I think the question I get most often when people find out that we are homeschooling is why we made the choice to take our kids out of public school.
The short answer is that we simply felt it was a better fit for J's learning style. He made good grades and did well on standardized tests, but I had reservations about how much he was retaining. Yes, there was an "incident", but that occurred after we had applied to an online charter academy so the issue served more to reinforce our decision to pull J.
That is the short answer.
I suppose the detailed version is longer, yes, and more complicated. This was not a snap decision. We made this choice thoughtfully, rationally and reverently. However once we decided to homeschool we didn't waste any time withdrawing J so I can where it would appear to have happened all at once.
Every year when the boys would start a new academic year I would consider pulling them to homeschool. I wanted my kids to have a community and friends they had known all their lives and I thought I could achieve that goal by keeping them in the same school. It is also why we have stayed in the same house all these years.Continuity aside, I couldn't get past how overwhelmed the teachers were at the amount of material that needed to be covered in school. To add to that burden was the fact that although J's grade level was small in the number of students, the rambunctiousness of many of his classmates made the class size seem impossible. In a class of 17-18 there were at least 5 "special project" students. My label, not theirs.
When J's Kindergarten teacher moved on to another field at the end of his school year that too gave me pause for thought. If someone teaching the kids had made the choice to get out of education, what did that say about what was being offered to our students? When my oldest started Kindergarten they still took a much needed rest time. Because of the increased requirements that break for both student and teacher went the way of the steam engine. Times were a changin'.
The way I dealt with knowing what was going on in the classroom and remaining present was to volunteer in the school. I enjoyed my time on the PTA front lines and I made quite a few friends and met many of our neighbors. I was able to keep my finger on the pulse of my children's education. I always believed that any school can be a good school if you're involved as a parent. Spending several days a week at the school in services of some task or another helped to get to know the teachers and the students.
As my kids moved through elementary school I took my involvement to a new level too. I signed on with the school district to become a certified substitute teacher. Now at least when I was in the building I was getting paid for it. This gave me a more intimate look at the inner workings of the school. I knew who could control their class and who yelled as a form of classroom management. I also knew which kids were being held in the educational system until the penal system could step in and take over. No, really some of the kids in public school are messed up. There's no candy-coating for that assessment.
It was during my time in front of the dry-erase board (no more chalkboards) that I saw spectrum of knowledge in just one classroom. Teachers have kids that are crazy-smart and they have some real paste eaters. My concern was that as the academically successful students finish their work way ahead of the academically challenged students the students that "got it" were either told to read at their desk, given more worksheets or required to help their classmates. With the first solution I can't help but think of all the time that is wasted each day. What would happen if a student was done with their lesson and showed mastery of the material they could move on to the next item on the day's agenda? Oh, I know the teacher needs to keep all the kids together, but that's a matter of "bulk education" not individual capacity. Then to add insult to injury students are sent home with homework after they've been what could only be considered a colossal waste of time between learning subjects. You've had my kid for 7 hours a day and he has to bring work home? Sorry that just doesn't reconcile with me.
So let's address the issue of those worksheets. During my time of service as a volunteer I copied a shitten ton of coloring pages, mini-books and label-the-thing-we-are-studying sheets. That seems to be the only means of assessing mastery of a concept when the measurement takes place with more than one student. We knew we could move faster and cover more ground with a 1:1 or 1:2 ratio. We could also employ interactive methods of assessment. Let's face it this generation thinks digitally. Lessons can be taught though a video as a part of a software program or online. I didn't like the one-size-fits-all approach to checking for comprehension. Having said that let me also say that I get this method is necessary when dealing with a number of students at one time. It's quite efficient, I'll give it that much.
When J got to middle school I was even less enthusiastic about the educational process. Time and time again I was told to let J work things out for himself. If I had a question about his classwork I was told that it was already explained to him. Well, guess what I'm asking for ME. Setting aside the fact my son has 504 accommodations, one of which is being given written instructions and to check for understanding, as the parent if I want to know something about my child's progress it shouldn't take an act of congress to get that information. So basically I hated what I perceived to be the "secrecy" of the middle school arena.
Mid-term during J's first semester in 7th grade we applied to an online charter school. We weren't even aware this was an option. I didn't know that I could manage creating a curriculum for him so I thought K12 would be a reasonable compromise. We filled out all the forms and acquired all the documentation only to be put on a wait list. Wha?? A wait list for an online school? Are you kidding me? Well, as it turns out, my friends, there is a quiet revolution going on out there right now. Parents are moving their kids out of public schools to private schools, charter schools and home schools.
That leads to me to one of the primary reasons for my decision to homeschool. I think of it as the siphoning off of quality students in the body. When parents move their children out of a public school to whichever alternative they choose, it leaves behind the students that require the most resources (academic, behavioral, financial). Which leaves more of a burden on the parents left behind. In order for my child's teachers to have what they needed to be effective in the classroom I was having to give more money and time. If I was taking one (two, three?) for the team I felt confident that my kids could benefit from those resources at home.
And, to be clear, our home zoned school is one of the best in the district. It's not like we were in an under-achieving, poor-performing school. So why didn't we stay and fight the good fight? Because I'm tired. Because we can't save them all, but dammit we can save our own. Because government is just too big to change in the time it is directly relevant to me. Because I love knowing where my kids are in their education and what they are doing everyday. Because time is short and I'd rather spend my energy tending to my own garden.
So those are some of our reasons. There are more, but I'll let y'all sit with these ideas for awhile.
--
