Not Another Homeschool Blog

This post is not for homeschoolers, perse. It is for everyone!  Here's the thing. Bad things are happening right now, but let's just focus on Covid19 for a minute.  I live in the State of GA and it is turning into quite the virus hot spot right now.  Whether people want to admit it or not, it is more dangerous to be single and mingle, so to speak than it was the whole time we were doing shelter in space.   But let me get to the point.  Why are we sending kids back to school? We closed down pretty quickly last year when teachers started getting sick... immediately. What is going to change there?  In speaking to my teacher friends, I am hearing that they either report to work or they lose their jobs.  I feel like we are playing Roulette here.  Children are virulent. They pass colds and viruses quickly. What happens when teachers get sick and die? Subs?  They don't have insurance. They will die quicker.  So here is my thought, and I re...

When I was pregnant with my second child, first child in my lap, Columbine happened. I assured myself this was a freak incident and I eventually got over it. When my kids were growing up, and if you follow this blog, you know I homeschooled, I would tell myself that my kids were safe from these crazed shooters because I homeschooled... that was of course a lie. Movie theatres, malls, other drivers on the road, they are never truly "safe". Now as a former homeschooling parent who makes costumes for school children, I am worried sick about these beautiful souls and their parents to entrust their kids to a system that is supposed to educated and protect them... And I don't trust that system... at all.

This afternoon, there was another school shooting incident , in the adjoining county from where I live.  Fortunately, the gunman did not succeed at taking any lives, and it appears that his goal was to shoot police officers as they came to protect the children from him. As it is being told on the news, he somehow got into the school and confronted the school secretary with an AK47 and told her to call Channel 2 news.  (he also walked around the school building and fired shots) He relayed to them that he wanted to film as he killed officers. I joked with my brother about the shooter being a punk because after they fired a few shots at him he surrendered.  Meanwhile parents were alerted, and had to pick up their kids at the nearby Walmart parking lot. On Facebook, friend of mine are saying things like "This is why we homeschool".  I definately agree with that sentiment as it definately gave me a sense of relief to know as crazy things happened at the nearby schoo...

I can't seem to get off this subject... of the Connecticut school shootings.  So since my heart is stuck there, I thought I would engage you all to think, think, think.. about ways that schools might be made safer. Mine is in this video. (Looking at the video is hard... there is so much pain in my face... but still, it does not compare.) What is your idea?  What do you think we need to do to make schools safer? FREE HOME EDUCATION WEBSITE ahermitt.com

It will keep them safe from any violence they could encounter in the school, but this kind of violence probably happens more outside the school buildings than within. Read: Homeschooling as a knee-jerk reaction to the Connecticut school shooting FREE HOME EDUCATION WEBSITE ahermitt.com

Someone explain to me how you go into a school and kill children.  Here is my summary of the devastation in Newtown Connecticut.  As of right how, there are still a lot of rumors abound.  The most disturbing of these rumors is that the gunman was the father of a Kindergartener whose intention was to kill his own child (and many others) in retaliation against the other parent.  I don't know if this is true or not. The consensus is that there were two gunmen, one who killed himself and was about 24.  The  other person may have escaped. Hug your kids a little tighter today.  I for one am very glad my very, very big son is home from college today, and my daughter is down the hall from me, safely sprawled across her bed reading.  As for me, my heart is sick and hurting for these innocent souls and their parents. FREE HOME EDUCATION WEBSITE ahermitt.com

I just saw on the news that there was a school bus crash where a car tried to make a left turn in front of a school bus got hit.  The driver and a middle school child where life-flighted to a hospital, and 13 high school bus passengers where brought to the hospital by bus, and the school bus driver was also brought to the hospital. This seems to happen a lot. I spoke to a parent the other day who had a child on a school bus last week that had an accident and the parents were not informed.  They found out through the grape vine.  That parent began homeschooling this past Monday.  That was the last straw in a long list of complaints. Last May 50 or more people were injured on a multiple school bus crash to Six Flags. I know putting your child on the school bus is easier for parents than driving, but it has always made me nervous.  I am glad that we only have to be out and about the same time as the hectic morning commute (another factor) one day a week. ...

My brain can't even process this: Former Miramonte teacher Mark Berndt, 61, who resigned last year amid a school board's firing proceedings, was charged last week with 23 felony counts of lewd acts with pupils, a sheriff's spokesman said Wednesday. He is accused of taking bondage photos of more than two dozen students in his classroom, including some with suspected semen-filled spoons at their mouths. In response, after years of ignoring complaints about this teacher, and a second teacher abusing the same kids, the entire school was emptied and restaffed. What is worse? ~That it happened? ~That it was ignored by the principal and others? ~That a knee-jerk decision was made to yank everyone from the principal to the janitors? ~That parents want their old teachers back? (~that this video is followed by the stupid titillating Valentine's Day commercial suggesting that women will give it up if you buy them flowers) What a big mess.  This is an ar...

I don't feel our local schools (this school is in my general area) are so bad that this could happen to anyone at any moment, but the schools have a reputation of being unable to respond quickly to emergency situations. Just recently, my nephew was there when his friend died in a local school. He may have lived if the people in charge had reacted more quickly and gotten him to a hospital in time. FREE HOME EDUCATION WEBSITE MY BUSINESS WEBSITE

There was a horrible bus accident here in the Atlanta area yesterday.  An incompetent bus driver trainee who already had the parents and kids concerned, flipped a school bus yesterday.  A teenager was crushed under it and died.  Two other kids were badly injured.  As a homeschoolers, I want to think, "I am glad my kids don't ride school buses, so I don't have to worry about that".  But I do.  Anyone with a heart beating in their chest should be concerned about the clear callousness that allowed this tragedy to happen.  The driver had hit a dog just that morning, a student reported.  The dog wasn't even in the street.  This guy could not drive, yet he was handed the lives of our children, and a life was lost. After wanting to know exactly why this guy was driving, I would love to ask why we still don't have sea tbelts on school buses. FREE HOME EDUCATION WEBSITE MY BUSINESS WEBSITE WalletPop Contributor

I am watching a Dr. Phil show that is breaking my heart.  It is about excessive discipline of children in schools. The show started with an a bsurd classroom arrest  where a young woman was treated like a hardened criminal for writing a kind note on her desk with an erasable marker.  I thought that was bad.  But it got much worse.  Children are being sent home  with broken bones, and some are dying due to aggressive discipline measures.  The children who are most abused are the ones who are autistic and non verbal. I try not to say this much, but things like this make me really glad that my kids are homeschooled.  Knowing that the most simple misunderstanding can spiral completely out of control is very unsettling to me as a parent. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Visit My Education Column at Examiner.com Check out FREE HOME EDUCATION WEBSITE for free homeschool links and resources

Net World Daily may not be one of my favorite websites, but they have done the job of compiling the information on sex crimes by female teachers on students over the past three years. A quick count gave me just under 170 teachers committing sex crimes. And this is just women's predators. I dare say this rivals the damage done by Catholic Priests in the 1970's and 1980's. Students from elementary to highschool to special needs were violated. Read more Notes From a Homeschooling Mom Visit Me at the Families.com Homeschool Blog Visit My Education Column at Examiner.com

As I said in my last video, classrooms should have 2 teachers, or parent helpers, or something like that. No teacher should be left alone with students... when they do things like this happen: Brian Havel, 22, was teaching English at the school March 14 when the boy arrived after class started. "In his class, the disciplinary process was X amount of sit-ups or push-ups in a certain amount of time. He either wouldn't or couldn't complete them," Delta interim Police Chief Roger Christian said of the punished student. "The class made a suggestion that if he couldn't finish, we ought to be able to punch him, and (Havel) agreed. So 10 to 15 students got to hit him," Christian said. Read more Teacher who allegedly encouraged boy's beating charged Read more Notes From a Homeschooling Mom Visit Me at the Families.com Homeschool Blog

This happened last week and I am just now getting a whiff of this news. How a child gets raped on the school bus and no one does anything to help... From watching the story, the rape was done in a way that it was hard to detect what was going on? I'm really confused here. And they say we are overprotecting our kids.... should we just hand them over to the school system who does nothing to protect them? Read more Notes From a Homeschooling Mom Visit Free Home Ed. Homeschool For Free!

Ok. The homeschooling part is only an aside... a byproduct of serious problems a school was having with a teacher. This teacher allegedly lost it when she did not get her way. She wanted to teach fifth grade and was turned down, so she began writing death threats on the walls of the school. "Students were pulled out of school by their parents, and some have not returned," Warminster Police Chief Michael Murphy said. "Their parents are home-schooling them." Full story here. Read more Notes From a Homeschooling Mom Visit Free Home Ed. Homeschool For Free!

Local GA highschoolers are being faced with a new danger... MRSA. Just this morning it was reported that there are 5 more cases. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) is a type of staph that is resistant to certain antibiotics. These antibiotics include methicillin and other more common antibiotics such as oxacillin, penicillin and amoxicillin. Staph infections, including MRSA, occur most frequently among persons in hospitals and healthcare facilities (such as nursing homes and dialysis centers) who have weakened immune systems . Now it is spreading through the local schools. Another reason to homeschool? I won't go that far. But I will say that if my kids were in the schools where there were infections they at least homeschool temporarily until I felt confident that the spread of infection was under control. Read more Notes From a Homeschooling Mom

My daughter is middle school age. She takes homeschool classes with other middle school students. She is almost 5 feet tall. She is just over 100 pounds. She still looks like a little girl. She acts like a little girl too. (she is child wearing yellow in the banner). Last week when I took my kids to the doctor and told her I wanted to put off the Cancer immunization until she was older, the doctor informed me that kids start having sex around my daughters age. Now I am hearing that a school in Maine is giving out birth control pills and patches to middle school girls WITHOUT parents knowledge or consent. I look at my daugther and it just doesn't make sense. Now I know that there are girls her age who certainly are more developed than my daughter, but at this age, I believe more effort should be put into monitoring and teaching children than giving out pills. Even if we put the moral ramifications aside... can someone tell me how school can give out birth control to girls without ev...

I am not even going to get into the hostage situation... except this is a lose-lose situation... kids either live in a police state or in constant danger. My concern is that some schools do not allow cell phones. I know I don't send my kids out of the house without them... even to homeschool co-op classes.