The Decision

     From the time my oldest daughter was born, people have asked me if I was going to homeschool her.  It seemed that many people believe the primary reason for becoming a teacher is to get the skills necessary to homeschool your kids.  I became a teacher because I love the teaching, science.  I couldn't imagine sitting on my couch day after day, hour after hour and patiently helping my kid sound out the same word we just sounded out on the previous page.  Was I planning to homeschool? NO!
     Ten years later I am expecting our homeschool curriculum to arrive in the mail tomorrow.  It may appear that I have had a change of heart, but that is not the case.  This path is one of the scariest I have ever walked down in faith.  I fully believe that the public school system in most places can provide students with excellent teachers and provide them to a variety of resources to help students.  When I taught school, I worked through the summer to write curriculum for the school district.  Every year a team of 3-5 teachers for each grade level would work together to evaluate the curriculum and assessments from the previous year and make changes to address the weaknesses.  I know what it takes to have a strong curriculum.  I know what it takes to have an engaging lesson that meets the needs of a variety of learners.  I know how hard it was to do that for a single subject in a single grade.  I know it is not humanly possible for one person to do it for every subject in multiple grades.
     However, we recently moved to Oregon, where the school system is vastly different from Texas.  My kids were in classes of 18 in Texas and each put in classes of 28 here.  The teachers were wonderful in assisting with the transition but with huge classes it is impossible to keep up with the individual needs of students.  My kids were in a gifted program where they were pulled out of class and a G/T teacher supplemented their curriculum.  Here modifications for G/T are left up to the classroom teacher (the one with 28 kids).   Due to shorter student days and a shorter school year, students here attend school 210 few hours per year than their Texas peers, that is an equivalent of 6 weeks.  The tipping point for me was this spring when the district began discussing budget cuts.  For the coming school year they are increasing class sizes, making the music teachers part-time, and eliminating all librarians.  I know enough about teaching to know that the more kids you put in a class the less the students at the top learn.  Instruction is done to those in the middle with tutoring for those that are low and the ones at the top are virtually ignored until they cause enough trouble to be sent out of the room.  Without a librarian, teachers are even further limited in dealing with the needs of diverse learners.  They can't work on special projects in the library or even be sent to check out an extra book.  It is an impossible situation that has lead me to homeschooling.

And so the journey begins...