As I look to return to a position on a college campus, I find I have to explain what I have been doing for the past two years. I have usually welcomed such questions during interviews. They give me a chance to explain how getting intimately involved in K-12 curriculum has better prepared me to review and develop programs for today’s college students. I can also go into detail about how my home classroom has allowed me to explore and test modern learning theory in ways that I couldn’t in a large lecture hall. My exchanges with schools have been respectful, even exciting … until yesterday.
Yesterday, during an interview, a round of questioning left me with the impression that the interviewer did not believe I was teaching at a real place. At first, I wondered if I had misled the organization somehow by listing the name of our home school on my resume. But then I remembered how I clearly stated in my cover letter that “I am currently on leave from my university to home school” our youngest child. Upon further reflection, I wondered what perception the interviewer had of homeschooling and whether this viewpoint led him to conclude that I had not been working at all during the course of the pandemic. Homeschooling’s image problem just became my problem.
When you tell people that you home school your child, some are impressed but others are appalled. The latter group imagines you and your child skipping barefooted through the woods all day with little regard for rules or schedules. Although there are some parents that subscribe to the “unschooling” approach to home school, that’s not me. (There are many approaches to home school. See here for an explanation of at least seven methods.) As I have noted before, I like structure and believe in standards. Therefore, I follow a more traditional, “school-at-home” approach. In this method, education parallels public or private school by utilizing curricula aligned with federal and state learning standards.
Many “school-at-home” parents purchase complete, curriculum packages to use throughout the school year. Instead, I have chosen to use a local school district’s curriculum as a framework on which to build our educational program. So, Mr. Interviewer, in addition to teaching my child 6 hours a day 5 days a week, I also prepare the daily activities for 6 different subjects, develop the weekly lesson plans for our “school,” draft the monthly curriculum schema, select and purchase the school supplies and books, oversee the special subject teachers and programs, read dozens of middle grade novels, design and grade assessments, and research and test the latest ideas on learning theory. Being a home school teacher at Keeler Academy is a very real, very complex job with high stakes. I look forward to working for an organization that shares the same opinion.