Diary of a Transplant: Homeschooling in Upstate New York

  |  April 11, 2013
Photo by Bill Townsend Photography/on Flickr

Photo by Bill Townsend Photography/on Flickr

Ex-Brooklynite and now full-time Upstater Larissa Phillips is back to regale us with tales of life on the farm.

It’s not like you move upstate and get exposed to a virus and suddenly you must homeschool your children.

But it’s incredibly easy to start thinking about. There are a lot of homeschoolers up here. Add that to a serious lack of alternative or progressive, or in some areas, even decent schools, and homeschooling becomes an easy choice.

The first two years up here, we homeschooled both our kids, which surprised us. We kind of always knew we’d homeschool Ernie in middle school. He is artsy and productive and quirky, and I hated to think of him having anything close to the uninspired, boring education I had in middle school.

But once we got upstate, we decided to keep Megan home, as well. She was going into 2nd grade. Megan is super-social and loves action, and has always enjoyed school, but it seemed like it would be a great bonding time for us as a family in a new life, and right away she met a great friend who was homeschooled.

It was indeed a fun time, but after two years, Megan went back to school, in search of more kids and more action. (She started fourth grade behind in math, and ahead in everything else. She caught up in math very quickly.)  Now I have one kid in school, and one kid homeschooling. I can tell you that neither side is perfect and that there are ups and downs to both methods.

Here are some of the pros and cons, as I experience them:

What’s Good About Homeschooling:
– One less school lunch to pack! Whoo-hoo!  I know this is pathetic, but packing school lunches is a terrible thing. 

-I don’t have to force my sleepy kid out of bed, nag him to eat, nag him to get dressed, nag him to find his shoes, start yelling that he is going to miss the bus, start screaming that I don’t know where his permission slips/math homework/house key/whatever is. It wasn’t like that every morning, but some version of stress usually happened. My since-infancy-late-sleeper of a son simply does not operate well in the morning. (Compare to Megan, who is up by 7, dressed and ready by 7:30, and waiting at the door for the bus at 7:34.) On school mornings Ernie almost never ate breakfast, he rarely ate lunch, came home from school exhausted and cranky, and was always sick. Homeschooling, he is healthy and well-rested. I love this.

-He has time to deeply explore his interests. Some of the things Ernie, 13, has done as a homeschooler: raised a herd of goats, learned how to milk a goat and make cheese; made his own cheese press with a handmade pressure scale; carved recorders and whistles and bows and arrows and a crossbow with a complicated trigger system that he devised; read extensively on animal behavior; clicker-trained a parrot; developed a budding naturalist’s knowledge of trees and birds and wildlife; interned in a veterinarian’s office; learned how to find mentors and adult teachers beyond his family; explored our property extensively; created animations and movies; created beautiful paintings and drawings; learned how to tap trees and make maple syrup.

– My son is never bored. Ever. I haven’t heard him say he is bored in years.

– He is exposed to various ages of people. He has friends ranging from age 3, up to adult.

– Socially, my son is not exposed to a lot of the usual nonsense that can happen when you put 30 13-year olds together. He barely does Facebook, doesn’t play video games, and as far as I know doesn’t engage in any of the cruel and appalling things I used to see on a regular basis in the halls of my own middle school.

– He is in an awesome homeschool group. It meets once a week, and recently he started meeting with some of the kids on another day for a literature group. It’s a high-functioning group, with brilliant, lovely children and teens and their equally brilliant and wonderful parents. This group has been wonderful for us, and we are lucky to have found them and been invited into their ranks.

What I don’t like about homeschooling:

-Math. Math doesn’t happen naturally in our family, the way reading and drawing and debating and sharing ideas do. We finally found a math curriculum that we like (“Life of Fred”), but I feel like we are a little behind, and I worry about this, and I am often on Ernie’s case to do his math. Ernie has to take standardized tests like any other kid, and he tests just fine, but I still worry.

– My lack of organization. I wish I had the time to develop the wonderful curricula I thought I’d be doing. But I just don’t, and I often leave Ernie to his own devices. Easy enough, because I look away for a second, and he is off doing something totally interesting and cool. But I worry about passing on my disorganization, and not pushing him hard enough, academically. Will he have trouble getting into college? I don’t think so. But I am a parent, so I worry.

– Driving, and money. In our neck of the woods, homeschooling requires extensive driving to get to classes and events, many of which cost money. It also requires one parent not working. I work two days a week; my husband works three days. This is lovely in so many ways, except for financially. If we didn’t homeschool, we’d have more money and more time.

We are deciding now if Megan will go back to school for fifth grade. She likes having a lot of kids around, and rural homeschooling was hard for her. Our local school is a great school, with small classes (20 kids in her 4th grade class!), an awesome principal, and some really excellent teachers. But there are things she and I both dislike about school, and we are still not sure what will happen next year. I’d like her to do one more year at school, and then homeschool for middle school. We’ll see.

As for Ernie? I don’t think he’ll ever go back to school, not until college anyway.

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