From Hallways to Home: A Trip Down Memory Lane
By Janna P.
Classroom with empty wooden desks by GlobalStock from Getty Images Pro Created un Canva
Once upon a blustery November morning seven years ago, a barely 11-year-old sixth grader walked into the math classroom at her local Christian school. She had been attending this school since kindergarten and had never known anything different as far as school goes. School, at the time, meant navigating a (comparatively) small, combined middle and high school campus on the middle school side of the building, worrying about being late to class, trying to make straight A’s to avoid parents’ displeasure, and juggling changing friendships. One word can connotate a lot, right?
In the days and weeks leading up to what would turn out to be a day that would change her life forever, the girl’s mom had grown more and more displeased with what she saw in the school – its leadership, policies, and treatment of kids. As early as August that year, she told the sixth grader and her two younger siblings that homeschooling might be a very real possibility. Okay, sure, Mom. Maybe. If something drastic happens. But I really don’t want to be homeschooled. Homeschoolers…don’t have as good of an education. They’re weird. What will I do for friends? For entertainment? All of these mental objections had raced through her head and been vocalized several times. Overall, she considered herself pretty safe from being taken out of her middle school. Therefore, she was fairly unsuspecting as she settled into a desk, opening her math binder and dutifully doing the bellwork, some math problems involving negatives, which were brand new to her and hard to understand. The teacher, whom she feared for her strictness and sometimes downright unkindness, had started to explain how to add and subtract negative numbers, when suddenly, the door opened, and a woman with heels clicked-clacked into the classroom. It was the school secretary. Everyone’s eyes turned toward her, and the teacher stopped talking. Much to the girl’s shock, the secretary asked if she would come on down to the office. Never, ever, had she been called to the office before, unless she was sick or had a prearranged doctor’s appointment. Confused, the girl rose from her desk and began to move toward the door.
“You’ll need your things,” the secretary told her.
“Oh, okay,” the girl replied.
She scooped up her math and science binders – science was the period before math, and she had grabbed both binders to save time later – and started to head out the door.
“What’s going on? Where are you going?” her best friend wanted to know. Several other classmates echoed the query.
The girl smiled uncertainly and shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll see you guys later.”
A chorus of “Bye, Janna,” filled the classroom, and she waved before exiting with the secretary down the hallway.
“Excuse me, but why am I being pulled out? Is something wrong?” she anxiously asked the secretary.
“Your mom just wants you,” is all the secretary would say.
With a grim face, her mom waited at her locker and told her to open it. She did as told, but not without whispering, “Mom, what’s happening?”
“I’m pulling you out. In the car.”
In other words, no full explanation until they reached the car. Another surprise was in store, for upon reaching the car, she saw her siblings in it already. They should’ve been at the elementary campus! Shortly afterward, she found out that an older kid had punched her brother that morning for absolutely no reason and tried to land one on her sister as well, and her mom had been witness.
A couple of weeks prior, while searching for a good homeschool curriculum online, her mom had found NorthStar Academy and made a mental note of it for later reference. It was accredited, spiritually sound, and seemed to have good classes at an appropriate level of challenge. At the end of November, the sixth grader and her two siblings found themselves sitting at brown desks with desktop computers doing their new schoolwork. For them, the days seemed to drag on endlessly, and schoolwork was pushed to the side as procrastination seemed much more interesting. Besides, the girl was still annoyed that she’d been pulled without warning. She never got the chance to say goodbye, and she hadn’t been mentally prepared for it. So, she didn’t start out liking NSA very much because it had taken away all she ever knew rather abruptly.
However, as the years went on, she wound up enjoying NSA very much. Not only did it offer flexibility for her to balance her schoolwork with her growing interest in softball, but it also offered a better education than what she would’ve received at her old school. No local school compared in class variety to NSA – from geography to apologetics, NorthStar covered topics of captivation difficult to find elsewhere. The girl ended up meeting so many wonderful friends and teachers from all over the world that she otherwise wouldn’t have. All prejudices against homeschooling and homeschoolers vanished as she learned to count herself blessed for the opportunity to attend NSA.
The girl in this story is me. This is my iNSAne story.
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Janna P. is a senior and seventh-year NSA student who lives in Idaho with her family of five. She enjoys reading, cooking, baking, traveling the Northwest, hanging out with her family, and spending time in God's creation. This is her first year on the Navigator. After her schooling career is over, she hopes to become a librarian and published author.