Homeschooling in a Foreign Land
My foreign country just happened to be the United States!
By E;e
Damianidou
Hill
We all know that home ducating our precious children comes with certain responsibilities:
choosing the right curriculum, running
the household, teaching, character training, and so on. It’s all part of the package
when we respond to this calling. Now,
add to all these the unique venture of
homeschooling in a foreign country. An
entire new set of challenges gets added
into the mix. ;at is the situation in
which I found myself a few years ago. My
foreign country just happened to be the
United States!
I laugh when I think back to my ;rst
interaction with a homeschool mom.
I was a foreign student still in graduate
school when we met. She proudly showed
me her attic, which she had turned into a
schoolroom. I wondered why someone
would have such a room in their house.
I assumed it was where the children did
their homework; the concept of homeschooling was entirely alien to me.
Fast-forward several years—one mar-
riage to an American, and three children.
I had now been living in the U.S. for a
total of seventeen years and had heard
several accounts from friends about how
God had led them to home-educate.
;is aspect of American culture (like
root beer and peanut butter) no longer
seemed quite as foreign to me. Although
I had developed respect for the decision
to teach at home, my husband and I opt-
ed for private Christian school. My hesi-
tations, I’m sure, re;ected many of the
same hesitations others have: Can I do
it? Can I stay sane while doing it? What
about socialization? Actually, what about
my socialization?
God has a plan for all
people groups, cultures,
and nations that can
be celebrated and from
which lessons can be
drawn and shared.
I had an additional qualm that spurred
some earnest soul and Bible searching: I
(unlike all the other homeschoolers I had
met) am not American. Could I bring
myself to teach these children to spell
colour without a u Horror of horrors!
What would my own high school English
teachers think?
My husband had encouraged me to
home-educate, but he had met with a lot
of resistance (from me). I had to ;gure
out if homeschooling was another Amer-
ican tradition . . . like ;anksgiving! I
loved turkey and stu;ng, but I still did
not like pumpkin pie.
