The 20-21 school year was an unusual one for many, as the move to online learning in many places left parents discerning the best path forward for their families. Many chose to withdraw their children from the local schools and enroll them in distance-learning programs, with the intention of returning to their former school the following year. MODG itself saw a 140% increase in new families who applied for admission. For some families, the year 2020 provided the encouragement needed to make the leap of faith into a more permanent switch to homeschooling.

“I was in carline picking my kids up from school when our governor announced that there would be no school for two weeks,” says Amy S.. describing that moment in March 2020. “I had three friends text me and go ‘There’s your chance! There’s an open door, do it!’”

Amy and her husband already were homeschooling their oldest child, and considering homeschooling the whole family.

“For the end of that semester, we were all flying by the seat of our pants,” she says. “But we knew early on, within a week of COVID, that we weren’t going back to the public schools. I like homeschooling too much. It’s working.”

Other families finished out the year through online learning with their physical school, but knew they wanted something different for the following year. For Brigid C., the system of having two students in online school was not sustainable.

“I was with kids doing homework for twelve hours per day, going back and forth between the two of them,” she says. “Even then we sometimes weren’t able to submit all of the required work.”

Brigid currently homeschools her two granddaughters and had already been dissatisfied with her students’ former school even before attempting online learning. In addition to the concerns they felt over the secular atmosphere in their prior school (Brigid shares that students who say 'God bless you' violate the school's policy to not allow any references to God), they felt that their students needed more support. 

“One of our granddaughters was struggling in school and was behind,” she says. “We decided that they weren’t going back to that school, though not necessarily because we had decided to homeschool at that point. I just didn’t want to do their curriculum. I ended up deciding to rearrange my life, to stop working, and to do this full time. I wanted to do this on my own terms.”

Others share Brigid’s concerns about what their students were being taught in their former schools.

“All my kids have gone to private Catholic schools,” says Mary G. “Even so, I was tired of trying to re-educate them. I’d have to look through their books and say, ‘This is wrong, that’s wrong, etc.’. It was so much work.”

When the pandemic made it clear that big changes were in store for the next school year no matter what, Mary took the opportunity to keep her son home and teach him herself. She tells of how she asked her son if he would prefer “education or indoctrination,” to which he emphatically responded, “I’ll take the education!”

“After that, we enrolled in MODG as fast as we could!" she says. "The program really works and we like our consultant. She’s made the whole thing easy. He got a real education that year.”

Amy and her family were unanimous in their desire to move to homeschooling. “Our kids were actually begging to be homeschooled,” she says. “We’ve never looked back.”

She also shares the blessing that her local homeschool community has become.

“This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” says Amy. “But having good friends who share our values was a huge reason for us to switch to homeschooling in general. We chose MODG because my friend was using it and it seemed to be working for her, but now that we’re enrolled, it’s like God is telling us to do this. MODG is giving us such a good education.”

Brigid researched different curriculums and was drawn to MODG due to its classical nature and its emphasis on “books, pen, and paper” over computer-learning.

“And, once we saw how much our granddaughter had improved from the time she took her first assessments to the end of the year, we really wanted to continue,” she says. “Our consultant is so wonderful - she has helped me and guided me, and I feel really confident this year.”

In the end, there are many unique circumstances that lead families to enroll in MODG, especially over the last year and a half. But what keeps them enrolled is largely the same, and summed up well by Brigid:

“We want them to know the truth.”

We are grateful to Brigid C., Mary G., and Amy S. for sharing their stories with us. Interviews have been lightly edited for clarity.