Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 7, 1995 TAG: 9509070093
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
``When it comes to school there's no place like home.''
And I did the thing we all sometimes do with people we believe to be different from us: I labeled and packaged her right into a narrow box.
Then I met her. We were standing together on Main Street in Wasena, watching the Tour duPont time-trial bicyclists whiz by.
My baby was curled up in the Snugli. Her two tow-headed boys were cruising the sidewalks on their bikes while she stood nearby, her adopted African-American son with her in a stroller. Her 4-year-old adopted daughter, whom she had rescued from a Romanian orphanage, held her hand.
We did the baby small-talk thing, then she told us exactly where she lived.
``You're the home-schoolers?'' I said. Hearing the surprise in my voice - and a trace of judgment - she put her hand up in a mock shield.
Her defensive look seemed to say it all: I am not what you think.
I visited Diana Howell this week after a friend suggested I write about the back-to-school rituals of students who don't go to school. I was surprised to see her carrying a tiny baby, didn't know that she'd been a foster mother for five years.
That's how she came to adopt her toddler Addison, now 2, after raising him his first 18 months. She had said, ``No more babies,'' after Addison officially joined the family.
``But when they call you on the phone with a 2-day old baby that needs a place to go, I mean ... can you imagine saying no?''
She talked about her back-to-home-schooling ritual, standing amid the piles of books, lesson plans and curriculum she'd been sifting through last week. The stereo played a CD of African music and folktales.
She had not spent the week perusing back-to-school sale racks. Her three school-age children didn't have to have the latest Pocahontas backpack or $100 Nike Airs. ``Just paper, pens, notebooks - the usual stuff from Wal-Mart.''
``I don't buy back-to-school clothes. I buy the kids clothes when they need them.''
I'd read about home-schooling, heard criticisms of it from educators and public-school parents: Home-schooled kids are hurt by the isolation. They miss out on important lessons about tolerance and compromise learned in the classroom.
Larry and Diana Howell are upfront about their children sometimes missing other kids. But they believe their home school provides lessons that only they can teach them - from lessons on The Bible to a unit on Lewis and Clark.
Their convictions are personal, religious, political. They stand by them unfailingly.
``We believe it's our responsibility to educate our kids,'' she says. ``I felt like, I'd seen them take their first steps, say their first words. Why shouldn't I see them read their first words?''
Their dining room-turned classroom contains a maxed-out computer station, books covering two of the four walls and a large oak table surrounded by three chairs.
Their boys Mark and Stuart are in the fifth and sixth grades, respectively - though last week Mark wasn't sure if he was entering the fourth or fifth grade. ``We don't make a big deal out of what grade they're in,'' Diana says.
She teaches the boys different levels of math and spelling, but uses the same lesson plans for history and science. Last week, she designed her own health curriculum and planned to kick off the school year with the Lewis and Clark lesson - followed by a field trip to the Explore Park.
The Howells are among a growing number of parents who teach their kids at home. Estimates of Roanoke-area home-schoolers run as high as 1,000 students.
For whatever reason - religion, frustration with public schools, to best serve their special-needs children - these parents feel they can do the job best.
Diana Howell isn't just a home-schooler. She's a reminder that no one's life can be summed up on the bumper of a minivan.
And that our differences very often can be the best teacher of all.
Beth Macy's column runs in Tuesday and Thursday Extra. Her phone number is 981-3435.
by CNB