Well, we are two weeks into our stay in Manta and we just completed our second week of homeschool.  I remember a time (pre-kid) where I thought of homeschooling with slightly negative connotations.  I had this idea that the only kids who home-schooled were ones who were socially inept or their parents were hover-parents who thought the public school system was too much for their darlings to handle.  I wondered “How in the world are these kids getting a ‘proper’ education, especially when their parents aren’t trained teachers?”  Then I started having kids.  I realized that not all teachers are created equal.  Not all teachers will have my child’s best interest at heart.  I found that it is rare to find a teacher who will truly care about my child.  Aside from all that, there are the concerns about the quality of education my child is getting, when there is one teacher and 20-30 kids.  There is no way each child will be able to get all the attention they need.  I know quite a few teachers and believe they are amazing.  They love what they do and are excited about teaching.  They are super heroes for all they put up with.  That said, they still can’t be everything to every student.

**Side note** Thankfully we were blessed to find one of those super-amazing teacher’s when Chandler started attending Derby schools in second grade (Becki Scott…we LOVE you!!).

As Chandler begin to near middle school, our discussions about whether we wanted him to stay in the public schools increased.  The reasons were more about what our children are exposed to morally and ethically and how we, as parents, wanted to protect them from this as long as possible.  I fear that the attitude some parents have these days are that “They will have to encounter it at some point in the real world.”  As if that makes it okay to let them be exposed as children to everything that the world will try to push their way.  They are so impressionable during these years.  Another issue I had begun to face was the fact that I felt that as a society, we have pushed education off on the school teachers (and Sunday school teachers), expecting that they should be the ones to make sure our kids are properly educated (intellectually, morally, ethically, etc).  The fact of the matter (in most cases) is that we are our children’s first and best teacher.  If we are to “train them up in the way they should go”, WE need to be the ones modeling these behaviors.  If they are spending the majority of their waking hours away from you, who is their primary influence?