MAKING THE SWITCH: Our Family's Journey from Public School to Home School

By Leigh Ann Scott

Leigh Ann Scott spent many years teaching middle school language arts and enrolled her own children in the same school where she worked. With each year that passed, she saw changes taking place in education, and many of them did not align with her beliefs. After observing the children of friends and family who homeschooled, Leigh Ann began to be intrigued by it and started asking questions. Once the COVID-19 pandemic sent her and her children home to school through virtual means, she saw the need even more and unenrolled her children from public school. As a teacher, this was a conflict of interest, but she followed through and never looked back. This is their story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798891300057

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MAKING THE SWITCH

Our Family's Journey from Public School to Home School

Leigh Ann Scott

ISBN 979-8-89130-004-0 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89130-005-7 (digital)

Copyright © 2024 by Leigh Ann Scott

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Our Story

Chapter 2

Why We Chose Homeschooling

Chapter 3

The Timing Is Never Right

Chapter 4

Shutting Down the Negative

Chapter 5

Public Schoolteacher/Homeschool Mom

Chapter 6

Are You Ready to Make the Switch Too?

Chapter 7

Educating the Whole Child

Chapter 8

The Importance of Reading Aloud to Children

Chapter 9

The Importance of Outdoor Play

Chapter 10

Discipleship and Education

Chapter 11

Conclusion

Book Recommendations

References

About the Author

Introduction

Mom, please, will you homeschool me next year? Anna pleaded through tears on her last day of fifth grade.

I was working the car rider line, which was beginning to die down as kids were headed home for the summer, and she came bursting through the doors of the gym. All of the teacher's kids had been released from their classrooms to go find their parents. She didn't come through the doors smiling because it was the last day and her summer was beginning. Like some kids, she wasn't sad because it was the last day and she was going to miss her friends, or was uncertain of what her summer held. She was crying because at the end of the day, on the very last day of fifth grade, her on-again-off-again friend had decided to be off again and was gathering a posse to be with her. It wasn't enough that she had been relentlessly bullied throughout third grade by another student, but for the past two school years, she faced a daily uncertainty of whether or not the girls in her class would like her anymore, if one girl in particular told them not to.

She had been miserable for three school years, and the guilt was weighing on me. School had been fun for her in the beginning. She loved learning, and she was good at it. She enjoyed her teachers and was friendly and personable, so she made friends easily. She was well-liked by her classmates and teachers, even though she could be difficult and stubborn at times. But around third grade, school had stopped being fun for her. Not only that, but all that she dealt with while in the classroom was taking a toll on her education. She was mostly maintaining her grades but was not truly learning anything.

We had already been in discussion about homeschooling, and it was something that I had been researching and looking into for more than a year; but at that time, she didn't know that my mind was already made-up and things had already been set in motion for us to begin homeschooling. So I simply responded, Yes, I think we will. And that is just what we did.

This is the journey of my family as we switched from public school to homeschool.

Chapter 1

Our Story

My Story

Within a year of having me, my mother gave birth to my brother and then almost immediately divorced my father. She was a high school dropout who was ending her second marriage, making her a factory-employed single mother. My father moved back in with his parents, where he would remain for the rest of his life.

My parents had what was a common joint custody of us, but we spent our weekdays with our mom. After moving a few times, we settled in a single-wide trailer. She somehow managed to escape two rounds of layoffs from the factory where she worked but would not be so fortunate when the third round came about. With little experience and education, we were in a tough position. The result was that my brother and I moved in with our father, which meant that we would also be living with our grandparents in a three-generation home.

The move happened during the summer between my kindergarten and first-grade years and just before my brother began kindergarten. I attended public school for all my schooling (kindergarten through twelfth grades) and, thankfully, all within the same school system and district.

My father was highly intelligent, although he was not a lover of school. He did go on to trade school following his high school graduation, but he struggled to work for other people and rather enjoyed the freedom of being his own boss. So he did that, but for him, it mostly meant being in financial struggle throughout his life. However, he had been raised to be self-sufficient, and living with him meant that I was fortunate to grow up on a small farm (or what would likely now be called a homestead) and learn a lot about growing and preserving my own food, living off the land, and being frugal. He raised cattle and tobacco and could grow almost anything. He bought a few acres across from where we all lived and used that land to maintain us while I was growing up.

My mother was also very intelligent, but in many different ways. She had been raised rather differently and had what we would call street smarts more than academic intelligence. School simply was not a priority while she was growing up, at least not more than basic survival had been. She was not a dainty woman but was instead what most would call a tomboy. She had been raised with all brothers and divorced parents. Her father was not a staple in her life, and her mother lived by her own free will and worked odd shifts that kept her from always being home.

My mom would go on to get her GED while I was living with my dad and grandparents and then get her nursing assistant credentials following that. She has always been a helper of people and loved the work that working as a nursing assistant would bring, but it simply did not pay the bills. While working those jobs, she often had side gigs cleaning houses or tending bars or whatever she could find. She would eventually go on to marry my now stepfather, and they would run a small construction business together. Her life choices while she was young, however, would always haunt her, and she would always struggle financially.

To put it simply, I grew up poor. I knew we were poor, but for the most part, I don't remember caring that much. I did sometimes notice that