Daily Star photo / JOHN EBY Margo Miller, of Niles, has been home schooling 16 years. She is pictured with her last student, son Connor, a junior.

Margo Miller dove into home schooling 16 years ago out of a desire to be the “greatest influence” in the lives of her five children.

Her last student, Connor, is a high school junior.

She has seen home schooling evolve from her dining table to everything from robotics, which led to meeting President George W. Bush at the White House, and a band in which her daughter Brittney played clarinet.

The Millers have lived for 24 years on Bell Road behind Shelton’s market and near the Niles Township hall, a former back porch holding the table central to educating her brood.

Her husband, Rick, for the past two years campus safety officer at Bethel College in Mishawaka, Ind., grew up in Niles.

Margo was born in Kalamazoo, lived mostly in northern Michigan and graduated from high school in 1979 in Cheboygan, whose Chiefs wear orange and black.

Her oldest, Landon, is almost 24 and married last year. He and his wife  graduated from Bethel and are Army second lieutenants stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas. They met through ROTC at the University of Notre Dame.

Spencer, 22, is studying mechanical engineering through a joint N.D.-Bethel program. The five-year program started with three years at Bethel.

Brennan, 20, is in his second year traveling with Life Action Ministries.

“They’re in Texas right now,” she said. “They’re going to the West Coast. He’s very excited.”

After working with children, he plans to study elementary education at Bethel.

“Graphic design and music are passions, too.”

Brittney, 18, is a Bethel freshman also studying elementary education. During h senior year of high school, she attended Southwestern Michigan College. She played in a SMC community band and continues in music at Bethel.

“Three of our five kids have done the (SMC) Career Academy,” Miller said. “It’s actually through Lewis Cass (Intermediate School District). We are in the Brandywine district. With schools of choice, they helped us do it by signing up the kids as part-time students.”
Connor, a junior who turns 17 in March, “is our athlete, into soccer and basketball. He and three of the other kids have been on the robotics team for years now.”

All five attended preschool before being home schooled.

“It’s been quite a journey, but I’ve never regretted it,” said Miller, who earned a teaching degree from Central Michigan University. “I have a twin sister, and she home schools, too. She has four. Whenever we went on a field trip, people thought we were a daycare. You have to be diligent and look at it, ‘This is my job.’ There are so many things available you can get overwhelmed wanting to do everything.

There’s got to be a balance between basics and extras.”

Landon even started kindergarten, “but I felt like I was giving my child away,” she said. “I had him for five years, and now I have to give him to somebody? I wanted to be the greatest influence in the kids’ lives. Church and the Bible are very important in our family.

Proverbs says, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go and when he’s old, he will not depart from it.’ My husband has always been very supportive. I could have worked for our entire married lives, but he’s always let me stay home. There are definitely sacrifices that come with it. It’s not been easy financially. A nice benefit of his job is the kids get their tuition paid. That’s how we’re doing college.”

Party of five

“The Lord helped me do it,” Miller said. “We took summer off. Too many fun things to do in the summer time. We were very structured.

The kids got teased about doing school in their pajamas, but we weren’t like that. College was always our goal.

“Back then, we did breakfast together, followed by quiet time with the Bible — even if they were first-graders who could barely read. We read devotions before the day got busy, and it was put on the back shelf and forgotten. It took a while to get them to that point where they could work independently. I remember getting the oldest up earlier because he needed more quiet to concentrate. Some things we did together, like history and literature we could read together as a group. Other things, like math and language arts, we did separately. I don’t remember them helping each other a lot because they were so close in age. They worked together at the table, but as they got older, they liked to separate more and go up to their rooms. I went from child to child. It’s cool to look back and think, ‘I taught all my kids to read.’ It could take you all day, but it doesn’t have to because you’re not trying to deal with 30 kids, recess, bathroom and half-hour lunches. We always had a structured routine because kids need to know what to expect. Certain days we’d have something fun. Fridays were usually library day. Trying to get all the kids’ boots on and out the door, those days were the most stressful. For colonial America, we made costumes, got a few kids together and went to the Ferry Street school, tying our lunches up in bandannas like they did” in the 19th century.

Miller said when home schooling, “Everything is a learning experience,” from planting a garden as a family and tapping maple sap for syrup in the name of “learning how to love to learn. My kids have carried that on as adults who explore new things. Kids who are home-schooled get along with all ages of people.”

Science segway  into robotics

FIRST stands for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.

It is an organization founded by Segway inventor Dean Kamen in 1989 to develop ways to inspire study of engineering and technology.

The organization is the foundation for the FIRST Robotics Competition, FIRST LEGO League, Junior FIRST LEGO League and FIRST Tech Challenge.

FIRST also operates FIRST Place, a research facility at FIRST headquarters in Manchester, N.H., where it holds educational programs and day camps for students and teachers.

“It’s great for hands-on learning,” Miller said. “We went to the White House and met President Bush because of that. One year, they won the state championship, so we went to international competition in Atlanta. Our kids came in second. That was 2007. We got back on Sunday and got a phone call on Monday from the White House. We spent a whole day at the Capitol, then we got to go into the East Room with our robot and President Bush greeted us. Three of my kids were on the team,” which posed in pink shirts with Bush and Kamen.

“Our husbands, who are not engineers, help kids build robots” for six weeks at Lake Michigan College. “This is our fifth year. We’re addicted. Last year, they had to build a robot to hang inner tubes in order” of triangle, circle and square to represent the FIRST logo.

“They want you to work in a team, like a business,” Miller said. “My son and nephew both went into engineering because of it.”