By Jennifer Bowler

Today as I watched some young kids waiting on the side of the road for our local school bus, I started thinking about the reasons I choose a home-school lifestyle for our family.

I come from a background that is strongly enmeshed in the public school systems. I am the product of three generations of public school teachers. Because of my prejudice, my children had a great deal of negative experiences before I even considered taking them out of government schools and beginning this wonderful adventure of home-based education.

I was so timid taking my first steps into this home-school world. I want to share some of the surprising and gratifying lessons home-schooling has taught me.

1. Education is a lifelong endeavor. The main reason I was reluctant to home-school was my own insecurities. I knew my weaknesses. I thought the “experts” at public school were somehow better qualified to teach my children. I held onto this belief even with all the evidence that my child was “falling through the cracks.” When I woke up I realized that I had the motivation to teach my children and that was more valuable to them than pedagogy. I became a lifelong learner. I may not be trained on the latest fad in education, (I have been around enough to see a lot of education reform come and go.) but I know each of my children's learning styles and personalities. I know their passions and quirks. I also know how to help them learn how to learn (and hopefully inspire them to love learning). I have personally been inspired to continue cultivating my mind and expanding my education. My example and our children's participation has changed the culture of our home. We do not “do school” we are living-learning and teaching one another. Learning is a hobby and we devote long enjoyable hours to it.
   
   
2. Healthy socialization is important: In my childhood all my friends and social experiences revolved around public schools. Because I did not know any better, I felt like that was the only way to train a child with essential social skills. From this warped perspective I thought It was perfectly normal for an adolescent to refrain from having intelligent conversations with adults about their lives. I thought it was normal to awkwardly exclude those who were different. I thought it was normal for youth to feel tremendous conformity with their peers. All this was “normal” in my experiences in public schools but maladaptive for real life. I now define socialization as: The skills needed to effectively communicate, resolve conflict, feel empathy and compassion for others, and problem solving skills including team work. I am impressed with the socialization skills my home-schooled children exhibit. I have thoughtfully and deliberately focused on social skills. They have a full and vibrate social life and have learned skills I did not develop until adulthood. I wish I could have enjoyed the social lives my children have.
   
   
3. Home-schooling is a rich and rewarding experience for a family. I did not begin homeschooling to improve our family life. The laughter and bonding that are such an important part of our family now came as a huge surprise to me. When we began homeschooling we started reading together and this led to “inside jokes” based on our reading. We started writing together and this led to a game of sneaking onto each other's computers and adding funny arbitrary words like “fuzzy bunny slippers” and waiting in expectation for it to be discovered. Math, history, social studies all came to life in our home. The dinner conversations have been raised to a higher level and became so much more fun. The older kids' studies are interesting and exciting for the younger. They can't wait to learn. The family dynamics, while not perfect are so much better than before. I never expected it because I was public schooled and did not know better.
   
   

These are just three reasons why I love being a home-school family. My children express gratitude that we have taken this road less traveled because it really has made all the difference.

By Tanya Simler

Cedaredge has had a fairly large concentration of homeschooling families for many years. When we moved here from Denver area 7 years ago, we met with a group of families, first as a co-op where moms in our group taught classes they had experience in or felt children in our group needed/wanted to learn, and then later as "clubs" through American Youth Leadership Institute (AYLI).  These were rewarding for both students and moms who were involved!

A few years ago, my family discovered an online leadership education school (http://leadershipeducationacademy.com/), where my three oldest children began taking classes.  My oldest daughter began by taking their scholar classes and completed four of those classes/projects (Key of Liberty, Shakespeare Conquest, Sword of Freedom and Pyramid Project).  She gained so much from these projects, and I saw tremendous growth in her personally and in her educational skills, knowledge, and abilities.

When one of the moms of our group talked about her experiences in Eastern Colorado with a Commonwealth School, some of us became interested in pursuing this opportunity for our area, especially for our older children.  I was especially interested as most Commonwealth Schools teach the same scholar classes my daughter had been taking from the online school.  The online classes were great, but there were many technological problems and limitations that were frustrating.  I thought about how much better of an experience we could provide if we offered these same classes/projects "live" for our children.

Three of us trained for about 9 weeks through  http://newcommonwealthschools.wordpress.com/.  It was fairly intense as none of us had ever done anything like this before, but we felt inspired and excited through the whole process.  We felt God guiding us and performing many small miracles on our behalf.  We then attended a very intense three-day training a year ago through  http://www.lemimentortraining.com/ to learn how to mentor the scholar classes we wanted to offer for our first year.  We teach our youth that each person has at least one personal mission that God desires for them to accomplish with their life.  Many of us as mothers who are part of this school feel we are accomplishing our own personal missions through this school.

Now that our first year is complete, I can look back and say it was stressful, wonderful, inspiring, educating, challenging, and exactly what we were suppose to be doing.  I truly came to love each of the children and moms in our school, and consider them extended family.  I rejoice in their accomplishments and am saddened by their difficulties.  Most of our children said that one day of "school" was their favorite of each week, and that makes our efforts entirely worth it!  Not only did our children learn, but we as moms did as well and we are excited for the new classes we will be mentoring in the upcoming year.

So to recap why I'm thankful we took the step to create GMSA and why I want it to continue for many years--
1)  We are able to offer the same wonderful classes my daughter took online in a more ideal setting.
2)  We have created a totally unique opportunity in this area that meets the needs of the families who desire this type of education for their children.
3)  We all love the social/support aspect of meeting with others on a weekly basis.  We have developed a closeness that is beautiful and look forward to adding new friends to our circle!
4)  We are all growing by leaps and bounds by this educational experience, and we feel fulfillment in accomplishing our own personal missions.