Referring to my last blog post, Day 1: My First Impression of Homeschooling, I mentioned that I am the parent of two children. My first was born in 1989 and my second in 2007.
With my first child, I was very young and had the tendency to place faith and hope into the world systems - especially the education system because I had a certain level of respect for the education that I received. Also, I gave birth to my child when I was still in high school and shortly after graduating, I went to college. So, the system education experience was something that was still apart of my daily living and I saw it as having a great amount of value and being an integral part of a child's development.
Early on, I found that my child was extremely mentally and physically active and that she responded well when being directed to reading, math, art, and other educational-type activities so I integrated those things into her daily schedule. As a result of this, at age 2 1/2, she was able to get an early acceptance at a private pre-school. She thrived in this environment - she thoroughly enjoyed going to school and it was very cool to see her develop socially. Throughout this, we continued with her education at home because it was something fun that we did together and it kept us both routine, scheduled, and focused.
When she was 5, she started kindergarten - it was a half-day program and I saw it as a way of integrating the children into the school experience. So that first year, I didn't see much academic progress but I didn't anticipate seeing much either.
For the following year, she began the first grade and I expected that I would start to see her being challenged academically. Each day I saw the work that she brought home and it was the same as what she had brought home from her half-days of kindergarten. When I asked her what she learned, she would smile, shrug, and and usually say, "Nothing." After a couple of months of this, I called the school, expressed my concern about my child not learning anything new, and asked if they would consider challenging her. I was told, "She is fine and she is right where she needs to be." As I've mentioned, I still had this belief that the school knew better than I did, so I let it go.
Throughout the years, this pattern continued of me being concerned that she wasn't learning anything and with me doing nothing about it because I saw the school system as an authority - and after awhile, I accepted that my child was an 'average student' because she wasn't particularly driven to take advanced classes and seemed relatively satisfied with her school experience.
I do remember this one time when there was conflict in her classroom for an extensive period of time. The school was struggling to direct the situation and they were reacting to what was happening with and between the children in her class so she would come home stressed and burnt-out. She told me that she wanted to be homeschooled - but with my job, the other things going on, and me thinking that I wasn't qualified to teach her, I told her that it wasn't possible.
The school eventually fixed the problem and the point of homeschooling never came up again. She went on to attend the same private college prep school that I attended.
See, I saw my daughter as much more intelligent than I ever was - she did not have the problems that I had with learning and she seemed to breeze through school up until high school level. So, I thought that she would do really well at this school. I mean, if I could make it through it, she would probably do pretty well there. I also was satisfied that she chose this school because I knew that she would be challenged.
During her first year of high school it became clear that she hadn't been prepared for this level of education. I remember a day when I picked her up from school, she was agitated at an experience that she had with one of her teachers where she asked her teacher a question and the teacher told her to look it up in her book. She then explained to her teacher that she didn't know how to look something up in a book and her teacher suggested that she learn.
When she told me this, I recalled how I never once saw her bring home a book from school until high school - it was always copied worksheets. She had never learned how to use a table of contents or the index of a text book.
To be continued.
With my first child, I was very young and had the tendency to place faith and hope into the world systems - especially the education system because I had a certain level of respect for the education that I received. Also, I gave birth to my child when I was still in high school and shortly after graduating, I went to college. So, the system education experience was something that was still apart of my daily living and I saw it as having a great amount of value and being an integral part of a child's development.
Early on, I found that my child was extremely mentally and physically active and that she responded well when being directed to reading, math, art, and other educational-type activities so I integrated those things into her daily schedule. As a result of this, at age 2 1/2, she was able to get an early acceptance at a private pre-school. She thrived in this environment - she thoroughly enjoyed going to school and it was very cool to see her develop socially. Throughout this, we continued with her education at home because it was something fun that we did together and it kept us both routine, scheduled, and focused.
When she was 5, she started kindergarten - it was a half-day program and I saw it as a way of integrating the children into the school experience. So that first year, I didn't see much academic progress but I didn't anticipate seeing much either.
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| My daughter at age 5 - just before entering school for her first day of kindergarten. |
Throughout the years, this pattern continued of me being concerned that she wasn't learning anything and with me doing nothing about it because I saw the school system as an authority - and after awhile, I accepted that my child was an 'average student' because she wasn't particularly driven to take advanced classes and seemed relatively satisfied with her school experience.
I do remember this one time when there was conflict in her classroom for an extensive period of time. The school was struggling to direct the situation and they were reacting to what was happening with and between the children in her class so she would come home stressed and burnt-out. She told me that she wanted to be homeschooled - but with my job, the other things going on, and me thinking that I wasn't qualified to teach her, I told her that it wasn't possible.
The school eventually fixed the problem and the point of homeschooling never came up again. She went on to attend the same private college prep school that I attended.
See, I saw my daughter as much more intelligent than I ever was - she did not have the problems that I had with learning and she seemed to breeze through school up until high school level. So, I thought that she would do really well at this school. I mean, if I could make it through it, she would probably do pretty well there. I also was satisfied that she chose this school because I knew that she would be challenged.
During her first year of high school it became clear that she hadn't been prepared for this level of education. I remember a day when I picked her up from school, she was agitated at an experience that she had with one of her teachers where she asked her teacher a question and the teacher told her to look it up in her book. She then explained to her teacher that she didn't know how to look something up in a book and her teacher suggested that she learn.
When she told me this, I recalled how I never once saw her bring home a book from school until high school - it was always copied worksheets. She had never learned how to use a table of contents or the index of a text book.
To be continued.
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