In the West, we’re fortunate to have a seemingly endless array of educational opportunities for our kids.
During the pandemic, families had no choice but to start homeschooling. But once the pandemic ended, those families who were dreading the initial changes were some of the same families who decided to continue home education for the long haul.
I’m assuming this happened because families realized the benefits of homeschooling — families saw happier kids who were less stressed. But continuing to home-educate post-pandemic wasn’t a viable option for everyone — financial constraints or work-related barriers being likely factors — as not all families can afford to have one parent stay home.
Educating our children is a luxury not afforded by all. I get it. I understand firsthand how financially constraining homeschooling can be. We’ll soon be entering our last homeschooling year for the foreseeable future due to rising costs and a strained budget.
So, even though we’ve been homeschooling for the majority of my kids’ educational careers, it’s an era that’s coming to an end for us.
I should feel sad, and a part of me does, but I’m also excited for the next chapter in our family’s life and beyond grateful we were able to home-educate in the first place.
If you’ve heard of homeschooling, you’ve probably also heard of unschooling. In our family, our kids have done it all: public school abroad, public school at home, homeschooling, unschooling, and back to homeschooling again.
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Homeschooling, simply put, is home education.
However, homeschooling can look vastly different for different families depending on family size, location, curriculum preferences, social and extracurricular engagement, and available resources. Some homeschooling families are regimented, while some are more relaxed. Some families intertwine faith and education; others don’t.
There are homeschool groups, co-ops, and even homeschool academies that exist alongside public school systems, employing certified teachers who lead fun, extracurricular activities.
In a nutshell, how parents choose to home-educate varies — unschooling being just one option for those who choose to explore it. Homeschooling families tend to follow a curriculum while unschooling is more lax, even void of what we’ve come to view as traditional teacher/student roles and traditional education.
