It’s traditional to think of Mom as the primary teacher in a homeschool—but in some families, Dad fills that role. Listen to one homeschool dad’s story on today’s Home School Heartbeat, with HSLDA President Mike Smith.
Mike Smith:
Bruce, you’re a working dad and the primary teacher in your family’s homeschool. How does being a homeschool dad fit in with the rest of your responsibilities?
Bruce Shortt:
Well, Mike, working in homeschooling means that you never have to wonder what you’ll be doing in the evenings and on weekends! When I get home from the office, I usually start by doing math with one of our older sons, while the other practices the piano. As the evening progresses, we move on to other subjects. Now obviously, the boys need to be productively engaged when I’m not home, so during the day, the main thing the boys work on is foreign language. Over all, I spend roughly three to four hours a day on homeschooling. As the boys have gotten older, I’ve done less teaching. Both boys know that I expect them to become capable of teaching themselves most things with minimal instruction by me.
Now apart from the need to be flexible, I think it’s very important to focus on a few main subjects. My older boys are 9 and 10. At this point, piano and languages are only frills, and I find that history, geography, and some other things can be easily combined with their reading and writing. We don’t do science as a separate subject, for example, because you can’t do serious physics or chemistry until you have calculus, so we put the extra time into math.
Mike:
Well, thank you, Bruce, for that interesting perspective. And until next time, I’m Michael Smith.
