More parents of color are pursuing homeschooling for their kids. But the idea of taking children out of “traditional” schooling brings up a host of questions—what do I teach them? How do I make sure they’re actually learning? What’s our schedule supposed to look like?
We asked Detroit-based homeschooling mom of three Camille Kirksey to give us a sort of homeschooling 101 for newbie homeschoolers on Facebook Live.
Camille answered a lot of questions from our followers, including:
- Where do you begin? How far in advance do you plan curriculum, lesson plans, etc? Are there certain guidelines that are followed? I’d like to start like yesterday but I don’t even know where to begin.
- What is homeschooling, and what isn’t homeschooling?
- How do you structure your day with homeschooling kids of different ages/grade levels?
- What resources do you use to find curriculums and teach them accordingly?
- How do you plan to supplement their teaching when you reach a subject you’re not that familiar with?
- What are homeschooling collectives and do you use them?
- What’s some hard-earned homeschooling advice you wish you had heard when you were first starting?
- What have been some of the growing pains you’ve experienced on your homeschooling journey?
- Is it possible to homeschool if you work, particularly if you work outside the home? Is this a movement just for SAHM/WAHMs, or are there ways to make it work for parents whose lives require them to work outside the home?
- I’m considering homeschooling my 7th grader and Kindergartener while traveling abroad for a year as a single parent. I’d love some resources that are conducive to travel and some realistic sense of how much ‘help’ I’ll need especially if I want to maintain some time for me to work on maybe 25% basis from wherever we are. And structure- how do you build in predictable structure to your days?
- Would love to know how you keep [your] baby girl occupied while the others are learning?
- I have a 5 year old we’re currently traveling so he’s not in school. What and how are we supposed to be teaching him? We have two sylvan kindergarten and first grade books that we use what exactly should he be learning?
- Do you have any suggestion on where I can find a top grade set of (free) secular curriculum? There are a lot of resources out there by the vast majority have a religious base.
- Getting started can feel overwhelming. Can you recommend a resource, book or blog that we can follow that will help us get started? We’re busy so having some guidance/structure is going to be important until we get the hang of things.
- Talking to family about homeschooling. Any tools or tips? Our friends and family think we’re crazy.
- I love the idea of unschooling, but I am concerned that by not having some form of structure in place we will miss something important (for example, learning to read is typically taught in steps. First you learn the letters, then the sounds, then you put the sounds together to form a word.). Any suggestions on how best to approach the opportunity?
- We live in Phoenix and are struggling to find like-minded families nearby. We’d love to form/join a co-op, but there aren’t any nearby. Do you know of any tools/resources (like a matchmaking service or pen pals) out there that are connecting black homeschooling families together either in-person or in-line.
