Choosing to be homeschooled
You met a new friend that says he does 'homeschooling' or you have heard your parents talking about taking you out of school to participate in it.
You do not really know what it means and what to expect. Lets have a look at some information to help you get a clearer picture of this and to help you make up your mind if it will be a good fit for you.
To be 'home schooled' is exactly what it says. You stay at home or go to a friend's house and your mom or a tutor or an older child, helps you with your work.
There are so many advantages like you do not have set hours to attend school, you do not have to wear a uniform, you have more time to play and do fun things and you do not have to share your tutor with a lot of other kids.
There can also be some disadvantages (and this will mainly depend on your personality), you can feel very alone, you will not have a lot of friends and will maybe never be part of a sport team, but these disadvantages are easy to overcome if you join a club.
The law says that a child needs to be educated, but the choice you will make on 'where and how' you will be educated is up to you and your parents.
Parents choose to homeschool their children for many different reasons. Sometimes a kid is sick and can't go to regular school. But more often, kids are home schooled because their parents feel they can give their child a better education than the local school can. Parents also might choose homeschooling because they want their child's education to include religious instruction (learning about God), which isn't offered at public schools.
Homeschooling is a wonderful solution if you do not like school too much or you are being bullied or do not get along with other kids. but homeschooling must not be seen as en 'escape route'. If you really can not resolve the problems at your school or you feel you will learn better and more if you are not surrounded by many kids, you can give it a go.
Something very important that you need to remember is that staying at home for school, does not mean you can now not do any work and rather play the whole time.
You must have self control and be determined and make time for your work and now you have so much freedom that you can spend a lot of time doing your own research and learning more about things that interests you.
One of the great benefits are the amount of attention you will get from your tutor. You do not have to compete with 40 other kids and if you are honest, you can also tell your tutor quickly what you do not understand, without worrying about what the other kids will say or do.
To be fair, not all schoolteachers are experts in their fields either. And tutors may be used for subjects the parent isn't skilled in. If a homeschool parent or tutor doesn't know something or can't fully explain it, the instructor and student can always research the issue together. A local library, university, community college, or the Internet may have the answers.
A lot of people have this idea that homeschoolers do not get a good education, but that is not true. In many instances the child who is taught at home has more knowledge because they spend more time on certain topics and spend a lot of time on researching extra topics or gathering more information and they also have a lot of life skills which they can apply in daily life, because they have time to cook and bake and go to the shop or bank with their parents or visit the museums etc.
You may have heard about kids who were homeschooled and then went on to attend a top college. It does happen, but just like with regular school, this kind of achievement takes a lot of planning and hard work.
At the end of the day, a lot will depend on what you do with your time. If you do not listen to your tutor, play around the whole day and do no extra work, you are not going to learn new things, exactly the same as when you sit in the class of your school and do not your part. So it has nothing to do with where you are taught, it has to do with how much you do from your side.
Being homeschooled does not make you different from kids that go to traditional school - the only difference is the place you learn.
If you choose to take up homeschooling and you feel you want to interact more with other kids, have a discussion with your parent so that they can help get you enrolled in clubs or activities.
At the end of the day you must be happy with your decision and where you are going to get education, but it is also very important that you are also responsible for making yourself happy and doing what is expected from you and even more.
Have a look at the funny side between homeschool and public school
