I’m active on a number of parenting/mothering forums.  Many of them have subforums for every category under the sun including homeschooling.   On the homeschooling forums – at LEAST once per week a new member will post “How do I get started?” “What do I do first?” or something along those lines.

I confess that I get extremely annoyed at these posts…and it’s not because I’m reading them at 6am without the benefit of that first cuppa joe.  It’s more like JEEPERS CREEPERS folks – you want to be responsible for educating your own child but you’re too lazy to do a quick internet search to get some basic information all by your lonesome?  You need someone to TELL YOU what to do?  Boy oh boy are YOU in for a rude awakening!

Now that is NOT to say that one can find EVERYTHING necessary to understand the homeschooling process in one internet search. Heck, I’ve been at this for some 5 years now and STILL find things!  But here are some tips on how to get started.

STEP #1 – Before you do one single thing,  learn the laws for homeschooling in YOUR STATE.  Each state has its own set of rules, regulations, guidelines and hoops to jump through.  A quick search via the search engine of your choice will net you any number of links to websites that will explain the homeschool laws for YOUR STATE in regular language that you can understand without help from a law dictionary.

You need to know the laws…well……..to stay legal of course.  But also because you’ll find that not EVERYONE in the educational system in your state also know the laws.  Yes, it’s true…sad, but true.  You may find principals and superintendents who are not familiar with the laws and may try to thwart your right to educate your child at home through simple ignorance.   Of course there are also those administrators who will think you’re not competent to educate your child, will assume that you DON’T know your legal rights and try to prevent you from homeschooling.

Worse though, is that there may be members of other government agencies also not familiar with the homeschool laws, your parental rights and responsibilities.  There are far too many stories about child protective service workers knocking on doors of homeschool parents with all sorts of wild accusations and demands.  Same is true for police officers thinking a teenager is truant because he/she isn’t sitting in a classroom at 10am Monday morning.   Though these people are merely doing their (very difficult) job, they are not always armed with information about homeschool laws.   Better that YOU are armed with the knowledge and have the ability to explain it (calmly) than face the removal of your child, a court summons, etc.

Oh yes, and laws change….so keep on top of them.  One of the best ways to do that is:

STEP #2- Join a homeschool group.  Find a state association or a local group and join up.  These groups are where you find the veterans; those who have been in the trenches; those in the know.  They’ll have the stories (good, bad and ugly) about your local school system and how it handles homeschooling families.  This is the group of people who will stay up to date on the (sometimes changing) laws in your state and will help you to understand requests and demands from your local school administrators.

A simple internet search will find homeschool groups in your area (state, county or even city).  You may go through a number of groups over the course of your homeschooling adventure (another blog post on that) but stay involved in at least one – even if you only participate in on-line forums.

So – after you’ve done steps #1 and #2 all on your own – come back and talk to me and I’ll tell you the rest!