{. I think so. Their biggest concern, though, was about how I would be able to get that scholarship. I also went to my guidance counselor at school to talk about this, and his reaction was, "What's homeschoolins?" He didn't know anything about it, but he called me down a couple of days later and gave me a packet of GED information. Then my mom and I met with the principal and vice-principal, and I said, "What do you know about ways I can get out?" They said, "If you want to get out of public school, you really need psychological help." They thought I wasn't coping well, I wasn't dealing with the classes, so if I got a psychologist to say I was unable to attend school, I could get out. So I said, "OK, let's try this path." I actually went to two appointments with a psychologist. She took a very conventional view. She asked me why I clidn't like school, and I said, "The classes are really slow, I feel like I'rn just wasting my time." It seemed like her goal was to get me to go back to school, or there was also the option of home study, which meant having a ttrtor come to my hottse. That was the next best thing to homeschooling in my eyes - it was still better than being in school. But meanwhile, I wasn't letting any options drop, so I also talked to Dawn Shuman again, and she gave me the number of Manfred Smith fhomeschooling leader in Marylandl . When I talked to him, he gave me a whole different way of looking at it. My parents and I went to his house for a meeting, and he explained that he could give me grades and a diploma through The Learning Community Network [an umbrella school]. So that satisfied my parents. Then I wanted to know, how soon can I get out? According to Maryland law, yott have to give the school tlvo weeks'notice. Manfred said if I dropped off the appropriate papers at the Board of Education, and got my transcript from the school, I wouldn't have to go back to school that Monday. When we went to the Board of Education to get all the paper"work settled, my mother said, "Friday will be her last day," ancl they reminded us about the two-rveek waiting period. My mom said, "Well, she is 16," because it was actually legal fbr me to drop out. So that took care of that.
Wat about the big concnn about social life that so many peopk haae? Did that come up in your family at all? The school was very cliquey, and I had my clique of friends. Out of those people, I've kept in touch with everyone I really liked, without a problem. And I didn't have to keep up with the people that I didn't like. That was another reason I wanted to get ollt of school; there was a lot of stuff soing on that I didn'twant to be a part of, like all my friends were starting to smoke and drink, and there were all these - not exactly gangs, but cliques that would fight each other.
Focus
* Now that you'ue
been
out of school a year, how do you feel it's
gone?
Well, I didn't read the whole shelf of books, but it's been interesting, all the different things that you can call homeschooling. My sister and I went to Europe for a month, and that counted as Language, it counted as Social Studies, and it was just the best time. We went through September, so I never could have done it if I'd been in school. Do you haue any aduice for kids who uant to homeschool and find tha,t their parents are unsure ubout it?
Well, I'm actually giving a workshop on that at olrr next conference. I'm going to bring The Teenage Liberation
I
met zaith the principal IYL and uicefirincipal, and I said, "What do you know about utays I can get out?" Thq sqid, *If you ua,nt to get out of public school, you redlly need psychological help."
n /n
mom and
Handbooh, and I'm just going to tell them what's possible.
If their parents have concerns or fears, I'd
say most of the time the fear is either based on the fact that they don't think the child will do well enough, and I think the only way to conquer that is to talk to your parents a lot and show them that you're responsible. Or the fear is just based on the fact that they don't know anything about it, since
people are always afraid of what they don't know, and the thing to do is to give them as much information as possible.
Concerned about College Scholarship Interview with Sue Crawford. Allison's mother: How did it strike you uhen Allison first presented the idea of homeschool:ing?
\I4tat uas it lihe uhen you.first .sturted homeschooling?
That first semester, my parents kept asking,
"rr44rat
have you done today?" Finally I got sick of that, so I wrote a
I titled Wat, and it told about what I'd done. That worked out really well.
weekly newsletter that
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#97 'JAN./FEs. 1994
At first it struck me as undoable, but then she convinced us that it would probably work. I don't think this would work with every child that old. Neither I nor her father had much time to devote to her homeschooling; we both work full time, and we're separated now. Again, it 25