A Journey from Homeschooling to Workplace Transition

Dr. Dasaratha Rama

Glad I Did It!

We started homeschooling when Ananth was 6. I had not thought about homeschooling. Our older son went to public school. However, public school was not working for Ananth.

Awareness of Possibilities: Is this for me?

A neighbor encouraged me to homeschool and I decided to give it a try. While homeschooling offered many benefits, I want to focus on one key benefit that I did not expect when I started homeschooling. Homeschooling has provided a family-centered foundation for Ananth’s transition beyond school.

Ananth is now 23. In this article, I would like to look back on our homeschooling experience and how it has transformed us into co-learners who are learning for LIFE together. Ananth and I

• L: Learn together daily
• I: Pursue our individual and shared interests
• F: Grow our interactions with other Family members
• E: Work together in engaging our community

Homeschooling planted the seed for us to work together daily. Recently, Ananth developed the LIFESMART website as part of his professional web development course.

As he started working on the course, I saw an opportunity for him to create a website for our LIFESMART community.

I requested Manu Sekar, Ananth’s coding coach from HashHackCode to guide Ananth in building the site. Our years of working together during our homeschool years helped us work together on this important project.

Visit our website here.

As an autistic adult, Ananth’s journey to learning and workplace transition is different from those who go straight to college after high school. Ananth finished his Bharatanatyam arangetram. He finished his diploma in Medical Records and Hospital Documentation. In the meantime, he started working on coding with HashHackCode, an organization that teaches coding to neuro-diverse individuals. Recently, he also started his BBA undergraduate program.

Glad we did it!
We are glad, we had the opportunity to learn together for many years and become co-learners. We often hear of homeschooling benefits such as the possibility for the child to learn at his own pace and the possibility of tailoring education to the child’s needs and interests. While these are important benefits, a major benefit for us is the impact of homeschooling on the transition to post secondary education and work.

A LIFESMART transition as Ananth would call it!