Showing results for "The Story of a Mother" in Education

By Heart shares the surprising story of one family's journey from compliant public schooling to radical home-based learning. This literary homeschool memoir takes readers from the tundra of Bethel, Alaska, to the placid farm country of Wisconsin, all the while exploring the homeschool lifestyle. Daring and compassionate, it portrays homeschooling as a progressive choice and thoughtfully examines classic homeschool tensions – homeschool decision, schedules and curricula, socialization, and the economics of co-parenting.

Nicole Hendrick Donovan, a mother of four, couldn’t have prepared for the events that led to her son’s removal from the public-school system. Behavioral spikes, depression, and anxiety were only symptoms of an underlying diagnosis that had gone untreated for years. On a sunny afternoon, Jack eloped from first grade, creating chaos and leaving a trail of injured staff in his wake. Within her memoir, Donovan describes the path to her son’s autism diagnosis and her journey to acceptance and unconditional love, not only for Jack, but also for herself.

Esmé tells us about the night she and her mother became "egg vigilantes" against an illegally parked car; her freewheeling first school, where kids sat on sofas instead of at desks and could choose disco dancing instead of math; her dangerous neighborhood, which her father made seem friendly and wondrous; the Passover dinner when she stole a matzoh right out from under a rabbi; the awe-inspiring, life-threatening Chicago snowstorms; and lessons about love from tea-reading gypsies and Popeye cartoons.