I was homeschooled Back In The Day.
The days of the ‘80s and early ‘90s. When Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston ruled the charts, My Little Ponies were brand new, we pegged our acid wash jeans, even the manliest men wore short shorts and mesh crop tops, and the internet hadn’t been invented yet.
Photography Class
![](https://melyssawilliams.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/IMG_1183-e1533851772240-225x300.jpg)
Neighborhood thugs, the lot of ’em. I was taking the photo with my trusty camera, the one that I had to buy a roll of 24 exposure film for, all by myself, because apparently one of our homeschool classes was Get A Job, Kid.
If I touched the film strip with my Pop Rock dusted fingertips, the whole roll was ruined. Each and every shot had to be painstakingly planned, then when the roll was finished I would rewind the film – making that whirring song I can still hear – and mail it off to Kodak with a check for $3.99. Then I waited, like, 4-6 weeks for them to send me my photos, half of which were terrible or blurry shots of my thumbs.
Curriculum
Nowadays, homeschoolers have the best of the best in curricula choices. Endless varieties to suit your style, your needs, your budgets, your religion, your every whim. Choices, so many choices beckoning the homeschool mom. It’s a little overwhelming.
Things are beautiful and sparkly and catch the eye. They come in boxed sets, delivered to your house, to be set up in a Pinterest worthy school room, where everything is labeled and laminated.
Back in the ’80s you had a Trapper Keeper and a Saxon math book, and maybe some of those pencils you begged your mom for: the plastic tube kind that had a dozen tiny pencil leads in little pink capsules that you lined up and could rotate around. Lose just one of those capsules (likely to be sucked up in Mom’s Rainbow vacuum) and you were screwed.
![](https://melyssawilliams.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/78d8f1af048153336c5718b3b8b12963-300x264.jpg)
![](https://melyssawilliams.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/b08ae4e343e66516bf0c0785799dd7d3.jpg)
Research
Research was hard in the ’80s homeschool world. If you wanted an answer to something you had to write an essay about you looked it up in the 1974 Worldbook Encyclopedia set that was missing the “N” volume. There was no google.
Seriously, homeschooling whippersnappers of today, respect your elders. We graduated without google.
![The back side of that missing "N" volume](https://melyssawilliams.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/d48b77e98991e75334b37226031da54e-225x300.jpg)
Support
Homeschooling in 2018 you have tons of support and peer groups who are doing the same thing. It’s not weird at all anymore to homeschool, unschool, classically homeschool, interest-led homeschool, whathaveyou.
Homeschooling in the ’80s … well, let’s just say if you found another weirdo like you, you flew on angel’s wings to their side, where you embraced fervently, wept appropriately, and promised to be best friends forever (and you still are). Your Homeschool Club consisted of five kids, and four of them were your siblings.
If you were homeschooled in the 80s, your Homeschool Club consisted of five kids, and four of them were your siblings.
![](https://melyssawilliams.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/IMG_1175-300x225.jpg)
Here is my sister and I. It appears I am rocking some sort of pinafore. I really think the scrunchie brings out my eyes, don’t you?
I dig the mock turtle neck on my sister, and the vest was a bold choice. We were so freakin’ rad.
Homeschooling nowadays you have Homeschool Proms, Homeschool Winter Formals, Homeschool Yearbooks, Homeschool Sports Teams. Homeschooling in the ’80s you had no such things. We had … drum roll, puhleeze, the Annual Homeschool Talent Show.
![](https://melyssawilliams.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/IMG_1182-300x225.jpg)
Here I am, showing the world that ballerinas can totally dance hip hop!
Except we can’t. Not even a little. But in my head I was droppin’ a sick beat here to Paula Abdul’s Straight Up.
Oh my sweet chickens, you have not lived until you’ve experienced the mind-numbing awfulness of a Homeschool Talent Show.
Many a dad tried to leap to his sweet and welcome death out of the window of the church. Why church? Because church was always where they were held. Jesus instructed it to be so. It’s in the Gospels somewhere.
It was usually around hour four of the talent show that the fathers, whom until this night had been blissfully unaware of anything in their homeschooled offspring’s lives because their job was to go to work, began to get twitchy.
The piano playing, the violins, the ballet dances, the memorized poetry. So. Much. Poetry. Epic does not begin to describe the event.
I have to say, all modesty aside, the ballet duet I performed to the song Axel F has no parallel to this day.
Activity
![](https://melyssawilliams.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/IMG_1176-300x225.jpg)
When we weren’t hitting the books (mostly Nancy Drew), we were playing outside, an activity that homeschooled kids now don’t seem to do much of.
We had nature as our teacher, and weather didn’t factor into our nine hours a day in the great outdoors.
At the time I thought my mother was very into her children appreciating nature, in a free-range environment.
Now I’m wondering what she was doing with that time we were canvassing the ‘hood? Jazzercise? Soap operas while sipping Fanta? Was she having a sordid affair with the World Book Encyclopedia salesman?
Because if so, I want my “N” volume, buddy.
Anyway, the photo above is me with my sister riding our mighty steed. You should appreciate Cherokee’s palomino head blocking the sight of my father inexplicably wearing overalls with no shirt.
Pardon me while I go bleach my eyeballs.
Homeschooling these days no one even notices when kids run amuck in the subdivision or the grocery store during school hours. But homeschooling in the ’80s and ’90s? I cannot even tell you how many times I had to explain to some well-meaning stranger that I didn’t go to school. And it was legal. Yes, I was sure. No, they didn’t need to call my mom. No, I am not making this homeschooling thing up, I swear, ma’am. Please let go of me.
![](https://melyssawilliams.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/IMG_1185-300x225.jpg)
Art class, on a rare day when Mom let us back in the house. If you look closely you’ll notice some lovely ’80s artifacts: the Strawberry Shortcake glass we used for our paint water, the rotary phone that we weren’t allowed to use because everyone was long distance when you live in the country, the stack of phone books underneath, the homemade curtains (probably made during Sewing Class), and the wood paneling.
We had a lot of wood paneling. My childhood is gift wrapped in wood paneling. Oh, and is that the World Book set behind us? Why, yes, it is.
Homeschooling today the homeschoolers can take part in public school sports, or state wide testing, or go to school part-time for underwater basket weaving, or whathaveyou. Homeschooling back then they might let you in, but you had to sit with the other outskirts: the jock, the nerd, the cheerleader, and the goth.
No, wait. That’s The Breakfast Club. Pfft. Those posers wished they were as cool as we were.
![Homeschool attire in the '80s](https://melyssawilliams.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/IMG_1184-e1533852983395-225x300.jpg)
Culture
Molly Ringwald would have worn more prairie dresses if she had any style at all. Or at the very least, a vest made out of her grandmother’s couch, which I am sporting below. Let us take a moment to mourn the loss of high-waisted jeans and tights with weird sandals.
![Life for a homeschooler in the Wild West days of the 1980s](https://melyssawilliams.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/IMG_1180-e1533853065766-225x300.jpg)
Homeschooling today consists of personal laptops, pop-up online professors at your disposal, co-ops, and endless help from the community.
Homeschooling in my childhood meant if you needed help with something you went to Mom and if she didn’t know, you biked yourself to the library to borrow the “N” volume.
Sans helmet or cell phone, naturally, because safety just wasn’t a priority in the ’80s. You might get lost on the way, get hit by a truck, be kidnapped by a Hell’s Angel gang, or trip and fall off a cliff, and Mom wouldn’t have known about it until you didn’t come for dinner.
But we were always home for dinner. Mom was a good cook.
![1980s Homeschoolers sitting around the dinner table](https://melyssawilliams.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/IMG_1181-300x225.jpg)
Evidently this was in my Dress Like A Pilgrim phase, which thankfully lasted … um, longer than it should have. I am comforted by the fact that my sister’s hat is possibly worse, and also my dad is fully clothed.
![](https://melyssawilliams.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/5a437de9a314906221b52691a553169d-300x157.jpg)
Despite the fact that was no google, homeschooling seemed easier back then somehow. Probably because I was on the other side of the pencil.
PIN IT
![Homeschooling in the '80s](https://melyssawilliams.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/homeschool-life-1980s.jpg)
Michele says:
Love all the interspersed pictures. I will let you know thought that Ella Rose still rocks some high waisted jeans. She loves them. I am older than you but some of those things still applies to me. I remember wearing vests that looked like someone quilt and the prairie style was very in style.
August 23, 2018 — 6:09 pm
Melyssa Williams says:
I love that high waisted jeans are coming back. My muffin top will finally be able to breathe again!
August 23, 2018 — 7:03 pm
Angel Pyles says:
Praise the ever-lovin Lord for the return of the high -waisted jeans! I’ll have you know that I owned a pretty pinafore like yours that my mom made AND I went to public school! Oh yeah! I mean I got made fun of because I wore handmade clothes, but whatever, I had a Michael Jackson Trapper Keeper!
August 24, 2018 — 1:39 am
Melyssa Williams says:
Michael Jackson Trapper Keeper – that is RAD.
August 24, 2018 — 2:57 am
Tracy says:
Trapper keepers were the bomb! I don’t think I knew anyone who homeschooled when I was in high school. I had friends that went to a private Christian school and I was pretty jealous of that.
August 25, 2018 — 2:56 pm
Melyssa Williams says:
It wasn’t really mainstream until the 2000s fo sho!
August 26, 2018 — 1:16 am
Camille says:
I feel like i knew so many homeschoolers growing up in the 80’s AND I dual enrolled in jr.hight and high school. There are a lot of homeschoolers now but maybe it was where I lived I felt like there were a lot then too!
August 27, 2018 — 2:05 pm
Melyssa Williams says:
Really? You must have been in a homeschooling hub and didn’t even know it!
August 27, 2018 — 3:53 pm
Lisa says:
I feel like I should fly On angel’s wings to your side, embrace fervently, weep appropriately, and promise to be best friends forever! Then we should recreate our talent show presentations and look for the missing encyclopedia. Ours was from 1985.
Sincerely,
Fellow homeschool graduate – Class of 1993.
August 12, 2019 — 11:51 pm
Lisa says:
I feel like I should fly On angel’s wings to your side, embrace fervently, weep appropriately, and promise to be best friends forever! Then we should recreate our talent show presentations and look for the missing encyclopedia. Ours was from 1985.
Sincerely,
Fellow homeschool graduate – Class of 1993.
August 12, 2019 — 11:55 pm
Melyssa says:
YASSS! Did we just become best friends?
August 13, 2019 — 2:51 am
Lisa says:
I was home schooled too, 1993-2006. Not exactly the early days, but rather a kind of “bridge generation” between a basement full of books and a virtual classroom. I struggled through an undiagnosed learning disorder, watched our home school group balloon from 20 families to 200, and put up with my mom’s constant disease paranoia (good preparation for right now!) all before middle school. Then came distance learning in the 7th grade, and with it 6 years that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Early distance learning amounted to watching a teacher read the book on camera. My mom being the kind of student (and parent) she is meant both of us (I also have a sister close in age) had to write down everything that teacher said. Somewhere in my parents’ house is a remote control with all the ink worn off the pause button. Four to five core classes took 10-14 hours per day. Any electives had to wait until summer. (Thank goodness we had 4-H!) PE was a Nordic Track in the basement. I somehow evaded the talent show scene. Entering college on the 100 level felt like a break. I could finally work, drive, socialize, and decide my own class schedule. I could have made better decisions with that last bit of freedom, but oh well – couldn’t we all? In short, home schooling messed me up plenty. Probably not as much as the busing, bullying, and medicating I doubtless would have experienced at our local public school. Both parents put their all into my education and never let me fall behind. (They didn’t have to worry about my sister. She’s crazy smart.) I sometimes feel a little guilty that I didn’t make it pay off for them in a major way by becoming a doctor or a lawyer or something along those lines. Your parents must be proud of you for homeschooling your own kids. I can’t imagine how much work that must be. For your sake, I hope it’s also fun at times as well!
May 14, 2020 — 3:18 am
melyssa m williams says:
What a story! That distance learning part sounds awful with a capital A. I’m sure your parents are plenty proud in spite of you not being a doctor or a lawyer!
PS I have homeschooled my own kids off and on, but let me tell you, the years when they went to public school my black little heart skipped a happy beat. 😉
May 14, 2020 — 5:47 pm
what can followers see on tiktok says:
Wow that was unusual. I just wrote an incredibly long comment but after I clicked submit my
comment didn’t appear. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Regardless, just wanted to
say excellent blog!
March 4, 2024 — 5:04 pm