 5, 2020.

It has taken me three years to write about our choice to home educate our daughters. I am sure my hesitancy to write about our decision is steeped in the uncomfortableness I feel about talking about my choice to do something different than the norm. There was an expectation from those around me that I would be a classroom teacher once I graduated with a degree in education, which ironically was the same year I decided to stay home and be the primary teacher for my daughters.

It wasn't one thing that led my husband and me to become a home educating family. As I reflect on our earlier days of homeschooling, I know we had the desire to give our daughters more than we had as children of the 80s and 90s. The more wasn't about stuff, but more about the internal that would make an impact on their choices and lives in the future.

Our journey into homeschooling was a response to my daughter having a "late" birthday. She was born in December, which means that she would've needed to wait until the following school year to be an official kindergartner. My daughter's foundation for learning had already started to be form years before through play and my love of reading. We spent many days doing puzzles. I remember when I realized she recognized her colors. We would regularly put together some color matching cards designed by Melissa and Doug. She would match them on her own. When I shared her new skill with one of my professors, she shared with me that most kids weren't able to what my daughter had. She was just barely two when she reached this milestone. Because we were home, and I was in school to become a teacher, I figured teaching her the basics was the least that I could do. I can't take credit for all that she was learning in her formative years; my daughter was teaching me just as much as I was teaching her. I followed her lead, and we kept pressing forward. Following my daughter's lead, would be one of my top reasons for choosing to home educate. We had invested years into learning new skills, and I didn't want her work, our work to be undone since many kindergartners aren't coming into the classroom ready to read or, at the very least, knowing their alphabet. My daughter had and still does have a strong desire to learn. It would’ve been a disservice to allow her thirst for learning to be extinguished due to a change in her learning environment. 

Now at the time, I was not against public school. A few months after I originally wrote this article, my daughters and I became a part of the public school system. I taught first grade, and they attended Kindergarten and second grade. But even though I wasn't against public school, I knew my older daughter would be bored because the summer before we started homeschooling, I co-taught summer school to the kindergarteners who were entering the school district. Many of the students did not know their alphabet let alone sounds to be able to read, and based on my conversation with the other K teachers, Kindergarten was mostly about learning letters, numbers, colors, how to behave, etc.  My philosophy has always been that children are people, and I refused to subscribe to "She's just a kid with nothing else to do with her time." In August 2009, my family embarked on our homeschool journey.

Since we've been homeschooling for a while now, I realize that other reasons made us do something different. If you been in the homeschooling community for any amount of time, you know that the Black homeschooling community didn't have as many families. Many times we are the only Black people that we see at events and activities for homeschoolers. But I don't regret choosing to do this very different thing.

Two Non-Academic Reasons I Became a Homeschool Mom

I have the opportunity daily to teach my daughters self-love.

It came to me when my daughters were teeny tiny that I would guide them to truly loving and knowing themselves. Homeschooling provided me with the space to encourage and nurture my girls, so they would have the opportunity to grow into who God created them to be. It's much easier to conform to those around them when you have self-doubt and uncertainty about yourself and your beliefs.  I speak from experience. In my youth, I was a conformer, and I often made myself disappear. As a mother, I knew I didn't want them to live such a life.  I want my daughters to have confidence in themselves, while they are children so that it would be present when they enter adulthood. 

I can let them see up close and personal that being Black isn't bad.

I am not sure if I would have as strong of an urge to homeschool if we weren't Black Americans. I know that stereotypes are alive and well in all types of communities. But, after teaching in the classroom for one year, I was reminded of another one of my top reasons for homeschooling my daughters. Black children do not always receive the support needed in the classroom. Teachers often make assumptions before they've officially met the child they are assigned to teach.

Even though my girls were home with me for the first seven and five years of their lives, they didn't leave the public classroom unscathed. I had to rebuild my precious girl's view of herself, which took more than the amount of time that she was in the school, and I tried to restore hope in my other girl because she had a bad experience in her Kindergarten class. She has disdain when it comes to teachers, and honestly, I don't believe there's anything I can do to change her perception.

I wanted to protect my daughters from being treated or made to feel less than simply because of their skin color. Being treated differently is not something I recall from my time as an elementary student because it wasn't as blatant as it is now. My short stint in the classroom during my student teaching experience opened my eyes. My time teaching was a reminder that negative perceptions are still ever-present in many classrooms when it comes to students of color and those from families who have a lower socioeconomic status. When I was part of the school system as a teacher, I heard comments the other teachers made about their students like "Those people …" or "Why are you trying to teach them XY and Z. It's more important for them to be able to take directions because of the jobs they'll work." White teachers weren't the only source of comments like this, but Black teachers contributed too. I refused to allow these notions and perspectives to be projected onto the children God has trusted me to take care of, guide, and prepare for a future that we can't even imagine.

These are only a few reasons why we decided to homeschool our daughters.

Tell me why did you start homeschooling your child(ren)?