You Decide.

My original inaugural homeschool post looked much different from the one you’re now reading. It was entitled “3 Reasons We Chose to Homeschool”, and while it simmers in my pile of drafts for potential publication, I find it is abruptly outdated in the face of COVID-19 school closures.

We have found joy in our decision to homeschool. And much of the joy comes from just that – our DECISION. We weighed our options. We poured over curricula, navigated routines, shifted gears, and adjusted daily based on successes and failures. We carefully curated an atmosphere of education that would allow for exploration, discovery, relationships, adventure, and boredom (because that’s where the magic happens, friends).

We weren’t thrust into it unexpectedly. We were not scrambling to adjust work schedules or rebalance priorities at home. We didn’t have to figure out how to enrich our children without libraries, museums, playgrounds, grocery stores, friends’ houses, state parks, or bookstores.

Homeschooling is no longer just an educational choice. For many places in the US it has become an educational reality. So while I hope to share more about our own intentional homeschool journey, I don’t want to do so without saying that this thing we are doing now – whether we chose it or not – this is a hard thing. There will be triumphs and trials, often in the same day. In one moment you may wonder why you don’t take the leap and homeschool regardless of re-openings, and in the next you may see a desperate mirage of the yellow school bus bumping down the road.

One decision has been made for us. Our children will not be returning to their school buildings, whether it is for this month or this year or this season. But there are still decisions to be made. Decisions about finding beauty in the chaos. Decisions about curbing attitudes with kindness instead of our own stubborn rebuttals. Decisions about giving framework to the new freedom of our days. Decisions about what we want our children to learn. Decisions about how much we should learn from worksheets versus the world.

Maybe you made the decision to homeschool. Maybe the state made that decision for you. Regardless, the next decision is entirely yours. What will you do, now that you are in this place of challenge and beauty and struggle and joy? How will you allow this time to change you? What will you decide?

You decide.