Who should do a virtual public school?

We lasted in a virtual public school, our state's first, for only eight weeks. It's now been about eight weeks since our decision to quit, and I still get emails from people asking me why we joined, why we quit, and whether or not they should try it.

The "why" anyone does anything is a pretty personal question, but I've thought a lot about this and thought I'd pull together some questions that may be helpful to ask yourself before you sign up for a state-sponsored virtual public school.

* Are you ok with having someone else telling you what to do?

At first, I liked having a teacher oversee our progress thinking it'd feel like having a safety net below us. In short time, though, I felt like I was constantly being watched, constantly being reminded how much more progress we needed to make. I realized that after over four years of DIY homeschooling, the oversight of an outside teacher rubbed me the wrong way--though I think some people would appreciate the accountability this forces on them.

* How many kids are you homeschooling?

This was a biggie for us. If your kids are young, I think MAVA (Massachusetts Virtual Academy) is very, very time consuming for the teaching parent. Between the workload of my two girls who were in the program, it was really hard on my youngest son who was not enrolled. I felt like I told him, "Go play---I'll be there in a minute!" about a hundred times a day. It wasn't fair to him.

* Can your enrolled student/students work independently?

When I published my "why are my kids crying every day?" post to the MAVA message board, I had one woman tell me that things were going wonderfully for her. Turns out, her daughter was in 8th grade and could do almost all of her work on her own. If you have a very dedicated, task-oriented, independent learner, they may really enjoy a virtual school.

* Has your child been in public school before?

The K12 workload (the curriculum used by MAVA) is pretty intense and can take up the majority of the day to complete regularly. A child who has come out of a full-day school environment may not be as affected by this. For my kids who were used to lots of unstructured time, field trips and classes with friends, this longer school day was a real drag.

* Do you want a boxed, soup-to-nuts curriculum? Really?

In hindsight, this is another reason we should never, ever have joined MAVA. The curriculum we have used over the years has always been pieced together to take advantage of each child's learning style and ability. Finding ourselves locked into a single curriculum---even one as strong as K12---would not have suited us in the long run.

I realize eight weeks isn't really long enough to give to a new situation, but I don't regret our decision at all.

Have you considered a virtual public school, or are you enrolled in one? Do you agree with the above or am I missing something?

Closing a door

I wrote this on January 25, to an online message board for MAVA, the virtual school in Massachusetts (sorry for the wonky text--it was a literal cut-and-paste job):

We have almost finished our second month and I'm begin to lose my grip. I can

honestly say that I haven't had a day doing K12 when one of my two kids hasn't

been weeping over their work at one point or another. I am so tired of the

stomping, the whining, the tears----

Here is the thing: They are not strangers to school work. We have always done

sit-down math, history, science, grammar, spelling, It wasn't as scripted as it

is now, but we weren't totally unschool-y. I don't make them do the tedious work

and we skip anything "optional" b/c I'd rather they just go and relax/play.

And don't even get me started on what the heck do I do to keep my 6yo son busy

when I'm locked down in the dining room for the morning and into the afternoon

with the girls.

My kids are generally pretty well behaved and do follow rules. They will do

their work (eventually) but I feel like I'm fighting with them almost all the

time when school is "in session". It's almost like a tag team----one kids will

be a model student while the other is a wreck and then, "POOF!" they switch. I

jokingly said that I'm going to get an ulcer and gray hair from this. Not

jokingly: This isn't fun.

And, I'm no newbie---this is my 5th year homeschooling! When the girls do their

work without complaint, we have no issues with the program at all.

Would love your advice. Is this unique to my household, or are most of you

finding this to be a fight? Do you reward good behavior or punish the bad?

Thanks,

Christina

This, in a nutshell, sums up what life has been like for the past couple of months. (Can you tell how much I wrote this post to myself, as if to pick myself up and cheer myself on?)

What I didn't include in any of my public statements is that my son had started throwing huge angry tantrums daily, my kids were at each other's throats most of the time, and I was barely able to make it through the day without having to go sit in the bathroom to cry and question why I couldn't make this work.

So, this past Friday, I made a decision. We are leaving the virtual school, effective immediately.

We'll take a week off to regroup and go on field trips (heck, we didn't even take off "school vacation week", so I guess we deserve it), and then finish out the school year as regular old homeschoolers.

As soon as I made this decision final in my head, the feeling in our house--in me--changed. I wasn't running a list of what we needed to finish up over the weekend, mentally ticking off all the ways in which we could do better if only we applied ourselves more.

The kids felt the lightness too: That night, D---our little guy---crawled into bed with me and said, I love you, I love you, I love you over and over again, and then wrote John and I notes: "You are the best Daddy in the world", "You are the best Mommy in the world".

I'm not sure what life holds in store for us going forward, but I do know I made the right choice for us right now.

And for everyone who has commented, called, written or even just wished us luck during this decision-making process, thank you, thank you, thank you. I am so fortunate to have you all in my life.

-------------------------------------------------------

While MAVA wasn't right for us, I do hope it succeeds in our state. I plan to post more thoughts about the program specifically in the coming weeks since I think some families may be interested to know if it would work for them.

Homeschooling in a public school world

It's been almost two months since we started with MAVA, the new virtual public school in Massachusetts. The lack of new posts on this blog should be an indication that it is, indeed, kicking my butt.

But, I'm kind of enjoying the butt-kicking, in some weird way. It feels good to have a plan, to check off items as we do them, to track our progress more concretely than we were before.

But, there are definitely growing pains in this new school, both at our home and throughout the program. My girls would rather play than do school (shocking, I know). They complain about how long it takes, forgetting that things move so much quicker if they don't w-h-i-n-e at every step.

And, my poor son. I'm still struggling to keep him busy and learning and engaged while wrapped up with my other two.

Outside of our home, the only other family I knew in real life who was enrolled in MAVA recently quit. The public school's beating drum that says "move forward, move forward" thrown on top of K12's vigorous curriculum (which is, ironically, all about "mastering tasks at your own pace") got to be too much for them.

Aye, there's the rub, as Shakespeare would say.

It's hard to marry the homeschooling lifestyle with the public school mentality. The public school wants us to finish at least 80% of all of our subjects by the end of June, never mind that we joined more than 20% into the school year. Never mind that I was already doing school with the kids in September, October and November, not lying on the couch wondering how they'd get educated.

The public school wants 80% complete, but K12 says "mastery, mastery". So how does one move forward if a child is stuck? How can I spend an extra week on long division when the clock is ticking?

Report cards were just issued that were based solely on what percentage of the program is complete in each subject. I'd say we did fair. Each girl got one "W", or Warning grade. Belly got hers in Art, which is funny given that the girl takes three hours of art classes each week, but alas, her progress in the program lags a bit behind.

Jilly got her "W" in History, a subject we have always kicked ass in up until now. I like the K12 History program, it just gets shuffled aside a little bit in an attempt to get to math-reading-spelling-grammar-french-science-art. But, again, it feels funny to see a "W" in a subject that I've loved enough to do well into the summer each year.

I asked our "teacher" (more on this later), what will happen if we are at, say, 65% at the end of June. Will they kick us out? "No!" she replied quickly, but then admitted she isn't sure what that means for us. I know they want the kids to stay on grade level, but I don't really care if my 4th grader becomes a 5th grader in September, December or March of next year.

I care that my kids learn and understand the work.

I don't want to outright quit in frustration though. I want to see where we end up in June and then take stock in our family life, our homeschooling life and our place in MAVA. Maybe there will be a place for us next September, maybe there won't. But, it's too early to stop now.

Target practice

It's no big secret that I'm not a super-confident homeschooler. Maybe if my kids' orders had been reversed, I'd be different, but I didn't get my early reader/early math lover until my third child, leaving me to believe that I absolutely suck at teaching my own kids.

The truth is, kids learn at different rates, and nothing taught me that with more sweaty palms than my oldest needing until she was about seven years old to read a book. And though I believe that kids learn at different rates, I've always wondered if maybe she just needed a different teacher to get through to her. . .

Hence, one of the reason we DO have another teacher, through our new virtual school.


But, one thing just happened that has given me a huge confidence boost and made me feel even better about our past four years as a homeschooling family: I found out my girls are On Target.


Just last week, they both were required to complete Scantron assessment tests in Reading and Math. After they finished, I sat back and waited to hear the worst: Your Children Have Learned Nothing At Home.


The results came through yesterday and with my husband looking over my shoulder, I nervously read the letter explaining the three segments each childs' score can fall into: At Risk, On Target, and Advanced.


They were On Target, both girls, in Math and Reading in their respective grades!


I can't even tell you how many times I've gone back to look at these scores, making sure my eyes didn't trick me, making sure I was comparing their scores against the right chart. Even in the individual "skills" breakouts, there were no glaring issues to indicate that they are majorly deficient in any area.


So, no extra "classes" or worksheets or worries.

OK, I'll still worry.

But, I feel a heck of a lot better now knowing that I got them this far, and feel relatively confident that I can get them through the next few years with one little step forward at a time.

Our first days in Massachusetts' new virtual public school

Christmas in December!

Look what arrived on Monday:

Inside these boxes is our new curriculum. We are officially now part of MAVA, the new virtual public school in Massachusetts.

(well, at least the girls are. My son, D, is still a free-flowing, hippy homeschooling kindergartner)

We've plunged right in which is why you haven't seen anything new on this blog all week. Holy crow, there is a lot to figure out, though I've had enough people say TAKE IT SLOW that I get it.

Take it slow.

But, ZOMG, look at all of this? I'm part giddy with excitement and faint from fear.

But thank goodness for my friend Miriam who is a few months ahead in this journey and has answered my desperate, need-an-answer-right-now questions like, CAN WE WRITE IN THESE BOOKS?!?!?!?!?! (her voice-of-reason answer? yes, most of the materials are consumable and here is where you could've found out the answer for yourself before you wrung your hands for an hour).

The best was last night when I told her about my hatred of Study Island, a standardized test-prep program, where new math concepts were being thrown at my girls in multiple-question format and threatening to sink our floundering ship. She looked concerned and asked, did they watch the lesson first?

Lesson? There is a lesson? Somehow, without a smirk or an eyeroll, she dragged me over to our friend's computer and pulled up the program to show me where "Lesson" clearly was stated next to the test area.

So, that has been my week in a nutshell: Moments of Oh My God I Can't Find Anything How Can They Expect Me To Do This I Don't Have All The Materials followed by oh. it's right there.

We've also "met" our teacher on the phone and in virtual classrooms, and we all like her. She is thankfully also the same teacher that my friends have, so the kids can "wave" to each other when they are in the same class.

I'll try to chronicle some of our new homeschooling journey here even though some people may not exactly call this homeschooling. But, to me, this doesn't feel all that different from what we've been doing for the past four years except we have more of a schedule now and some online classes to attend (though almost everything is flexible). I'll let you know if at some point I really feel like we have entered Public School Land.

Maybe it's when we get the School Lunch requirements. Heh.

Wordless Wednesday: Leaping

We've submitted our application:

I'll know in a short while if we will be public-school-sanctioned homeschoolers. Or virtual schoolers. Or oh-my-goodness-what-have-we-done-and-do-you-really-need-our-immunization-records-you-do-realize-you-can't-catch-anything-through-the-computer schoolers.

When is a homeschooler not a homeschooler?

I live in Massachusetts which, in homeschooling terms, is an "approval state". This means that the calendar year your child turns six, you must send a "Letter of Intent to Homeschool" to your local school department. I then send my Lesson Plan for the year to the school district and, at the end of the year, send a Progress Report.

We now have a "new" way of doing things which has some people shook up a bit, while others are breathing a sigh of relief. It is a "Virtual Public School" and the first one just started up in this state this school year.

By joining this Virtual School, I would sign my kids up with the Greenfield (MA) School District which is actually more than two hours away on the other side of the state. My town would send this school a check for the amount in taxes they would use if he/she was in the town's school system (I've read it's about $3,000 per child, but don't quote me).

In exchange, I would receive a computer (don't get too excited; I've heard they are a bit old and creaky) and a complete curriculum from K-12. Oh and a teacher would be assigned to my child, and I would no longer call myself teacher but "Learning Coach" (oy, schoolspeak).

The other biggie is that my kids would be required to take the MCAS which is our mandatory standardized achievement tests.

Even with the evil MCAS, I have to admit my interest has been piqued. We now pay $20 a month for one of my children to do two subjects online. I have spent countless dollars on curriculum, some of it which I never use because I don't understand it, don't make time for it, or forget I have it (seriously).

But the initial reports I heard about the virtual public school were full of alarming details: Teachers will check your work daily! You can never miss a day! No flexibility! Six hours of busy work a day!!!!! (subtext: Your children will hate you, you will become a frumpy nervous mess and your house will start to smell!)

So, I've been asking around, reading the message boards, looking at the website. It's not like Massachusetts is doing something totally new: My very good friend does a virtual school in California and one of my fave online homeschoolers does it in Canada.

And what I'm hearing right now is pretty interesting. There seems to be some flexibility in curriculum if the school agrees that what you are using meets their standards. You can tweak your schedule around a bit so that you can take a field trip one day, or just have a needed "sanity day". The teachers are available but not hovering and checking every last thing.

The one thing that irks me is that there seems to be some quibbling over what to call these new Virtual School students. Are they homeschoolers? Public Schoolers? Traitors to the cause?

Really? Give me a break. I don't care if you teach your kid math by counting the chicken eggs they collect in the morning, or if they run off every Friday night to a paid Russian Math class for two hours, or if they are enrolled in a public school curriculum two hours away: A kid who does most of their work at home, is a homeschooler.

Agree? Disagree? Feel free to discuss, but if you get nasty in the comments, I'm coming after you with my metal ruler. I am still the teacher after all.