I always tell people I was homeschooled for my primary years. If I tell them what I actually did, distance education, people mostly ask whether I was early at starting university.<\/p>\n
Distance education is becoming a lot more popular than when I did it. I started off with a very ancient Mac, and a teleconference with my other 4-6 prep classmates. We had minischools and days out where we saw each other, occasionally your teacher would come to visit you at home (and when I say occasionally, I mean maybe once or twice every second year, depending how far away you lived from the distance education centre).<\/p>\n
I went back to visit my old distance school when I was in grade 10, and was heading through my rebellious, (fake) pierced stage. My teacher there told us about how it was no longer a school for distance isolated kids, it was more for kids with behavioural, health and allergy problems.<\/p>\n
Now, quite a few years later, I believe that distance education is the right thing for KK. I don’t feel confident enough in my teaching abilities to go it alone in home schooling or unschooling practices (I’ll try write a highlight post on this soon) and I wanted the convenience of pre-written work that any adult member of the family could do with KK.<\/p>\n
I don’t feel confident about the local school system being able to fit KK’s educational needs. Not that KK has problems – KK’s relatively smart and highly social. KK’s just a bit different from the other kids, more intense. KK would qualify as gifted, except that there is no sight word recognition reading yet. I was gifted too, and when I went to high school it was the worst possible years of my life.<\/p>\n
Anyway, so distance education could be the solution. We can tailor it to KK’s needs, and work through it flexibly. It’s this flexible part that is so important. DMH and I both have really random shift work schedules, kinda combined with ‘fly in fly out’ (FIFO). For example, I’ve worked straight days Sunday through Saturday lately, but next week I’ll have Tuesday through Thursday off. And DMH has seasonal work in blocks. We need to be able to share time with KK whenever we are home, not just when school isn’t on.<\/p>\n
There’s just one little blip. I appear to lack the patience to teach to someone who has difficulty concentrating and can’t be yelled at to pay attention. I tried it today – kidkid got distracted by the blutack and I yelled. Arg. I get so angry at myself, but it seems like I’m constantly in reactive mode at the moment. I blame work.<\/p>\n
What are your experiences with home schooling and distance education? Positive, negative or neutral? Are we crazy? Actually, don’t answer that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I always tell people I was homeschooled for my primary years. If I tell them what I actually did, distance education, people mostly ask whether…<\/p>\n