Skip to main content

Why Home Education? (A Series, Pt 1)

 As we tiptoe closer and closer to homeschooling (but I prefer the phrase Home Education just because it doesn't have all the weird connotations of home schoolers I've known, plus I'm not trying to replicate school to any degree) I've begun feeling more and more fed up with their current school. 

Case in point: at 7:30 tonight the Kindergarten teacher sends out an email announcing all kids have a special out of uniform day tomorrow! Oh boy! In honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday the kids must wear blue pants and a red shirt! 

a) pretty sure my girl doesn't have a solid red shirt, are patterns okay, cuz that's what you're gonna get.

b) could you for once get your act together and NOT send a late night email informing me of the super fun thing my child will be devastated if she misses out on? So that I can't passive-aggressive fail to see the email lest the child suffer? The first time this happened, okay. Now, the tenth time--you're incompetent and I resent being held hostage to your incompetence. 

c) why do we even have buy uniforms if there's gonna be one super duper fun exemption after another?

Look, I'm not a grump. I love when teachers do fun things to build camaraderie in their classrooms and I can sympathize with teachers being overwhelmed and forgetting things. But, when I was teaching I kept this constant rolling tally in my head of how much I was asking of parents. If I screwed up and forgot to send advance notice then I had to compensate by changing plans. I never, ever would've sent an email like that with less than a full week's notice.

So, reason #1 to Home Educate? Not being held hostage to a school's requirements for how to celebrate every dang event of the year, nor being at the mercy of adults with poor planning abilities. 

I'm going to continue this list randomly and wantonly as things occur. 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Lied.

For the very first time I lied to a birth family member. I've been brutally honest even when it caused an uproar. I've been honest because I was personally committed to always telling the truth. Until now. Because this lie may actually be the best way to preserve Jane's relationship with her birth family. At our last video call with Grandma Jane seemed uninterested, unengaged, not showing any real emotion. I struggled to find things to prompt her to talk about. Over the next two weeks I waited and she never asked for another call. In the third week I casually brought up the topic and she did not really respond, certainly didn't ask for another call. Finally, yesterday I point blank asked if she wanted to do a video call and she said the word yes but her whole body language said no. It was clear that she was saying yes because she thought she was supposed to, not because she wanted to. So, I took her body language rather than her words and made the decision that we...
Post a Comment
Read more

So What About Mother's Day?

I was looking ahead on the calendar to our next visit and suddenly realized it fell during Mother's Day weekend. A flood of mixed emotions hit me immediately. Mother's Day is not a deeply important holiday to me. It's nice and all but I've never had super big emotions about it.  The girls can't know what it is yet and won't have any big feelings this year. But...years from now...will this be a uniquely difficult holiday?  So if no one cares right now can I just kinda slide this one under the rug and avoid all the drama? Please, please, please someone confirm this is a real option!?! Ugh, but what about the birth family. Is this a big deal for them? Are there major traditions? Will this be a minefield of potential hurt feelings? Is there a tactful way to call them up and say, so, on a scale of 1 to 10 how invested are you into making this a big rigamarole? While thinking this through I did some googling and found that the local zoo does a special Mother...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why This but Not That?

I've been thinking about how I react to everything the three toddlers do. After years as a special ed teacher and 16 years of parenting I feel like I'm pretty relaxed most of the time. I would generally describe my parenting style as: pick your battles and, really, are there that many battles worth fighting? But lately it seems like I'm having big reactions to some things that the three littles do. For example: they were all three playing in the front yard and Kate opened the gate and got out into the driveway, even though I'd made a big deal about only mama opening that gate. Walking outside and finding her outside the fence (the gate had swung shut behind her) was about the angriest I have been since the girls came. I went absolutely ballistic...to the extent that I won't even describe here what I did to teach her this was extremely dangerous behavior. We live in the country but our house is near a road that people go flying down because it's so quiet. No...
Post a Comment
Read more