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Some of you may know that I put all of my children in school. Which at one point I thought would be a simple situation. And that was a lie. And I get it. We are a homeschool family, and not all homeschool families are created equally. Where I felt like my path was simple and easy, we ran into a few obstacles in entering school. I know my situation may be different from yours, but I like to share with you guys, so let me share how things are going.
First, we have 4 children in four different schools. As much as I hate that, I do have a village, so picking them up or dropping them off hasn’t been too much of an inconvenience. But at the same time, I do miss that there is not a sibling around to help the other sibling. Because the triplets were born so close to each other, I think they were more dependent on each other. This year they are learning to rely on themselves. I think that is easier for some and tougher for others. My oldest daughter is used to being the leader of the pack, and now she’s trying to navigate being one of the youngest kids at her school. Middle children find it easier to get along with others because they are in the middle. I was a middle child; I totally understand how easy it was for me to adjust without a sibling around. The baby boy has also adjusted well in his new school. Boys are just different. They are easy to make friends with and typically have less drama. I appreciate that from boys. And then the baby, she only goes to school a few days out of the week, and we work at home for the other days. I absolutely love having that time with her at home, gives me time to build her, and it keeps the germs down.
In the past at our other schools, we got a lot of information. And I have to be honest, sometimes I hated to see all the emails and texts, GroupMe, Google Classroom, band, and other messages daily. But lately I have started to miss them. And here is why: I dropped my children off at schools that I haven’t been a part of since the 1990’s. Things have changed; the hallways look different, they don’t use lockers, and they have new buildings and bigger cafeterias, new teachers, new administrators, and so much more. And I didn’t receive any information. And I know you are wondering whether I went to an open house. I did. I walked into school with my 13-year-old son, into the very school I started 8th grade in. And nothing looked remotely familiar. Thankfully, I was able to follow arrows and signs, and we were able to navigate our way through school. Still, we only met the teachers and exchanged emails and phone numbers.
I think it’s because my children are in upper grades that maybe I am not getting very much information, but at the same time… I’m new to the school.
Everything is electronic, so it’s been a learning curve for my children. They attended a technology-free (ish) school. Some things they did with a Chromebook, but for the most part they wrote everything down. We have had to do a mix of this; test and work have been on a Chromebook, but my 10th grader needed to organize her work, so she decided to put things into a notebook. As a cheat sheet of sorts, just to organize or take notes on what she was learning. After all, we want to retain some information.
Also, we were told that some of the classes that we took online were not transferable, just to get enrolled in an online class taught with the same program we used to homeschool. Also, end-of-course testing was mentioned. So most of the classes we took in homeschool needed an end-of-course test issued by the school as a requirement. When asking students about taking end-of-course tests, 90% of the students were exempt. So are they really required? This is different than a state test. Are they really needed?
Other than that, I think we are adjusting fine LOL
Basically Tesha
