Educating At Home

   The last few months, I've been still dealing with virtual learning. That hasn't been too bad because I've always said eventually I'd homeschool so I've used this as a trial period. I've always stocked up on learning materials and spent a great deal of my downtime on educating my kids. However, I guess I've expected for their formal school years to be equivalent to mine and I've been highly disappointed.  I'm wearing thin with the curriculum of the public school system. I'm tremendously grateful to all the educational professionals that teach children for a living and deal with the ever changing budget cuts. I'm also grateful to the board members that relentlessly tackle difficult decisions relating to children and their parents. This gratefulness doesn't surpass my frustration with the curriculum. Some of the topics are raced over and no homework is assigned nightly. When I was a kid, homework was what helped reinforce the lesson learned that day. Then mathematics is being taught all over the place for my kids. For example, by the time my step daughter learned multiplication, the teacher spent a day on division and moved right along. I know some kids probably learned this quickly, but learners that move a little slower are not going to get everything in one day. On top of that, there are never worksheets being done at home and "electronic"  progress reports are a joke. I wish they'd take a break from the internet and utilize printers and print them off and have parents sign like they use to do. Sometimes the grades aren't put in regularly so you don't accurately know what your child's grades are until report cards come home. The last issue, which is probably the most irritating issue, is parent/teacher conferences are almost extinct. Now, they'd rather email you in a hurry and keep it pushing. I push for these conferences though and email for updates my child. I also try to be attentive to what subjects are worked on so we can go through workbooks at home or watch videos online to help reintroduce topics. I hate to add more to my kids sometimes, but if they are behind then they'll be more worst off when it's time for testing if we don't try to get a more in depth understanding of the subjects. I try to make this fun for them because education is too important to villainize, and I can't afford to fail at building a strong educational foundation for them.