We homeschooled half the year last year. Working with another family wouldn’t work. Most other homeschoolers here don’t take enough precautions for me.
Q: were the anti-mask shouters actually citizens in your school district? We’ve been getting what I call “gypsies,” roving bands of rabble-rousers.
I have no idea. I saw it on the local news before the Olympics.
Mask mandates at my kids schools. They don’t mind wearing them, but I have trouble understanding them when they are wearing masks and there is background noise, hope that is a me problem and their teachers/friends can hear them ok.
That’s not a ‘you problem’; it’s very common. That’s why, for example, you see sports coaches pull their masks down to tell at/to their players, or politicians wear their masks to the podium but take it off to speak.
Some anti-mask protesters shut down a school board meeting near here a while back (I want to say April or May) and when the police records got released after the police arrested some of the protesters, it turned out none of those arrested lived in the school district that was being protested against and not all of them even had school aged kids.
I know that some school systems have introduced virtual/online schools, operating in addition to the brick-and-mortar schools, for those families that want the option / for those students who did well with the arrangement.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some such institutions available to folks who are out-of-region (albeit presumably subject to tuition).
There are many online programs/courses that homeschoolers use, especially at the high school level. That sounds basically like what you’re describing, Kevin.
How incredibly frustrating. Your school board was invaded by real-life trolls.
I understand that actual parents whose kids will actually be subjected to whatever the school board decides on may have strong opinions, and that might make for contentious school board meetings. But most of them also know people on the other side, which might moderate how they present their views.
I’d be really furious if my school board was rendered unable to function because a bunch of busybodies decided to make a fuss like that.
In a typical year that is probably true, but this year is different. You might have some friends who are feeling the same apprehension you feel, and who would be on the same page with regards to precautions. It might be worth sounding out some friends. A “class” made up of children from three families would have a lot less mixing of exposure than two classes of 25 kids each.
While a lot of the home schooling resources are religious, there are secular resources, too. Some from the crunchy-granola side, and some that started out catering to kids whose parents had jobs in foreign countries or otherwise away from convenient schools.
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Yes we explored lots of options. Some with other friends but I would have been doing most of the administering since I was sahm. 3 kids were plenty of a challenge. Even with twins at the same grade, they were at different places with math & reading.
Last year we homeschooled for half a year and then put the kids back in. RP did not want them to go back. I was worried I wasn’t providing them enough education but all the kids performed well. I was most worried about my 2nd grader because the math curriculum didn’t follow the school’s. Everyday I worried and compared myself to what the school could provide. In the end, none of it mattered. The kids were fine. The upside is that you can accelerate and meet the kid where they’re at. I miss that part… still, school has so much to offer socially.
These are very common homeschool concerns. It’s freeing when you realize homeschool needn’t (and probably shouldn’t) look like public school. Personalized instruction, both in terms of where the kid is at (accelerated/behind) and his/her learning style (eg visual, auditory, kinesthetic) is a huge benefit.
Besides, in 2nd grade, how different could the curriculum be? Addition, subtraction, place values…I expect the kid of 2 actuarials will likely be fine when it comes to math.
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I was vaguely aware of those (my junior high and senior high school experience was frustrating to me, because the schools were “too slow” for my tastes, so personal interest has kept me somewhat aware of development in such things). However, I’m referring to something a little different that seems to have emerged as some jurisdictions work through the implications of education in the pandemic.
Here’s a news article on one example of what I was trying to describe: Collierville Virtual Academy opening in 2021-2022 school year | localmemphis.com
Note that it is a “real school” being incorporated as part of one school district’s set of schools, targeting those local students who did better in a virtual environment, and which will include some provision for extracurricular activities in addition to the academics you’d expect.
I think, but am not certain, that this particular example arises from provisions in Tennessee’s education regs that are obliging school systems to avoid having some students who are virtual/hybrid at schools that are otherwise returning to full in-person instruction, but recognizing that there are some parents/students who wish to remain virtual for other reasons.
There are some obvious similarities to some of the resources that have become available online for homeschoolers. But I think this might be “something else”. It’ll be interesting to see how virtual academies do over the next couple of years.
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Yeah, one of my HS friends had been sending her son (who has some kind of social issue… can’t recall the diagnosis) to online school for years now. So it was just business as usual for him during Covid. That’s got to be better than something the regular schools hastily threw together at the last minute.
My neighbors, who were pretty happy with a fully-on-line program provided by the town, said that when they sent everyone home a year ago, April, the on line learning had been hastily cobbled together and was terrible, but the system has spent time over the summer planning and the intentional on-line school worked well.
Most kids in town did hybrid learning this year, but the town had an optional fully on line track, that my neighbor signed up for. She was extremely unhappy they were going to suddenly, and with little planning, drop everyone back into “in person” classes.
She’s also an epidemiologist, which might color her emotional reactions, but she had some pretty solid comments about her kids’ learning experience.
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School starting in two weeks from today. Glad Ohio isn’t one of the states banning mask mandates.
School openings so far reveal science is right – masking works - CNN
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I read somewhere that Franklin and Delaware Counties have moved to “red.”
There is a bad map there, as it shows total cases and rates therein, and not recent cases, but the counties are colored according to recent cases, I think,
Yes, my company reinstated the mask requirement for in the office when we went red two weeks ago. Still have to go in, though.
Don’t get me started…