When being challenged about homeschooling by people looking to convince me that I am doing the wrong thing, I am often quizzed about my depth of educational knowledge. They barrage me with questions like “do you know grammar well enough to teach it”, “what about algebra” and “do you really think you can teach calculus”. I generally answer all of these questions by saying “yes” and giving a big smile. My answer is technically the truth.
Just because I am a homeschooling mother does not mean that I know everything. What I do know however is how to learn anything that I want to know. While I was not educated specifically to teach difficult high school courses, it did take many of these courses myself and understand the amount of work that goes into learning tough subjects. I do know how to search the internet to answer tough questions when the answer is not apparent in the textbook. I also know how to find a tutor to help me should a subject become overwhelming.
A book I read before I started homeschooling made it clear to me that you don’t need to be a know-it-all to teach your child through high school and even into the Ivy League. It was entitled, Morning by Morning, How We Home Schooled Our African-American Sons to the Ivy League. In this book, the author stated the many resources she used to homeschool her sons. The family had current event discussions in the mornings. They learned science by attending and then teaching at the local science museum, they went to science and sports camps each summer, she had her artistic son apprentice a local artist. She also hired college student to teach her sons math and other difficult classes.
Reading this book gave me the confidence to be able to homeschool my kids without knowledge of everything a child needs to learn in 12 years of school.
Related article: Hands off homeschooling
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