Former Public School Teacher Chooses to Homeschool Daughters, Discovers Increased Flexibility and Quality Family Time

Twelve years ago, a professor stood before Amanda Ostrander’s class at Laurentian University and gave his students every reason to not teach in public schools, but to school their future kids at home instead.

The professor, seeing his own kids’ eyes shine with a love of learning as he turned a backflip on the trampoline into a physics lesson, conveyed to the class how wonderful he found homeschooling to be.

Ostrander, from Sudbury, Ont., wasn’t a mom back then, but she held her professor’s words in her heart, and tidbits from others since, to later become a homeschooling parent and consultant for thousands like her.

The feats of famous Canadians probably factored in, too. With a degree in Canadian history, Ostrander studied Henry Hudson, who was charged with navigating a path through the Arctic. “He kind of kept saying, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it,’” Ostrander told The Epoch Times, adding that he ended up following his own agenda.

Canadians, she added, always did things “the way they wanted to do it.”

And so, afterOstrander met her husband, Stéphane, in classic Canadian fashion both agreed to school their kids their way. As educators who had taught in the public school system, they weren’t hung up on whether or not they could teach.

“It’s a lot easier to teach two kids than it is to teach 30,” Ostrander said, referring to their daughters, Alexi, 9, and Zoe, 7, neither of whom has ever attended public school.

“It’s actually a lot easier than we anticipated,” she said. “It takes a lot less time. It’s a lot more calm, and it just became something that we loved.”

As educational insiders, the Ostranders knew of the political games and inefficiencies of public schools and opted to sidestep them. They wanted to teach more arts, history, and sciences, which, Ostrander believes, are neglected in public schools because they’re less measurable than language or math.