Why Are We Homeschooling?

God laughs when you tell him his plans

Well he must think Iʼm hilarious! Homeschooling was not on the agenda for the FraLews. Miss Maʼam actually made it pretty clear at the beginning of the year that she did NOT want to homeschool. We were fine with that plan. We enrolled her in public school, bought the school supplies and said our tearful goodbyes. We were ready and so was she.

What we werenʼt ready for was the horrible communication from the administration. We werenʼt ready for her school to assign 3 different teachers in the first three weeks of school. We werenʼt ready for her to go from a class size of 12 with two teachers in prek to a class size of 25 with one teacher in Kindergarten.

We werenʼt ready for outdated practices and discipline models that were not developmentally appropriate. We werenʼt ready to receive phone calls about our daughter being left in a room by herself for hours. Thatʼs not ʼTime Out.ʼ Itʼs solitary confinement and itʼs not okay. Sheʼs 5.

For the final straw, we werenʼt ready for our daughter to be described as ʼdisrespectful,ʼ we werenʼt ready for the obvious bias shown by the administration, we werenʼt ready for the stereotypes that would be attributed to our daughter, and we werenʼt ready for my husband to be threatened with the police when he called administration out on their disrespectful childish behavior.

We donʼt think our daughter is perfect. No one is. We donʼt expect her to behave like an angel all the time. We do expect her to behave like sheʼs five. We do expect the adults that we are trusting with her care and education to work with us as a team, not actively work against us. We do expect our concerns to be heard and acknowledged.

So, for now this is the best solution. We would rather adjust our schedules and do whatʼs best for our daughter than to leave her in an environment that does not suit her. This isnʼt the way we expected this school year to go, but Iʼve learned to stop making plans. Iʼm starting to think God takes them as a personal challenge to do the opposite.