This post is part of a narrative history of our homeschool. It is about why we chose to homeschool, what we did and how we did it. It is about our failures and frustrations as well as our successes. The plan is to make an honest accounting of it all for the benefit of ourselves and others. This is a work in progress which was started in late October 2014 after the kids had already skipped most or all of high school, Christian had earned a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics (Summa Cum Laude), Kelly had earned a Bachelors degree in Statistics (Magna Cum Laude) and they were ensconced in funded PhD programs on the West Coast. I add to the narrative as I have time.
Though this story is part of a larger blog that is now over ten years old, I want it to stand on its own. To that end, I will briefly describe the educational background of our families and the early days of our marriage. My wife Lorena and I have surprisingly similar backgrounds. She comes from a family of farmers and woodworker’s from Northern Mexico while I come from a family of farmers and woodworkers (loggers and mill workers) from Oregon. The only one of our parents who went to college was my mother who got a degree in Pharmacy from Oregon State University in 1952, a time at which very few women studied Pharmacy.
All of the next generation in both families went on to college at some sacrifice to our parents. Lorena has three brothers with Bachelor’s degrees in engineering from excellent universities in Mexico. Lorena’s fourth brother runs a successful business, but education is valued so highly that he started and is half way through a mid-career law degree. It was only through great sacrifice, hard work and the family working together over a long period of time that they were able accomplish this uncommon level of education achievement. Lorena, herself is now half way through an Associate’s degree at the local community college.
My family has a surprisingly similar educational background. Of the four children, three have Master’s degrees (Psychology, Engineering and an MBA). The fourth ran a successful business for twenty years while earning a mid-career Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. Our family sacrificed to get all the kids through college though not nearly as much as Lorena’s family. So, both Lorena and I came from families who valued education and, more importantly, were willing to make sacrifices to make college a possibility for all the kids.
Shortly after I finished my Master’s degree, I met Lorena at a church event in Texas. I had gotten accepted at Texas A&M for a PhD, but left graduate school when Lorena and I got serious about our relationship. I took an engineering job at Motorola in South Florida and Lorena and I got married a year later. Our daughter Kelly was born during the three years we lived in South Florida. We spoke only Spanish during our time in Florida, but Lorena took English as a second language at a local community college and was quite fluent before we moved to Oregon at the very end of 1994. We like to say that was when Kelly learned Spanish and Lorena learned English.
We moved to Oregon so I could start a small business with my father. Our son Christian was born there not to long after we arrived. We continued to speak Spanish at home, so both the kid’s first language was Spanish. Everyone around the kids other than Lorena and I spoke with them in English. That include their grandparents, cousins, neighbor kids, people at church, etc. That meant they were fluent in English very early, too. That fluency in both languages was something at which we had to work pretty hard and probably had a significant influence on both how and why we did homeschool.
Betty Blonde #196 – 04/16/2009
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