Time Marches On

Last week was an important milestone in the Knox family. All three of the Knox children started public school. Big deal you might say. Read on...

7- 1/2 years ago, my wife and I picked up everything we owned and moved our family to the big city of Spring, Texas. When we arrived, we had been contemplating teaching our children at home. My wife had been an early childhood education major in college and was a year from graduation when we started our family. She had taught in the day school in our town before we moved and even had our son in her class. She had done research on home schooling and felt it was something she would like to try with our children. The motivation wasn't to seclude or insulate our children from the world. My wife just wanted to be able to spend time with our kids in their early, developmental years. In the fall of that same year, we started our experiment with our oldest, Christopher. He was 5 years old.

Now, 7-1/2 years later, we sensed the winds of change and after a lot of prayer and consideration, we enrolled our children in the Conroe School District. For the first time in their lives, our children would be spending the day away from us and each other. Each would be attending different schools in different parts of town. We were very concerned about how the children would adapt to the social climate as well as the structure and schedule. We were also concerned about the kids having to ride the bus to school. Each child would be riding different buses. How would our kids adjust to the double whammy of attending public school AND riding the bus?

After a week and a half, despite our misgivings and conerns, I'm pleased to report that our transition seems to have been a success.

Christopher, our oldest, started 7th grade and went out for football. He's 5' 9" and 220 lbs. and appears to have made the B team squad. He has practice at 7AM every day. He would prefer not to have to get up so early, but is enjoying Jr. Hi at the moment. He really likes football, too. His first game is September 6. Chris enjoys his Texas History class.

Jessica, our oldest daughter, started 5th grade at the newest school facility in town. Her primary teacher is a first year teacher and Jessica likes her. Jessica decided that she would like to be in the school band and wants to play the trumpet. Her grandfather and I both played the trumpet in school bands and we're letting her pick which of our horns she wants to play. She hasn't decided which class she likes best. She's just having fun.

Anna, our youngest, started 3rd grade. She is the most out-going of our children and loves the opportunity to make new friends. Interestingly enough, 60 or 70% of Anna's class is hispanic. She's hoping to learn spanish along with other things this year. Her favorite class is PE.

Our goal when we started teaching our kids at home was to make sure - above everything else - that we raised decent people. At this stage, we feel we've been successful in that enterprise. If the last week and a half is any indication, it looks like they're going to be just fine.