Meme & K12

I’m feeling more confident today in exploring K12 for Meme. Her teacher is setting up on-line assessment tests to see exactly where she is. No decisions will be made about grade level or work level until she takes these tests. I’m comfortable with that.

I admit it’s a huge relief actually talking to her teacher and beginning to come up with a plan of action.  Things happen, and we can’t do anything about that. It’s been hell on me the last few years trying the juggle moves, job hunts, childbirth, learning disabilities . . . I could go on, but I’ll sum it up with “loads of not fun crud.”

Despite the fact that it should have been, education was not always the top priority. Sometimes we were focused on simply surviving the changes going on in our lives. The thought of someone guiding me through this “catching up process,” which has daunted me for the last 3 years, is comforting. I like that Meme will have someone other than myself to be accountable to.

Of course, I haven’t yet told Meme that she’s going to be doing a virtual academy this school year. I’m a bit afraid of the resistance I’m going to get. 

Meme, my sweet Meme. She’s bright, creative, artistic, and imaginative but resists doing any work that she doesn’t deem is fun. Aren’t we all like that? At some point, most of us learned that there are a good many things that we’ll do on a daily basis that isn’t fun, but we need the end results.  From the daily: we need clean plates to eat off of; therefore we need to wash some dishes. To the lifelong: we want a comfortable life and a stable job; therefore we need to work hard on our education, which is just one step in getting there, but an important step.

The idea of being actually responsible and held accountable for her school work scares the heck out of her.  I need help motivating her. I need some structure at this point.

A large part of me, the long-term homeschooler part, feels like I’m betraying my fellow homeschoolers by using a public school virtual academy. I realize that it’s just pride who phrases this switch in terms of a betrayal. The reality is that I don’t want to admit that I’m failing in areas as a homeschool mom and some of my long-held beliefs about how children learn may not be correct – or at least not correct for my children.

A whole paradigm shift takes a while to adjust to.