New Starts - Here's to the 2012-13 School Year

It’s been a while since I’ve written. I took the summer off – well, sort of. We did school work all summer long, but at a more relaxed pace.

But it’s the beginning of a new year, and I’m starting it with enthusiasm, good intentions and a hope that we will get more done this year than last. 

August is like Mondays. I love Mondays! Each Monday it’s like you are given a clean slate for accomplishing things. It doesn’t matter how much or little was done last week, it’s Monday and it all starts at 0 again.

A new school year is like that. New resolutions. New ideas. New homeschool friends. And new books.

Update on the kids:

Jojo is still doing traditional homeschooling, or at least traditional “relaxed” homeschooling, which isn’t traditional, I guess. Are you confused? She isn’t under any outside obligations or authority at least.

She decides some things. Other things, like what books she reads, she has some say-so, but the book has to meet with my approval. I tried the let her pick her own books, but she refused to read anything but fluff, and not even good fluff.  Right now she’s reading the Sherlock Holmes compendium.

A few weeks ago, she and I both came to the conclusion that she needs some outside help. I’ve looked into the local community college, and she can actually take courses despite being only 16. Math seemed like a good start for her. I’m really good at math, but the explanations I come up with just don’t seem to sink in with her. Having someone other than Mom teach her is a good thing.

Speaking of which, it’s the second year that our homeschool group’s co-op is up and running. I’m excited about it. For years and years I tried (half-heartedly, I admit) to get a weekly cooperative learning group together. It’s a bunch of families where different parents teach different things to kids that aren’t theirs. I think it’s really important for kids to have someone else teaching them every now and then.

Last year, I taught drama the first semester and hands-on history the second. I’m switching gears here by hoping to teach yoga this semester. Then I won’t have any excuse not to do yoga at least once a week.

Now for Meme. I can’t remember if I said anything, but our plan from the get-go last year was to have her stay in eighth grade for 2 years. She was a bit behind on a few subjects, and pushing her to do more work than she is capable of would be more than frustrating. It could damage her desire to learn.

She worked all summer, mostly on Study Island. Study Island is a 3^rd party service that K12 uses to help kids fill in the gaps for different subject areas by teaching them mini-lessons and having them practice with games. I love it. It allows the student to sort through different grade levels to find the bits and pieces that may be missing from their learning and practice them.

I’m more comfortable with her math skills than I’ve ever been. She doesn’t like math, but, other than myself, I don’t know many people who do. For a long while, she stubbornly refused to learn even basic math concepts, like the multiplication tables. It was not for lack of assignments. At one point (during a fit of frustration on my part), she was doing 10 pages, front and back, of math facts. She still did not retain them.

Our goal this year is to finish the eighth grade, obviously, and be prepared for high school. I’m hoping the high school K12 issues will be worked out. It’s a good program, but it can go very wrong if they let it.

Meme took the leap test at the end of this year, and we will practice that sucker all year long. Last year, in language arts and history, she did awesome. Not so well in math and science.  At least the test pointed out specific areas that she’s weak in so that we can build up those skills.

Bobo is doing fine. Like with Meme, we went in to the second grade with the intent of taking two years to finish it – at least two years at the longest.  He wasn’t behind per se. His birthday falls in September, which would in general make him the youngest kid of his class. So instead of being immature for his grade level, we started kindergarten work when he was 5 about to turn 6 rather than 4 about to turn 5.So he never did first grade.

Again with all the state rigmarole, he was placed in second grade instead of first. If it had been this year, it would have been fixed. But being K12’s first year in Louisiana, it wasn’t allowed. Last year, we took our time, going in to each lesson with the idea that we wouldn’t come out until it was learned. In language arts, that hasn’t been hard. He still isn’t reading fluently, but most boys that I know from my years of homeschooling didn’t read fluently until they were eight. 

He is, however, reading well enough that he can read what I’m googling for. Internet shopping for his birthday gifts can now only take place at night. When you think you’re going to surprise them . . .

 
Here’s to a new school year!! May it be full of diligence, industriousness, good learning and good friends!

Getting Sorted

I knew going into this adventure that the first few weeks getting started would be hard, but I thought it would all be on my end. Since this is LaVCA’s first year, they too are having a good bit of growing pains.

Meme and Jojo took their assessment tests. Jojo, like anything I ask her these days, replied “I don’t know” to the question of how she did. Meme, never very forthcoming with the words, didn’t say much, but I overheared her tell her best friend that she failed the unfailable test. 

Supposedly, as soon as the child is finished taking the test, the scores are sent to the teacher, who reviews them and comes up with an ILP (Individualized Learning Plan). 

I figured that I would hear from the teachers in a couple of days post-test.  Silly me. All these teachers have pretty much been in training meetings for the last two weeks. Top that off with every child being new in LaVCA this year (since it’s year one), so every ILP has to be made from scratch.

So my anxiety doth run over my cup. I know I fret, but I had a major fret episode. Yesterday, Friday, I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I called both Meme’s and Jojo’s teachers, left a message on their voicemail (they were in another meeting) and waited.

Meme’s teacher called back a couple of hours later. Of course, I’ve been trying to convince K12 that she needs to be in seventh grade, despite her age. We have not yet done seventh grade work with her, and I don’t think she could handle eighth grade work.

Well, she actually did okay on the assessment test. Compared to other eighth grade students, Meme’s on the high end of average for reading comprehension and just below average in math. Considering that we haven’t yet gotten to sixth or seventh grade math, that’s not bad. And since she didn’t start reading until she was 9, being on the high end of average for other eighth grades is pretty good.

Her teacher and I talked for while, discussing what this means. One of my worries is that she won’t be able to handle the eighth grade work in science and history. The teacher said that since her reading comprehension is fairly high, all things considered, and since science and history are all based on reading stuff and understanding that stuff, she can do the work. That does make sense.

We agreed to keep her in the eighth grade. In a weird way this means that she’s skipping a grade simply for the fact that we haven’t done anything for seventh grade. Oh well, it’s all subjective anyway.  She still needs a bit of remediation in math, but not as much as I thought.  She may need some extra help in writing as well, but the teacher’s philosophy is that if she’s reading on that level, she can emulate what she reads and write on that level too.

 

Meme is actually pleased with herself.  So I can officially call her an eighth grader now.

Once It Clicks

When feeling frustrated because my monkeys sometimes progress slowly, I remember what it was like a few years ago. We were in Massachusetts after Hurricane Katrina, and because of her dyslexia, Jojo at 10 could barely read 10 of the 50 most frequently written words. Even though we had tried 3 or 4 reading programs (I might go into that another day), she would forget what she learned within days or weeks of stopping. Meme at eight could not read at all -- not due to any problem with her, but because, between life's crises, I had been focusing all my efforts on Jojo.

It was difficult to admit that our life was not likely to settle down any time soon, and that moving all over, having babies, and two major hurricanes (we came back to Louisiana in time to get hit by Gustav) may be excuses other people will buy as to why we are woefully behind, but I needed to get over it and home-school despite what events were and are happening around us. I had to get determined that my child would read.

Once I figured out that the school system was not going to help (another long story), I researched the heck out of dyslexia. Then I spent 6 intensive months on Jojo's reading lessons – several exhausting hours every day. Then another 3 months of pushing her to read all of the time -- several books a week.  At first many of the books were below her age level for content, but she was starting to read at least.

Within a few months of turning 11, she was reading the fourth Harry Potter (after she read the first 3 in 3 weeks). I tested her reading level constantly, and within months of starting to read she was almost where she should be.  

In so many books about the act of learning to read, you see the same phrase over and over again. Suddenly something clicks, and the child will go from sounding out letters to reading in a short time. It’s almost like magic.  At some point I despaired that this magical event would ever occur for Jojo, but it had happened.

I'm still pushing her to read – 1 long or 2 short novels a week on top of the reading she does for pleasure. Her reading level is still being pushed to the limits.  Four years later, she can read anything. Her vocabulary has grown considerably. I now assign her books I read in college English classes, and she can not only read it but she understands the subtlety in it.

What I need to remember from that time period is that once she started reading, her schoolwork became easier for both of us. So much of our time was spent on learning to read and reading for her with the other subjects. Both for her and Meme, learning to read at that time was all consuming.

With the boys it will be the same thing. Once they break through that reading barrier, once that magical moment happens and it all clicks together, self-learning will become the norm. I will feel less horrible as a home-schooling mom and stop beating myself up over failures and delays, and go back to throwing book after book at them, just like I did with their sisters.  I look forward to those coming days with glee!