May Palacpac, Storyteller

I’ve recently published the last installment for my blog series on Educating for life home school conference 2014 held last September 6. In it, I’ve mentioned common questions posed to us home schooling families.

I promised in that blog that I will give my answers to the questions, so here goes:

Can you home school legally?

Yes, despite some misconception on what home schooling is, and the confusion between home schooling and home studying, home schooling is definitely legal in the Philippines.

There are many DepEd-accredited home school providing institutions that you can register your child with, or you can have your child take the PepTest at the DepEd center every year.

Are they socialised?

There is a huge difference between socialisation and being sociable.

There’s definitely no problem with socialisation, most home schoolers are extremely confident and comfortable conversing with anyone of any status, age or nationality – provided they’re using the same language, ofcourse. Sometimes, not even. You’ll be surprised at their confidence to communicate outside words!

Whether or not they are sociable is a personality trait.

For example, my 9-year old takes after his dad who likes being surrounded with people so he’s popular, but my 5-year old is the moody type – he takes after me.  He enjoys friends and parties, but there are times when he just wants to play with his blocks by himself.

Do you give them tests?

If you’re referring to paperwork, yes, we let them answer practice exercises or write essays and all that, but we don’t roast them with those.

I do a lot of discussions with my children to check on how much they understood after they’ve read a book or watched a movie. Processing with our children is a huge part of home schooling, there are many ways to do that like doing arts, crafts or as simple as making a short video using the cellphone camera.

We try to lay off unnecessary tediousness when it comes to our kids’ education. The goal is to make learning fun, relaxed and enjoyable.

What about P.E.?

We run as a family, and we’re hoping to join our very first Fun Run this November, that’s already P.E.

Our eldest attends a dance class with other home schoolers as they prepare for a production they’re staging on March, and we signed him up for soccer at the Philippine Army headquarters, where young soccer players like him are coached by soldiers who are not on duty.

YOU ARE SO STRANGE!

We can’t all the be same, if we are, the world will be boring.

How long will you home school?

For as long as it works for our children and our family. Most home schooling families take it a year at a time, then re-assess before the next school year.

Some families home school for as long as 20 years – and all the way till College. Others home school their children only during their foundation years.

Look at what they’re missing!

They’re not missing any more than they would’ve missed if they have gone to a regular school.

In fact, we are able to provide them with more opportunities to explore, discover, and see new things, given our circumstances.

We can pack our suitcases and take our children anywhere with us at any time. We can home school anywhere, the world is our classroom.

Why do you do this?

There are many possible answers for this – we want to give our children the best education possible, because we want to prepare them for their future, because we want to set their foundation, blah blah blah — but the bottom line is that our family is called to do this. There’s no better way to say it.

They’ll miss the prom!!!

First of all, please be informed that many home schoolers have been invited to proms by their friends more than once. And I’ve heard of many co-ops that have been organising fun formal dinner events for home schoolers.

But what is it exactly that they’re missing when they don’t go to a regular prom?  The truth is that the prom hype is mostly just something we got from the books we read or from the movies that we watched. In my honest opinion, a prom is something our kids can live without.

There are many local high schools that have already taken out prom from their events and none of their students died.

What about graduation?

If it’s just marching, they can always march with the rest of the regular students attending their home school provider’s regular school. Or they can march with other home schoolers.

But graduation is more than just marching, what it actually means is that your child is ready to be launched, to be on his own and ready to make a go at life independent from you. With that, most home schoolers have no problems.

Many former home schoolers are now leaders and achievers in their own fields of work.

I could never do that!

It’s not a walk in the park, that’s for sure, but if you feel that you’re called to home school your child, trust me, you can do it, too!

Can they go to college?

If you mean whether they can keep up with other students in college, yes.

Many home schoolers who entered universities have been granted scholarships and are on top of their class. They are confident, impressive and can express themselves well, verbally and in writing.

Most home schoolers have a whole gamut of skills- computer programming, languages, advertising, marketing, entrepreneurship and many other things they have had the time to train for and apply in practical situations.

But what’s more important is that, most home schoolers have deeply ingrained values. They can handle responsibilities on-the-job, keep in excellent character, lead with confidence and represent with integrity.
I hope my answers to these questions can help you decide if home schooling is what  you want for your family.  Don’t hesitate to shoot me some questions if you have any, but be nice, okay? ;)