Being Homeschooled by Iona Scott

Being Homeschooled
I went to a very good primary school and apart from the fact the books and most of the work were boring I was pretty happy.
However when I moved to secondary school things were not so good. In the morning I would sit on the train listing to one of the girls I travelled with talking about her deepest boyfriend, then, when I got to school I would sit in my form room (which was a dilapidated prefab) and have my form tutor stare at me over the rim of her glasses and have a go at me because I, along with many others in the class, had forgotten to bring my locker key. After this we would all get lost in the main building looking for our French lesson. When we had found our French lesson our French teacher would yell at us for being late and then start talking to us in French. But I don’t speak French so the teacher yelled at me for not understanding.

Then, while in a easy and boring history lesson, I would be ambushed by the special needs teacher armed with his supply of patronising praise and stickers. I left that lesson with a gold star.

The rest of the day was past with more boredom, more yelling, other students passively insulting you as you walk down the corridors and the teachers openly calling students stupid.
At home-time I would sit on the bus in front of a group of girls arguing and smoking, then get on the train and listen to how awful everyone's day was. I would get home around 4:30 and crash on the sofa for a wile, have tea, do my homework , crash some more and go to bed. It was not much of a life.
It was decided that I would be better off being homescooled and so I began a whole new routine.
For a start there is no time wasting, I don't have to move class room every hour, line up, or do the register. I just sit down and do the work.

I also have a lot more flexibility and choice in what I do, so yes I still have to do English and maths but I have done a history project on the golden age of piracy and I am studying forensic science. Both of these are things I chose to do. This makes the day a lot more interesting, finding out things I want to know rather than having boring school work forced on you.
Now that I’m not wasting my life on homework I have a lot more time to read. I’m dyslexic so I’ve found reading difficult but I don’t think this was helped by the utterly boring books I was made to read in school. But now that I spend my reading time on good books my reading skills have improved and the chronicles of Narnia, Atemis Fowl and the Poldark novels are among some of the books I have enjoyed.
Socialisation has not really been a issue, every week I go to an explorer scout group and I see other friends at the week ends. Also I spend the day around siblings so I never get lonely.
School life and homeschool life are so far apart, school was mislabel but being homeschooled is a lot happier and I’m doing things I otherwise would not have the opportunity to do, I cook the family meal once a week, I’m ahead with my maths and I’m learning Sign
Language.

It really is a lot of fun.