Tuesday, September 8, 2020

And now... for homeschooling!

 For the next chapter in my education life I have the opportunity to take what I've learned from 17 years in education and apply it to my own daughters. 

After some long, late-night conversations where my husband and I weighed the pros and cons of every possible different learning situation out there we decided that homeschooling was going to make the most sense for our family. I love my girls' public elementary school and it felt like a loss to submit the paperwork to withdraw them. Knowing those teachers, I also 100% believe that my girls' school is going to knock virtual learning out of the park. 

But... after a rough spring I realized that if I am going to be home in the room with my children while they are learning, I want to be the teacher, not the enforcer. I don't want any more fights about when to sit in front of the computer, how to sit so the teacher can see your face, being both tech support and the social-emotional counselor when the computer crashed during small group with teacher... And I didn't want any other occasions of being told "Mommy, stay out of it, you aren't my teacher. My work is fine." Followed by my ever mature response, "I've been teaching small moments longer than you've been alive, kiddo. I know I know what your teacher wants." 

And so, we have taken the homeschooling leap. Today, while all over our region teachers and students are going back to school for their first virtual day, my girls and I are entering our first official week of our new routine. We've had a three week long slow-start. We spent the first week preparing for our trip to Williamsburg, Virginia. We dove into studying Virginia landforms, history, geography, economy, and ecosystems. Then we spent a week visiting Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown. The third week of our "slow start" we got into our math curriculum (We are using Right Start) and got comfortable in our math routine.

Today marks our first full day of homeschooling. Interrupted, of course, by a sudden run to the pediatrician (but hey, easy to get an appointment, everyone else was in school). 

And right this instant? We are having family independent writing time, where each of us is silently working on our writing. Or at least pretending to work on our writing. We'll see what each girl has to share during the writing conference portion of this experience.

I am still seeing clients this year, as well as working on some other exciting projects. But after some creative scheduling we've made it possible to also be here to teach my girls.

So stay tuned, for at least two days a week we will have family writing time, so I hope to actually stay somewhat up to date on this blog. 


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