In this series of articles I will share my journey from traditional brick and mortar school to home schooling. I hope it helps the parents that are wondering how to start and if it is the right thing for them.
Recently I decided to look into homeschooling for my children for personal family reasons. My mom has Alzheimer’s and I wanted to be more available to travel to South Carolina to see her more often and help my dad. Brick and Mortar school was making that very tough.
The Decision
My first obstacle was the decision to break the norm or traditional school and look into the home school process. I wondered if I was doing the right thing for my children… Will they miss out on socialization with other kids? Will they learn as much? Will they stay on track? How will this affect college acceptance? The list goes on. So, my first step was to try to find other parents that were already homeschooling and ask them questions and see how their kids were with the whole process. This was very difficult… where do I find these parents?
I resorted to the new age encyclopedia….”Google”. I googled home school programs in ga… and there were over 20. I liked at reviews and went to each website and I found two that offered online webinars with parents and also field trips to get to know the staff and other parents. I signed up for everything they had and attended them all and met with parents and children and staff. I collected information on both programs and asked every question I could think of. I was also surprised at how candid the parents were about the programs.
I noticed that all the kids I met were well adjusted, easy to meet new people and very active in extracurricular activities. One of my anxieties relieved.
I reached out to several college administrators to investigate the percentage of homeschooled children entering their schools and found the number to be higher than I imagined. Entrance into college is not affected at all by the fact that a child is home schooled, if the program is accredited, proper test scores and transcripts are in order you follow the same procedure as traditional school children. Next anxiety relieved.
Finally…. What do I do now? What is my first step? Well it was simple.. After a few days of prayer, I sat my kiddos down and talked to them about the idea and the process. I needed to explain to them that they would have to be diligent and get their work done independently. There is not going to be a teacher walking around the room etc. They were more receptive than I expected. Actually, they wanted to start immediately. Final anxiety relieved.
Stay Tuned for Homeschooling The Transition Part 2 to see what I did once I decided that Home Schooling was a GO for our family and what my next steps were with the 2 programs I chose to explore.
The two programs I chose to explore more and start the enrollment process were GA Connections Academy and Georgia Cyber Academy.
