From Public to Private

Hello everyone! This blog is going to be a record of what we're teaching the kids, as well as the other things we do during the day. As a bit of background, our children are Mike and Kayla, and they are almost six years old. They are in Kindergarten, although this is their third year of real schooling. Two years ago, the twins were showing a lot of academic promise and a great thirst for knowledge and experience. It seemed that the right thing to do was find an appropriate pre-school for them, which we did. We'll forever be grateful to Pooh's Corner PreSchool, where they were challenged and enriched daily. They were there for two years.

Now that our little kids are bigger kids, it was time for them to enter the Big School. Off they went, backpacks in hand, to enter their separate classrooms. The teachers were pretty good, and we were quite pleased at the first week of school. However...

The class size is 23 children, and Mike is high functioning autistic. His ability to deal with loud sounds goes down throughout the day, and by 3pm he is usually sitting with his hands over his ears, trying very hard to be a good boy. Also, he tends to get a bit hyper-focused on things from time to time, and his teacher wasn't showing as much tolerance to that as we felt was necessary, nor was she finding the right way to move him on to a new, more appropriate task. Their dad talked to the teacher and then the principal, and then the fun began.

I see no reason to get into the sordid details, but let's just say that he was told that he had threatened physical violence on the principal (he had not), that she had taken care of the original issue between dad and the teacher (she had not), and that he was no longer welcome in the school. Hmm... so we can't communicate with our child's teacher, nor can we observe or ask for time from the administration...?

We yanked the kids out. Both of them.

There's a lot more to the story, of course. There always is. The teachers really aren't to blame; had they had decent administration, this would never have come to be. We made it clear that our removal of the children from the public school was NOT due to the teachers, but strictly due to the administration, and the principal in particular.

We're in the process of moving, and the new public school they'll be attending is wonderful. The staff are responsive, communicative, and interested in the kids and the parents. The class size is much smaller (our kids make 16 to each of their classes), and Mike will be put into the "more sedate" class, which we hope will make things a bit easier for him. He has an especially hard time because he's so far ahead academically (reading at first grade level, math at first to second grade level, etc.). We're hoping that a small class size will turn into more attention for him, and a more challenging and stimulating education.

Kayla is happy anywhere, and both children are looking forward to their new school in their new town. So you might be asking why are we talking about homeschooling then? That is because there is a time gap of at least one week, and possibly more, between public school 1, and public school 2. That's where I come in.

Tomorrow, I'll post up photographs of the kids, and perhaps a video or two. I'll share our day (at least, the way I plan our day) and how it turns out. With that, I leave you with a home schooling chuckle for the day: