Secondary School – Homeschooled – Horticulture course in College…

Firstly, I would like to say thank you to Aunty Djamila for suggesting I write this post about home schooling. You allowed me to summarise the past three years in a blog post. x

When I was in primary school, I was fine, I had a little group of friends that made me happy. However once I got to secondary school I went from happy to quite lonely and lost. I remember waking up every morning dreading going to school and seeing the same grumpy faces.

No matter what I felt like the day before I would always promise myself today is a good day, and I would get dressed and tell myself to be positive. I would go through a normal day of school, come home, only to realise that I no longer had the buzz of excitement that I had at  the beginning of the day.

This pattern didn’t just occur once. It happened nearly every day. I just got more negative and felt lifeless as the days went by. The happy, bubbly character, I once was seemed to have disappeared under the cloak of my negativity.  The biggest let down for me was seeing my mum’s sad face that she desperately tried to hide, each time she greeted me when I came home. The sheer disappointment with myself made me reflect on who I really was and why I allowed myself to go through the same miserable pattern every day and never stopped to wonder why.

At first I wasn’t sure what to do. My mum suggested going to a different school. After all, I just wanted a fresh start. After much consideration my mum and I felt that, that option was a diversion instead of a solution.

So I have spent the past 3 years of my life being home schooled by mum. A big struggle for me was having a lack of female role models, that problem was solved when I started spending more time with the ladies who came for meditation once a week at our house. I address them as my auntie’s because they are practically family. Each of them had so much experience of the reality of life, dealing with faith, family, education and work. It made me a little frustrated that I didn’t make in depth conversation with them sooner.

I must thank my mum for organising the meditation group, where all people are welcomed. My mum has been my biggest role model, she has always opted to advise me instead of instruct me. Despite spending the past three years having to deal with my emotional highs and lows, my inconsistent routines and my constant changing of behaviour, my mum has stayed sane and always reminded me when I made mistakes that it was “part of growing up”.

I have enjoyed spending my time observing the people I truly care about, absorbing their warm, loving energy. I feel spiritual warmth is much different to any other comfort whether it be from food a book or TV. The pace at which I completed my studies slowed down to a pace I was more comfortable with. In the first year of being home schooled I completed KS3 textbooks on Maths, English and Science. The 2 following years I decided I wanted to step away from studying the national curriculum and spent time actually discovering and studying my own interests. That is when I spent more time in the garden. In my contemplation I realised that the garden was my interest, the variety of plants, the wildlife and the complexity of it all fascinates me, I also really enjoyed watching TV shows on nature like Planet Earth, Countryfile and BBC documentaries on nature.

Whilst considering possible career options, I felt I wanted to work within the realm of nature whether through healing or propagating the land itself. 8 months ago in March I attended an open day at a college to find out what type of courses I could do. During this time I learnt about the horticulture programme at the college and I was very interested. However following a conversation with the horticulture representative, I learnt I wasn’t old enough to join the programme at the time. They recommended that I volunteer at a Community Farm, which I did and very much enjoyed.

Planting baby tomato plants at the community farm.

A month after attending the open day I decided to take a look at what other topics I was interested in. I remembered attending a one day introduction session in Aromatherapy at my brother’s autistic school. I loved learning about how scents from oils can make people feel better emotionally and physically. So I enrolled in two courses in natural healing Aromatherapy and Herbalism.

Earlier this month I turned 16 and began discussing my interest in horticulture again with my parents. My dad called the college and a week later an interview was arranged between myself and the head of the horticulture department. The interview went well and I was offered a horticulture course in level 3. When asked whether I felt comfortable with the level, I was, I just worried a little about my academic abilities. After all I based most of my knowledge up till that point on how it felt in my heart. I just felt everything was right from the people to the level of work required for the lessons. I felt like the college was more like a big warm house then an educational institute. I felt very much at ease in the college. I am going in a week from now for an induction and hopefully I’ll begin my lessons soon!