Home Educating with Two Full-Time Jobs: How We Do It

Let's say your heart is set on homeschooling, but both you and your spouse work full time. Can the situation work? If so, how might it look? Come along as I share where Husband and I are on that front, at this point, and how we're preparing for years to come.

Mile-High View of 2-Job Homeschooling

One of my motivations in writing this post was the lack of situational specificity in what's available online for how "exactly" to homeschool when both parents work full time. I'll get more into our family's situation and plans toward the end of this post. But if all you want is some helpful general tips, this section is the place to be! I've combined various sources (Organized Home+School, Remote Office School, Give Mom a Minute, This Ain't the Lyceum, and Teach Work Mom) into a "top-six" list of helpful tips for making your situation successful.

• Outsource various aspects. This can relate to anything, whether housework or (in most states) supervision.
• Set a routine. This goes without saying for most people (I know there are some people who want routine but can't keep it, or just don't like routines). "Whatever works" is the operative word.
• Set Independent tasks for each child. Over time, children can and should become more independent with their education; the best place to begin this is in childhood, given each child’s developmental level. The parent will check work done afterward. 
• Include focused time for parents to work. Some jobs can be done with less concentration, but the greatest efficiency (and most meetings) need to be done without anyone distracting the working parent. 
• Use childcare when parents must be out without their children. This is especially important for jobs that require some or all time in the office. 
• Consider pre-packaged curriculum for set tasks. This may be an option for parents who aren’t sure how to go about organizing or determining what they want each child to accomplish during a school year. 

How Homeschooling "Must" Look

Legal boundaries around homeschooling set the "bare minimum" which any homeschooling parent must achieve. Various sources, including ProPublica, provide visual representations of United States states that show the relative levels of regulation placed on parents who choose to withdraw their child(ren) from public or private schools. Laws cover several areas and may or may not overlap in terms of overall level of regulation per state:

• Notification of intent to homeschool to the local school district. Most states (30) require an annual notice; 9 require a one-time notice; and 11 require no notice.
• Minimal level of parental education. Most states (36) don't specify a level; 10 require a high school diploma; and 4 leave the decision up to the individual school district official.
• Required subjects to be taught to each child. Most states (33) do have a set of required subjects and 11 of those have assessment requirements to verify that those are being taught. The rest (17) do not have a required-subjects list.
• Assessments of child academic performance (e.g., a scholastic achievement test). Most states (29) do not have assessment requirements for homeschooled children; 8 each have ramifications or no ramifications for either annual or periodic assessment; and 5 have periodic assessment without ramifications. (As a side note, I grew up in a state without current testing requirements, but did at one point take the state achievement test with a group of other homeschooled children.)
• Vaccinations for students. Most states (29) do not require any particular vaccinations; 16 require one or more but without verification to the district; and 5 require one or more with district verification.
• Criminal history of a household occupant. The vast majority of states (48) do not limit whether children can be homeschooled in a house wherein someone with a criminal history lives. One state has a broad prohibition, and the remaining state has one type of offender prohibited from living in the same home.

One question that comes up about parental qualifications is whether their qualifications should be compared to those of public or private school teachers or substitute teachers. I think most readers of this blog have a decent understanding of teacher qualifications (and hopefully a range of opinions on those!), but I don't know as much about substitute teachers.

If one chooses to think of a homeschooling parent as a substite teacher (which concept I disagree with but others agree with), Swing has (apparently) reliable summary information on what qualifications a sub should have. By state, 17 require some form of certification; 9 require some college credits possibly up to a bachelor's degree; and the remaining 24 require a high school diploma or GED. That said, parents with less than a high school education have anecdotally educated their children well.

How Homeschooling "Can" Look

So long as a family is within the legal boundaries, they have enormous flexibility and choice as far as how they want to homeschool. In this section, I'll talk more about outsourcing and the spectrum of "looks" for homeschool. I'm deliberately steering away from talking about specific curricula because Husband and I are picky enough within our worldview to want to select our own components that do not all fit within a single pre-packed curriculum.

Outsourcing

As the homeschooling parent(s), you are responsible for providing for your child(ren)'s education. However, this does not mean that you are required to provide all instruction yourself, directly. You do have the option to delgate and oversee the process and results of that delegation. This may look like hiring a tutor (individual or group) for subjects you're not confident at all in guiding; co-ops for a greater degree of interpersonal interaction while keeping homeschool parents as the teachers; or part-time school that supports your homeschool. 

In our area, there's a great example of the last option--a K-12 hybrid Christian school that offers 3 days/week of classes for children using a blended classical and Charlotte Mason approach. Teachers in this school assign at-home lessons for parents to guide their children through. I see this as primarily school-based education because the lessons are planned by teachers (not the parents) to be implemented by parents, as opposed to parents both designing the curriculum/lessons and implementing them.

Spectrum of Options

The amount of time dedicated to "school" subjects and the rigidity of the schedule seem to me the main factors most determining the look and feel of your homeschool. From low to high amounts of time, you could see

• Unschooling - no tests, no assignments, and (presumably) no set hours. The parents do teach but focus on life and not-necessarily-"academic" books with their children.
• Charlotte Mason - periodic tests in an oral or written format, and only mornings typically spent in lessons with afternoons spent outside. Mostly "living" books are used.
• Mimic-the-public-school - for want of a better term, I use this to refer to parents who mimic the 8-hour traditional school day, including a highly structured school area in the home. This is (very likely) rare among experienced or longer-term homeschoolers.

Similarly, the rigidity of one's daily and weekly schedule can vary tremendously. Growing up, I was used to a fairly minimal schedule aside from co-op days and outings. Essentially, I had to find a time to do one-on-one work with Mom or complete independent tasks on a checklist, and as long as I got them done by the end of the day, choosing a schedule was up to me. This allowed breaks for outdoor activity, pleasure reading, chores, and other things.

Since looking into homeschooling as it has developed in the last 20-30 years, I've seen another trend towards some sort of weekly schedule, whether that uses set times (less often with multiple kids) or time-blocking (more often due to flexible start times of each block). Each child might not spend 5 days per week working on every single subject, but all subjects would be covered and flow into each other. Charlotte Mason recommends alternating easier with more difficult subjects in terms of attention required from the child, which fits with principles of learning.

One aspect of scheduling and routines that newer homeschool parents might not be aware of is how much their children are capable of doing independently. While a previously public-schooled child might not start month 1 of being homeschooled with a full level of independence, s/he is perfectly capable of starting small (one sub-task) and working up to multiple subjects with a start/stop cue and checking over work as needed for parental feedback.

Finally, children of multiple ages can work and learn with each other on multiple subjects. Examples that come to mind include:

• Outdoor physical activity--walking has no age limit provided one can already walk
• History - parts taught from solid primary and secondary sources can generally be gone over and discussed among a group of varied-age children (depending on sensitivity of content). Younger children will go less in-depth than older children, and that's okay.
• Literature - this is not a universally co-learning subject due to varied maturity level of some texts chosen, but classic literature is typically appropriate and beneficial for ages from childhood through adulthood
• Home economics - see my post from earlier this year about introducing chores to children

How Working Full-Time Can Look

It goes almost without saying that working from home has become a lot more common since a certain virus started making the rounds. I won't analyze trends in this post, but rather will go through the spectrum of full-time work options. "Full-time" is operationally defined as benefit-eligible work that takes the typical person around 30-40 hours per week.

• 100% remote. If this type of work supports an office-based company, there may be policies prohibiting supervision of children during dedicated work hours (e.g., meeting times). At the other end of remote work may be full-time freelancing.
• Blended remote and on-site. An example of this is a university position that requires a minimum number of in-person office hours and instructional time per week during an academic semester. Availability for remote meetings at home may be required on an occasional or regular basis
• 100% on site. Examples include shift work in health care, office work as an in-person support or administrator, or construction. This is the "traditional" but also least flexible mode of work.

In a 2-parent household, there can be any combination of these. How easy might homeschooling be in these situations? Short answer . . . it varies! But as long as parent(s) are home and mentally available when their child(ren) is/are awake, homeschooling can be fit into that time.

Our Process for Working and Educating

Currently, our work situation entails one parent working 100% remotely (with some scheduled meetings) with the expectation that whenever the tasks get done is when they get done; and the other parent working about 50% remotely (with some in-person instructional time and office hours during all 3 semesters in a university setting), also with the expectation that so long as work is done prior to any deadlines it doesn't really matter how long it takes that work to get done.

Given this work schedule, at least one of us is home all the time. However, during that time the parent-at-home may not be available to educate Child. We also have rather different sleep schedules (one night owl best until 3am, and one morning person best starting around 4-5am). Child is a typical morning person at this time. Child is also at a not-quite-preschool age but will be in kindergarten age soon enough!

Therefore, our process for educating is very focused on each of our strengths, utilizing the time windows of mutual availability. Husband's strengths are in theology, philosophy, math, and the more theoretical subjects, while my strengths are in the life sciences, home economics, finances, and reading instruction. It's most developmentally appropriate for Child right now to be outdoors a lot, moving the body a lot, and learning language processing by interacting with real people, objects, and processes (think following 1-step directions to prepare the coffee maker or participate in dressing/undressing oneself).

This routine doesn't require extra time from either of us, but it does require a sacrifice of some of our "me" time when Child is ready and willing to interact. I am generally the one supervising and facilitating outdoor time, so I'll bring along a charged phone (for email, calls, video meetings, and grading), notebook (for written brainstorming), and book (professional development) along with the necessary snacks. Otherwise, one or both of us can generally check off work tasks in the same large area of the house as Child while we supervise play--which is children's work!

Outsourcing-wise, we do utilize childcare for times when I need to be out of the house and Child is awake.

I'll likely revisit this post's ideas as each year passes and Child(ren) get(s) more ready for formal academic work, but right now that is what works for us as we work full time! Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments.