When my oldest boy approached the age for school, it was with a lot of anxiety for me.
How could I put my own kids through a system I had not enjoyed personally, and had little to no faith in for their improvement?
So I considered homeschooling, despite the financial odds I faced, and the additional problem that the state I lived in would fight me from beginning to end on my desire to school my own children. (We lived in Maryland at the time, a state very antagonistic to homeschooling.)
In the end, practicality won out, and we enrolled my oldest son in kindergarten. When we took him, our oldest girl was incredibly jealous, and she wanted to go with him.
The problems began right away.
He was 'too quiet'. He didn't get along with the other kids. This child reflected a lot of my own school experiences back to me in a frightening way, since these were also problems I had, that I had never found adequate solutions for. Again, practicality prevailed, as much as I wanted it otherwise, and he continued into the first grade.
The problems got worse in first grade for him - first of all, the World Trade Center got blown up, only a few days into his first grade year. How does a kid overcome something like that?
In our case, you move. To Texas, where homeschooling is simultaneously loved and ignored by the school system. I immediately ripped him out and started schooling him myself as soon as we were settled.
Homeschooling
I was so excited - living my dream!
What I failed to realize was that the dream brought its own problems of a different nature, which I hadn't reckoned for.
Now I had to keep track of his schooling...AND create and gather the curriculum...AND then teach each child, who all learned things differently.
We were also still struggling to make ends meet financially, and struggling with a public library system that was woeful compared to other state I'd lived in. On top of that, a health crisis developed for me that I had to figure out.
I fought it through for awhile, and got David homeschooled through the fourth grade. I even discovered how to teach him through his interests, in a way similar to unschooling, without actually unschooling him (not a fan of unschooling, where the child just learns whatever he feels like learning with little to no parental guidance or oversight.)
And then my oldest girl started school...and something seemed very wrong.
She wasn't learning. We went two years, trying to teach her even the basic basics of reading and the alphabet. Nothing stuck.
When my youngest girl officially started kindergarten and started reading before her big sister, and her big sister started taking away her books and not allowing her to read...something had to change.
Public Schooling
I enrolled all my kids in the local elementary school, that was a five-minute walk away from our house. Oldest boy started fifth grade, oldest girl started second grade (she was the age for it), and youngest girl started kindergarten.
And then problems exploded left and right.
Some things were little explosions...oldest boy didn't quite get the concept of 'homework' since he hadn't had any for several years. Had to relearn to turn things in when he finished them. Youngest girl didn't like her teacher, and didn't like leaving home every day.
But poor oldest girl endured the worst - she couldn't read, and couldn't even pretend to read. The class laughed at her answers. She buried her head in her arms and cried in front of everybody.
I knew this would happen - in some ways, it felt cruel to expose her to that.
But I also knew what the result would be - it was too dramatic for anything else to happen.
Her second-grade teacher complained to the principal, who immediately pulled in the school counselor, who immediately ordered testing - which immediately announced what I'd already suspected.
Dyslexia.
When I was growing up, I saw what happened to my brothers, some of whom also had dyslexia (it runs genetically in our family - my dad had it too). They were passed from grade to grade, even thought they'd never gotten good grades, or even deserved to pass. Then they entered the adult world of work, and struggled to read forevermore.
I'd investigated this school system. They had a dyslexia program - but getting into it was tricky. You had to manifest a problem, and who can tell if a kindergartner has dyslexia or if they're just difficult? The teachers and administrators would battle over it for years, and by the time she'd graduated and still couldn't read...what then?
I was not having that for my girl.
She got moved back a grade, and started the dyslexia class and rocked it. Finished it early, and could read. It was a painful step, but judging from having been in that system, it was what had to be done to get her help quickly.
The Best of Both
Public middle school was a special kind of hell on earth...both for me and for my kids.
My oldest son managed to put his head down and get through it, quietly and without event. Oldest girl went one year, and wanted out. She'd finished the school's dyslexia program, and didn't want to deal with the environment of the school anymore.
I found an option available here called online public school, where the kids went to school online, and the school provided the curriculum, the teaching, and the transcripts. All for state money - we didn't pay a dime.
I had to be the children's 'teacher', but it was no different than the work I was already doing - coordinating their education from beginning to end. That was my job, and it was a beautiful solution.
At least, for a couple of years.
Both my younger children got on - my youngest girl after she'd been hospitalized for depression and anxiety after having battled with a teacher who bullied her in middle school, and then my youngest son, who was smart enough to look at his siblings' experiences and say, 'Heck with that!'
But oldest girl needed something more - she couldn't take the quiet and isolation after a couple of years. So we went in a different direction.
Collegiate High School
My oldest son was graduating from community college with his associates' degree. My oldest girl decided, at the ceremony, that she should go to early college high school. It was a new program there, also tuition-free, for public school students who wanted to earn a high school diploma and a college degree at the same time.
"Why not?" I thought. This kid can do anything.
And then the world exploded again....
In order to fit all the credits in she would need to earn in order to get her college degree, she had to take the equivalent of 18 credits of class - an extraordinary schedule. Her older brother tried it and found it too challenging - took his GED instead and then took a regular schedule of classes. I thought he couldn't handle it because of his issues with socialization.
The program itself was just plain hard. Oldest girl decided to leave after the first semester, because she was failing the program. Dragged me over to the school to withdraw her from classes. We ended up at the principal's office, where he and some other school administrators sat down with us and told us we were making a mistake. An extraordinary statement, I thought.
They told me she was getting As and Bs, which floored me. She'd been telling me she was failing school. They didn't want her to leave, because they needed the good students to stay.
Oldest girl was unmoved. She told them her reasons - the program wasn't for her, she said. She'd been led to believe she would have more choice in her classes, and she hadn't gotten that. She wanted to take her GED and just go to college, instead of studying 20 hours a day in subjects she didn't care about to get a degree she didn't want. She just wanted to learn photography and work as a photographer and director, and she didn't care about anything else.
And then....a miracle....
The principal abruptly stood up, and went to a closet in his office. He pulled out a camera and some camera equipment, and put them on the table in front of her.
"I bought this so some student could help me take pictures around school - I need someone to run with this - but will you stay if I let you use this equipment?"
She couldn't speak. It was exactly the kind of camera she'd hoped to buy for herself. A tear rolled down one cheek. He bought her lunch and walked her back to class.
And she stayed. And she graduated.
College
My oldest son has one year of college left. Oldest and youngest girl are enrolling in university and community college this year. Youngest boy is passing the GED practice tests, but still too young (according to Texas) to take the test.
We'll see what happens from this time forward. Probably more explosions. But I'm used to them by now....the lights are kinda pretty, when you turn your head a certain way...
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