Homeschool update Nov, 2011

Video Transcript

I have so many things to talk about that I am going to go ahead and make an update compilation video.  So here goes:


It is November 21st.  So, my son graduates in April so we've done 4 months of the homeschool year with five months to go. We are almost to the halfway point and I find myself correcting some miss-steps that we took this year.

Major Miss-step: Using online schooling through the public school system for the first time in my son's senior
year.  It is interesting because I always advised against using it but I figured, It's his senior year, we're going to make it easy.  He only has a couple of things he has to do and even those are optional, and it will give him a taste of what it is like to work with teachers.

So.... yeah-NO.  It's not turned out well. We are using Georgia Virtual School and as far as I can tell, there are two issues. The first issue is that it is online and there isn't much of any teacher contact. There is a once a week chat session and it just happens to be at a time when my kids are not available, for any of their classes. So if they have classes or anything, they can call the teachers on the phone between 9 and 5. But my kids are so busy and they are most likely to need help in the evenings, so that just hasn't helped.  So they haven't been able to get as much guidance as they needed. Second, there are some software issues and they have been updating the system, I think, once a month since they started.  There was a major update a few weeks ago and it so happened that it coincided with the week my kids were out of town to participate in the Bob Jones University High School Festival, which is the Arts, and Theater, and all that competition. So before they left they did all their work and uploaded (or downloaded) all their work into their drop box. They are away doing their thing, and my son decided to check on his grades and finds that his dropbox is empty. So I contact the teachers and said the drop boxes are empty....  My son's teachers agreed to let the him turn in this assignments late and my daugthters teacher agreed to think about it. (Still they ended up with zeros for several assignments) And what it resulted in was them going from like B students to D students. It is unacceptable because had they had more teacher interaction they would have been A students and if there had not been a software problem, even without teacher interaction, they would have been B (or even C) students. So I have a serious problem with that.

So what are we going to do? We are kinda going to start over.  Yeah, with 5 months to do. So I looked at the other curriculum and I've compared what they have gone over unit-wise with the other curriculums that I normally use, which are Hippocampus.com (my son was taking physics) and for my daughter, Rosetta Stone (she was taking Spanish 2).  So I am going to have them review and take the tests for those and then carry on as if they had always been using these curriculums that I normally use anyway.

So, do I say don't use the Georgia Virtual School?  I wouldn't say that. And actually my son is going to stay in the Financial Math Class and if we are not happy with that grade, I am going to have them do Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace for extra credit, and just add that to his grade.  So I wouldn't say don't use Georgia Virtual school.  I would say use Georgia Virtual School if there is a chance that the child will be going back to school, because they will accept those grades more readily. I'll also say only use Georgia Virtual School if your your child follows traditional school hours. If you have been homeschooling for as long as I have and homeschooling has become and integrated part of your lifestyle and you have your own special cycle and rhythm, chances are, that your child does not keep normal school hours. So if your child does not keep normal school hours, and they don't NEED a public school grading system that's going to be accepted by the public school, I would strongly recommend that you find something else.

OK?  On to happy news.

My son has been accepted by all three colleges he applied to, all with scholarships to all three of those colleges, some better than others. The one he most wanted didn't give as much money as he needed, for us to be able to afford it without hocking the house and closing a retirement account to be able to pay for it.  But we said nothing. We just laid out the numbers in front of him and said, here's how much cash we have for you every year.  The rest will have to be taken out in loans (we also talked about competing for additional scholarships) of some sort, and even if we take out those loans in our name, you are going to have to help pay them back. He opted for the college with the largest scholarship and the one that most closely meet our finances. ... And it's a good college, and it's a Christian college, and they actually have a better reputation in what he wants to take than the college he really wanted, so It's a happy thing and it's all good.  So that's wonderful. I am very excited about the college search being done. (For the first kid anyway).

So, we are about to go into tech week (which I've written about before.)  Tech week is when Drama club takes over our lives. Our houses fall apart from an inability to shop, clean, or do anything else other than drive back and forth to the theater, and watch shows (and work on shows).  It is also a time of great illness, as everyone tend to get sick from the kids all breathing so close to each other and passing that on to their families.  But it is an amazing time to watch these kids get better and better in their acting and theater.  And most of the kids are looking forward to a future in theater including and especially my daughter who plans to go into theater and costuming.

So that's where we are at.  If you have any questions about homeschooling; anything in particular you want to know, go ahead and drop a question.  It helps me have a reason to make a video log because otherwise I just can't think of anything.  I mean, I know what I know, but I don't know what you want to know,

So until next time... thanks.