A Good Question

By Michelle Dalrymple

I like to chat with my students. Before, after, even during, I will try to converse with my students about almost anything – holidays, the weekend, family, schoolwork. I find this makes me seem more approachable, and students are more likely to ask me questions or for help. Plus, I am an avid talker. I have been known to stay after class for up to an hour or more just to chat with students.

Over the course of the semester, I will usually share that I homeschool my children, and this always is cause for more conversing. Some will want to know why; others share that they or someone they know homeschools. I’ve even had students write their final papers about some aspect of homeschooling. However, of all my students and all the questions they have asked me about homeschooling, there is one question that was only asked once, and it really, really made me stop and think.

Here is the set up: every year, I have students whose ages vary from the 16 year old high schooler to the 65 year old retiree who wants to write in his or her spare time. This particular student was very bright, and she had the benefit of life experience on her side as well. She was in her late thirties to early forties; her kids were out of the house, and she was looking to move forward in her career.

In class she asked great questions, made interesting comments, and ended up taking a second class with me the following semester. About a month or so into the class we mentioned something about education, and she raised her hand. Her question: “How do you balance the fact you homeschool against the fact that you teach at a public institution?” Hmm.

It’s not that this question has not been asked before, quite the contrary. I have read about teachers such as David Guterson – a high school English teacher who homeschools his children. I have seen statistics about public school teachers who either send their children to public or private school, or if that is not feasible, home educate. Public teachers homeschooling their children is nothing new; if anything it is often a sad statement about the effects of public education. It is like seeing a doctor in a hospital and having him say that his family does not go to that same hospital; they go to one across town. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for said institution.

However, the question had never been posed to me. And in the very place I teach – yikes! I had been asked a lot of questions. My grandmother’s and aunt’s barrage of questions every time they called or visited gave me plenty of practice answering whatever question might pass my way. Any question, that is, but this one.

There I stood at the front of the class, dry-erase marker in hand, and I was speechless. It took me a moment to gather my thoughts and ask myself, “Yeah. How do I balance that?” Just their year before I had applied for a full time position at the college – what did I think of the education system that was passing public school students on to me?

I admit that I was secretly pleased that this probing question came from a student. Even though it was an older “non-traditional” student, the question she posed did reaffirm my faith that not all publicly schooled students were sub-par; in this particular class it seemed almost the norm. Between students talking with each other louder than I could lecture and those playing “Knock out Osama Bin Laden” on the computer, my faith in the students coming into my classes was at an all-time low. However, her question was deep, probing, and well-spoken. I don’t get students like her very often, but when I do I realize that was the answer to her question.

I balance it with students like herself, public school students who taught themselves, or those who wanted more out of school but didn’t get it. I also balance it with the homeschooled students coming into my class, that a professor like me might be a welcome sight to a new college student – that I might be a bit more receptive to alternatively educated students, homeschool, alternative schools, Christian schools, or otherwise, than many other professors might be.

Finally, I balance it with the fact that college is a completely affective environment, and I want my children to be as prepared for it as possible. As a professor, I see what I do and don’t want my children to be. Homeschooling gives me much more leverage to permit that to happen.