A Journey into Home-Schooling

Well, welcome. Welcome back. This is Dr. Soyla Quesada, and I am your host for Two Kids, One Doctor.

As time passes, it's become more and more difficult to sit, right, to sit and record podcasts, especially running a business, creating content for the different platforms, creating posts, communicating via email, contacting individuals, contacting organizations, coaching a group of women, coaching one-on-one, teaching classes and courses, a recording for my client portal. And I also don't want to let this go. I don't want to. Part of me wants to say, let it go, Zoyla.

Part of me also understands the strength of a story, the purpose of this podcast and how it was started. You know, back in 2024, I decided to put a pause to the podcast. I thought actually I was going to retire it, and I did for an entire year, and then starting it back up again early this year.

I came on today to share with you an update on homeschooling. About three months ago, I was faced with the decision, with the choice, with the option of taking my youngest son out of school. The system wasn't working. There were so many things we were doing on our end. And at the end of it all, things continued to happen at the school.

And I decided it was best for him, for me, and for his learning to be paused on the public school side and for us to embark and start this homeschooling journey together. An update, as it has been about three months, is that the beginning stages were just letting go of what a school schedule was, allowing for his mental state to start over, for us to begin anew. To rest, to reset, to make some decisions on what homeschooling was going to be like for us. and for him.

Let me say us. I say us because I'm learning a lot through this process. But obviously at the end of the day it's for his learning, for his growth, for his development. He is currently in fourth grade. He would be going into fifth grade this next year. You know, homeschool, if you know anything about homeschooling, you go out to, at least for us, and let me just take that back because I was going to make a general comment.

Homeschooling is not the same for everyone. Let me give you an example of what that's like. So when there's a particular doctor that we go to, and they tend to ask every visit, how is homeschooling going?

And let me just be honest with you, listener. Homeschooling is very different week to week. It really depends on what's happening. It depends on my work schedule. It depends on the time we have together. It depends on him as well. Like, how are we feeling? What's happening this week? What are some things that you're interested in learning? So let's get back to why I said every homeschooling experience is different. There's so many different ways to do homeschooling. There's unschooling.

There is you name it I haven't really delved deep into all the things but you know everyone is going to do this differently it's going to look different for each family so that's one for you to keep in mind for me as well because I was like okay those first three months it was like all right so what curriculum are we following what are we doing what are some things that you you're interested in, Between like week two and three, I realized that it was more important for us

to use the time to reset and to rest. And then beginning week four, I started to look into, okay, what is a homeschooling curriculum for us? What is that going to be looking like? We did a lot of research. I decided that it's going to look like for us, we're going to learn from the point of interest for him. What are we interested in? There are for sure some things that he's not interested in doing that we're still going to do. One of those is math. You know, math is, it's a universal language.

Math is math. And for us to be able to fall in love with math again, I don't mind math. I don't love teaching it. So we worked on getting him a math tutor.

We've been doing math from you know a third grade level for him just to see where his his math level is at where is he what is what is an interest or what are some things that maybe he's not really great at some things that maybe he's really good at he loves to read reading is his passion he can read about anything so we've been reading a lot about a lot of things so even with math, I've had to gather books that have stories about math or reading about mathematicians and things like that.

So that's how I've been able to kind of like really like tell, you know, allow for him to see that there is fun things to learn about math and people that do math and things like that.

History, he loves history. So, you know, history is like, there's a book about everything right so we've been learning a lot about that about history of all kinds of history science we love science so there's definitely been many lessons about science grammar I don't want to stop doing that either and we do that through reading and writing so homeschooling is going to look very different for everyone ours is not very structured in the today

we're going to do math and science and math no today we're going to do science and we are going to do some history. Tomorrow, we're going to the Museum of History. And whatever we see there and learn about there, we're going to bring it back and create a lesson around it. The same with reading. Okay, what are you interested in reading this week? You're going to be reading this book? Okay. Then these are the lessons that we're going to be based on or we're going to base our week on.

So it's flexible and it is also creative. And it is allowing him to decide what am I interested in learning today. And as a parent, it's important to me to prepare him for what's next, right? So I tell him, we're homeschooling right now. It doesn't mean that this is going to be it for us forever. Like, I would still want you to go to high school. I still would want you to consider college.

Again, that's something that he's going to decide on his own, right? But for me, it's important to get him ready for whatever that next thing is. And it might not have anything to do with math. It might not have anything to do with science, but how can I prepare you anyways during this time? In a learning structure that's more flexible and it's more to what he wants to learn and also more to his learning style.

One of the things that our students, our kids miss out on in structured school is even though teachers try their best, than they do to do individual lessons for the students or try to flex a lesson so that each student can engage in the lesson or in the curriculum in a way that's meaningful to them, it is not always fruitful, right? It doesn't always have a great outcome because it's difficult, y'all. I can't imagine, and I don't know if y'all know this, but I did go to undergrad.

I did get my teaching certification. And I actually attempted to teach when I first moved to the state of Rhode Island. And that quickly didn't go anywhere because I went to college in New Jersey. And if you can imagine coming to a new state and looking for work and Rhode Island being such a small state. It is a community, which took me some time to also accept, right? You can't just come here and get a job.

Like, no, it helps if you know people, if you've graduated from schools that maybe they know about, et cetera. So it was a little bit of a tricky time for me. So I didn't. I went to grad school instead, and we can go into a whole nother episode about that. But I know that it's difficult to teach. a group of students. And this school only had about 17 students per classroom, which is beneficial to my son because it's a smaller setting.

But it's still not the easiest thing to teach everyone. We're also dealing with, you know, student outbursts or arguments and then group settings and then any students that have special needs in the classroom, which I know my son did as well. And those things are difficult. So all that to say is that right now in homeschooling or schooling at home, because it's schooling at home, it's different by the day and the week.

It's very intentional to how he's learning and what he needs and how he learns and how he prefers to learn and get the information.

So all of that is part of my update for y'all the other one is to if you know anyone please send them this episode if you know anyone that's thinking about homeschooling or maybe someone that's already homeschooling and is looking for someone that's you know fresh freshly doing this and is having a lot of emotions and feelings and thoughts about this the other thing is I wanted to update you on me it has been in and at the beginning at

the very beginning when I was like you know when I went through the whole first four weeks of like what curriculum are we doing how are we doing this is it going to be beneficial for him the thing that you have to get used to, is that there's going to be mom guilt associated with the transition there will be mom guilt associated with the transition. Mom guilt was huge for me because I was like, oh, my God, we're just we're not doing any learning this week.

Oh, my goodness. Am I am I failing him? Am I failing as a parent? You start doubting your choice. Like, was it wasn't was it a good choice to take him out of school?

What's happening? What should I be doing now? Like every second of my day was thinking about what am I not doing versus like enjoying the time, the transition period between taking him out of school because it's a transition for the both of us right now i have to schedule my day around the teaching needs or the times that i'm going to be teaching him i have to schedule meetings around things that maybe he's doing i have to schedule actually my teaching for him or not even teaching

because he's such a self-starter and an independent learner. Very grateful for that. He's an independent learner. So all I really have to do is start something with him and then he takes off, right? So to start something, maybe before a call, right? Maybe before a meeting, maybe before an email, let him get through that and then check in on him again, right? Are we in the same room? Are we in separate rooms? Like all of that is real stuff that happens.

Okay. Like what about learning materials? Do we have all the learning materials we need? Should I be getting more books? You don't understand how many trips I've taken to the library because I never thought it was enough material. We never had enough material. All the searching for lessons, all the things like we need to get more and more and more, right?

So that adds up to our mom guilt. Like if we're not already doing enough, now having a child at home, balancing life, balancing work and business while needing to take time also to take care of your child who's now home, making sure that he's being directed and redirected into learning added a lot of stress and pressure to me. And he was fine, y'all. He was fine. But of course, for me, it was like, am I doing enough? Are we doing enough? Should we do more?

Okay, math, you know, math is a subject he doesn't love. How can I begin to make it interesting and fun for him? So all those things are happening in your mind. Even if you're still, even if he's doing work and you're doing work, part of me is like, okay, should I not be working so that I could be spending time with him? Blah, blah, blah. Like, it's just a lot. And it's mostly around time and how time is being spent.

So I had to let go of a lot of that because again, homeschooling is different for every household. I had a particular expectation of myself and him during this time. And I had to breathe. I had to relax a little bit on what my idea was about homeschooling and redirect my energy to create what that was going to look like for us. Accepting, right? Accepting that it was going to be different for me than the next person. That we also get to create this, y'all. We also get to create this.

My child is healthy. My child is well. My child is learning. And he is learning things above grade level. All right? He's a self-starter and he's an independent learner. He appreciates being led to a lesson And then he takes all from there. So for me, it was accepting that that was going to be okay. I didn't have to be, again, because I was trained to teach. Listen to this. I was trained as an educator. So guess what?

My idea of homeschooling was going to be a whiteboard. Today we're doing this and we have a schedule and we have structure and blah, blah, blah. We work okay without it being that structure. Like today we're going to do so-and-so. This week we're going to do this. But guess what? It might be that we move some things to next week because this week we're going to put some things in.

Maybe there's a new thing that's happening at the museum of art for example okay we're gonna go check out that that exhibition you know and then looping it and linking it to a learning experience because kids are learning all the time so accepting that was important accepting that and recreating what teaching and learning was going to be for us what is our setup what is our structure because we do have a structure. It's just not your typical school structure.

So it was important for me to go through the process, right, of the doubt, of the fear, of the mom guilt, and get to a point where I'm not accepting of it. I am flexible with the learning. And we are learning. We are learning. We are doing things. We're not even doing things that he might not be doing at school. For example, school might have one field trip a year. For us, we're doing things on a weekly basis. We're going outside.

We are going to the museums. We are creating learning around new books and new literature. I mean, like we're doing so many things that he would have been missing out at school. Now, as an update as well, because I have to be very honest.

Now, is this the structure or the setup that I want for us for the next, how many years would he have left? Like six years?

I don't know. I can't tell you that right now. This is, I knew he needed to be taken out of school this year, mid-year yes and I feel that if he went back this year he was going to regress and I didn't want that for him because we were spending more time more time and energy on treatments outside of school on making sure he was well on you know conversations with teachers and and teams at the school and all the things and I'll share with y'all maybe soon about all the things that he was

needing and what was happening and what led me to the final straw of taking him out of school. And I'll share that with y'all. Just make a note and please remind me. Please do remind me. Again, share this episode with any parent that's considering it or is already in homeschooling. Maybe they agree, maybe they don't agree with my experience. And that's okay. It's my experience. Now, is this going to be what I want for us for the long run? I don't know.

I would like him to have more more socializing but not pressured to socializing because part of what was happening at the school is that oh, you know, it's, it's, it's, um, I don't want to say it's pressured, but it's forced, right? Like, let's say a kid just doesn't want to be social today. Like, you kind of had to, you were in a school, you were working with people, and humans socialize, so you know what I mean. So for me, it's important for him to get around other kids, right?

And we're doing that with different homeschool communities here within the state. Are they consistent? No.

Are they enough? I don't think so but guess what's happening though he's becoming closer to his brother because he doesn't have peers of his age right so like he's excited to see his brother get home they're playing more they're talking more they're sharing more space things like that so that's I would see it as a benefit to also not being at school right but back to the initial question like do I see myself, ourselves in this in this setting in this setup the structure I can't say that

I do I can't say right now that I'm like, I can't wait for next year for us to be at the house all day, every day, teaching, learning, all that stuff. So we are having small, tiny conversations because there's a lot of social skills that we are also working on because that's the other part that I was in part of his social learning at school. I'm not at school with him. So I can only teach him the things that I see at home, right?

And those aren't necessarily always the things that are projecting or coming out at school. So now that he's at home, I am directly pointing to the things that I know will be helpful for him if he was to go back out there and be in like a big social group, etc.

You know what I mean? Like I'm just also working with him on that because I do tell him like I understand the social aspect and the fear of socializing and being in big groups, but we do live in a world with other humans, and we do have to kind of get used to being around other people. And of course, it doesn't have to be around big groups of people. But how do we.

Get ourselves a little bit comfortable, right? And it doesn't have to be that you're like forever comfortable or that I'm going to force him to be in an uncomfortable situation. But there are just things like that that I'm working on with him on. Other things I'm working with him on is like reaction and responses. So like, okay, something happened to you or someone did something to you or someone pushed you or took your paper or whatever. Like, how are we responding to that? How are we reacting?

And so those type of things, I'm directly working with him on, which I don't think I would have been able to because I wasn't able to. I would work with him on stuff at home. Yes, of course, if things came from school, we worked on those things at home, but they weren't all day, every day, right? Like right now, I'm like, okay, let's start over. This is how we should be doing this, blah, blah, blah, you know, and allow him to grow on his emotional intelligence.

Like okay we all have emotions but now how do we react to things and that has been so key and so important so when I say we're learning we're learning because I'm learning too y'all patience I'm learning a lot of patience lots of it I thought I was patient enough but having a kid with you all day absolutely more patience and you know working on the emotional intelligence piece for him is so important that I think we were trying to do at the same time while he was also immersed in the problem,

right? He was immersed in the issue and the problem in the classroom.

And we were, I was doing what I could on the outside, getting him with specialists and going through therapy and all that stuff, but it wasn't going to be enough when he was dealing with it in such a big way at school, right? So for us now, we're still doing all the specialists and specialties and therapies and stuff like that while we're also working on it one-on-one at home.

And so that's going to make major difference so do i see him going back out into a big classroom not a big classroom but small size class or smaller you know comparison right because we know public schools are like 20 plus 25 plus the school particular was a smaller setting so i you know would i want him to go back to a smaller setting classroom absolutely maybe we can find something that's smaller than that yes absolutely and for us to have a

structure or a a pattern of life that's different from the one we have now, I don't, I don't, I don't take it off the table, but it's also not forefront of my mind that next year he's going to go back to school, right? Have we had conversations about it? Absolutely. Have we said, maybe let's take this summer to rethink what next school year is going to look like? Are we open and flexible? Absolutely. Is this working for him right now? Yes. And we're going to take

it year by year. I'm not going to pressure him to stay at home. I'm not pressuring myself to keep him at home if we know that he's ready.

And if we're not ready and we're staying at home and homeschooling for the rest of his you know educational career I'm okay with that too but we're taking it year by year I'm okay with the thought let me rephrase that of the thought of that but we're gonna take it year by year and so I just wanted to share all of that with you in terms of like what the update has been I mean what the last three months have been the things that have been happening but also you know

things that we think about such as like are we going to stay here are we going to go back to school what are we doing like it's just it's just a lot of things and this this isn't even enough of all the things that have been happening but i wanted to share this in a short episode with you again share this episode with anyone you know if you have any questions don't hesitate to email me or contact me and leave a message also don't forget which i don't ask of often don't forget

to leave a review with the podcast app that you're listening to, whichever podcast app you are using, just so that more people can find this podcast as well. All right, I'm leaving now. This is Dr. Zoyla Quesada, and I am your host, and this is Two Kids, One Doctorate. Take care.