5 Homeschooling Fails & Wins

I have one more year before the baby goes off to college. As the new school year begins, I’m reflecting on the mistakes and wins we have had along the way. I had to pivot and learn from my mistakes, which is probably an aspect of anything we do. Thankfully, my mistakes were counterbalanced with some wins!

5 Homeschooling Mistakes

1. Replicating the daily grind of the public school. I don’t know why I did this. Perhaps it’s because I felt this weight of responsibility for their education, and it was what I knew. If I could do it over, I would not stress out so much, and I wouldn’t schedule the kids so rigidly. I even had PE on their schedule even though they played hockey every day. 🤦🏻‍♀️  I would also only school 4 days per week.
2. Mixed Up Priorities. Some days–okay, a lot of days–I had my own agenda, and it felt like their schooling was a massive burden and in the way of all the things I needed to do. For some years, I worked from home, too. Life is busy, and it’s not like I could just make my own to-do list disappear. However, two of my kids needed explicit instruction and accountability. They were not the kind of kids who would take a workbook and magically learn on their own. Honestly, I didn’t have the time to sit down and actually teach them as often as they needed. I had to decide what my primary role was during the day. If I was a homeschool teacher first, then everything else had to wait. But on days when other things were more important, I needed to find a teacher for my kids. They needed direct teaching and accountability. I couldn’t do it all by myself. I never found amazing live classes that offered what they needed: an expert teacher, grading, due dates, a fun class, and accountability. So we struggled when I was busy.
3. We didn’t travel enough. Part of the reason was because sports tied us down, but I could have worked around it a little better to plan some fun trips. If I could go back in time, I would have the kids plan the trips and stay within a budget. It would be an adventure!
4. I enrolled them in asynchronous (self-paced) classes that didn’t have due dates. This was a nightmare because they waited until the last few weeks of the course to mass-submit their work, which was sub-par since they were in a panic. Then, they didn’t get feedback from their teacher because they mass-submitted their work. They needed due dates to keep them accountable for finishing and meeting a deadline. We wasted a lot of time and money, and they lost learning on that type of class.
5. I didn’t give them tests. I thought that as long as they were learning and I was measuring that learning in other ways—like conversations, projects, essays, etc.—we would be good! However, when my kids got to college, they had a rude awakening. They never really learned how to study for a test, how to deal with the stress of an exam, how to watch their time while testing, and how to suffer the consequences of a bad grade.

5 Homeschooling Wins:

1. They got jobs. They worked at Chic-fil-A, a car wash, a sports camp, and a hockey rink. A couple of them even had two part-time jobs. Working for tips in a manual labor job is some kind of magic sauce for growing them up and forcing them to consider their future. They made friends and had to submit to a boss. Sometimes they had awful bosses, which was wonderful as they learned to navigate such a situation. They learned customer service, to get to work on time, what it was like to “get written up” for being late, and most importantly, the value of a dollar and hard work. I never woke them up or “helped” them get to work on time and they learned responsibility to someone other than me. I even gave them “Intro to Business” credit on their transcripts, which was a great way to acknowledge their hard work and learning. I always made them pay for things like their hockey sticks, and they would say, “That hockey stick is worth four weeks of work!” Yes, son. Yes, it is.
2. They learned how to write. I knew writing was critical to their ability to think and reason, and their college life would be so much easier if they arrived with crazy-good writing skills. I see some of their friends struggle in their college classes because they lack the necessary skills. My oldest son has written 70 essays alone for his medical school applications!
3. They have all developed a biblical worldview. This took so much sacrifice; it’s hard to put it into words. In any of its iterations, the importance of a Christian education cannot be overstated. I will save more for a dedicated blog post on this topic, but watching my grown children evaluate the absolute craziness of this world with the security, confidence, and faith that only comes from knowing God and His word, fills me with immeasurable joy.
4. Dual enrollment. As soon as they hit their junior year of high school, I could take a breath. I could outsource their classes, and they earned college credit. As a result, my oldest finished college in two years, and my middle will finish in three. The baby? We’ll see. He’s built different.
5. We found associations to join. For example, my oldest joined the American College of Cardiology since my son was interested in this. He applied to be a “young scholar.” He was accepted into the program and had physician mentors. He even got to shadow them at work. They flew him to New Orleans and Washington D.C., and paid for his $400/night hotels just to attend their conventions. He was selected to present at one of the conferences after doing a research project with his mentor. Along the way, he gathered letters of recommendation he used to open even more doors with Level 1 trauma emergency departments, ambulance companies, and more. All of these experiences have had a cumulative effect on his future.

I’m sure that if I were to do it all over again, I would still make mistakes and have regrets. It is by the grace of God that anything wonderful happens, and the Lord works all of those mistakes and fumbles together for the good of those who love Him. I wish you a wonderful school year ahead where you learn from mistakes and celebrate the wins.