Teacher = Mom

I have learned in the last 4.5 years with k12 that I am ultimately my child's biggest cheerleader and hardest critic.  I am the one that is in charge of his progress, his daily assignments. I am the teacher for him. the certified professional on the other side of the screen so to speak has 100 other kids to contend with.  I will execute the program to the best of my ability, however that being said.

if I do an assessment orally with my child. then that is the end of it. if I do an assessment as an open book exam with the help of google, everyone is just going to have to trust my judgement on that. I know him best, I know how far I can push him before he stops believing in himself. I know when to back off and he needs a break. that may or may not coincide with what the local, state, or fed's think is appropriate, but hey, they can go sit in on the other 99 kids, and actually teach them.

for this kid, if I say a youtube on the subject is good enough for the day, it is. if I say that the one hour of swimming 5 days a week for 12 weeks counts as the whole year, it does. if passing the spellingcity list is done, the rest of the busy work is not going to be done and that is the end of it.

I go in and I mark done absolutely everything that I feel meets the spirit of the lesson, and that is the end of it. we make 3% progress on paper every week, I do the record keeping on sunday nights, I mark 6 hours of attendance each day and it is never ever 6 hours a day, some days it is 2, some days it is 6, and some days it is 12. it is my judgement call, not the local, state, or feds call.

no one has ever come to my house to 'verify' that we have done XYZ, no one has ever asked for me to fax in a weeks worth of work at the end of the week.  now fortunately we have an electronic sample each week that is just a reporting, not physically done work. it is scores taken from the OLS. We take OLS as the spirit of the objective, not the letter of the law.  As long as he has answered the assessments in one fashion or another, I move on and do not quibble.

I used to WORRY about the benchmarks and state tests, what if. well so what, what if. many kids that never study (his brother) get exemplary without even trying. some kids fail due to test anxiety, it does not measure anything more than the temperature of the day IMO. so no, that is not my final indicator that this program is working. what is?

when we started, my child was 18 months behind in reading ability and 1 year behind in math. today he is 6 years ahead in reading ability and 1 year behind in math.  He is most likely 10 years ahead in science. I fill out the forms each week to stay in compliance, but ultimately my objective was to get the books and 'grades' accredited for those that can not see beyond the nose on their face when it comes to college acceptance. and really nothing more.

this program is excellent for training the newly B&M departed, it is training wheels to the education of our children. if I have a question, I can ask someone here, google it, whatever, so long as I can get the right information.  but ultimately I sign off on everything with my child and I bank and balance the work in OLS to make "them" happy.

for instance. my child working on algebra ever day for 30 days for 2.5 hours a day this summer, so I just stored that time up and progress, and then applied it over the last two weeks, while he is doing what he wants on science and literature.  He reads age appropriate books that are interesting to him, many that are not in OLS, but I mark off the number of chapters in there that correlate by progress, so we 'trade' one item for another. He would much rather read Lord of the Rings than Henry Huggins.

If you really want to take control of your child's education, there is still a way to do that at home. you just have to be proactive. ;)