How it all started…
I had originally started to research in the summer/fall of 2019 homeschool laws and curriculum when one of my nephews was being assigned to do repeat work and sit next to the teacher’s desk. My nephew was apparently too difficult to teach so why bother. They’d rather give him the same work so they don’t have to explain. Another nephew was on the AB Honor Roll, yet couldn’t even make proper sentences, know proper punctuation or do math close to the level he was in.
So when the pandemic hit, we thought it to be safe to pick virtual learning through the school. Test what online public schooling would be like. We were severely disappointed! It was a major struggle, especially with teachers not posting work and getting the boys to understand how to do their work on a computer. What would be a normal school day took all day 😔 It was stressing me out and the kiddos. The tip of the iceberg was when the special education teacher was constantly telling one of the boys, “If you were here you wouldn’t be acting like this.” He doesn’t like cameras or videos. So he wouldn’t talk much or completely shutdown. We tried this for two months. It was time to make a change…
Finally, we got fed up with this Schoology program and teachers that post work either below or above the boys achievement level. Teachers trying to pass by two of them because they’re somewhat difficult to teach. There is no guidance, just here you should already know it type of thing. Trying to teach the boys one thing one day, expecting more similar work the next day and the next day it’s completely different. It’s like their forgetting the steps in between and expecting the kids to know what to do. We can only go so far because certain teachers will only post anything the day of. So there is no way to prepare ahead of time. And that only happens when the teachers remember to post any work.
This virtual learning just isn’t working. Honestly, I was completely shocked at their progress reports. I was dreading it with how much trouble we had. Yes, they made good grades. Those grades are only covering three core subjects though!
So after much consideration and research as of today, October 1st the boys have been formally withdrawn from Hazlewood Elementary School and enrolled into our home-based education school.
Starting Monday, October 5, 2020 the boys will be attending Our Journey of Hope Academy.
Update 2023…
I have explained a little more with this post on why we started.
Homeschool Aunt Chaos 