(Home)school is cool!

I went on a little adventure today. Inspired by our ongoing troubles with the local education system, I thought it might be worthwhile to explore alternatives.

Enter our long-lost friend who we recently reconnected with on Facebook (Shout out to Facebook!). She's been homeschooling her daughter (now 11) since the early years and has been a valuable resource in our charting of the homeschool territory. So today I ventured out to visit the group to get a feel for the culture and make some headway in deciding if it's a viable option for us.

I've always considered myself pretty traditional when it comes to education so this is a big leap for me to even be considering homeschooling. And you know what? It's really cool. It totally speaks to my inner hippie. It appeals to my don't-fence-me-in attitude and is stirring up the mommy ideals most of us have as we were first approaching parenthood. You know, before you become jaded and exhausted and reality sets in.

The people I met today were fantastic. Nope, I have no witty remarks, no snark. They were great, welcoming, forthcoming, honest. There were families there for lots of different reasons and they were valid reasons. Whatever preconceived notions you have about homeschoolers, I can certainly attest these particular parents are just doing what makes sense for their families. And they have every right to do it without reproach or skepticism. I can also vouch for the fact that their children are getting a lot more education than mine are right now.

The irony of this little situation of ours is that the group is actually near our old neighborhood; the one we left because the schools were so bad. We moved to our current area, largely due to the strong school system...which is now failing to deliver the real deal. Count that as a lesson learned the hard (and expensive) way. So we're closet hippies stuck in the suburbs in a recession. Awesome!

Now that we've come to the realization that we've been trying to fit our round pegs into the square hole of a traditional public school system, do we have the chutzpah do actually to actually make the change? I hope so, because when your child doesn't fit the mold, the cookie cutter school is a recipe for disaster.