Homeschooling Anne goes from 8:30 a.m. in the morning right up through bedtime, with breaks for lunch, snack, and dinner. Since I wake up at 5:30 a.m. to get Leigh ready for school, the days are long and exhausting.
This isn’t the best situation. In an ideal world, Anne would have a few lessons, a little work, and be done by noon. Homeschooling should offer her free time for play and discovery. We’d have time for art and music, too.
Unfortunately, Anne can take all day for just three pages of work.
She is back home because she wasn’t ready for third grade academically or socially. We received a call on the first day of school, right after lunch, asking if she had trouble sitting, working, and following directions.
Given the pedagogical approaches of the third-grade teachers, the lack of essential supports, and Anne’s needs, we had to promptly return to homeschooling.
There’s no good defense for how we teach lower-elementary students. We shouldn’t be grading them and we certainly shouldn’t be expecting them to behave like little adults. After two years of COVID-19 disruptions, the post-pandemic classroom should be a lot more about nurturing and reassuring young students.
It is disheartening that special education supports are more difficult to obtain than they were before the pandemic. Revising Anne’s IEP was going to take months. The school district lacks evaluators, school psychologists, and paraprofessionals. That’s true nationwide. What were staffing shortages before the pandemic are now staffing emergencies.
With Anne home for yet another year, we are again relying on a mix of workbooks, activity guides, and online resources. I still refer to the state standards each Sunday as I prepare for the week ahead. Homeschooling requires the same planning as teaching in a classroom.
We control the pace of learning new materials and we can constantly review past materials. Anne needs to progress at her speed, not the mean or median speed of 20 to 30 third-grade students. We move with her, not against her.
Using IXL, Adventure Academy, and Khan Academy allows us to assess Anne (and Leigh) objectively.
It would be great to have both girls back on campus at the elementary school. However, we’re also glad that we can continue to provide the learning experiences that Anne needs to be successful.
Homeschooling Anne also allows me to handle the medical appointments for both girls during the week. With medical appointments and after-school activities, our calendars are packed with non-stop activity.
I’m too exhausted to write blog posts each week, and I’m struggling to produce podcasts. Homeschooling also means I’m not able to pursue anything else right now.
Ideally, Anne returns to campus next year, ready to thrive alongside their classmates.