What Do You Do?

I'm teaching 4th and 5th graders for Sunday School each week and because our church ministers to all the families in the area, we have a wide array of children from different types of homes but the majority are from dysfunctional homes. I find it very interesting to hear their opinions and point of views, albeit shocking at times but it is still interesting.

In the last 5 weeks of teaching them, school experiences have been brought up a lot and I've been all ears. Today, one of my students asked what my job is and I said I was 'professional mom'. What's that? So I walked up to the board and wrote out all that I do: cook meals, maintain the home inside and out, maintain family finances, parent and disciple my children, coordinate and execute the family schedule, homeschool, and take care of myself.

They had many questions about what I wrote but 'homeschooling' really caught their eye. "Does that mean Camille does school on the computer?", "How much time do you do school each day?" , "Were you a teacher before?" and the questions kept going as I answered their questions.

"No, Camille does not have any lessons on the computer, I teach her almost like I teach this class- I have help (as I held up the teacher's manual for Sunday School)." They wanted to know so much and I truly debated whether or not to tell them because I was scared it might be harmful for them. A part of me wished Camille was in the class so that she could tell them herself but I realized that her perspective might be like salt.

I told them what we do, without a ton of detail, what our daily routine is and what a day for Camille is like. They had tons of questions after that because it seems the only homeschoolers they know use computer programs for their lessons. The bad part of all the questions was that I felt it left a sense of unrest among them, as they started to complain more about school than before.

Later when we got home and discovered the last caterpillar was gone from our milkweed plant, I realized- our kids' education is not something we compartmentalize, it is a way of life for us. Camille and Danny are drawing beside me and Camille has drawn an under the sea picture complete with sponges, sea anemone and coral, she is telling Danny a story about how the sea anemone protects the clownfish and how a sponge makes friends with a crab to travel safely together.

I love our life.