The history

My nephew Connor is 14, entering the 8th grade. In January 2008 he moved in with us to attend the local public school. He and his parents thought he might do a better job if he had a fresh start. I am well aware that we bring ourselves with us, or as we used to say “wherever you go, there you are”. But I am also a firm believer in fresh starts. 

He spent the last 2 nine-weeks of the school year with us and did a pretty good job. He passed the 7th grade and did well on the End of Grade exams. We had a lot of fun having him live with us and planned to have him come back for 8th grade. But it wasn’t all that easy. We would struggle with finishing his homework. He is smart but doesn’t slow down to read and answer correctly. Then we would file it away in his notebook so he could hand it in, and I would find out a week later that he had never turned it in. There were several issues.

His old habit had been to stuff all his papers in his locker and ignore them. We got around that by telling his homeroom teacher not to assign him a locker. Now everything stayed in his notebook unless he tossed it in the trash, which happened a few times. If he threw it in the trash here I would find it and smooth it back out. I couldn’t do anything if it was thrown away at school. But even the stuff in his notebook wasn’t always turned in and the teachers weren’t consistent with marking it as reviewed by them so I wouldn’t know if it was ready to file away here at home or still needed to be handed in. I did learn to not throw anything away in case they said it was missing.

There was an online system where I could look for grades. Some teachers were better than others at completing that on time. But eventually I could see what was missing and work with them and Connor to get it turned in. Most of them did state homework assignments on their websites so I could know what he was supposed to be doing even when he hadn’t captured it in his agenda.

The upshot was that his school was a whole lot of work for me. It felt like we were working harder at organizing and fixing issues than at learning. In May I mentioned to a friend that we had joked that we should pay her money to homeschool Connor along with her own kids. That lead to a serious discussion about whether I could homeschool him while I work. By the end of the evening I was convinced it was the way to go. I spent a busy few weeks in May/June looking up information on homeschooling, honestly assessing whether I could do it and whether he could do it, and praying a lot. I mentioned to his father that I would like to homeschool him if Rick didn’t have any issues with it. We agreed to give it a go. I know it will be a lot of work, but I don’t think it can be more work than the effort it took last semester in public school. At least this way I can know he is focusing on learning.

As I started planning I realized this will have to be a longterm effort. I told Connor this isn’t something we do for a year or two and then he finishes at a public school. We’re committed until he graduates from high school in 5 years.

Here we are, four weeks into the school year, and I think we are doing pretty well. It should be an interesting journey.