Ask a (secular) home schooler

[Aroura]

I have read the entire thread, and there are a couple of questions that I have.

The first question is, why did you decide to do the homeschooling in the first place?  I had rather expected that you might answer that in your opening post, but you do not seem to have done so.


The second question is, why are you planning on putting her back into public school by the 5th grade?  Of course, your answer to the first question might automatically answer this one, depending on what it is.

I didn't explain because I didn't want to sounds anti-public school.  It's kind of long and complicated, but I will try to sum up.

In kinder and 1st grade, during parent teacher conferences, and from what I saw while volunteering, she wasn't paying attention all the time to the teacher, or to the other kids when they were forced to get up and "explain their thinking".  The teacher even started to throw some "she might be autistic" thoughts at us.  

There were a LOT of problem kids in these large classes, and their method of dealing with them was ineffectual at best, and created more problem kids at worst.   For instance, I saw a neighbor kid, not a problem child, get labeled as such because he was outspoken to the teacher when he thought she was behaving unfairly.  And she was, in the instance I saw. 

The actual problem kids were sent to the "focus room" where the received cookies and gummy bears and toys if they stopped behaving like little monsters. So the next day,of course, they did it again, so they could go get more cookies and gummy bears.  Honestly, they completely rewarded bad behavior.

Because of the number of children unable to sit still for 5 minutes, or stop interrupting the teacher in some way, the teacher would often spend large amounts of time on one concept, idea, or problem, long after most of the students had "got" it, they would continue teaching the whole class until everyone got it.  Here is where my kid was starting to get labeled as inattentive or autistic.  At first, I went along with it, and told her to pay better attention, and I just volunteered more and helped in the class 3 or 4 days a week.  
For 2 years I did that (I really wanted to support public education).  Finally it was a like a lightbulb went on in my head.  She's just BORED, she already understands this, she's not autistic or unable to focus, she just understood this 2 weeks ago, hell 2 months ago, and they are still teaching it for the benefit of the bottom 10% of the class.  I looked around a saw a lot of kids getting labeled as ADHD or autistic or disruptive, when they were bright kids who were just bored! 

So I took her out before the PS system turned her into a problem child.

I intend to put her back because I don't think all public schools are bad.  I myself attended a good middle school and a great high school.
When my husband finally gets his degree and gets a job, we are going to base where we move largely on the public school ratings in the area.  If we can find a decent school at that time, we will put her back.  But there are a lot of ifs there.  Maybe she won't want to go back, but I think she will, at least to try it.  Because of my disability, I'm not sure I'll be a good teacher through harder subjects in middle school or high school, so essentially part of it is lacking faith in myself. Perhaps that too will have changed by the time we get to that point. 

So we intend to put her back into a good PS, but it might not happen.  It's a wait and see how this goes and that goes sort of thing.