Homeschooled Kid

Today I shared with my students a few of the times I as a homeschooled teen stuck out like a sore thumb. First there was the time I visited my best friend's Christian school and read A Tale of Two Cities while she and her classmates did math homework in study hall. A boy near me asked if it was a cliffhanger. No; I was reading Dickens as if it were a cliffhanger, though. Then there was the time I was at the public library doing research on the bubonic plague. Sharing the card catalog (yes, those old-fashioned wooden drawers with cards in them) was a public-school boy who was also conducting research. "Is that for an essay?" he asked. "No," I replied. "I'm writing a story." It was a novel, actually, but I didn't want to sound pretentious. And when I was on the Christian school's softball team one year (at the same best friend's pleading), I rode the bus with kids my age who tried to be friendly by asking what kind of music I liked. "Country?" No. "Well, what, then?" "Opera," I said.

It would be an uphill climb for me to be able to relate to public school kids and eventually teach them! But I believe in God's perfect plan, and my homeschool-kid background has definitely helped shape me into who I am. According to educationnews.org, the number of homeschoolers is on the rise. It behooves public school teachers to respect the education choices of parents, whether it be to pursue online schooling for their child or to enroll the child in a charter school (which is also a public school) or something else entirely. For Christians, a major argument in favor of school choice is for parents to have more say in how their children are taught about moral and religious matters. No matter where they are and who's teaching them, they're getting an education.