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The
year was 1985. I was returning home from Richardson with two other
ladies who had traveled with me to attend the first book fair in the
state of Texas (now the Hearth and Home Book Fair held in
Arlington). One of the ladies, whose husband had sent her on this
trip as an encouragement for her to teach her children at home,
said, “Well, my husband certainly knew what he was doing by sending
me with you on this trip. We listened to tapes about home schooling
all the way there and heard more about it while at the book fair ….
But I tell you what: if I’m going to home school, I’m going to tell
everyone what I’m doing. I’m not going to sneak around and try to
hide.”
Later when I was
telling Tim about the conversation, I mentioned that I wished I
could be like that. He said that I should go ahead and be open with
people about it. I just gawked at him.
Let me back up a
little. We were just completing our first year of home schooling,
educating one student at home. I had spent the year cringing every
time our doorbell rang during school hours. I would not allow my
child to play in the front yard during the day, nor would I take him
to the grocery store during the time that students were usually in
class. We had named our school so when people asked Peter where he
went to school, he could reply, “Lambert Christian Academy.” That
had backfired once when his soccer coach responded to that answer
with the query, “Oh really? Where is that?” Peter, then seven,
replied, “I don’t know; you’ll have to ask my mother.”
You see, home
schooling has always been legal in Texas, Tim and others are fond of
explaining, just not clearly legal. That means that those of
us who were teaching our children at home believed that we had the
legal right to do so, while others, especially people connected to
the TEA (Texas Education Agency), thought otherwise and encouraged
school districts to prosecute home educators for thwarting the
compulsory attendance laws.
So why were we
doing it? Why had we made the decision to teach our children at
home if it was so scary? The only answer I have to that question is
that it had to be the Lord. When Peter was old enough to go to
kindergarten, Noell was two and a half years old, and Stephen and
Stephanie were six months old. We were not discussing home
educating at that time. One reason was that we had never heard of
it. Another was that we were focused on just surviving each day.
Through a friend at church, God provided a godly, retired
schoolteacher to instruct Peter in her home with no more than three
or four others. After his first fall with Mrs. Curry, she told us
that she believed that she could put Peter through first grade the
second half of the year. Not realizing the future implications, the
proud parents agreed.
Peter did well,
and at the end of two years with Mrs. Curry, he was second-grade age
and ready for third grade. He was also now of compulsory attendance
age (At the time, the age was seven; it has since been changed to
six years old.), and Mrs. Curry would no longer teach him because
“he legally had to be in school.” So the proud parents had to make
a decision. We were committed to Christian education, but we had
been warned to not put our children ahead in school, especially the
boys, because they would tend to be followers and we wanted them to
be leaders. There was only one Christian school in Lubbock in which
we were interested, and a call to the school revealed that they had
no way to deal with a child who was ahead other than putting him in
the next grade. Either that or he could repeat the grade he had
just completed with the same curriculum that Mrs. Curry had used.
We found neither of those choices acceptable.
By this time, Tim had started to get
interested in the idea of people teaching their children at home.
He heard a Focus on the Family radio program on which Dr. Raymond
Moore was discussing it, and we had some friends (with no children,
mind you!) at church who were encouraging us in that direction. I,
on the other hand, was not too keen on it, as I was pretty sure I
knew who would have to do all the work, and my plate was already
very full! However, given Peter’s situation, we really had no
choice but to teach him at home
The first year I
thought this was a short-term solution and that eventually he would
enroll in that private school. I would tell people, “I’m
homeschooling this year; I’ll think about next year later.”
However, I noticed something; I had my son back. When Peter went to
Mrs. Curry’s, he was gone for five hours a day; he started at 7:30
a.m. and was home by 12:30 p.m. He ate lunch, took a nap (I rode
that horse as long as possible!), and watched his one hour of
television; then it was time for me to start supper. I hardly spent
any time with him. When we were schooling, I was spending time with
him again.
So one year
stretched into two, and two into three. About my fourth year of
home schooling, I was considering a seven-year program for our
curriculum and determined that, if we started that program the next
year, we would complete it the year Peter was a senior. I suddenly
realized that I was thinking about high school! Gasp! I came to
the conclusion that home schooling had become a lifestyle for us; it
was what we did and who we were.
We had also
become more relaxed about people knowing that we homeschooled. Not
long after my trip to Richardson, Tim told me one day that he wanted
to visit with the superintendent of the local school district.
Being used to hiding from the school district because of the legal
climate, I was very uncomfortable about his doing that. However, he
asked me to read The Day They Padlocked the Church, a book
about some Christians in Nebraska, their church school, and
officials who had been heavy-handed in dealing with them. The book
helped me realize that we had to stand up for our rights as parents
to direct the education and upbringing of our children. Tim had his
visit with the superintendent, and I spent the next week waiting for
the knock on the door—which never came.
Noell began her
formal education our second year of home schooling, and Stephen and
Stephanie joined two years later. We had our good days and our bad
days; we had our good years and our bad years (at least, in MY
opinion). We used different curricula, sometimes full programs and
sometimes the eclectic approach. There are some subjects that we
covered well, and some that our children will have to teach
themselves if they need to know much about them. They are capable
of doing that and in some instances have already done so.
Home schooling
was probably the hardest thing we have ever done, but it was also
the most rewarding. Our children are miles ahead of where we were
when we were their ages, and they have relationships with each other
that will hold them in good stead the rest of their lives. Peter
graduated in 1995 and is now the president of a software developing
company and married to another home-school graduate, Rita, who is
THSC’s special events coordinator. Noell, a 1997 graduate, is
working as a legislative director in Austin for a Christian state
representative. Our 2000 graduates, Stephen apprenticed with a
home-school friend of ours and is now working as a locksmith, and
Stephanie serves many as she works at THSC as Rita’s assistant, runs
our house, coaches home-school tennis, and teaches piano lessons.
Do not
misunderstand me. Home schooling is not a panacea. It does not
guarantee that your children will never go their own way; it does
not guarantee that your children “will rise up and call [you]
blessed.” Our children are not perfect, nor were we perfect
parents. They will make mistakes, just like we have. We trust God
that He will use our efforts for good in their lives and that we
have given them the best start that we could, because He is the One
who called us to this lifestyle called home education.
For three years Tim was president of
the local support group which he and Lyndsay helped start in 1984.
During that time, Tim was asked to serve on the Advisory Board of
the Texas Home School Coalition. In 1990, he was asked to take over
the reins of the organization, and the whole family served as
volunteers at that time.
As the Coalition and the Lambert
children have grown, things have changed. Tim began to work for
THSC fulltime in 1995. Lyndsay, now a completed home-school mom,
helps Tim at the Coalition as Director of Special Projects. While
their children do still occasionally volunteer for THSC, because
they have moved into adulthood, much of the work they previously
volunteered to do is now handled by staff.
The Lamberts, while no longer
homeschooling, are all committed to the home-school community and
the furtherance of parental rights to direct the education and
upbringing of their children in Texas. |
