Poll: How many homeschoolers/unschoolers here? When did you start?

Considering homeschooling for my kids (4 and 7) when we move to Virginia. We have the best in the city of New Orleans and getting to the same level in Virginia seems prohibitive. My wife and I are deep in the research phase, reading, talking with people, conference in June, etc. Would like to get a sense of how many did it, and if you would share your thoughts, I'd appreciate it.

i was homeschooled for a year in middle school as my family made the transition from private to public schools. the year of homeschooling allowed my parents to save some more money for a down payment on a house with good public schools. my brother was homeschooled at the same time - he is three years younger than me - for grade school.

I think home school is fine for primary school. once you get into middle and high school i am not as supportive. this may have been only my experience but i learn best when interacting with others - showing others what i learned and learning from others mistakes. this becomes more significant during middle school/high school as this is when more group tasks are assigned.

We've gone back and forth between homeschooling, private schools in Puerto Rico, and public schools in Indiana. This fall we'll be trying a new combination (a private school in Indiana).

Both school and home education have their strong points. If you have the time to do it, I recommend home education -- you'll never get your kids' childhood back, and there's no time more quality than teaching them all the good parts of the world.

You have to dance a lot harder, to make sure they have plenty of contact with people their own age. It's almost certain that there will be homeschooling groups in your new area in Virginia, so that takes care of that, depending on the vitality of the groups in question. But nowadays, in the States, it's not too hard to find social support networks for homeschoolers.

I figured school and I weren't a right fit some time in high school, so I dropped out then. Never even heard of unschooling at the time, I just considered myself an autodidact. That was now more than two years ago, and I still haven't started "unschooling" myself.

It was a problem when my parents threw me out soon after my 18th birthday, for dropping out of school. I had to get a miserable job, coding PHP for about the same amount of money my friend got stacking boxes in a warehouse. That was nothing unexpected, it just shows how much programmers are valued in my country.

The job made me depressed, unable to do anything. Not learn, nothing.

Now I'm working with a friend on a startup company, poised to solve all our problems, but I wouldn't say that's going so great either.

But I don't regret anything. School wasn't a good way of learning for me, and I will continue my education on my own, as soon as this company gets of the ground and I have some time.

My 3 kids started taking classes at the local community colleges while in high school, especially math. This was CA and they could take the classes for high school credit or college, even UC, credit. They opted for UC credit and it put them ahead of the game. My daughter avoided a 5th year at UCLA. My son dropped out of college and eventually founded a company with a couple of friends.