Middle School Homeschooling: Our Unexpected Beginning

2025 was a pretty big year of transition for our family. Actually, transition might be underselling it. Just when I thought I was getting the hang of things, my internal GPS announced, “Rerouting,” in a lovely British accent and sent me making a U-turn in the middle of the street.

After years spent healing from chronic illness, rebuilding my relationship with my body, and learning how to live differently, I found myself stepping into another chapter I hadn’t quite seen coming: homeschooling my son.

POV: Thirty-year-old me finds out what we’re doing now.

The Life I Hadn’t Imagined

For much of my adult life, I believed I was supposed to have a career. I was a marketer. A working mom. A woman with a résumé, a schedule, and a fairly convincing idea of what she was “supposed” to do next. I’d even told people that being a stay-at-home mom wasn’t for me. Homeschooling certainly wasn’t part of the picture.

Then, in 2021, I left my career to focus on healing. It was a big enough change on its own. I needed to get my health and energy back, and learn how to live in a way my body could actually sustain. Every so often, the thought of homeschooling would surface, but I couldn’t imagine taking on something as important as my son’s education while I was still trying to find my footing. For the time being, the priority was simple: heal first.

Healing has a funny way of rearranging your priorities, though. As I slowed down, learned to listen to my body, and found a little more quiet beneath the noise of fear, I began to hear my own intuition more clearly. The idea of homeschooling kept coming back. So did the longing for more time with my son, especially after all the time I’d missed while working so much.

I still had no idea whether I could do it. At first, I pictured myself having to become a traditional teacher, somehow armed with every answer from sixth-grade math to ancient history. But gradually, I began to see the role differently. Maybe I wasn’t being asked to know everything. Maybe I could be a facilitator of curiosity: someone who helped him ask questions, find answers, and discover what interested him along the way.

That distinction changed everything.

Learning Is Bigger Than a Classroom

I began imagining all the things we could explore together: nature, creativity, mindfulness, gardening, energy, and the wonderfully random questions that send us down rabbit holes. We could visit new places, try things neither of us had done before, and follow interests that might never fit neatly into a lesson plan.

My son doesn’t only learn from me. He learns from the garden, the books we read, the people we meet, the places we visit, the things we build, the mistakes we make, and the questions we ask. And believe me, we ask enough questions to keep several librarians employed.

My job is to help him learn how to learn. To encourage him to stay curious, think critically, and discover what lights him up. To show him that learning doesn’t end when you close a textbook. It’s happening all around us, whether we’re studying a subject or wondering why a plant in the garden is doing something weird.

Of course, that realization didn’t magically erase my fears.

Would I know the material? Could I teach algebra? Did I even remember algebra? Would he discover how bad I am at history? What curriculum would we use, and how much would it cost? Would I give him what he needed for high school, college, adulthood, and the great big world beyond?

Those weren’t small questions. Some of them still aren’t. But I started to understand that I didn’t need to teach him everything he would ever need to know. I couldn’t, even if I tried. I certainly didn’t leave school knowing everything I know now. What I could help him build was a foundation of knowledge, confidence, curiosity, critical thinking, and resilience. Something he could keep drawing on as life changed and new questions appeared.

That thought gave me room to breathe.

How Middle School Homeschooling Became Our Next Adventure

Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have predicted any of this. If you’d handed my younger self that list, she probably would have checked whether you had the right woman.

Yet when I look at those chapters together, they make sense. Each one has asked me to step away from who I thought I was supposed to be and move a little closer to who I actually am.

So here I am: a Sassy Little Hippy. Former marketing professional turned energy enthusiast. Dedicated self-healer. Mom. Lifelong learner. And now, apparently, middle school teacher.

I don’t have a degree in education, and I don’t claim to have the perfect homeschool. I’m figuring things out as I go. But I do have a deep curiosity, a willingness to research the heck out of something, and a strong belief that learning should feel more like an adventure than a conveyor belt. And it also doesn't hurt that I'm a natural teacher (even my Human Design says so!)

Why I’m Sharing the Journey

When I started looking for homeschool inspiration, I found plenty of wonderful ideas for the elementary years. But middle school seemed a little quieter. Perhaps by then everyone else had it all figured out? If so, I missed that meeting.

So I did what I do best: dove into the research, gathered resources, and made a plan. There was definitely a spreadsheet (with multiple tabs) involved. And I looked for ways to make it all as free as possible, because I love free stuff almost as much as I love spreadsheets!

Somewhere in the middle of all that digging, I thought: if I’m already doing this work, why not share the resources I find and the things I create for our school? Besides, homeschooling has become part of my healing journey, too. I get more time with my son, the chance to share things I’m passionate about, and have a great excuse to revisit everything I’ve forgotten since middle school. I’m calling that a win.

And don't worry, I'm not jumping ahead of myself here. I actually started homeschooling him a year ago! So, I have a year's worth of lessons learned (pun intended??) to share.

Homeschool Little Hippy will be my corner of the Garden Journal for sharing our journey through these middle school years. I’ll write about the resources we use, the curricula I explore, field trips and educational rabbit holes, the things that work beautifully, and the things that absolutely do not.

I’m not here to tell anyone how to homeschool. I’m here to share how we’re finding our way through it. Maybe something we discover will spark an idea for your own journey.

And if you’re wondering what finally led us to choose this path in the first place? Well… that’s a story of its own.