We decided to give Jillian a sabbatical from home school and put Zachary and Chayce in a charter school that was using the same curriculum and instructional techniques we had used in home school the last three years. The teachers have been fantastic, they adjusted to the group based instructional environment relatively quickly, and they are excelling by public school standards. On the down side, they spend much less time reading and much less time socializing with friends. I'm concerned about the reading since they used to spend several hours each day reading on their own, but are now essentially disinterested in reading. The children are quite vocal in missing time with friends - they only get 30 minutes during the recesses. This is a problem Zachary's teacher has even picked up on as she noticed he gets along with everyone but is attached to no one. When homeschooling he'd typically have more time in one day with friends than the combined time with other children at school in a full week. These are the primary downsides, though we've found a plethora of other minor disappointments group-based schooling (I'm sure our experience would have been the same whether public or private school).
In summary, the experience has been good, but we're still not a fan of group-based education. We're on the fence whether to let them go back in January, and are definitely not returning next fall (Jillian has already started on their Fall 2012 curriculum).
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
My mid-term assessment of school
Posted by stueller at 10:48 AM
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1 comments:
I know what you mean on the downsides, we faced all of those too. We are loving homeschool ever since we fully committed to it. Some days are better than other, of course, but we are much happier being together during the day. I think it's so funny that my kids watch the clock now until the school kids get home. They think it's "dumb" that their friends have to be at school 6+ hours a day!!! For the most part I liked TECS but my kids didn't. What curriculum are you using for fall 2012??
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