SO now what! well, we do what any snowloving family does we play in the snow all winter…. I plucked Ethan right of the education he had/we had known for 11.5 years. Mind you I wasn’t totally convinced of it ever but it worked until it didn’t. My biggest reason for pulling him was that I noticed that he was beginning to feel bad about himself because of ALL of his failing grades. He was kind of sinking. He was questioning his ability to succeed, comparing it to others and I was not going to watch this boy fail. I was going to put him somewhere to succeed.
I didn’t have a total “plan”, my gosh I never really do but I put my intention out there for what I wanted for him, for what I felt would be best and waited. I am not a teacher and I have terrible executive functioning skills but I thought a trip to staples would help us in organizing and doing school at home. Bam that easy, staple will fix it all. I also went to Chariho’s website and printed out all of….? I don’t even remember what it’s called and I can’t find it anymore to be proper about it but basically it was descriptions of every class for every grade and where they should be for the year! I COULD not even read it. It was absolutely a foreign language, maybe if I was part robot! I still tried to go by it and make it work and it was just such a joke for us. I don’t mean it was wrong, bad, useless, or anything negative it works for most and again at times I wish it worked for us but it didn’t and we are not meant for it. Us trying in that way created so much tension, stress, anger, feelings of uselessness and inadequacies. ANd all for what? He knew all the material he knew it so damn well. So why would I continue on a path that was obviously wrong for Ethan not wrong for everyone but wrong for my boy. So after a month or more of trying I decided to go about this in a whole different approach. He was still able to take 1 class as a homeschooled boy and he went once a day everyday to his Marine Tech class. He loved the class and did so well. Sometimes when he spoke about the day I felt like he was the teacher. After struggling at home for a bit we practiced unschooling, let go of all expectations of what we should be doing and just went about our days learning life. All the while looking for other avenues of education. Things were smooth and sailing and I was watching my boy rise back up. One afternoon I was visiting with some of Natalie’s classmates and their families at my neighbors and that was the day Eagle Rock School entered our world and oh what a day it was:)
wishing you all love…talk soon