Chapter 8: The Freedom to Homeschool: Community as Classroom

This chapter aims to understand ways in which self-determination manifests in our choice to school at home as we pushed through and made tough economic decisions. We started with the end in mind. As graduates of historic Morehouse College and Spelman College, respectively, my husband and I knew at the onset that we wanted our children to follow in this rich educational and cultural tradition. Having served as a professor at a public historically Black college or university (HBCU), it was paramount for us that our children received the nurturing and support that HBCU’s provided and that we believed would prepare them for life, beyond the classroom. Central to our decision to homeschool is our strong belief in freedom, our strong belief in connecting to our rich cultural past, and the willingness to make the sacrifices to teach and train our children, with culturally rich curricula. Freedom from a compulsory system of education that seldom infused the type of literature, values, and experiences that were integral to life-long learning were top-of-mind, even during uncertainty. What follows is an autoethnography that describes the role of community as homeschoolers.