Q:I'm curious why you decided to home school your kids and how long you plan on continuing to do so.

iloveranch

We made the leap a little before Thanksgiving for several reasons:

1)  My son’s dad is a concert pianist and travels all over the world.  I wanted my son to be able to go with him when feasible (make use of that passport!) and not worry about missing school.

2)  The vast majority of schools are for average kids.  There is extra help offered for kids that have challenges, which is wonderful, but then there is no money or time left for kids that need to be challenged. 

3)  My son was constantly complaining how bored he was, had “homework” that was simply busy work - things he could do in Kindergarten - but despite how easy the work was, he had no time to dig into subjects that actually interested him.  I was finding myself having to say “I’m sorry, we can’t look up if we can ‘make gravity’ because you have to color this turkey and do these 5 worksheets first.”  Gravity vs. coloring a turkey…  and the turkey had to come first because he was being graded on it.  Ridiculous.

4)  My attempts to work with the school and appeals for more advanced stuff fell on deaf ears.  His teacher actually told me “Yeah, teachers never like to have advanced kids in their class because it’s hard to show improvement over the school year and we get paid on performance.  We’d rather have them be performing below grade level at the beginning of the year.”  Essentially telling me that my son’s needs would be ignored the entire school year because he was already testing above the ‘end of year mark’ at the beginning of the year.  WTH?

5)  Because I can.  I work from home right now, so I have the time to do it.  I don’t know how long that option will be available to me though…

So that kinda answers the second part of your question: I don’t know.  I’ll either home school as long as I can and/or as long as my son wants to continue!  ~JJ

24 Notes/ Hide

  1. axioa said: concert pianist?! wow!!
  2. diloolie said: Will you be my mom??? *doe eyes*
  3. ashemountain said: As long as he can socialize (and hey, this is you we’re talking about, of course you make sure he can), the way you’re doing it is the best. The education system is garbage.
  4. queenfattyoftherollpalace said: I was lucky enough in my elementary days to have teachers that actually catered to my intelligence. They would bring me books to read because the school library didn’t have anything at my reading level.
  5. teachthemhowtothink posted this