Homeschooling Narrative

As the youngest in my family, I was always the one who was getting the best treatment.
Looking back, it was apparent my mom wanted the best for me, she decided to pull me out of
elementary school to teach me herself. She explained that my school was teaching in a way she
didn’t appreciate, that I was a visual learner and needed her.
I grew up in Maryland in a suburban town called Germantown. I went to a small
elementary school with only 500 students there. In kindergarten, I just remember running
around recess, playing games with the other kids like tag or hide and seek. However, I was
struggling to learn from my teachers. The kids around me were learning faster while I was falling
behind. This was more evident as I moved through 1st grade and into 2nd grade. Fractions
were the breaking point for my mom, I could barely learn fractions so that’s when she decided to
homeschool me. I was much more of a visual learner which wasn’t the way they were teaching
me. Once I finished 2nd grade my mom finally pulled me out of elementary school so I could
start homeschooling 3rd grade.
That first year went by fast I can barely remember it. What I remember most from my
first year of homeschooling was my mom searching for online resources to teach me herself.
She knew as a kid I was obsessed with video games so she tried to approach teaching me with
interactive learning games. She would find various resources online to teach me science, math,
and history. But my favorite was when we would go to DC for museums. When I was 11 my
mom got us to join a homeschooling co-op. We were part of a group of families that were all
homeschooling and got together so that we could experience learning together.
Everyone was socially awkward at that point as we all grew up learning with our parents,
and we did not have many friends around us in our youth. However, co-op made it easier to

make friends and socialize with one another. My closest friends were Terrighn and Julian. I
remember them the most because they stuck with me until 8th grade and further. Before high
school my mom wanted me to get a taste of school, that’s when I started 8th-grade middle
school for the 2nd semester. I felt like an outcast compared to everyone else there everyone
knew me as the homeschooled kid. Thankfully I wasn’t treated like a weirdo by the other kids
however I still had trouble making friends in middle school.
When I finally started 9th grade in high school I had made some friends who had helped
me get comfortable with school. 9th grade was my favorite year I had made so many friends
and had fun at the football games and going to pep rallies. High school was a breeze for me,
and when I finally walked the stage my senior year I felt ecstatic. My mom was the proudest she
felt that it was a great experience for both of us to learn together therefore she was proud that I
became independent