Homeschoolers are Amazing!

It's always refreshing when someone from outside the homeschooling world shares some positive thoughts about homeschooling and homeschoolers. 

Years ago, a public high school teacher friend of ours told us that he could always pick out the kids in his classes that had been homeschooled prior to entering high school.  He said that he had found that homeschooled kids had a level of social and academic maturity that went far beyond the level of maturity displayed by the other kids in his classes.  He had found homeschooled kids to be much better equipped to handle the academic AND social pressures of high school.  That sure was nice to hear from a public school teacher.  While most homeschoolers don't "need" reassurance from their non-homeschooling friends, it's sure encouraging to hear it from time to time! 

For the last several years, it has been my privilege to help administrate the social media outlets for a large homeschool curriculum publisher.  During that time I worked closely with social media expert, Ryan Egan.  Though Ryan didn't come to his job with a background rich in homeschool knowledge or experience, his focus on ministry and his passion for people very quickly became very evident to every homeschoolers that he began to interact with on a daily basis.  The homeschoolers that got to know Ryan on Twitter and Facebook soon realized that they had a great friend and advocate in him!

But it would seem that while we were being encouraged by Ryan, he was learning from us. During his time working in the "homeschool world" (he recently moved on to a new job), Ryan discovered a few things about homeschoolers.  A recent post on his blog, Homeschoolers are Amazing--What I Learned from Working for a Homeschool Curriculum Company, shares some of what he learned from us.

Let me tell you what homeschoolers aren’t:

• Unsocialized – Kill this stereotype immediately.  The majority of homeschoolers I interacted with were easy to talk to, easy to work with, and had kids that could hold intelligent conversations with adults while still being able to play with infants and toddlers.
• Behind the times – There are some incredibly tech and web-savvy people homeschooling their children.  To be honest, many were utilizing way more technology than the average family does.
• Boring – In a word….no.  Many of these families do more in one year than many families do in an entire lifetime.
• Lazy – Many people think that homeschoolers don’t work hard and just want to let their kids slide through education.  That is SO far from the case.  You would not believe the organizational skills everyone has and the immense concern for making sure their children are properly educated.

It's a wonderful...and very encouraging post!  There's more, so I would encourage you to go read the rest of what Ryan learned about homeschoolers during his years working for a homeschool publishing company!

Thanks for being a part of our world for 3 years, Ryan!   We think you're pretty amazing, too!