Heavily Considering Homeschooling My Kids Following The Nashville School Shooting: What to do?

On Monday, a shooting took place at a private religious school in Nashville, Tennessee, leaving three 9-year-old children and 3 adults dead.

The shooting occurred at The Covenant School on campus of the elementary school where grades pre-K through sixth are taught.

The shooter, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, entered the school using two assault-style rifles, letting off a series of shots that left six victims dead: 9-year-old Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kenney and Hallie Scruggs, Covenant’s head of school, Dr. Katherine Koonce, 60, custodian Michael Hill, 61, and substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61.

The suspect, Hale was killed by Nashville’s tactical police department 14-minutes after Hale entered the Covenant school.

Although authorities believe the victims were targeted at-random, according to a statement made by Nashville’s Mayor John Cooper, officials believe that the school was a “targeted attack” as Hale has been identified as a former student.

Police are also saying Hale had maps of the school building and a 2nd possible attack location.

Though Hale’s motives are still unknown, the killer and events leading up to the shooting are still being investigated.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims and those involved and affected by this tragedy.

Is Homeschool Worth Considering?

It is such a stifling feeling when you hear news of yet another school shooting leaving innocent victims AND CHILDREN dead. Really, when is enough enough?!

This shooting has been named as the 130th mass shooting that has taken place in the US this year AND the 13th mass school shooting.

We’ve all felt the trembles behind the school massacre at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas May of 2022. We just recently heard about the incident involving a 6-year-old student bringing a handheld gun to school shooting and wounding his teacher, and just in February 2023, there was an active shooter on the campus of Michigan State University.

As a community, we continue to ban together to pray and offer heartfelt resources to victims and families who experience the loss of loved ones or feel trauma/effects behind these tragic events, but as a parent, it’s hard to not face the harsh reality that public schools just aren’t the same anymore–private schools either.

When events like this happen, it’s hard to shake the numbness and all the thoughts that run through your mind questioning if your kids are safe in school or if it’s just best to pull them out and homeschool until further notice.

I myself have been staring at the possibilities of homeschooling and I just don’t know what’s the right thing to do.

On one hand, the 8-hour school day never sat right in my spirit considering that if I picked my kids up right after school avoiding any after school activities or extra curriculars, by the time we make it home we have a glorious 3-4 hours of awake time to spend together. Once you add in dinner, play-time, bath routines and their own personal time, there’s even less time in a day…5 days a week!

On the other hand, if we wanted to explore the possibilities of homeschool and ditch the traditional 8-hour school day for the safety, peace-of-mind and overall freedom of having more family time, would upholding the curriculum and the responsibility of educating our own children even be possible while being a full-time working parent?

The options at-hand just don’t seem reasonable for the average working-class family, myself included.

What should you decide to do?

In the wake of this climate today and all the scares surrounding US news events, getting additional information can’t be the worst thing to do.

I’ve decided that we don’t have to rush to make a decision right at this moment. Making an informed decision on how homeschooling works, if there are support groups in the local area that could assist with transitioning, if it’s feasible for our family and if there are costs associated, etc. is not a bad thing.

Getting answers are often times necessary before making any major changes to your routine. Talk with your children about how they feel at school versus trying out homeschool.

Feel free to drop some information/personal experiences in the comments below for our fellow parent readers. At this point, all we can do is educate ourselves and go from there.

**Please note, some of the information provided in this article is merely opinion based and should not be used as expert advice or suggestion on what choices you should make. **