Adventures in Homeschooling: The End of the Story

Last year at this time we were unenrolling Laney from Waynesville High School, and I was having a bit of a panic attack about it. I won't rehash all of my feelings again, but I did record all of them on this blog post that you can check out HERE. To say the least, I was a bit worried about this new path that Laney had chosen to take, but I felt as if it was the right thing for us to support at that time. So Laney has spent the last year taking her classes from home through an online high school program provided by BYU. Today Laney headed back to the high school, this time to re-enroll for her senior year of high school. Here are my thoughts about the whole experience:

I'm sure that Laney could provide her own blog post about exactly what she gained from her year as a homeschooler and why she feels she benefited from the experience, so I'll use my post to talk about my thoughts about the whole thing. When she chose to pull herself out of school last year we had all sorts of thoughts about why that was the thing that Heavenly Father would inspire her to do. And the reality is, we still don't really know the whys of this experience. I have some ideas, but I'm sure that we may never totally know until we get to see the whole eternal big picture someday. As Laney headed to the school to enroll today, she said that she was a bit nervous about going back. Part of her believed that it might have been better to just fly through her courses last year so that she could have graduated early and started college a year earlier. (But I'm super glad she didn't make that choice -- not ready for her to leave us yet!) I think that part of her worried about getting back into the grind of all day schooling again. But I have no worries. I feel like she has grown so much in this last year that she will be ready to handle whatever comes her way, whether it is an academic challenge or a social challenge. She's going to thrive!

As we headed into the high school library to meet the counselors and set up Laney's classes for the year Laney was immediately grabbed by several of the students who were there with the National Honor Society or Student-to-Student who were there to give tours of the school to new students. All of them already knew Laney, and it was neat for me to see how excited all of them were to see Laney and that she would be back in school with them next year. She comes into school with a built-in group of friends who are accepting of her and her choice to sit this last year out. Seeing Laney interact with them made me happy. I am glad that my kids all have such good friends surrounding them. 

We had a long wait for our counselor, so we sat in the waiting area with all of the other students while we waited. Laney got a chance to catch up with old friends and meet several new students who were waiting as well. Because Waynesville has so many military families in the district we have an unusually high number of new students each year. While we were waiting there were several new seniors who had just moved into the area. Laney made sure to make the rounds and introduce herself to many of them, and I recognized one of her great qualities that she has really developed in this last year. Laney is good at being a friend to those in need, and I think that she made several of these new students feel much better entering a new school as a senior. Herman also got his chance to schmooze a bit as he interacted with everyone. Several of the WHS kids who were there to give tours had Herman as a principal in elementary school, so they already knew a bit about what type of person he is. But my absolute most favorite moment was when Herman cornered the boys who were there to explain his dating philosophy to them. He told them that they needed to be going out on lots and lots of dates with different girls and not pairing off. One of the guys said, "Can we really do that?" "Oh yes you can!!" explained Herman. And then he went on one of his long explanations of the benefits of dating in this way instead of pairing off. I watched these boys staring at Herman in rapt attention, hanging on his every word. As they listened every single one of them was nodding their head at him. Now, either this was because they totally agreed with his philosophy, or they thought, "If we just smile and nod at this guy, maybe he'll stop talking." So funny!

When Laney finally got to the front of the line to get her schedule together it was relatively easy to do. She already knew what she needed to take in order to graduate. The tricky thing for her was that she needed to have five quality point classes. These are generally the AP classes. Pretty difficult, but not too big of a deal. Laney is on track to be a valedictorian this year, but in order to do this she had to have five of these quality point classes, so that was her big requirement in coming back to school. In order to get these classes she had to drop her chamber choir class. I think she was a bit bummed out about that because she really wanted to take choir this year for the first time. But, like Herman said, this was probably the sacrifice that she was going to have to make because she studied at home last year. And it was a sacrifice she was willing to make. 

So her schedule complete, Laney is now officially back in the Waynesville School District for her senior year. Hurray! With all of that done, I look back on her last year and want to share some things I think Laney gained from her home school experience. 

1.  Laney became a super self-motivated learner. With online classes Laney never really interacted with a live teacher at all. She received all of her assignments online and turned them in online as well. The most human interaction came from the lady at the library who served as a proctor for her exams. Herman and I never really sat down and told her to do anything. She could have sat out the entire year if she chose to, but she made her master plan for the year and stuck to it. With her assignments she always seemed to go above the call of the assignment and give it her all. I think that these are skills that will serve her well when she enters college.

2.  Laney matured so much as a person. She spent this last year trying to better herself in so many areas of her life. I have never seen a person with so many lists of things that she wanted to accomplish. But she wasn't just a list maker. She went about getting those things done. I know that she didn't do everything, but the things that she accomplished went a long way toward helping her grow as an individual. She became more driven, but at the same time became more centered so that she seemed pretty even-keeled about everything that came her way. She became a source of strength in our family.

3.  Laney got the opportunity to interact with so many AMAZING women during the year. I'm an okay mom, but I'm not perfect. At the beginning of the year I think that Laney wanted to strive to be prepared to be an awesome mom someday. And so she kept going on and on about how she was going to work on her "womanly attributes." What does that even mean? I could never get her to really pin down an answer for me, but I think that she was wanting to be the best that she could be. Only seeing my example wasn't enough, but seeking out some unrealistic ideal of perfect womanhood wasn't right either. Luckily Laney got the chance to hang out with some great examples of women and moms. She was a permanent babysitter for Chitra Conner, Emi Stapler, and Melissa Stewart, and these women were such great examples to her. Being around them gave her a realistic idea of what it means to be a wife and mom. Each of these ladies approached motherhood differently, and they are each amazing, so Laney got to see several different examples and realize that there are lots of ways to have great "womanly attributes." I'm super grateful to these ladies for the examples that they were to Laney this year.

4. Laney became an amazing sister to Minsy. It had to be hard for Minsy to come to the US, knowing absolutely no English, and not knowing a single thing about these crazy people who were now her permanent family. I think it would have been even harder for her to transition to our life if it hadn't been for Laney. Laney became her best friend during the day. She played games with her and cooked with her and tried to teach her things all day long. She took Minsy to the park and on play dates. I think that Minsy's easy transition can be attributed to all of the effort Laney put into helping her in the early days.

5. Laney's testimony grew exponentially during this year. Every once in a while during this year Laney would make a comment somewhere and say how she had so much she needed to do to be better. Now, I know that all of us can always find things to do to help us be better, no matter how awesome we might be. But I had to roll my eyes sometimes when Laney said this because she was doing so much already. Every day she would read her scriptures in English (and Spanish!). She journaled. She found ways to do service. She studied Institute manuals. She strove in all that she did to learn all that she could and live the things she learned. She was such an example to me.  And I think that through this extra time this year Laney really found her spiritual groove. This opportunity to hear Heavenly Father's will in her life, follow that prompting, and then to see the blessings that came from that has been priceless. I have no fear sending her off on her own soon because I know that she has learned this valuable lesson this year. She will not need to lean on anyone in order to have a testimony. She has her very own. And it shines brightly.

There are so many other things I could list. Who knows why Laney was prompted to study from home last year? I don't. But I think that it is an experience that was well worth it for Laney and for us as a family. I still believe that I would be a terrible homeschool mom, but with someone as self-driven as Laney it could work. We're not in any hurry to push any of our other kids to do this. But for Laney I'd say that our year of homeschooling can be labeled a success. Yea!