Our Happy, Healthy Home School: February 2010

A few weeks ago, I decided one day to have Sarah try out first grade at the local public school. Actually, it wasn't done so much on a whim, but having her in school is something I had been considering for about a year. That's why last summer I had both her and Emily signed up for the new charter school in town but then decided against that. But one day in late January, I was feeling very over-whelmed and frankly, burned out, with home schooling. After all, we've been doing this life for 5 1/2 years now, I've just had a baby, am sleep deprived and trying to keep everything together...I thought it would be so much easier if one of my kids was gone most of the time. And if it was going to be any of them, it was going to be Sarah. Her personality is such that she almost *needs* the stimulation of someone always with her. My other girls played better on their own, but Sarah prefers near constant companionship of someone.

With Maegan being an independent scholar student, she is usually off on her own for several hours a day. Emily is somewhat independent but needs some help now and then. And of course I'm distracted ALOT with the baby's needs and nursing off and on all day long....so Sarah doesn't always get the individual attention that she needs. That is something I feel terrible about, but our family dynamics are what they are. We aren't a family with kids close in age...she's got a sister four yeas older and a brother six years younger. She would have done so well as a twin so she'd have a constant playmate!

Anyway...she began 1st grade on February 1, 2010. We had met her teacher the previous Friday. I'm sure she is a very nice person in general, but we soon found out that at least this teacher is very much entrenched in cookie cutter education and "require require require". By the end of the second day, I regretted ever enrolling Sarah in school. That day, the phone rang just as school would have been letting out. It was the teacher. She more or less explained that "Sarah has no concept of following directions on a worksheet, that she doesn't listen or follow instructions well and needs to learn to be independent in her work." Some of this doesn't surprise me, it is stuff that I struggle with at home too with Sarah.

But then, I opened up Sarah's binder and found a handwritten note "to the parents of Sarah", basically saying the same thing that she'd just said in the phone call. Being that it was the second day of school, I thought it was a bit over the top to do both a phone call AND a hand written note.

What I noticed especially on the first and second day of school, was that Sarah came home very sullen. She didn't want to talk about her school day AT ALL. I practically had to force her to give me any sort of feedback. Most of what she'd say was that she enjoyed recess, jumping rope and going to lunch. This is probably a standard answer of any young child, to say that their favorite part of school was the play time. However, on the 4th day I found out from another child in Sarah's class (who is a neighbor friend) that recess was taken away from Sarah on her first and second day there, because she hadn't finished her worksheets on time. I was floored!!! I can see taking away recess for blatant disobedience and causing trouble....but apparently the teacher couldn't cut Sarah some slack and allow her some extra time to do her work since she was still getting used to this new school environment. I don't know how many other recesses were taken away from Sarah during her 2 weeks there because she would never talk about it, like she was ashamed. That makes me so sad.

Another thing that really bothered me was one particular homework assignment Sarah had. (and lets not forget to mention that homework her second night after school took almost 3 hours----she just dug her heels in and did NOT want to do it after being at school all day long---I can't say I blame her for reacting like that!) So this one assignment was "Making Words Helper". They were given the letters A-E-L-P-T and my understanding was that they were to create 2, 3, 4 and 5 letter words from the given letters. Because I didn't read verbatim the full page of instructions, we did the assignment completely wrong. We did create several words from these letters, but apparently I was to instruct Sarah to create prescribed words from the instructional sheet. In other words, tell her what to create rather than letting her stretch her thinking. So, she got -6 on that assignment. Like I care...she was getting 100% on almost everything else and had tested out at one of the upper spelling groups! This just bothered me because its like they wanted to keep the kids in this little box, only doing what "they" (the experts) said to do, rather than letting them think up as many words as they could from the given letters. It was squashing her creativity and no room for being an individual, except for when they gave them permission to do so.

Then came more communication from the teacher. One day in the second week, Sarah arrived home from school without her homework binder. This is something they are to bring home daily. But this one day it wasn't there. I emailed the teacher and asked if Sarah had left it in the classroom. Rather than answering with a simple "yes her binder is still here", the teacher wrote an entire paragraph explaining "how" the binder had been left behind....basically saying that Sarah is a line-cutting-non-listening-dawdler. She told me about how all the rest of the class went to go line up at the door to leave that day, but Sarah was wanting to finish up a project and didn't get lined up with the others. The teacher told Sarah it was time to leave and that she could finish up the project the next day, but Sarah kept working on it. The teacher said she told Sarah this three times. Then she (Sarah) suddenly realized it was time to leave, so she grabbed her backpack (leaving her binder behind) and ran up to the front of the line with her friend we carpooled with. Yes, I realize Sarah should listen better, but the way the teacher said it was very condescending to both her and me.

Another thing that made it very difficult, was being a slave to the school's schedule. Having one child on this schedule was HARD, when the others were at home and on a completely different schedule. I was the driver for the morning carpool and it was a real struggle some days to make sure we were out the door on time, especially when the baby was needing to be fed or changed at just that minute.

So after enduring it for two weeks, we made the decision to bring her back to home schooling. What I found was that the lesson wasn't for Sarah to be in school, but for ME to understand more fully and appreciate that home school is what's best suited for our family structure. And although I still feel burned out and overwhelmed some days, at least Sarah is home where she can be appreciated for the person she is, she has time to work on things as long as she needs to, she gets the one on one attention and help that she needs, and has the freedom to play and be a child rather than spending 6+ hours a day at school then having homework after school that cut into her free time and our time as a family.