Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Educating children while on the mission field has many challenges. Learn how homeschooling has become a viable option for missionary families as Michael Farris talks with education specialist Nancy Elwood on today's Home School Heartbeat.

Mike Farris:
Nancy, your organization, SHARE Education Services, offers families extensive information about the educational options available overseas. Today, I want you to focus on homeschooling. How has homeschooling worked for the families that you serve?


Nancy Elwood:
Mike, one of our goals at SHARE Education Services is to help the missionary families who are homeschooling figure out the nuts and bolts of doing it well in places where many of them have little support and encouragement. Sometimes they're like the missionary who wrote to us just last month and said, "I need to start homeschooling my kids, but I don't know where to start! I'm desperate for advice." Many of the families with whom we work have either chosen homeschooling as their educational option or they're combining home and national schooling so that their kids can integrate into the culture and acquire the needed language skills.


There are obvious benefits to homeschooling in this part of the world, of course, like wonderful field trips and interesting things to learn and write about. On the other hand, time to plan and prepare good learning experiences can be difficult for parents who are trying to balance ministry and language learning, standing in lines for almost everything, and keeping good parenting and teaching a priority. So homeschooling on the mission field definitely requires intentionality and perseverance. I'd like to ask your listeners to pray for the missionary families they know, as they work hard to provide good educational experiences for their children.


Mike:
Nancy, I want to thank you so much for the work that you're doing to help these families on the front line of Christian service. I'm Mike Farris.