Homeschooling

And it’s effect on me

At the beginning of my 3rd grade year, my parents made a decision that changed my life forever. My parents began to see flaws without our counties school system that bothered them. Everything from a decrease in pertinent education, to an increase in violence within the schools. It was at this point my parents decided that they wanted my education to be different, they wanted to homeschool me.

I didn’t take the news very at first. All of my friends were from my school at the time and I really enjoyed going everyday. I was also scared of the idea of homeschooling. Knowing my track record at school of being rambunctious and disruptive, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to having my mom as my teacher. Throughout my first two years in grade school I was known to be a very energetic and ‘annoying’ kid. I was constantly distracting my fellow students and driving my teachers up the wall. I didn’t realize it back then, but had my parents never decided to homeschool me, I don’t think I would have made it through middle school. 

My first few years in my homeschooling journey were rough. This was my mother’s first attempt at teaching and I was reluctant to listen. She was constantly having to switch my curriculums and find different ways to teach me because I simply wouldn’t comply. It was hard to find something that worked for me, but eventually my parents decided to toss out the curriculums and build their own for me based off of real world lessons. Instead of spending hours a day with my face buried in a science textbook learning about fossils, I was introduced to an archeologist who taught me everything they knew. Instead of wasting my time reading through paragraph after paragraph of a history textbook, I competed in competitions like National History Day. this approach to teaching allowed me to get excited about my education and more involved in what I was learning. It gave me a passion for school and changed my view on education forever.

Eventually I found myself entering highschool. In my home state of Colorado, tracking your highschool credits as a homeschooler isn't the easiest task. It was because of this my parents decided to enroll me in a program at a local charter school meant to help homeschoolers stay on track with their studies and have all their credits tracked in the school system, this school was called “The Summit Academy”. Although I had to go back to those boring textbooks and seemingly endless reading, I found myself enjoying it thanks to my teachers. They seemed to share my mother's idea of education, they wanted to get us more involved in what we were learning and give us real world experience. This allowed me to maintain my excitement and passion for learning all throughout highschool. I eventually graduated from Summit in April of 2019 and I will always look back on my years there as good memories.

All in all homeschooling changed my outlook on what education is and the importance of what we learn. In my opinion, modern day highschools are flooded with useless information that we won't ever use in the real world. Hundreds of hours of our childhood is wasted on everything from pointless general education classes, to high level mathematics that 90% of us will never use again. Even college holds many of the same flaws, this is why when I graduated and it was time to choose the next stage of my life, I decided against college and found Praxis. I’m very excited to see where this path is going to take me in my life, and I truly owe it to the values and ideas that were instilled in me through homeschooling. I know there’s a lot of negative stereotypes surrounding homeschooling, but without its influence in my life, I wouldn't be who I am, and I wouldn’t be on the path I am had I not been homeschooled, and I will forever be grateful for that input in my life.

-Braden Schmidt 11-5-2019