Home Alone

Student compares homeschooling and college

By Marissa Shea
Observer Contributor

Sarah (last name withheld) is nineteen and is physically attending school for the first time.

Sarah was enrolled in Connections Academy, a Commonwealth Virtual School that offers online schooling from pre-K to 12th grade. The school was founded in 2002 and has since provided “personalized learning” for students online. She was enrolled in this program for the entirety of her grade school education and was not very fond of it.

“I didn’t like it – I like being taught by a teacher and it makes school feel twice as hard when you’re self-taught,” said Sarah. As a child, Sarah’s parents helped to teach what she couldn’t teach to herself, but as she grew older they became less involved in helping with schoolwork.

All the work for the Academy is done online on a website Sarah said is “similar to Blackboard.” Students are required to have access to a computer and a website login, and the academy supplied the textbooks. Sarah stated the system was “easy to use” but she would not recommend it.

Had it been Sarah’s choice, she would have attended a public school. For her, the workload was difficult to manage. “You usually had one week to complete assignments,” said Sarah. “This usually meant that I procrastinated until the last day.”

Since enrolling at MWCC, Sarah has appreciated having more deadlines, professors to answer her questions, and having to show up to the classroom. Although Sarah considers herself a very social person, she finds that it is harder to create relationships with other students due to her homeschooling.

“People often make assumptions about you when you have been homeschooled; they tend to think you are antisocial or odd,” said Sarah. She never walked at graduation, attended prom, or went on any school field trips.

Something Sarah enjoys about college is that nobody asks about her homeschooling. “At first I expected people to ask me questions, but they didn’t,” said Sarah. This made her transition easier. Sarah graduated with a high school diploma like most students, but it was a completely different experience that she “doesn’t recommend.”

She thinks that it is important for people to create “long lasting relationships with people in their communities” and homeschooling made it more difficult to do so. “When you are younger, you need to be social. I feel like I missed out on important school related events that people remember for the rest of their lives,” Sarah noted.

Sarah is majoring in Early Childhood Education with hopes to one day become a preschool or kindergarten children and “make a difference” in children’s lives. Sarah believes she has adjusted well to her new environment, considering there were no classrooms or classmates at her previous school.