Lately a lot of people seem to be making assumptions about what we will do for #3\u2019s\u00a0 schooling next year.\u00a0 The homeschoolers seem to think that this year was a total disaster and those with children in school think we\u2019ll be enrolling everyone next year because it has to have been so much easier.\u00a0 They\u2019re both wrong.<\/p>\n
He\u2019ll be home next year because the whole school system just seems wrong to us.\u00a0 We\u2019re his parents, but are expected to surrender any control of him and\/or his education the moment he sets foot on campus.\u00a0 Let\u2019s just start with the fact that we get no say in which campus he attends.\u00a0 (He\u2019s special ed due to vision issues, so private school is not an option.\u00a0 They don\u2019t have the resources to help him.)\u00a0 There are other schools and other teachers who would have been easier to work with, more eager to help him, but we are required to send him to the school in our neighborhood.\u00a0 He got the teacher to whom he was assigned.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t get to interview her, ask for her credentials, assess her abilities in any way.\u00a0 She gets a paycheck from the school district, so we\u2019re supposed to just accept that as good enough for us.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t allow the neighbor\u2019s son to mow my lawn without asking for references and experience before hiring him, but we\u2019re required to hand our son and his education over to someone we know less that the lawn boy.<\/p>\n
Maybe this makes us control freaks, maybe it means that we\u2019re overbearing or domineering\u2026but I don\u2019t think so.\u00a0 I think it means that we are parents, that we love our child, that we know his challenges and want the people who work with him to be people we would hire and for them to realize that we don\u2019t want to turn him over to them.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll give you an example\u2026.the other night, I took him out for pizza and met a man while standing in line who has worked with my son at the school.\u00a0 He seemed like a nice guy, but I had no idea who he was.\u00a0 He introduced himself as the guy who pulls my son out of class when he gets distracted and can\u2019t focus on his work.\u00a0 I had no idea this was happening.\u00a0 Let me repeat that\u2026.A man I\u2019ve never met before now gets called in when my son is having a bad day.\u00a0 He removes him from the teachers I know, the place I assume he is.\u00a0 For an undetermined period of time, he calms my child down (I\u2019m not sure what that even means) and then returns him to class\u2026AND NO ONE HAS TO TELL ME ABOUT IT.\u00a0 No phone calls.\u00a0 No notes.\u00a0 Nothing. <\/p>\n
He smiled at my incredulity and said, \u201cHe just has problems focusing sometimes.\u00a0 I help him fix that.\u201d<\/p>\n
I gulped, tried to control my wrath toward the school and system that has broken my trust so many times in the past.\u00a0 \u201cLiterally,\u201d I said, \u201cHe has problems with his eyes.\u00a0 Is that what you mean? His vision gets bad and he needs to rest them so you help him find a quiet place to rest his eyes?\u201d\u00a0 I hope, I hope, I hope\u2026<\/p>\n
He looked a little lost.\u00a0 \u201cHe has eye problems?\u201d<\/p>\n
The stranger-to-me has no idea that my son has Convergence Insufficiency.\u00a0 He has no clue about his problems.\u00a0 As I asked questions, I learned that he takes him to his office and asks questions about his family and tries to find out what\u2019s bothering him.\u00a0 Heaven forbid he actually know something about him first.<\/p>\n
He\u2019ll be home next year, because I\u2019m his mom.\u00a0 His dad and I know what is wrong with him.\u00a0 We aren\u2019t interested in psychobabble to get to the bottom of things, because we know that he has medical issues that effect his scholastic abilities.\u00a0 We also know that he may need help that\u2019s not us.\u00a0 We just want to know who those people are, where they are with our children, what they\u2019re talking about while they\u2019re there, and what qualifies them to be there. We\u2019re bringing him home not because the whole thing has been a complete disaster, but because it could have been and we wouldn\u2019t have known anything about it until it was too late to stop it.\u00a0 We\u2019re his parents, and until we get to be the people in charge of his education in a school setting\u2026.we\u2019ll be keeping him at home.\u00a0 I know other people put their children in schools and they are happy with the results\u2026they\u2019re a lot braver than I am.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lately a lot of people seem to be making assumptions about what we will do for #3\u2019s\u00a0 schooling next year.\u00a0 The homeschoolers seem to think that this year was a total disaster and those with children in school think we\u2019ll be enrolling everyone next year because it has to have been so much easier.\u00a0 They\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n