Our School Awards

It’s that time of year that we homeschooling parents can start feeling a little left out. In conversations and peppered all over Facebook are parents bragging about the awards their kids have gotten this last week of school.

Perfect Attendance.

Good Citizenship.

Honor Student.

Reading awards! Writing awards! Math awards! They’re everywhere! But hey, when my kids were in school, I bragged about them, too.

In all honesty, it is one of the bummers about homeschooling. Though we have groups we attend and the kids are involved in extracurricular activities, their school-years scrapbooks are going to be rather devoid of any official certificates declaring how smart, creative and friendly they are.

But I guess I really don’t need a piece of paper from a practical stranger to tell me those things, and I don’t really need a certificate in hand to comment on how awesome my kids are.

Because I have this blog and I can tell you now: they are pretty darn awesome. 😉

When I hear someone share, “My kid got an award for having all ‘A’s’!” I want to respond, “My kids got all A’s, too!” Because it’s true: we make sure the kids have mastered material before moving on. And we don’t waste time on “fluff” or busy-work that makes for easily-earned 100’s in a grade-book. Homeschooling acceptance has come a long way, but still…somehow, people often count an “A” from a mother as less-valuable than an “A” from a schoolteacher.

When I hear, “My kid earned a certificate for perfect attendance!” I think, “Mine did, too!” Because they were here every single day we had instruction…all 180 of ’em! LOL

And then there are those who remark about how hard their kids worked to earn their honor student accolades. I’m sure that they did work hard. Unfortunately, articles like this one and this blog mirror other studies I’ve read that state a dismally-increasing number of college freshmen require remedial classes—even those who were considered at the top of their class in high school—which leaves me wondering whether “honor student” credentials from a school still mean what they did even 20 years ago.

One of my kids has a friend who always says that homeschooling is so easy compared to the work he does at school. I can see how it might appear that way, but every homeschooling kid I know is a hard worker.

Not only that, I haven’t met many traditionally-schooled 7th-grade boys who can successfully learn Latin roots with a toddler climbing up his leg and shoving jellybeans in his ear! Talk about learning Life Skills! LOL

So as the end of our school year at home approaches, I want to publicly pat my boys on the back and let them know how proud I am of them.

Well done, boys—well done.