robyn dolan - The Working Parents Guide to Homeschooling

The Working Parents Guide To Homeschooling

by Robyn Dolan

Copyright 2019 Robyn K. Dolan

The Working Parents Guide to Homeschooling by Robyn Dolan

2nd Edition

Copyright 2014 Robyn K. Dolan

The Working Parents Guide to Homeschooling by Robyn Dolan

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

Disclaimer

T HANK YOU FOR PURCHASING The Working Parents Guide To Homeschooling. I hope you find it enjoyable, entertaining and helpful.

All persons in this book are real, though most of the names have been changed to protect the innocent (me). Some persons are composites of several different individuals, no likeness to one particular person is intended and composites are used merely for the authors convenience in illustrating a point.

All information presented in this work is considered correct as of the time of its writing. I have gone through all the links from the first edition and deleted sites that are no longer available. I have added several new chapters and revised some of the originals. I have also added some excellent resources that were not available at the time of the first edition. Facebook groups have become a terrific source for support and community.

All information is presented for educational and entertainment purposes only, no warranties are made and the author assumes no responsibility or liability for misuse or misunderstanding of this information.

This book details the authors personal experiences and opinions about working and homeschooling. The author is not licensed or certified to teach or give legal advice.

This book provides content related to working and homeschooling topics. As such, your use of this book implies your acceptance of this disclaimer.

Acknowledgments

I WOULD LIKE TO THANK Charles Platt, for endless support, encouragement, advice and for subtle and not so subtle nagging. Thanks to Maryruth Monahan, for being my cheerleader and my critic. I thank my children, for agreeing to let me tell on them. To my homeschooling friends for letting me tell parts of their stories, I thank you. My gratitude goes out to Steven David Horwich for consenting to be interviewed and for his valuable insights into homeschooling.

Thanks to Richard and Angela Hoy at Abuzz Press for believing in me and taking my rough Word document for the first edition and making it look beautiful in print and ebook. Also, their marketing tools are priceless; I should have bought 90 Days to Marketing Your Book Online long ago, as the marketing advice in it is just as appropriate for my craft business as for selling a book. I also thank them for their many years of inspiration and information through their weekly newsletter Writers Weekly.

I dedicate this book to my mom, Delores J. Siemann, whose life was an inspiration and whose death reminds me to postpone nothing.

Introduction - Whatever Possessed Me?!

I NOTICED THAT THE most successful homeschoolers had a few things in common: scheduling, supervision and consistency.

T HIS HOMESCHOOLING adventure all came about because, a few years after my husband and I divorced, my 3 children, then ages 10, 8 and 6, and I moved across town and they began attending the "other" elementary school. Immediately they began coming home with stacks of homework. We began a ritual of sitting down at the kitchen table right after school for two hours, taking a break for dinner, then spending another hour, struggling to finish up homework that seemed never to have been explained to them during class. Finally, I would fall into my old lazy boy rocking chair, in front of the fire, cuddling up with my first grader and his reading assignment. The next thing I knew, he was waking me up with a despairing "MOM!" and anguished eyes. His older brother and sister would be snickering in the background.

It didn't take long for me to decide that if I had to be the teacher anyway, I might as well bring them home and cut out the non-essentials. Like having the children at the bus stop at 6:30 a.m.; scrounging for lunch money; hundreds of dollars worth of school clothes, backpacks, and supplies. Not to mention the parent-teacher conferences, where, after months of the above scenario, I would be informed that my children were not doing as well as they could because I was not "actively participating" at home.

The only problem was I didn't know how to put a homeschooling plan into action. I didn't know any other homeschooling families. I was selling vacation homes and doing property management during the day, and waiting tables at night, but still not making enough money to afford the expensive curriculum packages that seemed to be necessary. Family members enthusiastically pointed out to me that I lacked a college degree and demanded to know who would watch the kids while I was working. What would my ex-husband, the children's father, say? I grew increasingly frustrated and discouraged.

I gave up. The kids and I moved from Southern California to Northern Arizona. I put the older children in what I thought was a "charter" school but was really a last-ditch effort to corral kids who had gotten expelled from the middle school and high school and keep them off the streets for a few hours a day. My youngest son was ensconced in the local elementary school. In a few weeks, I had discovered

my folly with the "charter" school, and my youngest son's teacher was calling me at home, complaining that he was doodling in class. Really??

I brought the kids home. I purchased a pricey curriculum from a private school, which allowed my children to be legally enrolled in school under their umbrella. These are known as satellite schools. In exchange for hefty tuition, they agreed to provide record-keeping for validation by the state and teacher assistance if we called in long distance.

We were all bursting with anticipation when the lesson plans, textbooks, and workbooks came. I spent hours going over everything before we got started. I very nearly needed a translator to interpret the lesson plans for me. I gave each child their textbooks and assignments, sat them around the kitchen table and waited for the joy of learning to begin. What I got were blank stares.