31. Options For Working Parents Who Want To Homeschool

A rapid-fire list of realistic ways to keep working while you homeschool

• our long planning runway before homeschooling and why we tested changes for a year 
• switching a business to virtual work to make home learning possible 
• work-from-home options and early-morning schedules that open up school time 
• using online school and virtual curriculum for more independence 
• hybrid programs as a lower-risk step into homeschooling 
• learning pods, drop-off co-ops, and other childcare-style supports 
• leaning on family help and building a schedule from multiple pieces 
• remembering you can pivot midyear if something is not working 

If you're pulling the trigger on homeschooling and you need help, definitely check out our guide! Cheering you on!!

Transcript

Cold Open And Show Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I think that is such a great idea. I'm so glad someone told me about that because I think it's just such a nice, like outside the box way to think of this, where you can still work and your kids can get a good education. We're two full-time working parents who just made a crazy decision.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

After four years in public school, we're homeschooling our three kids and documenting the whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Never in a million years did I think we would be homeschooled people.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Welcome to, well, this wasn't the plan podcast. I'm Slate, and school's in the kitchen now. I'm Scotty. We saw Scott when I say so. I'm Sailor, and this whole podcast was my idea. This podcast is our real-time journey. Unexpectedly juggling homeschool, jobs, parenting, and everything in between.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Follow along each week as we document how it's going and share the good, the bad, and the ugly. Because we know some days are going to be ugly, and we're not holding back.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

We're learning to expect the unexpected. So let's get into it.

Why Working Parents Asked For This

How We Planned The Transition

Rapid Ideas To Make It Work

Online School While You Work

Hybrid Programs As A Stepping Stone

Asking For Part-Time Hours

Hiring Help During Busy Seasons

Pods, Co-Ops, And Family Support

Fear, Overwhelm, And Changing Course

Guide Link And Closing

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Let's go. Hello everyone. I am back with what I think is probably our most requested episode. That is just more information about people that want to work and homeschool but don't necessarily have the job or flexibility that we have. So today, this episode is going to be a quick one with a lot of ideas that I've actually got from you guys or that we considered. And maybe this will get you thinking what maybe you could do to help transition into homeschooling. And just to back up, if you haven't heard this part of our story, we didn't just say, oh, we're going to homeschool and pull the kids from school. This was a long process, a planning process. Like we had to figure out so many things before we started homeschooling. We own a CPA firm and we used to see clients in person. And so our thought was if we can go virtual for everything, then it'll make it easier for us to have the kids in the house. And we just work from home without seeing clients in person. And also we used to like scan a lot of documents and things. And so we had to change that. Well, we had to had kind of give it a go before we went all in on this because this is our main source of income for our family. So we actually tried it for an entire year before we committed to homeschooling. It went really well. Of course, we have less business that way and we had to make some hard choices, but we were like, this is going to be better for our family. And it's actually been so nice, but it was a big plan. So don't feel like if you don't have it figured out today, that's not possible. My number one advice here is that you just need to get really creative. I'm really good at that. Carson's obviously not here again today. He is working, but he sometimes will automatically just be like, oh, we can't do that. And we've been married now 13 years. And I'm the one that's like, well, let's think about that. Maybe we can. Let's think outside the box. Let's do it a way that maybe other people wouldn't necessarily think about. And so now he's kind of on board with me and he'll be like, Do you have any suggestions? So I'm here to give you some suggestions and see if maybe some of these could work for you. And I know we all don't have the same situation. Like Carson and I both work and both homeschool the kids, but you might be doing it solo, or you might not have the same budget that someone else has to hire someone to help, things like that. So I'm just gonna give like a rapid-fire idea list to you, and maybe something will spark inside of you that you could try and make it work. So obviously, work from home job, that's gonna be the easiest one to do. It's not gonna be super easy if you have babies and toddlers or even doable. I I personally had a work-from-home job at the time, and I had to get some help with my toddler because it was insane. But if you have a work-from-home job with rigid hours and like us, like we can do our work any time of the day. We just have to get it done and out the door. So we can move those hours around. That's why it's nice that we can get up and work at 6 a.m. And there are actually some teaching jobs where you teach English to kids like in different countries. And those jobs actually start really early in the morning because the time difference. So that is something definitely to look into. I think sometimes it takes a while to get a job like that. But if you're a teacher, that's absolutely something that you could look into. The next option would be still working from home, just like we're doing, but maybe you have a more traditional job. Maybe you have to be clocked in at a certain time and it runs more like a regular American schedule. So an option that you could consider that we're not doing is an online or virtual school. So a mom messaged me this just this week, and she said she had pulled her kid out from school last year, and she does work from home, but she has to do like an online curriculum. So she can sit there and hear her daughter doing her schoolwork and hear the teacher talking and everything while she's working. So that is what her daughter does while she's at work. So that works, but obviously, again, that would need to be an older child. I can definitely tell you, like my son or oldest daughter, so they're 10 and 8, they would be completely fine with that. She said it's four hours a day about. So during that time, she's working. There are plenty of online and virtual options. Like out school has a full curriculum legacy. There's so many. There's really so many to choose from. I put all of those in my guide. If you are like seriously considering homeschooling and need help for every step of the way, I put everything into that guide. And if you get to the end and you still have a question, you have my email address and I will answer those questions. So all of those online curriculum options are on there. So what it would be is just your child has a teacher and they are teaching them online. And I know we got like a bad rap because of like COVID and all of that, but this is different. My kids do online out school classes, and I was a little like questioning that because of all the things that people said about COVID and online school. The thing is, these classes have very small groups of children in them, and they're set up for virtual learning. Whereas we were not set up in 2020 and it is completely different. So online school is actually a really good option. Sometimes it's self-paced, so they could do it any time of the day as long as they just get through it. So that's definitely an option if you have a more traditional work-from-home job where you can't just work whatever hours you want to work. Another option would be to do some sort of hybrid program. So we were thinking of doing a hybrid program first. So if you don't know what that is, it's just hybrid, meaning they go to a school for a couple days a week and then they're home for a couple days a week. So this definitely would be better for someone that maybe has more of a part-time schedule or a flexible schedule to where like you're really using those like three days that they're at school to get your work done, and then you could be at home with them. I think the good thing about this is it's a good stepping stone for people. That's kind of why I wanted to do it because I felt scared to like jump out of public school all of a sudden and then be homeschooling. And so this hybrid option would have given us like a lot more guidance and some training wheels. But my daughter did not want to do the hybrid school. So we were like, all right, we'll just try it. If we have to go back to the hybrid school, totally fine. And it's been great. But the hybrid school is an option. And I think it's better than what we're seeing at schools. One, because they're usually like a private school, not necessarily as expensive as a private school because it's less time, but their values are more like you would see from a homeschooler. So I do think that they align more with like what we want than like a traditional school. So I do love the hybrid program. So you get to be around like-minded families and you get some support, but it's not like full support like the public school. Another one is obviously working part-time or one parent working part-time. This is usually just a matter of asking. So whenever we were starting our business, Carson was like, Should I quit? Should I not quit? I just don't know what to do. And he actually never thought about asking to go down to part-time. So I was like, why don't you just ask and see? Because that would be a great thing. We would you wouldn't have to quit and we would lose all of that income. But you would cut down your hours enough to make sense for us. So he asked, and they were like, sure, no problem. So as an accountant, he was able to go to part-time. And I know engineers who do this, some lawyers. So definitely there are options, depending on your company, you know, so many things, but it's absolutely worth you asking because what are they going to do? Just say no. So if that's something that could work in your budget with you not losing your entire amount of pay, but just going to halftime, if that would be fine for your family, that's definitely worth asking. Another thing, and this is something that we are actually considering. We just talked about this this week, is hiring help through a teacher, like a retired teacher, a college student, someone like that. And we are considering next year in March and April, having some help with the kids' school so that we can focus more on work during our busy time. And then they can have someone come in and help them with their schoolwork. And I think that's going to be good for us because it's going to get our most like two stressful months. It'll give us some extra hours and we won't have to worry about school. And I like that we have the option to just do it those two months because we're very much enjoying homeschooling them. But it's very hard when we're stressed about work. So we think those two months would be great. I met someone here that they actually have a tutor come two or three days a week. I think maybe it was three, like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and they complete all of their school with their children because I guess they butt heads with their mom. And their mom didn't want to do it any longer, but they didn't want to send them back to school. The kids didn't want to go back to school, and they're like, okay, let's just get a college student. We have the money in our budget to get them to come and help make sure the kids get through school. So that's what they do. Definitely not a traditional option, but something that they have figured out that works for them. And then that's what we were just thinking this week. Like, there's no reason that we couldn't get some help just during this time. It is not, you do not have to be a teacher to help my kids get through their schoolwork. They're actually really good at working through it themselves and only need a few like questions answered or make sure their work is checked. So next year we will be hiring someone in March and April just to take a little bit of that stress off. Another thing that I've seen other families do is if there are multiple families considering doing this, if you can get organized, you can absolutely find some like-minded families to basically hire one teacher for everyone and create like a small learning group. I wish we had that. I wish we had a bunch of families close by that were like-minded and wanted the same thing as us so that we basically could create our own little school. So if you have that, that's definitely an option. And you could you would basically be having them in a little private school and you would be able to dictate what they did. So are they getting outside to do their work? Do they have flexibility? All of those things. I think that is such a great idea. I'm so glad someone told me about that because I think it's just such a nice, like outside the box way to think of this, where you can still work and your kids can get a good education. And there's a lot of teachers wanting to do this now. That is another option that I've seen on our Facebook pages, is that teachers now are offering classes. Like they have what's called a learning pod. So let's say you work part-time hours and you just need like a couple days a week without your kids to do your work, then these learning pods might be a really good option for you. So the learning pods are only a small group of kids in a small learning environment. And I've seen a few of them around here. So there's actually a lot of them popping up. I've heard really good feedback from moms who have used them. So that's definitely something to look at. Another option for you would be like drop-off co-ops or programs. There are things that offer this. So it's like a drop-off co-op where they actually go and you can leave for a while. The co-ops that we've done so far, you don't drop them off and leave, but they are classes. So depending on where you live, there might be some co-ops that you could drop them off. And it might be two days a week that you're getting like some extra work time. Then another thing that I don't often think of because we don't have this, but another mom was telling us that her mom helps her with the homeschooling. So she two days a week, her mom has the kids and she works a little bit extra those two days, and her helps with the homeschool. So if you have some family support, someone that would be willing to maybe just give you a day, and then you have one of these like programs. Maybe they go to co-op and then they go to your mom's like a day or two. Maybe there's a way out of all of these things that I have listed that you could piece together a way to make this work. When we did this and I was making our schedule, we're gonna get up at six and we're gonna work until 10, and then we're gonna pause, and then it's gonna take us two hours to homeschool, and then we're gonna have to do lunch, and then we need to get back to work for just like an hour or two. And I was so, so overwhelmed. I'm like, this sounds completely scary. Just know I was absolutely terrified, and it has been so, so much better than I could have ever anticipated. It's so much better for our family. It's so much better than sending them to school, dragging them out of bed every single morning, and all the stress that came with it. So just know that you might feel the same way I do. Also know that if you try it and it doesn't work, there's no reason that you can't make another change. You know, I think that sometimes we forget you can make a change no matter what. You can pull your kid from public school at Christmas and homeschool them if you want. Or if everyone's hating homeschool or what you're doing, hybrid program, co-ops, whatever, you absolutely have the power to change that, to fit what's best for your family. And I feel like if you're listening to this podcast, you absolutely are a person of the mind that thinks like that. Like I'm not just gonna sit here and do something that absolutely sucks for my family. If I don't have to, I can make a change. So I know that you already know that, actually. A few other families make this work by having rotating schedules like nursing schedules or firefighter schedules. You know, those schedules where you're home for a couple of days and then you have a shift and you're gone, and they're doing it that way, and they are homeschooling on only the days that they're home. And some people work by going to work, having some child care, and then they do the homeschool at night or on weekends. So there is truly a million ways to make this work. I do realize that some jobs are definitely more conducive to this than others. So maybe it's that you need to find another job, maybe it's you need to start looking at options where you could be like, yep, I could get work done this day, this day, and this day, and that would be enough. So hopefully this episode gave you some sort of idea or motivation or inspiration to find something that would work for you. Because I imagine if you're listening to this podcast, you're just trying to think, like, how could I possibly homeschool? And if you're pulling the trigger on homeschooling and you need help, definitely check out my guide. The link is in the comments. I spent a lot of time putting that together to hopefully make it feel like you have your best friend walking you through homeschool, telling you, you've got this. Here's what we do, here's what you should look into, here are the requirements from your state. So check that out. And until next time, thank you for listening to Well, this was the Planned Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

We will be really hard on this podcast. Thank you, have a good day.