Hambone Academy

I know it's a strange name for a school. In North Carolina, homeschoolers have to "name" their schools. We've been calling our son "Hambone" since the day he was born. The nickname just stuck.

My approach is probably a bit different from a lot of parents, as far as curriculum and all that jazz. I have a Master's Degree in Education, with focus on Instructional Design for Online Learning. I got my degree 12 years ago, but never got a job in the education field. I was working on my doctorate (in the same area), then got pregnant. I continued my doctoral coursework, completed comprehensive exams, and started my dissertation. That's when life just got too complicated. I focused on being a stay at home mom until Hambone started Kindergarten, then I started working part time at my son's school. I continued to work part time until his father and I separated, and I went to work there full time in a non-teaching capacity. I knew I didn't want to spend my entire life doing what I did there. I wanted to create online learning environments. There are plenty of jobs for that out there. I have the education. What I don't have is the experience.

I tried several times to get local organizations (including those I worked for) to let me create (for free!!) online training for our staff. It never panned out, and not due to anything on my end. I was getting very frustrated at the lack of opportunity to gain experience, and I just could not come up with anything I wanted to create for "fun" and experience. Until I woke up one morning and tried to get Hambone ready for school and he just cried and said he did not want to go. I understood the feeling. I didn't want to go back to the school either, a place that had been giving me severe anxiety for the last two years.

Instead of using packaged curriculum or co-ops, I decided to create a virtual school, just for Hambone. I'm a huge proponent of free and open source resources. There are so many free and low cost learning tools on the Internet. I'm treating this project like it's my job. Because it is my job to create a safe environment for my child. And when I'm done with the first year, I will have at least a little real instructional design experience so I can hopefully start a career in designing online learning and training environments.