In Which I Am Simultaneously Excited and Terrified

 Today is the first day of school for my kids. Kittygirl is back in the building for the first time since March 13 2020. Squirrelboy returned in person for the last quarter of last school year, but he's excited to be back and to be starting dual credit classes this semester. When school was ending last year, infection rates for going steadily down and vaccination rates were going steadily up. I had a lot of confidence that, though Covid wouldn't be a thing of the past by the fall, it would only be a minor concern. I even dared hope that masks in school wouldn't be necessary, or at least not for Squirrelboy since all high school students are old enough to be vaccinated.

However, that was not to be. At the same time mask mandates and other emergency orders were lifted, vaccination rates slowed down and case rates began to rise. Here in Kentucky, our case rates are now as high as they were back in January. Squirrelboy, Mr. Engineer, and I were all fully vaccinated by the end of April, but we continued to wear masks in public indoor environments to protect Kittygirl. Most people didn't, and, unsurprisingly, we now have yet another surge in the U.S. I'll breath a bit easier once a vaccine is approved for Kittygirl's age group, hopefully by October at last report. In the meantime, we've sent them back to school with masks and extra distancing and sanitizing in place and we hope and pray that that will be enough to protect them and all the other people in our schools. The fact, for the large majority of kids, in person learning is phenomenally better than virtual learning, and I'm glad Kittygirl is able to start her last year of elementary school in person. I just hope the calculated risk that most schools are taking by offering only in person learning with mitigation strategies pans out.

Speaking of calculated risks, I probably owe readers an update related to my last post. Even though it looked like a spike was beginning by the time Friends for Life Orlando rolled around the second week of July, Kittygirl and I headed to the Coronado Spring resort. We had an amazing time, both at the conference and at the parks. It was especially wonderful to reunite with Kittygirl's diabestie and her family, whom we met at our first conference in 2018. I was a bit nervous at the parks because, despite an official rule that unvaccinated guests should wear masks inside, cast members were not enforcing it, and there were plenty of unmasked kids under twelve indoors. Kittygirl and I wore our masks anytime we were inside or in crowded areas and we stayed safe.

We finished out the summer with a family trip to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. This felt pretty safe because we spent the large majority of our time outside when not in our rented cabin. Highlights including horseback riding, rafting, and multiple moose sightings.

As we move into yet another fall of this pandemic, I'm feeling tired. Not to disparage what people without kids have gone through, but I think this pandemic may be extra tiring for parents. Mr. Engineer and I have spent the past 17 months figuring out how to balance our children's physical health with their mental health. In the very early stages, when little was known about Covid 19, vaccination was a distant dream, and no treatments were available, that meant staying at home basically all the time. As it became clear that masks helped mitigate the spread of the virus, going out occasionally with masks became an option. As the pandemic put more of a strain on our kids' mental health we began to carefully open up our circle. We opened it up even more this summer, while never entirely going back to normal. 

Now that case levels are on the rise again, we have to go back to the drawing board when it comes to deciding how to balance our kids' needs. They're back in school in person because there was no other good choice. Our school did continue to offer a fully virtual academy, but since both kids are in magnet programs that was not a good solution for them. We burned out on virtual church this spring and started attending a church that was worshipping outside. When that church moved back inside in July, we went back to the church we're members of. However, as case numbers have continued to rise and many churches have started requiring masks, our church has not yet made the decision to do that. Looking at calculated risks, there is no reason to keep attending that church when there are options to worship in person at a church that requires masks. That makes our kids mad because they love our church. I'm sure there are others at our church who won't understand our decision because our kids are back in school so we're obviously not isolating. 

However, the fact that our kids are in school in person is a large part of the reason it doesn't make sense to attend worship in person at a church that's not requiring masks. If Kittygirl didn't have diabetes our decision would likely be the same, but that does in fact add an extra layer to our concern.

Pandemics are hard. I hope this is the only one I have to live through. Parenting is hard too. Parenting during a pandemic is extra hard. But I wouldn't trade it for not being a parent if I were given a chance.

In Which Squirrelboy is Nominated for the National Honor Society

 I was pretty much the ideal student all the way through school. I learned to read mostly on my own in kindergarten, even though reading wasn't formally taught until first grade back in the dark ages of the 1980's. I learned easily in the way that schools teach, and I was eager to learn. I was an excellent test taker. I was polite and never disruptive in the classroom. The only negative comments teachers ever had about me were that I could speak up a little bit more than I did. Even though I am certain I have ADHD, my ADHD had no apparent effect on my school performance at any level. I did miss or come late to class a handful of time in college when I was fully in charge of my schedule, but it's not like that's really weird for any college student. My ADHD didn't really become disruptive until I had lives other than mine to be concerned about (ie, until I became a parent).

Squirrelboy's school experience has not quite been the opposite of mine, but it has absolutely been very different. Because he's generally kind and polite (not always to me and Mr. Engineer, but, hey, he's a teenager) he has usually been well liked by his teachers. However, every single academic thing about school has always been hard for him thanks to his dyslexia and ADHD.

In kindergarten, as I've shared before, his teacher assured us for the first half of the year that he'd catch onto reading eventually. She told us it was common for kids, especially boys, to not really understand reading during the fall of kindergarten but suddenly make a big leap forward in the third quarter of the year. Spoiler alert: Squirrelboy never made that leap.

Once we got the official dyslexia diagnosis, it became abundantly clear that learning to read well would never be a process of leaping for him or of "the turning of a key" as is sometimes described. It would be a process of methodical, tiny steps up a steep hill toward the goal. Though there are schools out there that have the resources and the will to teach students with dyslexia in a way that works for their brains, Squirrelboy's school was not one of them. The way the school was teaching reading was never going to work with him.

Even when we came with this evidence in hand, however, Squirrelboy's kindergarten teacher was insistent that the best possible thing for him was to repeat kindergarten. This despite the overwhelming evidence that the way he was being taught was not appropriate for the way his brain worked. She still thought it would be best for him to spend another year being taught the same things in the same way. You know, the things that didn't work for him the first time.

Fortunately, our school system does not under normal circumstances for students to repeat a grade. They leave that choice up to the parents. We were blessed to be well educated, be native speakers of English, not be minorities, and have personal experience with dyslexia through Mr. Engineer. We insisted that Squirrelboy be passed on to first grade and it happened. First grade was a pretty miserable year learning-wise with a lot of tears, but by second grade, thanks to a lot of hours of tutoring outside of school by experts, Squirrelboy was beginning to catch up.

Even when he was mostly caught up, however, learning in the way the school expected was always an uphill battle for Squirrelboy. He worked ten times harder for any A or B he received than the average student. Homeschooling him for middle school provided a three year breather in which we could forget about grades entirely and focus on helping him enjoy learning again.

When he went off to high school, Mr. Engineer and I were nervous. He still had a serious problem paying attention to details, which showed up in his work. He also did not always seem to care about doing his best work. We thought his first semester of high school might need to serve as a wakeup call for him to always pay attention, do his best work, and ask for help when necessary. Since his school requires students to retake core courses if they don't earn an 83% or higher, we thought he might even have to retake one or two classes.

We were wrong. Squirrelboy immediately cared deeply both about his grades and about working hard to do his best work. He came out of the first semester with three A's and two high B's. He finished the second semester with all A's. So far in his sophomore year he has all A's. I would be among the first to tell you that it's not all about grades. Squirrelboy hasn't only earned good grades. He has invested in his learning, worked on becoming more independent, and learned to advocate and stand up for himself when he needs accommodations because of the way his brain works.

Because I was the perfect student, being nominated and then selected for the National Honor Society was not a surprise to me. It was, however, a huge surprise to Squirrelboy last week when he received an email with an invitation to apply to join the National Honor Society. He's been diligently working on the application, making sure it's his best work and represents not only his academic achievement but his service to his community, particularly through Boy Scouts. I have no idea how competitve the process of admission into his school's chapter of the National Honor Society is. Having the opportunity to fill out the application is not a guarantee that he will get in. However, just being nominated is a huge honor and shows just how far he's come. He's striding toward a successful future. I wish his kindergarten teacher could see him now.

In Which Virtual School is Not the Epic Disaster I Feared It Would Be

 When schools were closed here on March 13th, teachers were basically given no notice. The hope was the we would return to school the second week of April after spring break. The district sent home a flyer with suggested activities by grade level, but none of it was required. Kittygirl's teachers sent home their math workbooks and a few other things. Squirrelboy's teachers didn't sent home anything. I actually made my kids do something educational for those first two weeks before spring break, more for my sake than theirs because I didn't want to deal with bored kids all day long. I think most kids played video games for three weeks.

Once remote school, or NTI (nontraditional instruction) as it's called here in Kentucky, did start, it was pretty much a flop. I truly believe the teachers were trying, but they were coming into it with no prep and no training. Kittygirl hated NTI and learned nothing.

As this summer got underway and virus transmission rates went up instead of down, it finally became obvious to the school system that starting school in person was not going to happen. They made a commitment to get Chromebooks for every student in the district (they're still short 10,000, and they started the school year three weeks ago short a lot more because it seems most districts in the nation are ordering Chromebooks right now). They also bought districtwide license for Zoom (which has itself made improvements since the spring) and invested in training the teachers to teach virtually.

We're on day 12 now. It isn't perfect, but it's been a million times better than I thought it would be. One super helpful thing is that I expanded our pandemic bubble to bring in a classmate for Kittygirl. It's a service to her family because both of her parents are working from home and they were going crazy with two kids at home in the spring. It's a service to our family because Kittygirl is more motivated when she has a classmate with her and she has someone to play with on breaks and when she finishes her work. I even got them matching baskets to keep their school supplies in.

They have zoom meetings for most of the morning, starting at 9 and ending at noon, with some breaks in between. Since they attend a Spanish immersion school, they switch off every other day having their primary zoom block with the English teacher or the Spanish teacher. On alternate days they have a shorter half hour zoom with the other teacher. After a break for lunch and recess (the nice playset Mr. Engineer built when Squirrelboy was little is getting more use than it has in years) they have work to do in Google Classroom and/or SeeSaw (another educational platform). They have to spend at least 20 minutes each doing online math and reading, and then they watch a video made by one of the specials teachers and record their own video in response. I also make them read for 20 minutes. All told, they usually about 90 minutes of work in the afternoon, sometimes more if they take forever to to their specials videos. They sometimes to multiple takes because they want them to be perfect. The classmate, whom I have just now decided to name Pandagirl because she's wearing a panda dress today, is picked up at 4pm and they usually have at least an hour after schoolwork is done to play together. Also, every Friday (except today, which they're treating as a Monday because we were off for Labor Day this past Monday) is a catch up day with just one fun zoom meeting, so they normally only have an hour or so of work to finish after that and are done by lunchtime.

I feel like Kittygirl and Pandagirl have a good balance of direct instruction and independent work. They're learning new things and mostly enjoying school. I don't think Squirrelboy's schedule is as well balanced. Normally they have five classes a day. You would think they could just have those five classes every day via Zoom, but for some reason they've pulled together a weird schedule in which there are 3 classes M/W and 2 classes T/TH. T/TH the first class isn't until 11am. Fridays they have a zoom with their advisory class (it might be called homeroom elsewhere) and then a catchup day. On the bright side, I do feel like the content being presented is as good as it was in person last year. However, I don't think there will be nearly enough time for the teachers to present everything and the students to learn everything if they continue meeting only twice a week for all or most of the semester. Since his school covers in a semester what many schools take a year to cover, that means, for example, that his geometry teacher is supposed to cover it all in 30 lessons. Yeah, I'm sure that will be super effective.

My one concern with Kittygirl and Pandagirl is that they're not getting nearly as much Spanish immersion as they get during a normal school year. Their Spanish will definitely not be at the level it would normally be at by the end of the year. I console myself with the fact that every single Spanish immersion student in the district is in the same boat, so future teachers are bound to be understanding. I also don't think there's a way to do it that's significantly better than what they're doing.

A couple months ago I was seriously considering pulling Kittygirl out of school and homeschooling her this year. I know parents who have made the decision to homeschool for the year instead of doing virtual school or risking sending their kids back in person and I fully support that choice. However, I am pleasantly surprised to report that I have never seriously considered homeschool since I saw this fall's version of virtual school in action. It's not perfect, and I still contend that organized unschooling would be a better use of our time and energy this school year, but, given that there was no way the school system was buying into that idea, I'm pleasantly surprised by the outcome so far.

In Which Virtual Is Actually Pretty Good

If you had told me six months ago that my 9 year old would be using Zoom regularly this year I would have believed you. Then the pandemic hit, and most of us started using Zoom or some other video meeting interface pretty often. Our first experiences were kind of mediocre. Her teachers had a weekly class Zoom meeting, but it was poorly attended and not that engaging. Random kids in her grade would have their parents set up a Zoom meeting so that they could talk to their friends. Some parents set up meetings with grand intentions for the kids to speak Spanish with each other, but that never happened. Kittygirl tried one of those meetings, but it was set up by a boy and she was the only girl who joined. She left the meeting after just a few minutes. 

Virtual school as a whole was pretty unimpressive this spring. I don't blame the teachers. This was thrown on them very suddenly. They were provided with no training. They were also told they were not allowed to lower students' grades during the last 9 weeks when we had to go virtual and that they couldn't introduce new content. It was a pretty terrible set of circumstances.

Our first positive virtual experience was with a virtual Cub Scout campout in April. There was a whole schedule of suggested activities with the opportunity to share what you were doing via Facebook, plus Facebook live events where you could interact with others. Frankly, the planning was better than some in person campouts we've attended. We even had a real campfire in the backyard during the closing campfire program.

This summer everything the kids had planned to do was cancelled, but we managed to have some really impressive virtual experiences. We were particularly sad that FFL Orlando, the amazing diabetes conference that we've attended for the last two summers, had to go virtual.this year. However, it was actually done extremely well. They even had virtual versions of the Thursday evening banquet and the Saturday social events. One of the best parts of FFL is connecting with other parents of kids with diabetes and adults living with diabetes, and the organizers did their best to recreate those random connections by having virtual "hallways" - Zoom meetings that you could join at any time  between 8am and 8pm. 

It was disappointing that kid and adult sessions alternated during the virtual conference so I had to find something for Kittygirl to do during my sessions, but I understood practically why they did this. Many families simply don't have enough devices for multiple family members to be on Zoom at the same time.  Both the kid and adult sessions themselves, however, were quite good. I figured the adult sessions, that are often lecture type presentations would be pretty easy to translate to a digital environment, but I doubted the kid sessions would fare as well. To my great surprise, Kittygirl absolutely loved her first year in the Tween group even though it was virtual. They did an amazing number of fun activities along with learning some things about diabetes and meeting some famous people with diabetes. They even made "carb creatures" out of food and showed them off.

FFL was just one of several positive virtual experiences we've had this summer. Kittygirl also did a virtual diabetes camp that was surprisingly good. The week of the virtual FFL conference and for a week after that we were isolating as much as possible so we could safely visit my parents, so we signed each kid up for a week of virtual camp the second week. They were both excellent. 

Squirrelboy did a Cyber Film Camp with the Verdugo Hills BSA council, which is based in California in the heart of the moviemaking industry. He got to learn from professionals who do the kinds of things he hopes to do for a living, and he managed to cooperate with a group of 7 other scouts from 4 different states to make a short film. All the films made by the campers were shown in a film festival this Sunday, and I was really impressed. Squirrelboy's film even won the audience award, which was voted on by the Zoom seminar attendees.

Kittygirl did a virtual camp with Lexington Children's Theater. She at first wasn't excited about the idea, but then I told her it was based on a Percy Jackson book, which she is obsessed with, so she agreed. For three hours every day over Zoom the kids rehearsed a short play and then they presented it via Zoom on Friday. It was kind of surreal to have the kids saying their lines on camera in their homes instead of together on a stage, but it was amazingly good despite that. As a bonus, my in-laws who almost never visit and my brother who lives in Germany were able to join the Zoom meeting and watch Kittygirl's play. That never would have happened if it had been a normal end of camp presentation.

This year has not been what we expected. It looks likely that it will continue like this at least until the spring of 2020. Sometimes this makes me really angry. I'm particularly angry that the government in the U.S. has done a really pathetic job reacting to this pandemic. However, lots of individual organizations have really stepped up and embraced this unusual time. So many new people signed up for the virtual version of FFL that the organizers have committed to having a virtual version even when the in person version is safe again (hopefully that will be 2021, but all bets are off at this point). The Verdugo Hills council is planning to do the Cyber Film Camp again next summer. My husband's company is investigating allowing employees to work from home in come cases long term. I think this pandemic is going to fundamentally change the way we do some things, and in many cases it will be for the better.

These positive experiences are why, even though our spring experience of virtual school was pretty pathetic, I'm cautiously optimistic about what it could look like in the fall. Our district has announced that we will begin two weeks later than originally planned, on August 26, and that school will be virtual only at least until the end of September, at which point local conditions will be reevaluated. If we do go back later in the fall it will be part time to begin with and 1-3 days a week will still be virtual. This time, there has been more time to prepare, it is expected that new content will be presented, and the superintendent says that work will be differentiated. I have a healthy skepticism about how this will go, and am mentally preparing to pull Kittygirl and homeschool her if she's as miserable as she was in the spring, but for the time being I'm giving everyone the benefit of the doubt. Overall, virtual is normally not as good as in person. However, I have experience really well done virtual and really poorly done virtual. Here's hoping that school this fall is closer to the former.

In Which I Propose a Completely Unrealistic Plan for Education During the Pandemic

Back when schools closed in mid March most of us really had no idea what that meant or how long it would last. A tiny part of me hoped the kids would be able to come back before the end of the year, but the more realistic part of me knew they wouldn't be coming back. However, at that point I was still hoping we could have a somewhat normal summer and I was confident kids would be back in school in the fall even if extra precautions needed to be taken, and that that would be the right choice.

Well, if 2020 had gone according to plan my kids would be starting school on August 12th, less than a month from now. That's definitely not happening. The school start has currently been pushed to August 24. The school has yet to release an actual plan for how they're going to do in person school safely during the pandemic. A survey came out a couple weeks ago for parents. A survey went out to staff too. It was supposed to be more comprehensive, but, according to friends of mine who are both parents and staff, it was exactly the same.

The survey proposed three options. All options included school buildings being closed every Friday for deep cleaning.

Option 1: All students (except for those whose families choose 100% distance learning) are at school 4 days a week. Masks are worn at all times (presumably except when eating, but this wasn't addressed).

Option 2: Schools are divided into A and B groups and each group is in the school building 4 days a week alternating weeks.

Option 3: Schools are divided into A and B groups and each group is in the school building alternating days (one M/W and one T/Th).

When I filled out the survey I ranked the options in order 1, 3, 2. Given that the Spanish Immersion at Kittygirl's school and the collaborative educational style at Squirrelboy's school are pretty much impossible to replicate through distance learning I really thought it would be best for those students to be in the building as much as possible, and definitely not just every other week. 

However, the more I've learned about the logistics of opening a school during a pandemic with actively increasing cases the more I think virtual school is the only safe option pandemic-wise. Yes, it pretty much totally sucked in the spring, but, if they have to do it for the whole school year, hopefully it will be better.

That, of course, presents its own problems. How will special needs students be served if everything is virtual? What happens to students who have a personal aid? What happens to students who have a reader due to a visual disability or dyslexia? What happens to English Language Learners? Who is going to make sure they're actually understanding the content? Will gifted students receive additional content during virtual education? Will students receiving remediation in a subject receive that virtually?

Kittygirl's and Squirrelboy's needs are actually served fairly well through virtual education. It's easier for me to handle Kittygirl's diabetes if she's at home learning than if she's at school. Squirrelboy's ADHD is unlikely to impede him when he's working alone in the office downstairs without a single distraction.

It still sucks, mind you, and they're still going to hate if that's the way it ends up going. I'm pretty sure most students will feel that way. And let's be honest, for most students, virtual/distance learning is going to result in a whole lot less learning than in person learning would have.

This leads me to wonder (and here's the completely unrealistic proposal), why don't we just call this school year a wash for traditional learning? The families with parents working from home or one parent not working can just keep their kids home. If they want to teach them traditional academics more power to them. If not, the kids can play outside, read books, draw, play with legos, whatever they want to do. The one think I think would be helpful would be to put strict screentime limits into effect.

What about the kids whose parents have to work outside the home? Perhaps we could open some school buildings and operate them the way emergency childcare centers (which have reportedly been largely successful at warding off outbreaks) have been run. Keep kids in small groups, wear masks inside except when eating, have surfaces cleaned frequently, etc. If accomplishing particular educational tasks isn't  on the agenda, I think this might actually work. Provide a lot of books, have a place to isolate books for a couple days after students read them so that any virus on the surface dies, and you should be good. Also spend as much time outside as possible.

What about teens? In my completely unrealistic plan, high schools would be retooled as teen hangout centers (distanced and with masks of course) that would also offer limited life skills classes. I think even seniors would not be dramatically hurt by spending a year learning life skills instead of traditional academics before entering college.

Is anything like this going to happen? Of course not. And there are probably serious health risks to this plan that I haven't even considered. The fact remains, though, that students, parents, and teachers are all seriously stressed out right now. If the pressure of accomplishing a traditional academic year could be removed while the pandemic is raging I think it would be better for everyone's mental health.

And just because I like including a picture with every post, here's a picture of my cats, who would be quite content if we chose never to leave the house again.

In Which Crisis Schooling Is Not The Same Thing as Homeschooling

So much has changed since I last posted about the coronavirus pandemic. The news changes every single day, it seems. For the record, I am still not any more worried about Kittygirl getting covid-19 than I am about any member of my immediate family. If anything, I’m a little more worried about me or Mr. Engineer getting it. Though neither of us has a chronic health condition, neither of us is in as good of physical shape as Kittygirl, and the fact is there are many more people in their 40’s getting very sick and dying than there are kids.

What we’re mainly focused on right now is working and learning at home. The last day of school for the kids was March 13th. The first announcement was that they would return on April 6th, after spring break. Then that was changed to April 20th. The latest word is that schools in Kentucky are closed at least through May 1st. However, I’ll be shocked if they return to the school building this year. I think our governor just likes to take things in slow steps as opposed to closing schools for the rest of the year in one fell swoop as many other governors have done.

Mr. Engineer began working at home on March 16th, the same day the kids began learning at home. Luckily for him, the project he’s currently working on only required him to bring home a little bit of equipment and would have been done mostly in his office under normal circumstances. His coworkers who were working mainly in the lab had it much harder. He has set up his home office in Squirrelboy’s room, using a table we normally use to serve food when we have a lot of people over for a cookout.

In Kentucky, school systems are allowed to apply to do something called “nontraditional instruction”  (NTI for short) on days when it is not possible to meet in the school building. This means that students are given work online or paper packets to complete so that such days can be counted as school days and don’t need to be made up. Under normal circumstances, this happens just a handful of times a year on snow days.

For whatever reason, our district has never done NTI, which means we sometimes go into June making up snow days. However, when it became clear that schools would need to be closed for an extended period of time, every school district was allowed to apply for emergency NTI status. Since our district had never done NTI before, there was a steep learning curve. On the 13th, all students were sent home with a brochure suggesting “unplugged” learning activities in each subject for their grade level. Some teachers also sent home additional work. Ironically, my third grader brought home quite a bit and my 9th grader was only given a book to read and told to finish an already started project for math.

Officially, the first week of school closure was NTI days and the second week was “snow days.” The third was spring break. Kittygirl had enough A lot of other parents I know (many, but not all, of whom were either working from home or still going into work) were overwhelmed those first two weeks. A lot of memes were passed around social media about homeschool parents suddenly being seen as superheroes or homeschool parents as mafia bosses telling public school parents “Welcome to the family.”

The thing is, though, we weren’t really homeschooling. As a former homeschooler, I can testify that real homeschooling bears little resemblance to suddenly having to educate your child when school is closed due to a global pandemic. Homeschoolers plan out their year ahead of time. They choose the curriculum they use. They are also normally involved in a homeschool community. They often do classes at a homeschool cooperative one or two days a week. They meet other homeschoolers at the park. They go on field trips. Maybe they meet up with another homeschool family to do a science experiment together.

None of these things apply to what public school parents are now being asked to do. We didn’t plan to facilitate our children's learning at home. We, in fact, had almost no warning about it. We’re not choosing what to teach them. And even people who were already homeschooling can no longer gather with other homeschoolers, be it at a coop, at a park, or at someone’s home.

In our case, the first two weeks weren’t too bad. Kittygirl worked on the math packet and read the book she’d been sent home with. Squirrelboy read the book he had been sent home with, worked on his math project, and did a lot more work than he otherwise would have on the three merit badges he has left to earn his eagle rank in Boy Scouts. He also started a series of short films with theme of going outside and being active.

In addition, the kids spent a lot of time outside. I took them several times a week to a park on the other side of town that has mountain biking trails. As you may remember, mountain biking is one of Squirrelboy’s favorite things. Kittygirl was turned off of mountainbiking last summer when Squirrelboy took her on a trail that she wasn’t quite ready for and she fell. However, she decided to give it another try and she loved it.

As I said, the first two weeks weren’t too bad. I imagine they would still have been stressful if I were trying to work from home or if I had to go into work. Since I don’t work for pay right now, I’m able to dedicate a lot of time to the kids. I had actually just started sending off my first novel to agents and started work on my second, but the second can wait, and, if I actually get interest from an agent and need to do some editing on my novel I’ll figure out how to fit it in.

The beauty of the first two weeks was that the kids had minimal work that had been assigned by the school so, even though it wasn’t the same as homeschooling, it had some of the advantages. Kittygirl had time to do fun science experiments and watch educational videos. Squirrelboy had time to make some movies.

The teachers spent those two weeks training to teach via NTI and making plans. This has been the first official week of NTI, and it has been less than smooth. In fact, at times it has been downright torturous. The good news is that Squirrelboy’s school was pretty well positioned to start NTI. Nearly all assignments and teacher communication already came through Canvas, and most assignments were submitted through Canvas. The bad news is, the teachers are mostly assigning the kinds of work they assigned on days when they had a  sub. Squirrelboy generally hated that type of work and was never able to finish it in one class period thanks to his ADHD and dyslexia, so he’s been struggling with it. Kittygirl’s school was using SeeSaw Family for students to share some of their work with their families, so they decided to present NTI work using SeeSaw Classroom. They’re also using the web versions of their Math and Reading programs. There has been a steep learning curve for this. In fact, so many people complained about the math that the teacher suspended its use after Tuesday to reevaluate it and assigned work on IXL. The good news is, IXL is easy to use. The bad news is, Kittygirl hates it.

Gone are the lazy days when the kids could spend most of their time choosing what they learned about. I don’t blame the teachers. They’re doing their best in a bad situation. In many ways this is harder for them than it is for the students. They’re losing what is usually the best part of the year with this class of students. They miss them like crazy. And frequently they’re trying to help their own kids with online learning while doing online teaching.

I’ve seen a lot of complaining on social media about the work kids are being given during this time. I’ve even seen parents say they’re choosing not to have their kids do the work and encouraging others to rebel and declare the school year over or to file as homeschoolers for the remainder of the year and do whatever they want with their kids.

Educationally, that would be totally fine. Yes, the kids will miss some content, but it’s nothing they can’t catch up with when they’re able to return to school. Procedurally, it could be a big mess. Your child could be counted as truant and you could get in trouble. Or if you file as a homeschooler you might have to jump through a lot of hoops to enroll your child back in school in the fall. I know from enrolling Squirrelboy in high school after homeschooling for middle school that it was a tedious and annoying process for which I had to provide a lot of paperwork including a schedule that we didn’t actually follow every day and a transcript for which I had to go back and estimate grades because we didn’t actually assign grades.

We’re now on day 5 of real NTI. For Kittygirl it has gotten steadily better, but some of it is still tedious and feels pretty worthless. She tells me frequently that she wishes we could just go back to doing what we were doing the first two weeks. For Squirrelboy, it remains frustrating and tedious. He’s been able to keep his grades up and complete the work, but he’s basically getting everything he doesn’t like about school and none of what he likes, which is particularly sad for someone like him who had a mediocre experience at best during his public school years before high school.

For those of you who are in the trenches with me helping your kids trudge through their online work or worksheets sent home, I salute you. For those of you who are working on the front lines in healthcare and essential industries and hoping your kids get their work done, you are heroes.  Everyone in the world is going through the same crisis right now, but it doesn’t look the same for everyone. For some people in some places, it’s a hurricane. For others, like my family, it’s more of a gentle rainshower. Yes, it’s annoying we’d rather be going about our normal lives out in the sunshine. However, it’s not a tragedy. Mr. Engineer still has a job, and his company is committed to keeping everyone employed. To do this, they’ve given everyone a 20% pay cut, but this isn’t a financial hardship for us. Though it gives me little time for myself, I have the time and ability to help my kids with their work. The kids miss their activities, but it’s actually been nice to have more time in the evening to go on walks and play games together as a family. None of us have gotten sick, and, if we do, we have good odds because of our ages and good overall health.

Our biggest challenge is slogging through the kids’ work.What we are doing, however, absolutely does not fit the definition of homeschooling. Homeschooling is one of many good ways to educate your kids. Crisis schooling at home, however, is what we have to do right now, but absolutely not an ideal way for kids to be educated long term.

In Which Kittygirl Misses Dance Class Because Her Brother Has ADHD

As I've mentioned before, to my great surprise, Squirrelboy has been thriving in his first year back at public school. I pick him up most days (he can ride a bus, but it involves a transfer and a long wait and his school isn't far from Kittygirl's). Most days he bounds into the van with a smile and a story about something interesting that happened that day.

Today was the kind of day I feared might happen regularly during Squirrelboy's transition to public school. He was practically in tears as he slouched into the van and he declared angrily, "I have a ton of work to do and it's all due tomorrow!"

A ton of work translated as rewriting an essay he thought he had finished (he showed it to his teacher, who said it was week and recommended serious revision), finishing a presentation about Disney music that in theory should have been done in class (his partner didn't do any of the work), making some corrections to the digital poster for his science project, studying for a Civics test, and figuring out what to do about a group project for which one group member kept refusing to do his part and which was due, you guessed it, tomorrow. 

Squirrelboy spent the entire car ride home turning himself into a ball of stress over all the work he had to do. I assured him that, yes, it sounded like a lot of work, but that he had proven himself capable over the semester and that, after a short break to calm himself down, I was sure he could tackle the work. 

We arrived home about 3:15. I had to put dinner together so it could be put in the oven at 6pm and then Kittygirl and I were supposed to leave for her ballet class no later than 4pm. Squirrelboy took his afternoon ADHD meds and then decided he should set right to work (normally he takes a break of 20-30 minutes to let the medication take its full effect).

I sent Kittygirl to her room to do the 20 minutes of reading still needed to finish her reading log for the week, and set about to make cream cheese chicken pinwheels in the kitchen. Squirrelboy kept asking me if I could look at his work and I kept telling him that he'd have to bring the computer into the kitchen (at his school almost all work is done on a school-provided Chromebook). 

I was still working on the pinwheels when Kittygirl finished her reading. She came in to help me in the kitchen and Squirrelboy was struggling to even make a start on the project he was supposed to have finished in class. He practically begged me to come out and help him, but, by the time I finished putting dinner together, it was 3:50 and I wanted to leave for ballet in about 5 minutes.

This is when Kittygirl showed herself to be a good sister (either that or to be tired of having a commitment four afternoons a week). She offered to give up going to ballet class so that I could stay home and help Squirrelboy. I felt kind of bad, but she wasn't grudging about the offer and I knew that Squirrelboy might never finish his work if I weren't sitting by his side. I did consider bringing him to ballet, but the travel time would have cost him an hour of work time.

So I gave Kittygirl permission to watch a video in my room with the door closed and sat down next to Squirrelboy at the makeshift work station he has set up in the living room. It includes a larger monitor and a real keyboard he can attach to his Chromebook.

He was still a ball of stress, and I started by saying a prayer for him to have peace and to be able to look at his work in perspective and do his best. This isn't something I do regularly in my parenting, but I probably should. I then looked at his work with him and typed (which I do much faster than he does) while he worked his way through the assignment. He bounced ideas off of me, but ultimately the work was his.

The "in class" assignment took about an hour. Then Squirrelboy tackled the essay revision, which, in his words, was "easier than I thought it would be." Yet again, he bounced ideas off me and I typed, but the final product was his thoughts and words. That took him about half an hour. He corrected the few minor mistakes in his physics poster in about 15 minutes. He then had me look over an assignment for health which he had forgotten about in the initial stress induced panic (it's not actually due until the end of the day tomorrow). I pointed out some minor grammar and spelling errors, and he fixed them and submitted the assignment early. Finally, Squirrelboy looked at the group project that has been stressing him out. The teacher had extended the deadline out another five days, which means Squirrelboy can talk to him in class tomorrow about the dilemma that he has done his portion and the student who is supposed to do the final edit (the project is a podcast) has not even started and seems to be okay with getting a zero on the assignment.

Squirrelboy then took a break while dinner cooked and studied for Civics after dinner, which only took him about 20 minutes. He's been studying throughout the week for this test and just needed a final perusal of the unit concepts.

I'm really not sure whether I did the right thing by staying home to help Squirrelboy today. In the moment, it certainly seemed like the right thing. Squirrelboy absolutely has the ability to have done all the work by himself without me by his side. The typing would have taken him longer, but I think the work would have been of just as good quality.

What Squirrelboy cannot usually do at this point, however, is talk himself down when his emotions have escalated to the point they had reached today. Though in a very different context, his anger and stress was quite similar to what happened on fall break at the beginning of October (read the post from October 3rd if you haven't and you're curious). 

In terms of teaching my kids independence, as I talked about yesterday, I still haven't figured out the best way to walk the line of helping just enough versus too much when it comes to Squirrelboy and his stress induced near-breakdowns. At some point he needs to learn how to regulate his emotions, deescalate himself (or, better yet, not escalate in the first place), and sit down to accomplish whatever it is he needs to accomplish. 

I see that, but I'm not sure at this point how it is we're going to get there. In the meantime, I now know a lot more about what sets Disney songs apart from pop songs (Disney songs, for instance, normally have many more words and no repeating chorus), so at least I learned something interesting from today's experience :).

In Which My Son Could Have Been Born Into a Different Family

A week ago I posted about how Squirrelboy lost the genetic lottery when it comes to the invisible disabilities he could have inherited. He not only got my ADHD and Mr. Engineer's dyslexia, he got a more severe version of both. However, he's blessed to have won the situational lottery, by having been born to well educated upper middle class white parents who knew how to advocate for him and had the resources to get him the intervention he needed.

I have often wondered what would have happened to Squirrelboy if he had been born into another family. Of course, he couldn't literally have been born into another family, but children with disabilities like his are born into other families every day. Unfortunately, not all of those families have the knowledge, the resources, or the will to get their children the services they need to be successful in life.

While I was homeschooling Squirrelboy I met many families who had pulled their children out of school because the school wasn't serving their learning disabilities well, or, worse yet, was ignoring those disabilities altogether. Many of these parents had made great sacrifices of their time and income in order to give their children an education that would allow them to thrive.

Unfortunately, the majority of children with learning and attention disabilities don't have parents who are able to provide them with an individualized education at home. Most children with learning and attention disabilities are educated in the public system, and a huge percentage of them do no receive the accommodations and services they need.

I'm not blaming the teachers who let these kids fall through the cracks. As I've discussed before, even most reading specialists are not well educated in dyslexia. There are always exceptions, but the large majority of teachers want to see all their students succeed and will everything they have in their toolboxes to make that happen. Unfortunately, their toolboxes may only include a hammer and a Phillips head screwdriver when the tool little Johnny needs is an 1/8 inch Allen wrench.

One of the greatest disservices done to students with disabilities that are not diagnosed before they enter kindergarten is the concept of "waiting to fail." The idea behind this seems good on the surface. Children develop at different rates, and the idea is to wait until the end of second grade to let children catch up before evaluating them for learning disabilities. I'm sure there are a few children for whom this policy works. If a child is bright and has no learning disabilities, but comes into kindergarten with minimal exposure to books and letters, that child will eventually catch up with a good standard education.

However, students with dyslexia will never learn to read well without targeted intervention, and the earlier that intervention begins, the greater the chance of success. Despite evidence of this fact, parents are often told that it's not possible to diagnose dyslexia until 3rd grade.  This is patently untrue, and even the National Institute of Health knows it, but all too many schools don't.
Children only get evaluated earlier if their parents know enough to suspect dyslexia early on and aren't afraid to speak truth to power when it comes to advocating for their children.

Since I'm proficient in Spanish, I was sometimes called upon by Squirrelboy's elementary teachers to work with students from Spanish speaking families who came into the school with little or no knowledge of English. Squirrelboy's school had a strong ESL program and those students got a lot of support and most of them were working at or above grade level in English within a couple of years. All the students I worked with who came into the school in the upper grades could read and write proficiently in Spanish and just needed to transfer those skills.

I wondered what would happen, though, to a student with dyslexia who entered school with limited English proficiency. Chances are that student's struggles would be attributed to lack of English proficiency and a learning disability would not even enter the discussion until late in elementary school, possibly even later than third grade, when evaluations are most often considered. If the student's parents are immigrants with limited English proficiency and no understanding of the public school system and their rights to advocate for their child, that child would experience significant failure before any attempt at intervention began. All too often these are the kids who develop serious behavior problems and drop out of school as soon as they can.

This is much less common, but kids with invisible disabilities can also be held back by their parents. Homeschooling parents can fool themselves into thinking that their children will read "when they're ready", and continue to pursue a standard education with accommodations because they have an idea that having a label will hurt their child in the future. I have a friend who taught for a time at at Christian high school that admitted quite a few students who had been homeschooled through 8th grade. She told me about a few students she had who showed every sign of dyslexia, but who had never received any intervention because their parents did not want them to be labeled. These students struggled greatly at this rigorous high school, but their parents continued to believe that a label would be more damaging to them than failure.

My dream is for dyslexia, ADHD, and other invisible disabilities to be destigmatized so that parents are not afraid to seek out labels for their kids if they show signs of these disabilities. The second part of the dream is for public school teachers and administrators to be thoroughly educated in these disabilities and others and to begin identification and intervention as early as possible, allowing all of their students to succeed instead of waiting for some to fail.

Squirrelboy is successful today because he was given the supports and interventions he needed. It breaks my heart that not only is this not true for every child, it is not true for a large percentage of children with the same challenges he has.

In Which I Am Greatly Surprised By My Dyslexic's Favorite High School Class

Due to a combination of dyslexia making reading a writing a lot of work for his brain, ADHD making it difficult for him to a) concentrate in the school environment and b) force himself to be interested in the writing prompts his teachers gave him, Squirrelboy came out of elementary school basically hating to write. In the state writing test he took at the end of fifth grade, he scored on the novice level. That's the lowest score possible. I don't think his teachers were incompetent. The methods they employed worked to teach a majority of their students to write well. However, they did not work for Squirrelboy. Unfortunately, what they did was make him hate writing.

When I started homeschooling Squirrelboy, I approached language arts in general and writing in particular as slowly and gently as a I possibly could. The writing for the first program I tried involved the rewriting of fables, which is a hallmark of a particular stage within classical education, a style that is very popular within Christian homeschool circles in particular. The idea is that the student learns to write by imitating good models. There is nothing wrong with that model for the right student. However, Squirrelboy was not the right student. He hated it with the burning passion of a thousand suns. It turns out they had spent a brief amount of time in fifth grade rewriting fables, and the idea of spending an entire school year rewriting fables was anathema to him. I decided to back off the fable rewriting and just focus on the other parts of the program, which made it at least slightly palatable to him.

I hunted around for another writing program and landed on Susan Wise Bauer's Writing With Skill series. This is another curriculum from the classical education viewpoint, but it approaches the teaching of writing in a very methodical manner, teaching students to notice key details in reading, write summaries (well, actually narrations, but they're similar), make outlines, and eventually write paragraphs about a nonfiction topic. This program didn't create a lot of excitement around writing for Squirrelboy, but he didn't hate it. We used it on and off from the end of 6th grade all the way through the end of 8th grade and he definitely gained some valuable skills from it.

Through a friend and neighbor who has homeschooled all of her kids, most of whom have learning differences, I learned about the Bravewriter program. This is a language arts program started by a homeschooling mom and professional writer that focuses not so much on developing specific skills in a methodical manner as helping a child find their own writing voice and making language arts in general and writing in particular an enjoyable, joyful experience. First I borrowed the basic handbook of the program, The Writer's Jungle, and took Squirrelboy through the process detailed in it. It wasn't a cure all for his hatred of writing, but it was a nice break from the useful but fairly dull skill work in Writing With Skill. Two things we picked up that we used regularly were freewriting, in which Squirrelboy wrote for a set number of minutes about any topic he chose, with no attention needing to be paid to grammar or spelling. This helped him begin to get over his fear of doing writing wrong. Not directly related to writing, we also began to have regular poetry teas, during which we would enjoy a treat together and read poetry to each other. This time gave him an appreciation for a style of writing he previously disliked, though it didn't make him fall in love with writing poetry.

As 8th grade approached, I knew I had to prepare Squirrelboy to write for others. I attempted to do that by a) signing him up for two Bravewriter online classes and b) putting him in a writing class at our homeschool coop. Both were good experiences for him, but the online classes were particularly valuable. Having feedback from a professional writer on what he did right in his writing and how he could improve and having very concrete steps to follow to complete a specific project on a topic he chose was very helpful to him. He came out of 8th grade still not really liking writing, but not hating it, and able to do it competently when he was willing to put the work in.

Even with all the work I did over three years of homeschooling Squirrelboy and in 8th grade in particular, I was still nervous about how his freshman English class would go. He had had fairly limited experience writing for others, and none of that writing had been for a real grade. I was afraid that he would get overwhelmed by the requirements of the class and shut down. To my great astonishment, the exact opposite has happened. English is Squirrelboy's favorite class by far, and, while he's doing fairly well in all his classes, he's doing astonishingly well in English. His teacher has used his work as an example for other students (amazingly, this does not seem to have made the other students hate Squirrelboy). How has this miracle occurred? It's all about a passionate, supportive teacher who drew Squirrelboy in from day one, engaged him, and made him care about doing his best work all the time. That's the thing about people with ADHD. It's not that they can't concentrate. It's that they have a harder time than the average person concentrating on something if they don't care about it. If they're passionate about something, they can, in fact, give even more to it than someone with a typical brain. Squirrelboy's teacher has, to my great astonishment, made him passionate about the writing for his class. The other thing he has done is to choose assignments that are applicable to the real world and that show Squirrelboy and other students that being able to write well is a valuable skill for life. Squirrelboy has spend the past several weeks writing a grant proposal that will actually be presented to a community foundation and may result in funding for a drone for the journalism club (which the amazing English teacher also encouraged Squirrelboy to join).

In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that Squirrelboy's new passion for writing has not transferred to his other classes. He has had to do a decent amount of writing for both Health and Civics, and he has complained loudly about it. However, he has at least done it competently. Perhaps in another year of high school a different teacher will get Squirrelboy excited about their subject and he'll be able to transfer the passion for writing well that his English teacher is fanning into flame.

There are a lot of successful people in this world with ADHD and/or Dyslexia. What most, perhaps even all, of those people have in common is that someone, at some point in their life, believed in them and pushed them to do their best and pursue what they were passionate about, even if it was hard. Mr. Engineer and I have always tried to do that for Squirrelboy, but it's always better for parents to have other adults in their child's life as partners in this effort. Squirrlboy's Freshman English teacher is proving to be a great one.

In Which I Unabashedly Praise My Children's Schools

Yesterday I wrote about the many things I didn't like about Squirrelboy's early public school experience, so it's only fair that I also take some time to write about what I love about the schools my kids are currently attending. Since both of them have/had special events going on today, it's the perfect day to praise them.

Kittygirl attend a Spanish Immersion elementary school. The students have two main teachers, one of whom teaches language arts and social studies in English, and one of whom teachers math, science, and a little Spanish language arts in Spanish. They also three of their specials classes in Spanish: music, art, and library/technology. I was excited about Kittygirl learning Spanish, since that's what the two degrees I don't really use are in, but somehow I didn't realize that, in addition to being immersed in a second language, she'd be immersed in a culturally rich environment.

The majority of the Spanish speaking teachers at her school hail from somewhere in the Spanish speaking world, and they pass on their cultures to their students. In addition to this informal transmission of culture, the whole school studies different cultures of the Spanish speaking world throughout the school year. Last year, each grade gave a presentation about a different Spanish speaking country every month at the monthly assembly. The second graders presented on Equatorial Guinea, the only country in Africa in which Spanish is one of the official languages. Many people don't even know that there IS a country in Africa in which Spanish is spoken.

The school doesn't stop there, however. During Hispanic Heritage month (September 15 - October 15), the school hosts a Parade of Nations, which highlights the many nations of the world with which the students and staff of the school have a connection. Students can sign up to represent a country of their heritage, whether it's a country that they or one or both parents were born in, or a country from which their ancestors emigrated generations ago. In our case, our ancestors hailed from a variety of European nations, but we know what they all are and feel some kind of connection to them. The first year  of the parade, in first grade, Kittygirl represented Lithuania. That's the heritage with which I identify most strongly because it's the origin of my maiden name. In second grade Kittygirl really wanted to represent Sweden because her first name is Swedish, but we don't actually have any ancestors from Sweden. However, Mr. Engineer came to the rescue when he told her about his ancestors from right next door in Norway. This year's parade was today, and Kittygirl proudly represented Poland, which is the land from which our family  name originates. I always get a little teary eyed watching countries from all over the world (all continents except Antarctica and Australia were represented this year) being represented by these students and staff. There's a lot of division in our nation right now, and many people are suspicious of those who are different from them in some way. Watching this celebration of the diversity within a united, loving school community is a rare and precious thing.

Even outside of special events, I've been pleased so often with Kittygirl's school. As I mentioned yesterday, the school staff stepped up after her T1D diagnosis. I'm never nervous about sending her to school or worried that the staff will encounter something they can't handle. I have encountered so many parents who have experienced pushback when they asked that their child's medical needs be accommodated in school, I know that this kind of relationship with a school is not something to take for granted. In addition, every teacher I have encountered at her school seems to really love what they're doing and care about the kids and the mission of the school. Teachers are underpaid and underappreciated. This can at times lead to teachers who are just putting in their time until they retire or find another job. Thankfully, there are no teachers like that at Kittygirl's school.

Squirrelboy has only been at his new high school for 9 weeks so far, but I'm also incredibly pleased with it. He has commented that all of his teachers seem to love their jobs. We have also had personal experience, thanks to a stressful incident of mistaken identity last week, with how much the administrators care about the students and the effort they put into getting to know them. Squirrelboy's English teacher alone, however, might make sending him back to school worth it. As you might imagine, English has never been a favorite subject of Squirrelboys, what with the combination of his dyslexia and his ADHD. It was like pulling teeth to get him to write and to read literature when I was homeschooling him. However, his teacher has gotten him excited about learning how to communicate well, even though that includes writing. If I could have personally created an English teacher to help Squirrelboy thrive I would have created someone almost exactly like this man. He share Squirrelboy's passion of mountain biking, he does web design on the side, and he's also very interested in photography and videography, which are Squirrelboy's two main passions aside from biking at the moment. The first day of school, he told the students the story of how he left a corporate job and took a 60% pay cut to become a teacher. He's clearly passionate about his job and about helping students succeed.

Said amazing English teacher invited Squirrelboy to join the radio and journalism club, of which he is the adviser. Through that, Squirrelboy was given the opportunity to be the producer for the school news show. Since he's interested in pursuing such a job professionally, it's a perfect way for him to experience some of the things such a job entails before he makes any serious choices about his future.

Today, Squirrelboy is on the videography team covering his school's participation in the climate strike. Though most climate strikes were held a week ago, apparently this whole week has been designated at Climate Strike Week, and Squirrelboy's school decided to offer the students a chance to participate today. They aren't forcing the students to participate, of course. Those who don't choose to participate will have a supervised study hall at school, but the majority of both staff and students have chosen to participate. As I write this, they're out on a major road near their school holding signs about climate change and doing their part to raise awareness of the urgency of this issue.

I could go on about either school, but this is already getting long. Both of my children attend magnet schools, but I know it's not only specialized schools that contain caring, competent, and innovative teachers and staff. My overall experience with the public school system has been mixed, but I'm very thankful I currently have the opportunity to partner with two amazing schools in the education of my children.

In Which I Have a Complicated Relationship with the Public School System

When I was young, idealistic, and childless, I was certain that I would never consider having my children educated anywhere other than the public schools. In principle, I believe very strongly in the American public school system.  Historically speaking, it's a provocative and amazing thing that a nation would provide, free of charge, an education for all the children (both boys and girls) residing within its borders. This even applies to non-citizen children and those without legal residency. It is a revolutionary idea, looking at history, and even many parts of the world today, that, by law, even children with special needs are guaranteed a free and appropriate public education.

Sure, I knew that the system was not problem free. I knew there was a focus on testing that I didn't like. I knew that not all schools were high achieving like the affluent suburban school system from which I graduated.  However, I figured that any minor problems we might encounter could be overcome by good parents who were committed to being involved in their childrens' education. I figured, if my hypothetical children had any problems at all, they would be social, not academic, because I figured my children would be like me - bright but not particularly socially adept.

My rosy view of the public school system was not tested at all by Squirrelboy's first encounter with our local public school. He was behind in speech and qualified first for state provided early intervention and then (starting on his third birthday) public preschool at our local elementary school. He loved every minute of it. His teacher and his speech therapist were both amazing, and I was confident that he would continue to thrive there in kindergarten and beyond.

Then Squirrelboy started kindergarten and it all went downhill. Despite the fact that we had done everything we were supposed to do to build "prereading" skills, he wasn't learning letters at the rate he was expected to, let alone associating them with sounds. I looked up the signs of dyslexia, and he had every single one. I shared my suspicions wit his teacher, but she assured me that he was too young to be diagnosed with dyslexia. She said that for some kids, especially boys, iti just takes a little while for reading to click. She assured me that, after Christmas, a key would turn in his brain and he'd suddenly take off in reading. Even when it didn't happen right after Christmas, his teacher continued to dismiss our concerns. This happened consistently right up until the spring conference, at which she told us that reading just wasn't clicking for Squirrelboy and she thought he would benefit from "an extra year of primary" (eduspeak for repeating kindergarten). It was at that point that we sought and outside evaluation for dyslexia and then started tutoring after school two days a week. We insisted that Squirrelboy be moved on to first grade, not believing that another year of the methods that failed to teach him to read the first time around would miraculously have a different effect the second time.

About a third of the way into first grade I first started looking into homeschooling. Squirrelboy was miserable. Every Sunday at bedtime he would cry because he had to endure another week of school. In addition to not reading at the level he was expected to (despite making steady progress with the tutor), he had a very difficult time living up to the behavior expectations. He was constantly being told to "move his bee down to yellow" for various minor infractions, and it broke his heart that he never got to participate in the special experiences given to students who were easily able to meet the behavior expectations. We brought up with his teacher that we thought he might have ADHD, but, just like with his kindergarten teacher, our concerns were dismissed out of hand. He wasn't excessively disruptive, so surely he couldn't have ADHD. Some kids, especially boys, we were told, just take a little longer to mature. Just give him time, he'll learn to manage his behavior.

Had it been up to me, I would have pulled Squirrelboy out of school to homeschool during, or, at the latest, after first grade, but Mr. Engineer was not on board at the time. He made a reasonable point that it would be difficult to concentrate on homeschool with a toddler underfoot (Kittygirl was one at the time). He is the son of two public school teachers, and his commitment to the public school system was even stronger than mine. So we continued. After first grade, things in improved a bit. Squirrelboy was reading on grade level by third grade and finished the tutoring program by the end of fourth grade. He still had problems focusing and struggled with any subject that involved lots of details, especially math, but his teachers consistently dismissed us when we brought up ADHD as a possibility.

During his 5th grade year we had to make a decision about middle school. We knew we didn't want to send him to our local middle school. It consistently has one of the lowest sets of test scores in the district. While I am among the first  to say that tests don't mean everything, it does mean something if the large majority of the students at a school can't achieve even basic competence on them. The school also has a lot of behavior problems and some of the students are even involved in gangs. Though it would have horrified the young, idealistic version of me who wanted to teach in an inner city school, I knew I could not put my child in that environment. He got a spot at a magnet school. It was better and he might have done okay there, but the strict dress code and strict discipline would have been stifling to him. Mr. Engineer, to my surprise, agreed with my point of view and told me to move forward with plans to homeschool him for middle school.

Homeschool as not all butterflies and roses all the time. After an initial honeymoon period in which Squirrelboy was ready to do anything I said because he was so happy not to be in public middle school we started to butt heads fairly often and there were moments when I seriously wondered if putting him in that school I had so wanted to avoid would really be any worse than the daily torture we were enduring. Things started to improve when we finally decided to have him formally evaluated for ADHD. When he was constantly distracted while sitting in a quiet house at the kitchen table with just me in the room I realized that it had been silly of me to let his teachers push off my suspicions for so many years. To the surprise of no one who knew him well, he was diagnosed with moderate ADHD, combined type. It was quite a journey finding the right medication and the right dosage for him, but, once we did, it was a revelation. I could actually read a page to him without him interrupting me every other sentence. He could read and answer questions in his history book without forgetting the question halfway through his answer. It was amazing.

Homeschool continued to get better in 7th grade when Mr. Engineer took over as math teacher. It turns out that I'm a really pathetic math teacher. The one thing that bothered me about homeschool, in fact, was other homeschoolers. I endured so many conversations about how horrible our local public schools (or just public schools in general) were. Some were from parents who had pulled their children out of school after bad experiences, but other parents had never sent their children to public school. They were just certain that no child could every possibly be decently educated in a public school. Or, at the very least, they MIGHT get an acceptable education, but they would certainly be subject to evil influences and grow up to be horrible people. This was from people from all over the religious spectrum - conservative Christians all the way to avowed Atheists.

I normally kept my mouth shut about the fact that, all the time I was happily homeschooling Squirrelboy, I was also having a great experience as a public school parent. Kittygirl started kindergarten the year Squirrelboy started middle school. Even though she's a very different child and might actually have had a good experience there, I was adamantly opposed to sending her to the elementary school that Squirrelboy attended. After all of his struggles there, the idea of sending another child left a bad taste in my mouth. Happily,  Mr. Engineer was sensitive to my feelings and didn't insist that we send her there. We gave serious consideration to a fairly new private school that was affordable and followed the same education philosophy as her preschool, which we adored. But then we got notice that she had won ah highly coveted lottery spot at the Spanish immersion elementary school.  We didn't immediately  decide to accept it, but, after reflection and (a little bit of) prayer, we decided it couldn't hurt to try kindergarten at the free school that so many people wanted their kids to get into. After all, the private school wasn't going to turn away our money if the Spanish immersion school was a bad fit for Kittygirl and we sought to enroll her there for first grade.

Kittygirl thrived, and continues to thrive, at that school. I was terrified of sending her back after she was diagnosed with T1D during presidents' day weekend of her kindergarten year, but the school stepped up and has provided great care. It's not always the same care I would provide, but she's safe and healthy and doesn't miss out on anything due to her diabetes.

If Squirrelboy had been my only child I might have eventually become one of those homeschooling parents who denigrate the public school system, but the fact is that public school has been nothing but a good experience for my second child.

That catches us up to today, when I've recently laid my homeschooling parent identity aside and Squirrelboy has started high school at another magnet school. He did not want to go back to public school. He grudgingly agreed that the small magnet school would be better than our gigantic local high school if he HAD to go back to school, but he really didn't want to go back. The monday before school started (for some odd reason our school year always starts on a Wednesday) he asked me if we could go shopping - for homeschool curriculum. I was expecting he would have a bumpy transition and his grades might be less than ideal for awhile as he got used to working for someone other than mom and dad. I expected that he would say the first day was tolerable, at best. To my great surprise, he declared the first day "great," and his school experience has remained almost entirely positive. He complains about some assignments and he says Civics class is boring, but overall he's amazingly positive about school. The school was also amazingly receptive to setting up a 504 plan for his ADHD and gave him every single accommodation I asked for.

For the moment, I have a mostly positive feeling about public school. Both kids are in schools that are good places for them, with teachers and staff who love their jobs and do their best to help the kids succeed. However, I'm no longer that idealist 20-something who thought public school was the only acceptable choice for socially conscious parents. Even the best school isn't a good fit for every kid, and, for some kids and families, homeschool or private school is simply a better choice. The American public school system is flawed, yes, but, in the right circumstances, it has a lot of things going for it.