Home Education Style ‘Whatever works’

By Martina McNeill

We are newly registered home educators. Again! Our youngest son has had a stint at school for almost six years, but 2022 finds us home educating. Again. 

If you’ve ever spoken to a home educator who has been at it for more than five minutes, you might have heard them say, ‘It’s a lifestyle, not just an education’. Well, that describes us perfectly. We home educated from 2001 to 2016, at which time our two remaining children went to school. 

But in my heart, I’m still a home educating mum. I must admit to feeling almost relieved at having my son at home again, and to watch him enjoy learning – something that has been missing while he was at school. 

Our journey into educating at home started because our eldest child was the typical square peg that objected to being jammed into a round hole. My husband suggested home educating in despair at ever finding an educational environment that would survive our daughter, and vice versa. I nearly divorced him on the spot. I am NOT a patient person. My eldest is even less patient than I am, and categorically refused to learn anything if I was the one teaching. Many years later we learnt why we had such huge issues, but at the time I just knew there was something not quite right. 

Thankfully, we all survived, but I honestly had to laugh every time somebody said to me about home educating, ‘You must be so patient; I could never do this’. Over the years, we added more kids (we have six aged 11 to 25) and tried all sorts of home educating methods. We did unschooling, natural learning/child directed learning, unit studies, lap booking, packaged curriculum, full-on ACE, dabbled in Steiner, part-time school and distance education. I have home educated children with autism at varying levels, gifted kids, kids with learning difficulties, those who loved learning and those who hated it, one who taught herself to read at age four, one with school refusal. 

One of our children ‘graduated’ from home education at the end of Grade 12. One child finished home education at the end of Year 10, then got their VCE through Distance Education and is currently at university. Another gave up home education in despair around Grade 8, and then went to TAFE at age (almost) 16. One has been at school from Grade 4 onwards – and I really regret sending him to high school! We still have one child at a Special Developmental School, and our youngest started school part-way through Prep and finished Grade 5 at school, before moving back to home education. So, you can see that we’ve got quite a mixed bag! 

What have I learnt out of all that? That there’s a lot more to home education than just shoving a curriculum in front of a child and telling them to ‘get to it’. 

Be flexible and look at the needs, strengths, and abilities of each child. After all, that’s the key positive about home education: it’s tailored to the needs of the child. However, you also need to look at what works for the family as a whole. 

If you are a single parent who is also working outside of the home, you may not have the time needed to prepare unit studies from scratch. A sleep deprived mother of four under the age of five, is going to struggle to sit down with her non-reading child every day and go through four hours of phonics lessons. A large family with six kids will need to plan activities differently to one with one or two children. 

So be kind to yourself – don’t expect to reproduce what happens in the school classroom. Take the time to figure out what works for your family and to connect with your child. It is never too late to learn! 

Otherways 171 (Feb 2022)