Well, the reason I haven't posted for ages is because we've been so busy! But now that summer's really upon us with a vengeance and all the school kids are calling my two to "come and hang out!" I figured it's time we had our summer break, too.
They're still timetabled until the end of July, but with very minimal, token work. Kitty will have to keep on at the maths throughout August I'm afraid, as she's too far behind to be able to afford a break. I'll probably also get them to keep up at least one handwriting drill per week, because they do tend to get very sloppy with their presentation if they're let off the hook on that one for too long.
The big decision hanging in the air at the moment is about Kitty returning to school for year 10 and her GCSE's. After a bit of time out from school to regain her confidence, she feels she'd be ready to take the plunge again and it would certainly make my life easier if I didn't have to fund and teach her through that bit of her education. But I've completely lost faith in the English school system, so this decision brings with it another one: whether to move.
I'm putting a lot of thought into the idea of moving to Wales or Scotland, where the system isn't held prisoner by the SATS. It'd be a big deal, because it'd mean leaving behind the life I've spent 13 years building up here, from nothing, to go somewhere I don't know a soul, where I'll be without support. But if it does happen, it'll have to be sometime in the next year, so that Kitty can start her new school in September 2011.
Saturday, 24 July 2010
Friday, 9 April 2010
The Other One
Kitty is my eldest daughter. She's just coming up to 13 as I write. From when she was a toddler, she was always very gregarious and sociable, full of so much confidence that I used to agonise over how to encourage her spirit whilst still letting her know her place. She made friends easily at school and although she struggled with literacy at the beginning, she was always very bright verbally, very adventurous and well co-ordinated physically.
Then she got to about eight years old and suddenly started to have problems with bullies. Two particular bullies at her school, who picked on her, as bullies always do, pretty much at random. To start with, she told them where to go and stood up for herself. But as time went on and the bullies became more devious, often framing her so that she was torn between letting them abuse her and getting into trouble with the teachers. Being a very independent spirit, Kitty struggled through this on her own for quite a while before she told me about it, but when she did I went into the school to try to sort things out.
Well, you know the score... from the word Go, the teachers were all locking their shields together and telling us it was all in our heads. It turned out that the parents of these bullies were volunteer classroom assistants in the school, and it soon became clear that the regular staff were prepared to allow Kitty to live in misery in order to avoid risking the loss of their valued volunteers.
We battled with it until half way through year 6, just four months after I'd taken Sophia out of school. After one extremely dissatisfactory meeting with the headmaster, I said to myself, "Before, I thought this was the only way, but now I know we have a choice: I don't have to keep sending her in there to be abused." So I took her out as well.
In the following six months I discovered that my Kitty was a shadow of her old self: she now walked with a stoop, and spoke very negatively of herself, had no confidence in her abilities and had become extremely reluctant to try anything new, for fear of failure. She was convinced that she was ugly, worthless, and stupid. The merest suggestion of reading and writing would bring on crying fits, during which more shocking details about what she'd had to endure at school were reluctantly revealed. Where I'd thought her to be just a little behind with her literacy, it transpired that she was struggling so much with it that it was severely holding her back in all subjects. And yet, at each parent's evening I'd attended I'd been assured that she was "achieving all targets".
She started secondary school six months later, as we'd planned, hoping for a bright, fresh new start. Sadly, two kids from her old school were in the same class, and they were eager to carry Kitty's baggage from primary school into the new one. Besides that, I was deeply unhappy with the standard and quantity of work that was being done in the school. I struggled to get her the support she needed to improve her literacy, but when tested, the school declared that she was "only" a year and a half behind, and so didn't warrant extra help.
Then some very worrying things started to happen that made me suspect that it was the teachers and not just the kids, who were bullying her. She was suspended from classes one day because a teacher merely "suspected" that she had said "the F word" out loud in class. Not only was this absurd from the point of view that Kitty's the most square kid I've met, but also because the teacher's doubt was over whether she'd said the F word or "foot" - Kitty has a home counties accent, so those two words would not sound alike from her!
No attempts to reason with the head of year did any good. She even tried to bully me when I went in to try and discuss it with her, as well as Kitty's other issues there. She shouted me down, interrupted constantly until I felt compelled to stand up and say firmly to her, "I'm not one of your pupils, Mrs. A." And then, when I expressed that I was unhappy with the outcome of the meeting, she laughingly offered to take me to see the head, in a tone and way that told me "go ahead, it's a racket here, we all stick together so you'll get nothing from him that you didn't get from me".
And all the time, poor Kitty's confidence was being cut to ribbons, and she'd been fragile to begin with. I decided that the negligible educational gain that the place offered, it just wasn't worth the enormous personal cost to both Kitty, myself and all of us as a family. So I took her out permanently. As this had been supposedly the best school in the area, I didn't think it worth bothering to find another for her only to get more of the same, and have kept her out since April 2009.
Interestingly, since that time, another two children from that same year in that same school have been taken out to be home educated by their parents. So we're even more sure than before that it wasn't "just us"!
Then she got to about eight years old and suddenly started to have problems with bullies. Two particular bullies at her school, who picked on her, as bullies always do, pretty much at random. To start with, she told them where to go and stood up for herself. But as time went on and the bullies became more devious, often framing her so that she was torn between letting them abuse her and getting into trouble with the teachers. Being a very independent spirit, Kitty struggled through this on her own for quite a while before she told me about it, but when she did I went into the school to try to sort things out.
Well, you know the score... from the word Go, the teachers were all locking their shields together and telling us it was all in our heads. It turned out that the parents of these bullies were volunteer classroom assistants in the school, and it soon became clear that the regular staff were prepared to allow Kitty to live in misery in order to avoid risking the loss of their valued volunteers.
We battled with it until half way through year 6, just four months after I'd taken Sophia out of school. After one extremely dissatisfactory meeting with the headmaster, I said to myself, "Before, I thought this was the only way, but now I know we have a choice: I don't have to keep sending her in there to be abused." So I took her out as well.
In the following six months I discovered that my Kitty was a shadow of her old self: she now walked with a stoop, and spoke very negatively of herself, had no confidence in her abilities and had become extremely reluctant to try anything new, for fear of failure. She was convinced that she was ugly, worthless, and stupid. The merest suggestion of reading and writing would bring on crying fits, during which more shocking details about what she'd had to endure at school were reluctantly revealed. Where I'd thought her to be just a little behind with her literacy, it transpired that she was struggling so much with it that it was severely holding her back in all subjects. And yet, at each parent's evening I'd attended I'd been assured that she was "achieving all targets".
She started secondary school six months later, as we'd planned, hoping for a bright, fresh new start. Sadly, two kids from her old school were in the same class, and they were eager to carry Kitty's baggage from primary school into the new one. Besides that, I was deeply unhappy with the standard and quantity of work that was being done in the school. I struggled to get her the support she needed to improve her literacy, but when tested, the school declared that she was "only" a year and a half behind, and so didn't warrant extra help.
Then some very worrying things started to happen that made me suspect that it was the teachers and not just the kids, who were bullying her. She was suspended from classes one day because a teacher merely "suspected" that she had said "the F word" out loud in class. Not only was this absurd from the point of view that Kitty's the most square kid I've met, but also because the teacher's doubt was over whether she'd said the F word or "foot" - Kitty has a home counties accent, so those two words would not sound alike from her!
No attempts to reason with the head of year did any good. She even tried to bully me when I went in to try and discuss it with her, as well as Kitty's other issues there. She shouted me down, interrupted constantly until I felt compelled to stand up and say firmly to her, "I'm not one of your pupils, Mrs. A." And then, when I expressed that I was unhappy with the outcome of the meeting, she laughingly offered to take me to see the head, in a tone and way that told me "go ahead, it's a racket here, we all stick together so you'll get nothing from him that you didn't get from me".
And all the time, poor Kitty's confidence was being cut to ribbons, and she'd been fragile to begin with. I decided that the negligible educational gain that the place offered, it just wasn't worth the enormous personal cost to both Kitty, myself and all of us as a family. So I took her out permanently. As this had been supposedly the best school in the area, I didn't think it worth bothering to find another for her only to get more of the same, and have kept her out since April 2009.
Interestingly, since that time, another two children from that same year in that same school have been taken out to be home educated by their parents. So we're even more sure than before that it wasn't "just us"!
Thursday, 8 April 2010
Me!
Questions I'm often asked are: what happened to the kids' mother? and What are your qualifications for teaching them?
The simplest answer to the first is "disappeared", with a tinge of "none of your business" ;) Suffice to say this has been a one parent family since 2003, is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, and the "other parent" hasn't been seen or heard from since 2003.
To the second the answer is twofold: you don't need any qualifications or experience, as there's a wealth of materials and support out there to enable anyone to home educate their kids who wants to, for whatever reason. I haven't personally taken much advantage of this support, except in the form of books generally available in the shops, because I consider myself capable of teaching my own kids up to GCSE level in the general school subjects, having obtained high grades in my own GCSE's and A-levels not so long ago to have forgotten everything just yet.
My main areas of intellectual interest, since a very young age, have been in the humanities, but I'm a bit of a jack of all trades, really (yes - and master of none!). I've taken courses at the OU in the sciences (particularly physics), and through various voluntary and paid work I've gained vocational qualifications such as First Aid, etc.
The two things I consider to be the greatest gains I've got from my own personal study are that, given an excerpt of almost any language in Europe (from any period in history), I can probably work out the jist of its meaning at least or, depending on the language, give a full translation and reply. Although I would only confidently say that I can speak three languages: English, French and German. I can "get by" in many others, though.
The other thing is that I began searching, reading and learning sense at the age of six, to find a strong grasp of the history of my home continent, from prehistoric times to today. By this I mean all sides of that history: economic, geographic, demographic, social, cultural, linguistic, political and natural. I feel that the greatest thing I've taken from all this study is a sense of how and why things happen, and an acceptance of what can and can't be done. It gives me courage to do things that seem difficult or impossible, and to turn away from courses of action that might seem tempting, but which I know are unwise in the long-term.
The simplest answer to the first is "disappeared", with a tinge of "none of your business" ;) Suffice to say this has been a one parent family since 2003, is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, and the "other parent" hasn't been seen or heard from since 2003.
To the second the answer is twofold: you don't need any qualifications or experience, as there's a wealth of materials and support out there to enable anyone to home educate their kids who wants to, for whatever reason. I haven't personally taken much advantage of this support, except in the form of books generally available in the shops, because I consider myself capable of teaching my own kids up to GCSE level in the general school subjects, having obtained high grades in my own GCSE's and A-levels not so long ago to have forgotten everything just yet.
My main areas of intellectual interest, since a very young age, have been in the humanities, but I'm a bit of a jack of all trades, really (yes - and master of none!). I've taken courses at the OU in the sciences (particularly physics), and through various voluntary and paid work I've gained vocational qualifications such as First Aid, etc.
The two things I consider to be the greatest gains I've got from my own personal study are that, given an excerpt of almost any language in Europe (from any period in history), I can probably work out the jist of its meaning at least or, depending on the language, give a full translation and reply. Although I would only confidently say that I can speak three languages: English, French and German. I can "get by" in many others, though.
The other thing is that I began searching, reading and learning sense at the age of six, to find a strong grasp of the history of my home continent, from prehistoric times to today. By this I mean all sides of that history: economic, geographic, demographic, social, cultural, linguistic, political and natural. I feel that the greatest thing I've taken from all this study is a sense of how and why things happen, and an acceptance of what can and can't be done. It gives me courage to do things that seem difficult or impossible, and to turn away from courses of action that might seem tempting, but which I know are unwise in the long-term.
Begin at the beginning
After 16 years on the Internet and one personal blog after another, I've decided to just focus on my life's main work from now on: raising my two kids alone.
I've home educated my youngest daughter, Sophia, since April 2008. Sophia has just turned 11 as I write, and has Asperger Syndrome. Perhaps her greatest curse is that she just copes with it too well for some people to be able to quite comprehend or believe that she actually has it. Friends and family who get to spend a lot of time with her at home soon concede the point, but to a teacher who sees one thirtieth of her in class for a few hours on weekdays, she's neither disruptive, violent nor intellectually backward enough to be worthy of extra support!
After many battles with the local school, I started looking for another school that would be more supportive and sympathetic. All the schools within travelling distance from us were full, but I couldn't in all conscience keep sending her in when it had reached a point where the word "traumatise" was no exaggeration of what the place was doing to her. And by proxy, to us all as a family. So that's when I decided to home educate her.
I only planned for it to be a temporary measure - just until we found a space for her in another school. But as the months went by and I noticed her confidence and curiosity coming back, her whole attitude improving and so many of those behaviours that I'd been told were "her autism" turned out to actually be the fault of the school environment, I became less and less diligent in searching for another school place for her.
After only 2 weeks out of school she completely stopped wetting the bed. Her pickiness with food decreased as well, and she became increasingly relaxed as time went by and it sank in with her that she'd never, ever have to deal with that place again. And so for me as a parent, dealing with her became easier.
I also found that, with my one on one tutelage, she was achieving things way more in line with her high academic abilities, and I could see just how much the school had been holding her back.
Two years on now, and I know that nothing could persuade me to send her back to school. Tomorrow I'll talk about my other daughter, then a little about myself, and then I'll just write about what we do and how it goes. I hope that this blog will be of some use, maybe even inspiration, to other parents who feel they relate to our story on any level.
I've home educated my youngest daughter, Sophia, since April 2008. Sophia has just turned 11 as I write, and has Asperger Syndrome. Perhaps her greatest curse is that she just copes with it too well for some people to be able to quite comprehend or believe that she actually has it. Friends and family who get to spend a lot of time with her at home soon concede the point, but to a teacher who sees one thirtieth of her in class for a few hours on weekdays, she's neither disruptive, violent nor intellectually backward enough to be worthy of extra support!
After many battles with the local school, I started looking for another school that would be more supportive and sympathetic. All the schools within travelling distance from us were full, but I couldn't in all conscience keep sending her in when it had reached a point where the word "traumatise" was no exaggeration of what the place was doing to her. And by proxy, to us all as a family. So that's when I decided to home educate her.
I only planned for it to be a temporary measure - just until we found a space for her in another school. But as the months went by and I noticed her confidence and curiosity coming back, her whole attitude improving and so many of those behaviours that I'd been told were "her autism" turned out to actually be the fault of the school environment, I became less and less diligent in searching for another school place for her.
After only 2 weeks out of school she completely stopped wetting the bed. Her pickiness with food decreased as well, and she became increasingly relaxed as time went by and it sank in with her that she'd never, ever have to deal with that place again. And so for me as a parent, dealing with her became easier.
I also found that, with my one on one tutelage, she was achieving things way more in line with her high academic abilities, and I could see just how much the school had been holding her back.
Two years on now, and I know that nothing could persuade me to send her back to school. Tomorrow I'll talk about my other daughter, then a little about myself, and then I'll just write about what we do and how it goes. I hope that this blog will be of some use, maybe even inspiration, to other parents who feel they relate to our story on any level.
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