From Sales Executive to Homeschool Mom

You’ve seen ‘em… The very large family, dresses only wearing, maybe even headcovering having homeschoolers. Well, while I do know many families who have those convictions (and greatly respect their decisions) there are actually many, many different types of people who homeschool.
I have friends who homeschool for some or all of the following reasons:
1. To help their children academically excel
2. To take education at a more natural pace be it accelerated or delayed
3. For religious reasons
4. Due to frustration with the school system
5. For family solidarity
6. Because their child has special needs
7. For the flexibility of schedule (we went to New England-Rev. War, DC-Inauguration, and Disney one year! Another, we had TONS of doctor’s visits for my son-ASD)
8. For a customized, tutorial education
9. Because they move a lot
10. Because they just like their children, love to learn and ENJOY teaching!
Like many homeschool moms, I had a life before homeschooling. And like many moms, that life has helped me very much, though never quite in ways that I expected. As a former Technical Sales Executive, I knew that I always loved sales. I also really loved learning-you have to know a lot about your product to be good. While those things obviously did help me in my enthusiasm for homeschooling (I read everything I could about education and learning styles for about 4 years until I had exhausted the available material) what really helped was…. Learning my client. That’s right, my children are, of course children, but they are the ‘client’ as it were.
If I fail to understand a client, I cannot communicate with them and we have no relationship. The skill of listening to and trying to understand clients became invaluable as a parent. There is no person in the entire world I desire to know, communicate with, and have relationship than my family; my children especially. In sales, I always came in with an agenda- to represent a product to a client. . To achieve my agenda, I first had to get to know my client, ask questions; lots of them, observe, and try to understand how my client was thinking.
In homeschooling, my agenda is to provide my children with academic material, help them learn, and instill a love of learning. With my children, I WANTED to simply go for the “empty vessel” idea where their minds are an empty vessel and I just have to “fill it up”. This approach did not work in a one on one environment. First of all, if they already knew something, boredom and restlessness would take over. Second, if there was little to no understanding, no matter how many different and creative ways I tried, I was frustrated. So, I decided to slow things down a bit. I did a bit of “unschooling” where materials are readily available to see where their interests would lead them. I was not disappointed. Their interests, when give the opportunity to flourish, included Russian History and Political Science for my older child. It included numbers in any fashion for my second child-and we use that to introduce new information. My youngest is just two, but the influence of his older siblings has already infected him. He has a very natural mechanical intuitiveness and is a very tactile learner.
This is a major thing that makes what I do very rewarding, fulfilling and joyful! While we do have workbooks and such in our house, our home is more like one big school experiment all the time. School is ALWAYS in session in one way or another. Veritas!