Today our school year is officially over! I am just as relieved as the children are that we are finished! It has been a very stressful year, to say the least. To celebrate, we have been packing up our laptop computers and the printer loaned to us so that we can return them to the school tomorrow. What a year this has been!! It is normal to feel like you have a 'bad day' when you home school, but when every day turns into a battle, it is time to look at what you are doing and seek the Lord's will as to if He would want you to change what you are doing. We have been doing an online public school for the past two years and this year they changed the curriculum that they were using. Although at first we thought it might be ok, as the year progressed we knew that this was no longer going to work for our family.
Anne struggled with math last year. So this year was no exception! In fact, this year was worse! The concepts this year were being taught differently from what she, as well as us, were used to. This made it difficult for us to be able to effectively help her with her class. She felt like giving up because no matter how hard she tried, she would keep getting the answers wrong. The way she was being taught was just way to confusing! With us being at a distance from the school, that made getting personal help that much more difficult.
Before the first semester was over, I noticed that Adia was likely not where she should be in her reading. In her reading, letters would get turned around or mixed up ('saw' became 'was', etc). She struggled with writing and would fight me every time there was a writing assignment. We brought this up to the teacher and she started working with Adia via the internet once a week, but not a whole lot of improvement occurred. The frustrating part for me was that when I would read it to her she would get it, so why couldn't she read it herself. I struggled with knowing if she really couldn't do it or if she just didn't want to do it. In writing, she would be able to tell me a story, and then I would write it down. I would then have her re-copy it, which would take "forever". So I folded the paper to where she could only see one line at a time, and that seemed to help. Looking at paragraphs just overwhelmed her in reading and in writing. She would have amazing ideas in her head, she just couldn't get it down on paper. I felt like such a failure as a teacher!! In math, there would be days when numbers would get turned around and concepts would just be incredibly difficult to be caught. The way she was being taught confused her to where I had to reteach her the "old fashioned" way.
As a result of these difficulties, we began exploring the idea that she might have a form of dyslexia. We have had a few teachers evaluate her and we have another evaluation yet to go with another set of teachers (tomorrow afternoon) to see if indeed this is what we are dealing with. If we are, I am in no way qualified to get her the help she needs! We are also being faced with the decision as to whether or not it would be in Adia's best interest in the long run to repeat 1st grade. :( I never thought that this would be something I as a parent would have to decide for my children, but this year it is becoming a reality that we must face. Please be in prayer as this decision of grade placement will likely take place within the next couple of weeks.
Jonathan seemed to get bored with the curriculum that was used this year and could be stretched further in some of his classes. In reading, however, he is a bit behind. The curriculum change this year, sent us limited physical books for him to read and had most of the reading done online. This I fear, has held him back a bit. So, we have some work to get him caught up as well. Thankfully he seems to catch on pretty quickly!
This brings us to the decision of what we will be doing next year for school. We have submitted applications to two Christian schools in the area. We have received one letter of acceptance from one, and a verbal "we would be a good match" from the other. So, now we are waiting to see what will happen as a result of our application for financial assistance for tuition. Our goal would be to send all three of the children to school, but we definitely need to send the girls as they need the greatest help! If we can not afford to send Jonathan, then we will home school him but use a completely different curriculum to hopefully help him get caught up to where he needs to be in his classes.
We have so much to pray about, so we would appreciate your prayers for us as well as the teachers as they continue to evaluate Adia. We will keep you posted and let you know what the end result is once the evaluations are complete.
Why are we choosing to send them to a Christian school when its so expensive? Why don't we choose the public school route instead? For some of the reasons, we are wanting the children to have the opportunity to have Christian teaching and have a higher chance of making quality Christian friends (I know that there are Christians who attend public school as well). Public school for our family right now is not an option as that is what we are trying to get away from, especially because of the curriculum that the public schools are having to use. There is a place for both kinds of education and both have their benefits. We are just having to choose what we feel like God would want us to have for our family.
