Greetings, My name is Amarie, I am a single mom from the Bronx who made the unexpected decision to transition from the public school system to homeschool my teen through high school.
When I made that choice in 2022, I stepped into it with excitement and a lot of assumptions. As an only child and former latchkey kid of the 80’s, I had spent a lot of time learning how to be alone. How to self-soothe. How to grow quietly. I didn’t expect those memories to resurface while teaching my child.
I was raised to believe progress looked a certain way. It meant leaving the house every morning with purpose to sustain a paycheck. It meant independence, survival, and resilience especially for the women in my family. You see, my matriarch-led household came from the Greatest Generation (Born 1901–1927) and the Silent Generation (Born 1928–1945) where women had limited opportunity to work but women of color, under Jim Crow and widowed had even greater challenges. So when I chose to stay home and homeschool to them it looked like I was going backwards with all the options of modern times but in reality it was something else entirely.- Freedom.
The Reality Behind the Choice
What started as research out of sheer curiosity for us became a full reset. I’ll speak more to that in a future post. In the end we became first-generation homeschoolers, creating a path we had never seen modeled before. That part felt overwhelming at first. Preparing for the big leap included learning at our own pace, long conversations, quiet mornings, and caregiving woven into the background.
When we took the leap, we took plenty of mental health days; intentional pauses to prevent burnout and manage stress that traditional school schedules didn’t always allow. For wellness I found myself documenting pieces of our life through photography, visiting the community garden or crafting was grounding between lesson planning. For my teen is was games and chatting with his friends. We reconnected in ways that 8-10 hours apart per day at work and school had impacted us differently as a family.
Finding Our Village: What Helped Us
Homeschooling in New York City came with its own challenges especially with a teenager. Many of the families we came across had started homeschooling from the toddler years, so finding peers for my teen to be fully transparent in the Bronx was HARD the first year. And like most parents, one of the biggest questions I kept hearing was: “But he’s a teenager, what about socialization? “I understood that concern, at one point, I had it too. Growing up in the South Bronx, homeschooling wasn’t talked about as an option. Most of us came from working-class families where structure looked like public school, private or parochial enrollment or if you were lucky, summer camp or spending summers with relatives was everything .
So when we stepped into homeschooling, we had to start from where we came from. Access doesn’t always equal connection for any child in most cases. In public school, kids are surrounded by others every day in assigned situations. Homeschooling didn’t move the needle any different nor remove socialization, it just cuts out the middle man and puts it directly in our hands. For us homeschooling or not, that part can felt tough at first but it got easier.
We were more intentional. We built your tribe. Sometimes it looked like connecting with just one or two families who aligned with us. We start with shared spaces – Places like community centers, art programs, gardens, and libraries naturally bring families together. We were open—but observant .
Not every space felt right and some parents we didn’t align with, and that’s okay. Paying attention to how my teen felt , my vibe from training in schools and consistency mattered more than quantity – Oh, this was huge for us we and lesson exchanges to plan and seeing the same faces over time built trust and real connection.
This journey taught me that breaking tradition didn’t mean rejecting it. It meant honoring it enough to evolve. Progress didn’t have to look like what I was taught. It could look like choosing my child’s well-being, doing something different and standing in it anyway. In the Bronx, there are more resources than people realize you just have to tap in. You don’t need a big group. You just need the right group.
“Oran a azu nwa,- the community raises the child. ” Nigerian/Igbo quote
Blessings. Amarie – @bronxurbanvillageproject
Bronx Moms Collective 
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