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. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Family Visit Success!

Last weekend we did a family visit that was a return to how we'd first begun doing them. Theo and I drove the girls down and stayed and hung out with the family the whole time. The visit was just 1.5 hours long. Aunt made the lovely suggestion that good-byes would happen in the house and not at the car. She even coached grandma to do them quickly. So, we did a quick but sincere good-bye then left. No drama with grandma climbing over seats or Jane wailing from her car seat. And it all worked! Girls were cheerful and chatty on the way home! No nightmares for Jane that night! Kate was even okay--one day of extreme clinginess but then she returned to usual level of attachment-bonding cling! I'm so incredibly relieved! Because what would I have done if this hadn't worked?? I could not bear the thought of telling them we were stopping visits completely not least of all because I truly don't believe that would be the right path, long term. But now I don't have to f...

Halloween Hell

 Tomorrow the kids will do a daytime Trunk or Treat event with Grandma. I suggested the outing about two months ago, chose the event, coordinated a meeting place with her, bought the kids costumes, prepped them for it, and now it's happening. I did it all. And I am dreading it with every fiber in my being. All this week my mood has been sliding downhill the closer it gets.  I hate meet ups with Grandma. There was a time when I hated them less, now I hate them with visceral dread. Why? Because I don't want Grandma to know where the girls are in school.  It was a huge mistake to tell her our home address and last name. A few weeks after we did that I got a phone call from a relative telling me about Grandma sneaking her son back into other grandchildren's lives. The relative warned me to "look in the back seat of her car" in case she was hiding him in there when she came to visit us. Needless to say, she was never invited to our house again.  So, what do I do? Yes, ...

Turning Two in a Tutu

Kate turns two this week! After sixteen years of boys I'm going a little over the top with the pink and fluff but I just can't hold back. And with pictures like these, even minute of planning and prep was worth it! She loves to play dress up and have tea parties with her stuffed animals. She's so adorable! Jane and James are 3 and a half so I decided we needed to celebrate their half birthdays, too. Any excuse for a cupcake!