The first time I heard about someone my age who was planning on homeschooling his kids, I thought he was crazy.
It was a friend in grad school, engaged to a girl who had been homeschooled. I had never met her, but he told me all about how they were going to have a room with desks and a chalkboard and it was going to be just like school, during school hours, five days a week, with their kids having to raise their hands to ask questions.
They were considering getting a bell.
I was less than impressed by the idea.
I got married three days after I finished grad school and then we moved to San Diego. Our new church asked us to help them start up a college ministry, and then one day we were called to come to an emergency meeting with the high schoolers.
Andy Williams had walked out of the boys bathroom and opened fire, killing two students and wounding thirteen.
I talked with one girl who was standing with her friends, facing the bathroom. She saw the boy next to her get shot. She was so scared that she just froze, with another friend yelling at her to get down.
We worked with them for several more months before we were transferred to Japan. In preparing to move, I knew that Isaac would be very busy with his new job and I would be friendless, family-less and jobless in a foreign country, so I went to the bookstore and stocked up on a ton of books.
A lot of the books I just grabbed without thinking about it much. I think there were probably 15 or more that I bought that day. I bought one about the Columbine High School shooting. I bought several about marriage, some Beth Moore, one or two Christian fiction, and one about homeschooling.
I didn’t get to the homeschooling book for quite a while. I think it was the last book I read, and I wondered to myself why in the world I had bought it. I think I was mostly looking for more ammunition that my friend was making a really bad decision by homeschooling his kids, along with the idea that maybe it was safer than public school, but I really didn’t think it would be something I’d ever do.
Instead, my interest was caught. I learned that people who do school at home, as my friend was planning, are in the minority. As I learned about the different styles of homeschooling, it just sounded so…fun. I read about children being able to follow their interests, learning survival skills and flying and cooking, and incorporating math and physics and history into those interests.
I thought about my school experience. As an elementary student I was often sent to the one computer in the class to play games because I finished my work early. In high school I got to skip several finals because my grade in the class was over 100%. In Chemistry I sat in the back of the class with the JV football team and after the teacher taught the lesson, I re-taught it to them in a way they could understand. After my SAT scores became known, our English teacher had me helping her prepare the other students for their SAT’s.
And I had forgotten most of what I had learned. School had taught me to memorize and then forget, and I most definitely did not learn to think deeply or to work hard, much less find an interest I was passionate about and pursue it.
I started sharing the statistics in the book with Isaac. Homeschooled children had higher standardized test scores, had a higher rate of college acceptance, and, despite the many doubts people have, studies have shown them to be better socialized.
I started reading every homeschooling book I could find. As I shared what I learned we both became convinced that homeschooling provided a better quality education. And what finally convinced us was when we started looking at the spiritual side.
Almost 90% of evangelical children will leave the church when they leave our homes.
But that number changes when you break it down by how they are schooled. Children who go to private school have a lower percent who will leave the church.
Children who are homeschooled?
Over 90% of them stay in the church.
Of course, just going to church doesn’t guarantee that they are following their faith, but it is a good sign.
Let me take a break here and say that I don’t believe EVERY Christian has to homeschool. However, I do think every Christian should seriously and prayerfully consider it, and then do as they are led by God.
I had always known that God has charged us with the spiritual development of our children, but what I had never really thought about was that children are gone away at school for 6-8 hours a day, plus they have homework, so the time we get with our children who are schooled out of the home is the leftover time, at the end of the day when everyone is tired.
And all those school hours? Are spent in an institution that is not religiously neutral, but is openly hostile to the Christian faith. Many of those hours are also wasted. Homeschooling takes less time, and leaves more free time for play, family and personal interests.
We’re still early in our homeschooling journey. Chloe is doing kindergarten work, but the public school system would consider her a preschooler because her birthday falls in November. We do school when we feel like it. We play when we don’t. I am having to grow in personal discipline because I would be perfectly happy reading and scrapbooking all day while my children are away at school. I might have a cleaner house and fewer laundry piles. Routines and schedules don’t come naturally to me, but “me-time” does! And as the kids get older I know I’ll have to be working on that. Right now I love cuddling up on the couch and reading together. I love it when Chloe is so proud of herself when she reads an entire book with no help from me. When we all rush to the computer to figure out what kind of lizard we just caught. That we have time for daily devotionals and dancing in the living room and tea parties. That my children are best friends and math is a fun game to play. That everyone gets excited when a new box of school books comes in the mail.
But you’ll never see me with desks lined up in a row facing the chalkboard and the kids longing for the bell to ring.
Because I still think that’s crazy.
Today I have the fun of doing my first interview! Kendra Leigh Castle is a mom and Navy wife just like me (and some of you) but she has also just published her very first book! Read on to learn a little about her, and if you comment on this post before Saturday morning, TWO of you will win a copy of her first book, Call of the Highland Moon!
1. Ok, let’s say we’re actually meeting at Starbucks instead of doing this over email. I’m having a peppermint mocha. What are you drinking? I always order the same thing: a grande vanilla latte. Vanilla + foam+ lots of caffeine = perfection.
2. How many years have you been a Navy wife? Ten years this month, actually!
3. How many places have you lived? Well, I stared in New York, then moved to Pensacola, Corpus Christi, Meridian (MS), Virginia Beach , Fallon (NV), and in a month, Lemoore (CA). But I’m in North Carolina right now with family:-) Moving boxes are starting to make me phobic.
4. Do you have children? I’ve got three, ages 8, 6, and 2. A girl and two boys. The older two spend most of their time trying to annihilate one another, and the youngest one is currently exploring future career options as a stripper.
5. How did you get started writing? I’ve been writing since I was really little, actually. It started with bad holiday poetry, but by high school a friend and I were filling notebooks with this meandering, bizarre, hysterical (we thought) thing that we just called “The Story.” It was so much fun, I didn’t realize it was actually three years of a creative writing exercise. I won a schoolwide contest my junior year to have an article I’d written published in a local paper, and then in college, a goofy little story I’d written made it into the campus literary magazine. So it was always a strong part of who I was…it just never occurred to me that I might be good enough to make a living at it. Or if it did, my strong fear of rejection kept me from getting very serious about it!
6. How did the military lifestyle affect your writing? Honestly, I don’t think I would ever have decided to take the plunge and really try to get published if I hadn’t been a military wife! Watching my husband, who’s a Navy fighter pilot, live out his dream has been a big inspiration for me to do what I love. That, and knowing so many amazing Navy wives who manage to carve out their own niches, just for themselves, despite being moved all over the country at regular intervals. The military lifestyle itself has, I know, made me much more resilient in general, and has given me confidence in my abilities. Because, you know, when the bad stuff happens and he’s gone (AGAIN), you’re “it”! I won’t say that I never despaired (like, say, over the first manuscript I ever wrote that now lives in the recesses of my closet with a stack of rejection letters), but the writing helped center me amidst the daily insanity. I had to keep trying. And my husband was never going to let me quit anyway…I would have had a boot up my butt immediately. I grouched sometimes, but the support made a huge difference.
7. What’s your favorite snack while writing? This is tough, mostly because I love snacks. If it’s available and crunchy, I’ll probably eat it. And get crumbs in my keyboard. That said, original flavor Baked Lays are right up at the top of the list!
8. Tell us about your first book. What do you love most about it? My first book, Call of the Highland Moon, is about a werewolf named Gideon MacInnes, the reluctant future alpha of his Highland pack, and the shy bookshop owner he falls for when he’s attacked and she takes him in out of a snowstorm in Northern New York. Of course, she thinks he’s a wounded dog at the time…but by the time she figures out otherwise, the creatures hunting Gideon for his connection to an ancient and powerful relic have targeted her as well. Although Gideon and Carly Silver quickly forge a deep bond, Gideon knows all too well that mating with a werewolf can be deadly for humans. But with enemies closing in, and the legendary Stone of Destiny only just beginning to reveal its secrets, the two of them are soon in far too deep to turn their backs on one another. Can their love survive against impossible odds? Only the full moon will tell.
I love a lot of things about this book (after all, it’s the one that won me an agent and sold), but my favorite aspect of it is still the way my hero and heroine, Gideon and Carly, interact with one another. From the very beginning, they just clicked, and their banter was a lot of fun to write. Both speak sarcasm, which is like a second language to me:-) Spooling up their sexual tension before I finally let it rip was, I admit, also entertaining. I love those characters. I’ve had a few emails from people telling me that they hope I’ve included Carly and Gideon in my second book, Dark Highland Fire, which somes out in October, because they really connected with them and want to check in and see how they’re doing. And I did, actually, because I wanted to check in with them too! But that makes me happy, that the heart I put into the characters has come across to others so well.
9. What have you learned about following your dreams while balancing family? In a nutshell: that it’s possible. Being a mom and Navy wife, there were a lot of years where I didn’t think I had any room to add something just for myself to the mix…just holding everything else together was a struggle! But I hit a point where I realized that I really needed to take care of myself as much as I was taking care of everyone else, that besides being a wife and mother I was still the kid who had filled pages with stories and dreamed big, and that that should be important too. It’s not an easy balancing act, for sure. I don’t sleep as much as I should, and I’m more caffeinated than I ought to be. I’ve always been kind of a stress case anyway, though, chewing over the most nebulous concerns with gusto, so it could be a good thing that I have more concrete things to worry about with my work! So there has definitely been sacrifice involved, but I’m happier for actively chasing my dream. And having my husband and kids be as proud of me as I am of them is an amazing feeling.
Congratulations to Kendra! Remember, to be entered to win one of two copies of her book, just leave a comment on this post before Saturday morning. Or you can hop over to Amazon.com right now and buy a copy or five for everyone you know, and support a fellow military mama. And spread the word about the giveaway and Kendra’s first book!
Hmm, so I guess I sort of dropped off the face of the, er, blogosphere, didn’t I?
Sorry ’bout that.
I have no reason except that every time I blink a huge mess has been made and a child is asking me to come look at how high he can put his dirty toes on the wall or freaking out about the lovebugs outside or getting into the cupboards and walking around with four different toothbrushes in her mouth or a baby is dragging half a pack of diapers through the house saying “poo-poo poo-poo” and leaving a Hansel-and-Gretel-like trail of diapers back to her room.
It’s not like I even have blogger’s block or anything, so here is what you have to look forward to as soon as I get a chance to just sit and write for a while!
-An interview and book giveaway with a mom-and-Navy-wife-turned-romance-author (working title: Navy Wife to Published author)
-Pictures from our recent experiment on what happens when you build your house on sand and rock (title: Mommy, is that story real?)
-The background on how we came to be a homeschooling family (title: Even so, I still think he’s crazy)
-An update to my homeschooling page with reviews on the products we have used
-Finally finishing off the questions from my Q&A (and I promise none of them will be 20 parts!)
-Another made-up meme (a version of 6 things, I think, but I have to go back and see what I’ve been tagged for)
Since I’m going to be answering some questions again, if you have any for me, bring ‘em on!
You know that gene that tells women that they’re always cold and men that they’re always hot?
Well, they got switched in my husband and I.
He’s always cold. He’d keep the house 78 year-round if he could.
I open the windows on 60-degree days because I like the fresh air.
I’ve heard other women say that when they were pregnant the warmth differences evened out and they were finally the same temperature as their husbands.
However, when I was pregnant I slept in a tank top with a sheet pulled over me, and the sheet was only because I can’t stand to sleep without some sort of blanket.
And I still woke up sweaty.
Next to me? My husband?
He slept in sweats with his hood pulled up underneath a down comforter.
Our children seem to have inherited the correct genes, though.
On a recent cool day, Luke went out to play, and I threw on my flip flops and went to enjoy the fresh air and take some pictures.
Sockless soccer.
Pay no attention to the boy behind the tree.
Then Chloe decided we were having too much fun without her and she came out.
Only she layered up first.
Note the sweater with the hood pulled up under the hat.
And the socks on the hands.
And now that I think about it, I have no idea why they both decided to play outside in cowboy hats. But I’m glad they did.
on April 22nd, 2008 at 8:22 am
I love a plain old vanilla steamer. Simple and comforting.
owatz(AT)telus(DOT)net
Please send me your contact info by Monday!
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