Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Is it possible to homeschool AND work

I'm wondering if any of you know anyone that has successfully homeschooled while also working outside the home. I realize that this would be a huge committment, but I'm struggling to find the right educational fit for DS9. I'd love to homeschool, but quitting my job is not an option. (I am the primary bread-winner in the family....and, no, DH would never quit his job to homeschool our child). I'm not really seriously considering doing this, but I'm curious to know if it can be successfully done.

I remember reading a great idea about hiring college students to tutor for their own subjects and many homeschoolers incorporate co-ops into their homeschooling.

My husband and I have successfully homeschooled while we both worked, but we were fortunate enough to be in situations where we had a great deal of flexibility in our hours, so we were able to arrange our schedules so that we had staggered shifts, minimizing the need for outside childcare.

With one-on-one instruction, we have found that we don't need 6 or 7 hours a day of actual instructional time. 3-4 hours a day to discuss prior work and introduce new concepts is really all that we found we needed, which was really good, because our son needed extensive OT and PT, which took up big chunks of his time in the early years. Finding ways to ensure continuous adult supervision during those times when we both had no choice but to work away from the house was way more of a challenge than the actual homeschooling itself. We do happen to live in an area with a number of large and active homeschooling support groups, so there are always opportunities to get together with other kids of varying ages and lots of activities and field trips that we can choose to take part in without having to go through all of the legwork of setting them all up ourselves.

It was really just way easier in our particular situation to do it ourselves than fight with the school system.

Hi Perplexed,

I'm also considering the work/homeschool combo. I'm a single mom, with a job that's demanding but flexible in its hours. My kid is <4, so I'm not there yet (kid is in a play-based preschool), but I think it's doable.

I'm fortunate to live in a town that's rampant with homeschoolers. My pipe-dream is a co-op where each family takes the kids one day a week. (I'm not at all uptight about curriculum, so I wouldn't be worried about what the other families were doing on their days.) More realistically, I'm hoping for informal arrangements with other families that will get the kid off my hands one or two days a week. I'm already cultivating the local homeschooling community and starting to make some friends.

My town also has a couple of independent study programs, which enroll homeschool kids as their school-of-record, and which have one or two on-campus days where there are classes and workshops and cool stuff. These are voluntary, but I would be taking full advantage of them.

With luck, that will leave me with only a day or two per week to cover, and hiring a college student for those days would be doable. The college student could shuttle the kid to activities, as well as working with her at home.

The question I keep asking myself is: would my worst-case, most neglectful homeschooling be worse than public school? The answer, for my particular child, is no. Even if she sat in a treehouse and read books all year long, she'd still come out ahead of where she'd be with public schooling.

I would also love to hear from others who are making it work, or have ideas for making it work. I briefly joined a Yahoo group for single-mom homeschoolers, but almost none of the comments were from actual successful working-parent homeschoolers. I would love to have a dialog with others who are serious about it and ready to get practical.

well, I work from home. I'm not the primary breadwinner, but I could go back to work outside the home (my former field was nursing). The upside of nursing is that people work 24/7...

But when I work for myself, I don't need to spend 8 hours a day working...and like aculady is saying, so far, Butter sure doesn't NEED 8 hrs of direct education. We participate in a home study program like MegMeg mentioned...Butter has an optional classroom day for 3-3.5 hrs (if she stays for lunch) once a week...the only day we don't actually go to the school is Monday...she has her class on Tuesday, games club Wednesday, orchestra, multimedia and guitar on Th and 3 hours of art on Friday morning (she takes two classes of that). If I had to go work outside the home, I'd hire a college student as well, preferrably one fluent in a foreign language or maybe you know a laid off teacher that would be happy to make some extra money.

I also agree with the comments about fighting with the public school or would the kid be better off just reading in a treehouse...mine would. Mine actually gets very little from direct personal instruction and would do just fine reading books about and teaching herself.

I think, if you think that is what is best for your child, you will find a way to make it work. I know if I was getting paid for all the time I spent arguing with our former school (and now maybe the home study school as well) I'd be RICH and not have to work anymore, lol!

You all are really making me think. I'm not totally unhappy with our school system, but I am sure that DS is not getting the individual attention he needs. He attends a magnet school which pulls in the best of the best, but also has a number of inner-city youth. (The school was founded to satisfy a desegregation lawsuit against the school system). The result is a school with excellent teachers and excellent programs, but a number of children who are under-performing that get all the attention. With DS being 2e, he is happy to slide under the radar and just do the bare minimum. I just see things getting worse as he heads to middle school in a couple of years. It sounds like I should really start researching our homeschooling community here.