As we sat there in the principal’s office on our first day at Rosslyn Academy in 1994, Mr. Richardson looked slowly around at all of us. He then looked at my mother, nervously clutching her manila folder of handwritten homeschool records, and said, “I don’t like homeschoolers”. Shocking I know! My mother gulped and started explaining how she used a curriculum, kept us on a schedule and she tried to keep really good records. He nodded and assured her that he was sure she had done her best. Still, he told her, “I have never met a homeschooler who could cope with a “real” academic environment”. Well, cope we did! Yay, Mom!! We made straight A’s from the first day and were no more social outcasts then the rest of the missionary kids in the school. Mr. Richardson, who became a huge favorite with all of us, actually apologized to Mom later that year. He told her she had changed his perceptions of homeschooling. 
Thirty years ago, the world barely acknowledged that homeschoolers were literate, let alone well-read and articulate. My mom worked incredibly hard all those years ago to educate us well. She had nothing but the curriculum she toted half way around the world and the books she had brought with her. No libraries, conventions or co-ops, just her commitment to teach us herself so that she wouldn’t have to send us away to boarding school the way she had. We all survived adolescence, we all love the Lord, we all made it through college and we are all committed to homeschooling to this day!

Sharon Rodriguez