Confession of a Home School Dad by Luke Strickland

Being a home school parent can be very isolating. I blog because I want to share my adventure through it but it has become apparent that I am the only Dad that does it. It's great to read other home school posts but, again, to do it as a dad seems to be rare. That was until I met luke on Twitter. Here's his guest post on being a home school dad:

Hi my name's Luke and we home educate. Now that might sound like I'm introducing myself at an AA meeting, and to be honest, when people find out that we home educate our kids the reaction I sometimes get is akin to people finding out I'm an alcoholic! (I'm not, just to clarify). But there's often a funny mixture of sympathy, confusion, misunderstanding and offence in people's reaction.



I think that much of this stems from lack of awareness about home education. Many people have never encountered anyone who willingly home educates, and there's plenty of misconceptions about what it looks like. For some people, they imagine that it's "school at home", just the kids sitting at the kitchen table for hours at a time following the national curriculum. Maybe some home-edders do take that approach, but I've not met one yet - for the overwhelming majority it's an incredibly varied routine, and something that doesn't remotely resemble the industrialised, mass-market school system that is the usual frame of reference.

That's one reason we started the Home Ed Matters Podcast, to share regular snapshots of our approach, our collective learning and to encourage others that home education isn't as scary as they may think. Actually it's exponentially on the rise, and perfectly within the law - section 7 of the 1996 Education Act requires parents to ensure their child receives an "efficient full time education... either by regular attendance at school or otherwise". Local authorities are generally supportive of elective home education, especially with such pressure on school places, and there are so many resources, communities and groups available online and across the country that in many ways there's never been a better time to do it.



There's a wide spectrum of approaches that families take to home ed, from following comprehensive curricula to the complete opposite, taking an entirely child-led and unstructured approach. Different styles suit different people, and we're somewhere in the middle, following various curricula for topics like maths, but otherwise applying a more literature based philosophy.

We structure our studies around Charlotte Mason's educational principles, something which resonates with us in terms of learning style, literature and passion. A key feature of her approach was nature study, with one of my favourite quotes of hers being "Never be within doors when you can rightly be without".

As a dad I try and get as involved as I can in my kids' curiosity-led learning, but I do work full time as well. Like many dads it can sometimes feel hard returning home from work to hear the exciting tales of family learning and adventure that have taken place that day. Much as I'm delighted to hear this, there can be a disconnect between the world of my workplace and the daily home education world of my family.

My wife does an amazing job with our two young children, facilitating their learning with enthusiasm and grace in a far better way than I could ever do. But that's not to say that I haven't found areas where our worlds overlap, and one of these is about being connected to the environment around us.

In my working life I actively helping clients and colleagues to make positive decisions regarding sustainable water management and taking due regard for the natural world we inhabit. This is a passion I want to inspire my children with, for them to be connected to and care about our world.

We're fortunate that we back on to farmland, fields which haven't changed for centuries, and with a diverse ecosystem to inspire us on our very doorstep. My kids and I often ramble and meander together around and across the fields being curious about what we see, hear and encounter. We've been surprised by buzzards launching from tree branches ahead of us; picked sloes, elderflowers, blackberries and elderberries; hunted for geocaches; identified trees and paddled in streams.

We often have no agenda but fresh air and curiosity - another Charlotte Mason characteristic. As she suggested "They must be let alone... to take in what they can of the beauty of the earth and heavens". It's important to me that we recognise the daily beauty in the world around us.

And this isn't just a fair weather activity. We have taken delight in snowy, slushy, muddy, rainy, and windy adventures. For me personally it's an exercise in re-wilding, as George Monbiot advocates, appreciating and connecting with the environment around me in reaction to the desk bound day. For my kids I want them to grow up with that wild element - that passionate connection and understanding of the ecosystems we share with the buzzards in our neighbourhood.

Back to Charlotte Mason "The question is not how much does the youth know when he has finished his education but how much does he care?". One thing I can nurture in my kids is that deep care for the world. Expressing it with them may look different to how I express it to my colleagues and clients, but this is an area where my professional and home educational worlds delightfully overlap, and for that I'm very grateful.

It doesn't phase me now when people react with disbelief or misunderstanding when they learn that we home educate. Once people hear a little more about our story, our approach and our passion for helping our kids learn, we find that their attitude softens and in many cases they are positively supportive!

It's great to be a home ed dad!

You can listen and subscribe to the Home Ed Matters Podcast here and follow @HomeEdMatters on twitter.

To read more from Luke check out www.lukestrickland.co.uk and follow @lukestrickland on twitter.