Hope is a father of three young children – two girls and one boy – and he recently relocated from Rivers State in Nigeria to Canada, with his entire family. Let’s take a mini-deep dive into his homeschooling journey so far.
How was your life in Rivers State before you moved to Canada, and why did you move?
It was pretty normal. My wife worked at a big multi-national Company while I pastored a church. My wife also assisted me in Pastoring the church. Our children went to normal school and life was the regular Nigerian’s reality.
My wife and I chose to move out of the country because we wanted a better reality for ourselves and our children. She also wanted to further her education. We got our visas for Canada and I don’t want to bore you with the long process and details but we ended up moving.
How did moving countries inform your decision to start homeschooling your children?
I realized that I wanted to be more hands-on with the raising of my children and with how I incorporated my values into their lives. I also figured that this may be more difficult to do if we didn’t spend as much time together, so I decided to homeschool them.
How did you start homeschooling your children and how has this journey been for you?
It hasn’t been easy at all. I go to culinary school – so this means that I have to juggle my schooling and working part-time with homeschooling my children. I can neither give up my job nor my education so it has been a matter of finding the right times to teach them and knowing how to balance everything that I have going on with their schooling.
In the beginning, I had to do a lot of research. There was no way I could’ve gone into this endeavour without researching properly. Education is not something I take lightly so I knew that for me to give my children the best experience possible I had to do a lot of research. My research showed that it is way easier to homeschool in Canada than it is in Nigeria because homeschooling is not a very foreign concept to them and there is legislation already put in place to guide homeschooling as opposed to Nigeria.
What is the biggest lesson homeschooling your children has taught you?
Overall, it has taught me patience. You have to be very patient to teach children. It has also taught me that children know a lot more than we give them credit for.
Learnt anything from Hope’s story, or got some questions for him? Tell us in the comments!
The #myhomeschoolinglife is a bi-weekly blog series curated by Gradely that explores the lives of parents who are currently homeschooling or have previously homeschooled their children. They simply share their experiences with us and we document them here to learn a few things from them and also show you what to do and what not to do if and when you choose to start your homeschooling journey. And if you’re already a homeschooling parent, find out how Gradely can help improve your homeschooling experience here regardless of your location.
If you would like to feature in the #myhomeschoolinglife blog, you can send an email to eniola@gradely.ng.
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Eniola Makinde
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