Why I Started Supplemental Homeschooling at Home

I was able to give my children a strong academic foundation because they did not spend their earliest learning years entirely dependent on public school. As both a parent and an educator, that decision was intentional.

Long before I stepped into my own classroom as a teacher, I had studied education through a critical and decolonial lens in graduate school. I understood how schools operate, what they do well, and where they often struggle. I knew that if my children eventually entered public school, they would need more than good grades. They would need literacy skills, critical thinking abilities, confidence, and the capacity to navigate a system that was not always designed to nurture those qualities in every child.

When I began teaching, my daughter was attending kindergarten at the same school where I worked. The school followed the educational philosophies of Sigfried Engelmann and E.D. Hirsch, and through that experience I learned about Project Follow Through and its findings. I watched what happened when a school prioritized strong foundational literacy and explicit instruction. By the middle of kindergarten, my daughter was already reading at a first-grade level and working through first-grade math concepts. The results were undeniable. When it came time for my son to enter school, I knew I wanted the same strong foundation for him.

What I saw as a teacher only reinforced what I was experiencing as a parent. Too often, schools were focused on moving students through standards and assessments rather than cultivating deep learning. I wanted my children to receive the kind of educational foundation I had been fortunate enough to experience—one that challenged them intellectually, nurtured their curiosity, and prepared them to think independently.

Years later, I find myself returning to supplemental education once again. This time, I come back not only as a mother, but also as a classroom teacher, consultant, and student of educational systems. Despite everything I have learned and accomplished professionally, I find myself facing the same reality: the learning needs of children often extend beyond what schools alone can provide.

I knew from the beginning that my experience was not going to look like the stereotypical homeschooling story. I wasn't a stay-at-home parent with unlimited time to devote to lesson planning and instruction. I was a single mother who had to work. At various points, I was simultaneously raising children, teaching in schools, and completing graduate studies. My life required a different approach, and I had to learn to stand confidently in those differences.

One of the assumptions I rejected early was the idea that homeschooling and public schooling had to exist in opposition to one another. I never viewed public school as something my children needed to avoid. In fact, I believed they needed access to it. Public schools are one of the foundational institutions of our society. My goal was not to remove my children from that system forever but to prepare them to navigate it successfully.

Because I understood how schools worked, I also understood how to help my children use the system to their advantage. I wanted them to enter school with strong academic skills, confidence, and the ability to advocate for themselves. I wanted them to know how to play the school game without allowing school to define the limits of their learning. Supplemental homeschooling became a way to build that foundation while still allowing them to benefit from the opportunities, relationships, and experiences that public education could provide.

What surprised me most was how long my children were able to academically coast through public school without encountering significant intellectual challenges. In many ways, the experience confirmed what I had already learned through my own research and observations as an educator.

When my daughter reached middle school, I intentionally enrolled her in accelerated classes. I assumed those courses would provide greater academic rigor and deeper learning opportunities. Instead, I discovered that accelerated classes often functioned as a haven for well-behaved students rather than a place for truly advanced academic work. Many of the students were certainly capable, but the distinction was not always about intellectual challenge. Often, it was simply that they could operate successfully at grade level, complete assignments, and follow expectations.

The contrast became even clearer when my daughter was accidentally placed in a regular seventh-grade history class while her friends were assigned to the accelerated section. She came home shocked by the difference. According to her, the behavioral climate was night and day. Students rarely completed work, classroom materials were damaged, and the teacher spent much of the period managing behavior rather than teaching content. The experience gave her an unexpected window into how differently students can experience school within the same building.

What surprised me was not that these differences existed. As a teacher, I knew they did. What surprised me was how much of a student's educational experience can be shaped by factors unrelated to actual learning. Too often, the conversation is framed as advanced versus regular classes when the more important question may be whether students have consistent opportunities to engage in meaningful intellectual work at all.

My studies also helped me realize that learning and schooling are not the same thing. As I learned more about educational research, I began to notice how many interruptions exist within a typical school day. Announcements, transitions, assemblies, testing schedules, behavior management, paperwork, attendance, drills, and countless other demands compete for instructional time. While schools serve many important functions, maximizing learning time is often only one of them.

This realization forced me to think differently about what education could look like. If I ever chose to homeschool full-time, I knew it would not require seven or eight hours of direct instruction each day. In reality, most of the core academic work could be completed in four or five focused hours, and sometimes even less. The difference would be that those hours were intentionally designed around learning rather than the operational needs of a school system.

That insight changed how I thought about education as a whole. I began to see that meaningful learning is not necessarily tied to a classroom, a bell schedule, or a school building. Learning can happen at the library, around the dinner table, during a museum visit, through a book discussion, while solving real-world problems, or during a conversation that sparks curiosity. School is one learning environment, but it is not the only learning environment.

The hardest part was finding the time and capacity to continue doing it consistently.

Teaching is demanding on every level—physically, mentally, emotionally, and relationally. At the same time, capitalism requires most families to prioritize earning a living simply to survive. Between work, parenting, household responsibilities, and graduate school, there came a point when I could no longer sustain the level of supplemental learning I wanted to provide for my children. I had to step back and, in many ways, allow them to academically float.

That decision was not easy.

I remember several occasions when my son was in elementary school and asked if I could teach him myself. Learning in his classroom had become frustrating, not because the content was too difficult, but because the environment made it difficult for him to learn. He already understood many of the skills being taught and struggled with the constant distractions and behaviors around him. As a teacher, I understood exactly what was happening. As a mother, it was heartbreaking to watch.

At the same time, I carried a great deal of guilt. Every day I sent my children to school knowing they were not always being challenged at the level I believed they were capable of reaching. I knew there was more they could do, more they could learn, and more they could become. Yet I also knew that I could not do everything. Like many working parents, I was constantly balancing what I knew was possible with what was realistic given the demands of everyday life.

Looking back, I realize that this tension is one of the hidden struggles many families face. We know our children need more than school alone can provide, but we often lack the time, resources, energy, or support systems to fill those gaps ourselves.

Today, I no longer see homeschooling and public schooling as competing philosophies. I see them as tools.

My goal was never to replace school. My goal was to help my children learn.

Years later, that mission remains the same. The difference is that I now understand the challenge more clearly. Schools cannot be everything to everyone. Parents cannot do everything alone. Learning requires communities, relationships, opportunities, and support systems that extend beyond any single institution.

The question is no longer whether learning happens at home or at school.

The question is whether we are willing to create the conditions where learning can happen everywhere.