“Homeschooling for the remainder of the school year made the transition easier and meant less lost school time,” Dunn said.
It also makes it easier to take off time when Mommy or Daddy comes home on mid-tour leave (mid-tour leave equals spring break for kids, even if “spring” break falls the second week of fall), has a four-day training holiday or wants to enjoy a block leave outside of $800 plane ticket season in December, said Army wife Jennifer Manning, who has been homeschooling her four girls for 10 years.
“As the years passed while my husband served on active duty, homeschooling proved to be beneficial to maintaining a sense of continuity both in our family life and our daughters’ educations,” she said.
Why do it?
For military families-who move every three to five years, on average, and many times more frequently than that-that continuity is crucial, Olson said. Her children would have been enrolled in three schools in three years; instead, they’ve been at the School of Olson since they began kindergarten.
“Homeschool has been a constant in a life full of change,” said Kendra Buckingham, who homeschools her five children at their station in Vicenza, Italy. “My 13-year-old has lived in 13 different houses but never had to change schools.”
Besides that, Buckingham said, her children have received a world-class education – literally.
“The military has sent us to some amazing and very diverse places – England, Hawaii, Alaska, North Carolina, Tennessee, Italy – and we seize whatever opportunities each location hands us,” she said.
Throughout their homeschooling careers, her children have observed lava flowing from a volcano in Hawaii, readied a dog team at the starting line of the Iditarod race in Alaska, spoken the local language at a nearby Italian market and even participated in an archeological dig in Israel.
“This has given my children a very well-rounded and fun education,” Buckingham said.
An education, Buckingham said, she would continue even if she weren’t military.
“I don’t remember my initial reasons to homeschool, but I’ve continued to homeschool because I love getting to spend all day with my children and learning along with them. I count it a privilege to pass on my values to my children each day,” she said.
That relationship is one of the reasons Dunn decided to continue homeschooling even after her move.
“I am intimately aware of my son’s strengths and needs, what he excels at, what he struggles with, how he learns best, and what most encourages him,” she said. “No outside teacher could ever know my son as well as I do.”
