“Your mother must be a saint.”

“How did your mom teach you chemistry?”

These are the top two responses I’ve gotten when people find out that I was homeschooled. My response to the first – ouch. My siblings and I were (generally) a delight to be with all day. For the second, there is a surprisingly large number of options to take any number of high school classes, so my mother was able to outsource whichever classes she wanted to (including my honors chemistry class).

North Carolina has long been a leader in school choice, and having the freedom to be homeschooled was one of the biggest blessings of my life.

I was homeschooled from kindergarten through twelfth grade. My mom was previously an elementary teacher, though, so I have my suspicions that my education started well before kindergarten. Here are a few of the highlights of my experience:

• Leadership opportunities | During high school, I had the opportunity to take on several leadership activities that let me invest in others and in my future. I did internships, volunteered with non-profits, co-taught classes at our homeschool co-op, and other activities that would have been more challenging had my schedule not been so flexible.
• A head start on college | I started taking dual enrollment classes in 10^th grade, and because of that, I was able to graduate from high school with my first year of college already accomplished. This enabled me to graduate a year early with two degrees, which in turn enabled me to go to straight into grad school.
• Classes that I wanted to take | Every spring, my mom and I would sit down and talk about the upcoming year and what courses I wanted to take, and it was one of the highlights of my year. I loved looking at all of the options, and getting to pick and choose the ones that best fit me. Because of this, I got to take classes that shaped my worldview in alignment with the Bible, helped me prepare for college, and were genuinely interesting. I rarely complained about school, because I loved what I was learning about.
• The flexibility to live life | One of the benefits of homeschooling is the flexibility. We would frequently have trips to the zoo, spontaneous park days, day trips to the beach, and other fun activities. We still did school, but we were able to work around it so that, when a warm day popped up, we could go outside and enjoy it.

This is a glimpse at my experience. It wasn’t always perfect, my siblings and I would sometimes bicker, and I’m sure there are days that we drove my mom crazy. However, it worked well for me and my personality. My siblings’ experiences all look totally different from mine, as did all of my friends’ (yes, contrary to popular belief, we did, in fact, have those). And homeschooling doesn’t work well for everyone. I had several friends over the years who found public, private, charter, or hybrid schools to be a better fit. But this is the beauty of school choice – that we have the ability to choose.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to education. Every family, every child, and even every school year is different. Having so many good options allows each family to make the best decisions for each child each year. That might stay the same, as it did for me, or it might change yearly. But this allows parents and children to get the best education possible.

This is National School Choice Week. You can learn more about school choice in North Carolina here!