Homeschooling question?

Question

My son is 8. He's in the gifted class and he does have a good teacher this year. He won teacher of the year last year. He's also in advanced choir two times a week. Now, the music teacher made my son cry by embrassing him in front of the whole class my son just sat in his chair and cried and the teacher did nothing. I knew someone who worked at this school and said 3-5 th graders were found on campus doing drugs! Most days my boy comes home saying so and so cussed him out. My boy is small for his age and therefore an easy target. I want to take him out of school starting next year but I don't know how you homeschool. Plus with my son being of advanced intelligence I don't know if I'll be able to keep up years from now. He says I am a great teacher, I teach him over the summer so he doeesn't fall behind. Does anyone have any HOMESCHOOL sites? Do you home school? How does it work?? I am in California, in the southern area.

You can't just switch schools here and frankly all the schools here suck. I agree with you about the social skills though. I thought I could take him to some things at the church to interact with children his age.

Unfortantly we cannot switch schools because you have to live in the area here.

Thanks though!

Answer 1

You know in your heart what the right thing to do is--listen to it and not any amount of rationalizing by either side.

If your heart is telling you it's time to pull him from school, then it's time. Since you aren't planning on doing it until this school year is over, you are giving yourself a great start.

I would recommend first of all to find some homeschool groups in your area, or at least websites. They can give you more information about the options there, plus you can get information from those who are homeschooling in California about their experiences with one form or another. If you can meet up with other homeschoolers for park days or other things, you can get a better feel for how it all works.

I would say don't worry about him being really smart and trying to keep up to him. First of all, if he's that smart, he'll end up likely doing the bulk of his stuff on his own and you won't even necessarily need to understand one iota of what he's doing. When I was in jr and sr. high school, the teachers, for the most part, didn't teach me a whole lot more than what I had already learned from the textbooks. It's what the better students tend to do--they learn on their own. Not to mention that there are a multitude of programs out there where other people are essentially in charge of teaching the subject--I'm thinking mainly online programs, but there may be other programs near you where he can go into a group session once a week to get some lessons then does his work on his own for a week, or even just a private tutor situation. There are lots of possibilities, even the possibility of sending him back to school at a later point.

To get started on homeschooling information, I think I'd start here:
http://homeschooling.about.com/About_Homeschooling.htm . As I recommended above, do try to find a homeschool support group in your area and learn about the laws and options where you live. And take nay-sayers opinions with a grain of salt. :)

Answer 2

Its great to see a concerned parent on this forum.
Its sad to hear that your son cried in class and the teacher embarassed him and did little to stop the crying.
As a teacher, I have had discipline kids and its always a crap shoot. I always aim to treat them like adults without personally embarassing or dememaning but I have had kids break down and cry when I have told them to settle down or handed back a test they failed. WHen the kid breaks down like this, I wonder how much pressure they are under: they are either very scared of their parents, or they are VERY dependent on my approval.

There are kids who do drugs at nearly every school (just like real life, there are people who do drugs at work, while driving, while pregnant) The world is full of bullies at every level, learning this is a lesson all by itself.
I know you want the best for your son and you want him to grow up to be a great adult. I don't know about you, but learning to deal with failure and learning to deal with bullies are lessons I learned in public school will I was still a kid. When I reflect on it, that was the best thing, while still in the realtivily safe world of public school I learned valuable life lessons, and was not 'chumped' when I came across the same problem as an adult. Growing up is TOUGH but its unavoidable.
Homeschooling, in this situation, looks like 'cutting and running'. If your son can stand it, try one more year, get him into boy scouts and be a Den Dad. You will learn a lot from each other and the other sons and dads.
God Bless

Answer 3

Here's a great home school.
www.americanschoolofcorr.com
If he's advanced he will be able to pick his own courses. I suggest you put him in college prep. (If he plans on going to college) My friend completed this program,and will be attending Harvard this upcoming year. GOOD LUCK!

PS. The school cost $40.00 a month. The books are mailed to you. He reads the books, completes the exams, and mails them in for grading. There are counselors at the school that he can talk to. Check the site out!

Answer 4

It's really not that hard to homeschool provided you did fairly well in school yourself. You need the right cirriculum and would have to regester with the county in which you live. You can find more info about it at www.vegsource.com/homeschool. There are lots of people there who homeschool and post on the site who can help you better than I can.

Answer 5

Don't listen to people who say he will lose social skills or a social life, my kids have all been homeschooled from 6th grade on and they are just fine, we only have one left who graduates this year. You need to insure that they stay in activities and have friends. We use a charter school as a covering, there are plenty of them out there that have homeschool programs. The one we use, Gorman Learning Center, allows us to actually choose the curriculum we want our child to use. They set up all the lesson plans for us, and we have a facilitator (teacher) who helps us out and checks our students work every month.

Answer 6

You start by picking a curriculum (I.E. Bob Jones, Saxon, Scott
Foresman, sonlight) you can pick and choose from different company's for each subject if you want (History, Math, Language arts/creative writing/writing/english, science) And you just tell your son what to do every day and then you correct it/go over anything he didn't understand. There are a lot of homeschool co-ops and groups many of which do end of the year testing, otherwise your school district can test him. ALL SCHOOL DISTRICTS ARE DIFFERENT, FIND OUT WAY BEFORE YOU START, OURS requires us to send them a letter telling them what curriculum we will use, the year before's test scores, and what grade. I think that's it, I am a homeschooler.

Answer 7

Here are some sites for homeschool. it may work for you.
www.homeschool.com
www.home-school.com
www.hslda.org
www.homeschoolcentral.com
www.homescholads.com, and you can read " Homeschooling the Child with ADD: Your Complete Guide to Successfully Homeschooling the Child with Learning Differences" by Lenore Colacion Hayes.
And you must contact HomeSchool Association of California at: www.hsc.org/
OR at: www.californiahomeschool.net/

Answer 8

You are on a slippery slope. You don't want to teach your kid that when things get tough, run away. You should teach him to have confidence rather than baby him. If kids at his school pick on him, so what? All kids get picked on at school at some point. It is what helps build character. Kids learn a lot from learning to deal with those threats. Running from the problem is going to lead to much greater problems in the future when he has to go to college and has not developed the social skills he needs.
Homeschooling is not always a bad idea, but it sounds like you are wanting to do it for all the wrong reasons.
Don't shelter your kid too much, that is dangerous.

Answer 9

www.ohdela.com


Its the homeschooling Im through, they give you a free computer and supplies, and after a year they give YOU money for extra curriculars... call or visit website for more details on it, and let me know how it goes.

Answer 10

Ask your County Schools System may be the can help.
good luck!