When I was in middle school, I was completely home schooled. This was actually a good thing for me, because I moved at a MUCH slower pace than most people. I don’t know how much of it was me not being able to focus because of my Aspergers, and I don’t know how much of it was just me being lazy, but rarely was I able to do a days worth of work in a single day. I was often in tears over the fact that school would always take up almost my entire day, sometimes my weekends, too, while it seemed like my siblings and friends only lost a few hours a day to school. During this turmoil, my mom made one of the riskiest decisions she’s made to date in her parenting; she enrolled me in CROWN.
For those who don’t already know, CROWN (Christian Reflection Of Wisdom and kNowledge, for those who don’t know. Part of CFA, CHEC Family Academy, which is itself a function of Christian Home Educator’s Co-op, aka CHEC.) Is a weekly co-op where I met with other students and we took classes once a week. Our homework had weekly due dates, so we were forced to keep up, while still maintaining some day-to-day flexibility. Not a good combo for people who can’t do their homework even without due dates.
Going into CROWN, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had attended CFA electives during their weekly co-op that met for 10-week semesters, and I loved the co-op. The classes I was in were fun, informal, and required very little homework (though some of them, such as Mrs. Heisler’s writing class, did help plant seeds that became some of my academic strengths later). CROWN, however, was a stricter form of this formula. We met once a week for classes, but these were no electives. English, History, Science, and other such subjects. They were also far more formal; we HAD to get our work done each week, which I wasn’t sure I was capable of doing. My mom was throwing me into a lake where I was going to either learn to quickly swim, or instantly sink to the bottom.
Somehow, I did a mixture of both. I managed to get my work done most weeks, with a few slip-ups, but where my life fell apart was in 9th grade. My second year of CROWN was less fantastic. I missed or turned in late/incomplete a huge amount of homework. Enough that, according to the official handbook’s rules, I should have been given enough demerits to be suspended or expelled. However, my english teacher at the time (Guida Sweitzer, who is also largely responsible for my current writing skills), knew me well enough that she knew I wasn’t a class-shirking jerk and helped make arrangements for me to get extensions or forgiveness of some of my problems. I struggled with this throughout my 3rd and 4th year, and my fifth year was only easy because it was mostly electives.
Throughout most of my academic career, I almost always found myself relying on the grace of luckily-placed people, and the incredible patience of my teachers and parents. It is by nothing less than God’s grace that I even managed to graduate high school. This is a humbling memory for me, and makes me realize that I really am powerless without God’s intervention.
A year later, I have finished my first year at Kent with a 3.89 GPA, and have earned respect from a lot of my classmates and teachers for my work ethic and attitude. I find it hard to believe that the boy who cried at the long book he had to spend all evening trying to understand and focus on is really the slightly older boy who is typing this and doing even better than he anticipated at Kent. It really does show me God’s power in my life, as well as my helplessness without him. Everything I am, even the things people claim came from my own hard work and effort, I owe to my creator.
Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
-Caleb Ference
