Read how a homeschooler has pursued her dancing dream and excelled academically while homeschooling.
Submitted by Carmen de Waal
My mother is a former academic and since I was little, I accompanied her almost everywhere while she was working – and living! I would often sit (quietly) at the back of a lecture hall entertaining myself while my mother was presenting a paper, or sat in a corner in while she was in a meeting. It was a lifestyle that worked for us. My mother read to me a lot and time spent on the road travelling – which we did often – was time for talking about so many different topics.
In the year that I turned 7, my mom enrolled me in a primary school and our lifestyle changed. Although I wasn’t unhappy in school and did well, we saw much less of each other and had less time for all those talks and reading. We both missed that so much. When I was 10, my mom became a single parent, resigned from the university to work at home and took me out of school. Our homeschool journey started – or maybe just resumed.
We followed mostly an unschooling approach, except for Mathematics. We would read to each other for hours (fiction, books on science, literature, poetry, history and many more), do household chores together, played piano, discussed any and all topics, debated current affairs, took outings together, and I would once again travel with her everywhere her work took her. I would be in the audience when she delivered speeches and I also helped her with administrative and other tasks related to her business. As a matter of fact, we pretty much still live like that!
My mom also encouraged, supported and joined me on my journey of following my dreams. After seeing the Nutcracker performed by the former SABT, at age five I declared that I wanted to become a “balleterina” one day. My mom enrolled me for ballet classes and I loved it! However, I was born with various foot problems and soon walking became painful and dancing impossible. At age six I had major surgery on both feet. It took a long time to recover and dancing was not an option. Round about age eleven, my mom enrolled me for piano lessons. I loved the piano lessons, but nonetheless, at age 12 the dream of becoming a dancer was still very much alive as well and my mom enrolled me for dancing classes again. Soon after that, we were informed that major surgery is required again – for both feet. This time I went back to dance class as soon as possible – casts and all. I would sit watching my friends while they were dancing, memorizing the choreography and moves in my head. As soon as I could, I joined them in dancing again – initially only being able to perform limited movements, but gradually doing more and more.
Our lifestyle taught me, among other things, the value of work ethic, discipline, perseverance, determination, goal setting and acting upon that. I was dedicated and passionate and would practice for hours. At this stage I was doing ballet, modern dancing and tap. (I also started Spanish dancing last year as well.)
Recently, all my perseverance paid off. Earlier this year, I was chosen as part of the South African Dance team, to represent our country in the international Dance World Cup in Romania. It was an absolute honour and privilege – and an amazing experience! It also recently received a number of gold and silver medals at the SA Dance School Competition.
My peers are only in matric this year and I have taken 2015 as my “gap” year. I took some time to focus on my dancing and music this year. Next year I will be a first year BMus-student – who will still be dancing as well!
Editor’s Note: In 2015 Carmen completed the American GED and she passed all of the subjects with distinctions, ranking mostly in the 99th and 98th percentile (highest or second highest score out of the people who were writing it that year). She obtained full marks (100%) for two of the subjects.
Then she was accepted to the State University of New York, and used that letter of acceptance plus her GED to apply to HESA (now known as Universities South Africa) for a foreign conditional matric with university exemption, which she was granted in August 2015.