Oh Hell. I dunno. It just kind of characterizes our homeschool experience so far….
I really do let my own highschool baggage get in the way sometimes.

Our meeting with our homeschool boss-lady last Friday went, in fact, completely without incident, without frustration and without namecalling judgement. Boss-lady (for whom she shall from this point forward be affectionately named) was very cool about what we’ve been doing- reading, gardening, camping, triathloning- and pretty non-chalant about what we haven’t been doing- modules.

We left the meeting with a whole new set of materials, which included two more modules, despite sheepishly admitting we’d not yet actually completed the last. While I’ve not officially announced it at any of these assessment meetings, I do think (given her extensive experience overseeing homeschoolers) she’s caught on to the fact that we’re of something along the unschooling variety of homeschoolers.

I’m happy she’s so perceptive. It saves me actually stating it out loud. Because stating it out loud, whether to Boss-lady, my family, my friends or my neighbors, then means I have to rationalize, justify, just plain old, explain, what the hell that means and therefore just what the hell we’re actually doing. Not that I couldn’t if you gave me a few days enough time, it’s just something I’m still playing with and trying to make work.

In the meantime, as we play with unschooling and flirt with our ‘modules’, oh… and diddle a little with old Charlotte- Mason, that is- we are sitting happily on the fence… finding our way. A way that works best. And I think, after these past six months, we’re getting there.

I just don’t wanna have to try to explain it to anybody!

Well, today we visited our local… lady.  She’s a lady.  She was a teacher and administrator for years and years and years and, oh yeah, years.  She’d no doubt appreciate this.  Anyhow, given her experience extending over the oh-so-many years, she knows a lot of stuff.  She is a tutor, with an increasingly growing number of clients.  I guess evidence of our rural school districts many strains.  She is also amazing with the assessments.  I’m not sure what her certifications and ‘papers’ are beyond the teaching and administrative aspects of her career, but she came highly recommended by several mothers with kids needs not being met by our local, over-extended, under-funded school system.

Ahem… bottom line is our Beasley has some interesting issues that need dealing with. The prevailing being the lack of a developed Visual Memory.  We’ve had this come up in past assessments, except it was described to us as Working Memory.

While he doesn’t show any other signs of ADD, this issue of memory is present in the disorder.

So, we commit to the “60-80 hours of work” to get Beasley up to speed OR I do a heckuvalot of research and prep to find out how to best “work through” this problem, ultimately improving the other issues he has, on our own.

$160/wk vs. my time and effort.

Looks like it will be my time and effort, folks, as this is why we chose to homeschool.  Sure it might be a little about the money, but we want to be able to provide him with the most customized approach possible and given that we already knew we had issues at play, we were prepared for a whole lotta work.

It’ll be 60-80 hours of time working here at home, lovely though tutor lady may be.  We are certainly appreciative of the language she gave us to be able to work with this problem.  I now know what we’re dealing with.