Sometimes, a creative action is taking a look at something that is not working and making some radical changes. But when you make alterations, other areas may suffer. Back to the drawing board. Let’s look for some more changes.
Last fall, we made a decision to take our two oldest children out of school. It was not a change we came to lightly, but when we pulled them out, we believed we were ready for a creative adventure: homeschooling. While researching home-school curricula and various options for teaching math, science, English, social studies and other subjects, I found myself taking my body weight in notes. I spent hours reading library books or talking to my sister, a veteran of California homeschooling with her two sons.
Having taught college courses, I wasn’t afraid of developing a structure for courses. When I made my final selections—utilizing some of the elements from the children’s school and others we decided we wanted to add—I felt eager and confident.
The book I wish I had read before starting the great homeschooling venture is “Love in the Time of Homeschooling: A Mother and Daughter’s Uncommon Year.” Harper provided me with a free copy of the book for my review.

Laura Brodie, whose book captures a year of homeschooling with her oldest of three children, details the triumphs and pitfalls she ran across in taking her daughter out of public school in a small Virginia town. While there were some successes during Brodie’s year teaching her daughter, she shares many of the less-than-perfect moments. Those moments that parents experience, but don’t necessarily think anyone else is dealing with.
Brodie does point out that in researching homeschooling “expressions of serious frustration seemed taboo.” I understood that teaching my children would be difficult, but I, too, rarely ran across research that offered insight into how to surmount the difficulties.
Brodie writes about confiding to friends that the homeschooling is not going so well, as she bumps along her rocky road of homeschooling: “Just as there is no place like home, there is no anger like homeschooling anger.” Brodie grapples with the guilt of losing her temper, as a mother will.
Brodie’s “noble” pursuit of homeschooling was similar to my own. No major scores to settle with anyone or religious discomfort with public schools—in fact, Brodie keeps her younger daughters in school. But Brodie operates on the belief, so long supported by our culture, that a parent can—among the long list of accomplishments—also provide a decent education to our children.
I still believe in homeschooling, just like I still believe in public schooling. However, I also believe that homeschooling may work for some better than others. For the creativity factor, I wish homeschooling would have worked for us. I love nothing better than letting my children explore and create and learn. But during the months I spent trying, the learning seemed to be lacking while the exploration and creativity were in abundance.
I’m not complaining. It has been a great experience, but I know that my kids need to have more of educational backbone than I was able to provide them. But I also know that play is also one of the greatest gifts I was able to give them these past few months.
So, if anyone asks me about homeschooling, I have a laundry list of books to recommend. Brodie’s journal of her homeschooling trials and tribulations is top of the pile.
It would appear that Brodie did no harm in taking her child out of school for the homeschooling year. I like to think that I, too, have done no harm. In fact, it is probably the opposite. Brodie learned a lot about her daughter and about herself. In reading her book and finishing up on a similar path, I also admit to learning a lot about my kids, their learning style and myself. And am looking forward to testing it all out when they are in school next year.
I’ll certainly be keeping their creativity going, but I’ll just make sure we can be creative without the pressure of having to teach to distraction.

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