Once again, our Governor, Charlie Crist, has declared the week of March 30 - April 6 to be Home Education Week here in Florida.

Governor Crist included in his proclamation that:

Studies indicate most children who are home educated exhibit self-confidence, good citizenship, exceptional academic test scores, higher than average college attendance and success.

I am encouraged by this.

In our county Home Education Week coincides with the public school system’s Spring Break.

Being as I am on Spring Break (grin) I spent a small portion of the morning surfing the net and reading blogs. While enjoying this cruise through cyberspace, I came across Dana’s blog Principled Discovery while reading Heather’s blog An Untraditional Home. Dana has come up with an extraordinary way to celebrate Home Education Week (to include the cute image at the top of this post) as it seems the Governor of Nebraska also proclaimed this week as Home Education Week.

Dana has put together some writing prompts that provide an opportunity, for those of us that homeschool, to write about our adventures. Today’s prompt is

Profiling Home Educators: Describe yourself, your family or one of your children. What is it like to be home educated in your family? What is ‘normal’ for you?

I am relatively new to being a home educator, yet in the month since making this decision, I have come to realize the significant (positive) impact this decision has made on us as a family unit.

Even though I don’t have a ‘curriculum’ that requires me to check off blocks and blocks of ‘Done’, I have been able to assess what being a ‘home educator’ has accomplished simply by observing our family dynamics.

Before becoming a ‘home educator’, our family unit was starting to unravel. We were each moving in different directions. We were growing further and further apart. I could say that I became a ‘home educator’ for many of the reasons that Governor Crist highlighted in his proclamation. However, in all honesty, I did it to save my family.

• Being a home educator means, to me, being able to sew my family together into the beautiful tapestry we were meant to be.
• Being a home educator provides my family with the opportunity to create the individual brightly colored threads that we are sewn together with, not just threads of my choice.
• Being a home educator gives me the freedom to view each piece of the tapestry from a different perspective each day because I am not bound by ’shoulds’ and ‘oughts’.

Being a home educator means that spring break is not a week ‘off’ from school. For me personally, it means a week ‘off’ from outside commitments as ’school’ is always in session. It’s called ‘life’.

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