By Anna Tramel, K-8 Teacher and Curriculum Developer
I come from a family of public educators, so in many ways, teaching has always been a part of who I am. Growing up, I never really wondered what I would do when I became an adult. I wanted to be a teacher. I loved school, loved learning, and loved the idea of having a classroom of my own one day. When I finally became a teacher, I was so excited to live out what I had dreamt of for so long. And for a long time, I loved it.
Some of my favorite memories from those years are still tied to the students I taught, the relationships we built, and those moments when something finally clicked for a child. There are incredibly talented, dedicated teachers working in public schools every day, and I was fortunate to work alongside many of them. Over time, though, I began to realize that the parts of education I loved most were becoming harder to fit into the school day.
There were standards to cover, schedules to follow, assessments to administer, data to collect, and an increasingly limited amount of time in which to do it all. Testing and benchmarking took up more of the calendar. The school day itself left little room for flexibility. Children spent most of their days inside classrooms because that was simply what the structure required. None of those things changed how much I cared about teaching. They changed the way I thought about learning.
I started asking myself a bigger question: If I could build a child’s education around the way children actually learn best, what would it look like?
For me, the answer includes strong academic instruction. Children need someone to explicitly teach them new concepts. They need opportunities to practice skills, receive feedback, and build a strong foundation. But I also believe learning is much bigger than that. Children learn through play. They learn outside. They learn by building, experimenting, creating, asking questions, helping cook dinner, measuring something for a project, visiting a new place, reading a book together, caring for an animal, having conversations with adults, and experiencing the world around them. They learn by being with their families. And sometimes, they simply need the freedom to spend twenty minutes on something one day and two hours on it the next.
That kind of flexibility became especially important to me when our family began homeschooling. Homeschooling gave me the opportunity to look at education from a completely different perspective. Instead of asking, “How do we fit everything into the school day?” I could begin asking, “What does my child need today?”
Some days call for focused instruction and practice. Other days allow us to take what we are learning and experience it in the real world. We can slow down when something is difficult, move ahead when something comes easily, spend an afternoon outside, travel as a family, or change our schedule when life requires it. Learning becomes part of life instead of something that only happens between certain hours of the day. That is one of the reasons the work being done through ArchwayOnline resonates so strongly with me. Online learning should not mean replacing one rigid school day with another rigid school day on a computer. At its best, it gives families another tool.
ArchwayOnline provides the direct instruction and intentional practice students need while allowing families flexibility in when and where that learning happens. A math lesson can be completed at the kitchen table in the morning, followed by an afternoon outside. Coursework can travel with a family. Students can work at a pace that makes sense for them rather than being tied to a single classroom schedule. It provides structure without requiring every family to structure their lives exactly the same way.
Today, my relationship with education looks very different from the one I pictured as a little girl dreaming of becoming a teacher. I am still teaching. I am still building lessons. I am still thinking about standards, skills, practice, and how to explain difficult concepts in ways students can understand. But I am also watching my own child learn through books, conversations, experiences, play, travel, time outside, and everyday life. And my work allows me to be present for those things.
Working remotely in education has given our family something I once did not realize could be part of schooling: flexibility. I can continue doing work I care deeply about while homeschooling and building our family’s days around what matters most to us.
My years in the classroom taught me an incredible amount about children, teachers, and education. Homeschooling has simply widened my understanding of what a classroom can be. Sometimes it has four walls. Sometimes it is the kitchen table. Sometimes it is the backyard, a museum, a road trip, a library, or wherever the day happens to take us.
The goal is not to make learning easier or expect less from children. The goal is to give them strong instruction, meaningful practice, real experiences, and enough flexibility to let learning become part of their lives. That is the kind of education I believe in now. And in many ways, it is still the kind of teacher I always dreamed of becoming.
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