After many years of considering it, I think we are going to take the plunge to home school our ds11 in January.
I will have to fit this in around work, etc., but I think it is doable.
He was called to the principal's office on Friday and told he wrote an essay on his last test that offended the teacher. I asked him what specific statements were offensive, did he use bad words? Did he say the teacher was stupid? Nope, just that the teacher thought it was rude (the principal thought it was too sarcastic) and he said he thought the book was stupid and he didn't like it. I called the principal but have not heard back.
I had already sent the teacher a note about the book being pretty boring for him, she said he was misbehaving -- turns out he was making origami in class to keep himself from misbehaving, and was surprised to find out this was not acceptable. This book is a somewhat depressing coming-of-age book about a young girl. The next book up is a very depressing coming-of-age book about a young girl, during a war. (no, not the classic one you're thinking of).
The teacher has taken this class which is supposed to be his area of greatest strength and is making him feel like a failure; they are supposed to read every evening. If he forgets his book the next day, the table he is at gets punished, and he says 'they all hate me', because he's forgotten his book twice in two months. I was already going to ask the teacher to think of some other way to take points away from ds without making the other kids ostracize him.
She has taken this subject that is supposed to be his area of greatest strength and is making him feel like a failure; he is pretty sensitive to social isolation, and she's making him feel like a complete outcast. He's extremely courteous, she even noted this on his interim report card; he's very much a rule-follower, and she has apparently been asking them to use their 'own voices' in their writing -- well apparently none of this matters, or she is willfully misunderstanding his intentions. What kind of adult takes the writings of an 11 year old boy so personally as to be offended? Surely this isn't the first scathing review of a modern 'classic' that she's read?
Why wouldn't a real principal tell that teacher to get over herself and just address it by speaking to him herself?
Worst case, he was probably kind of snotty in his writing, but he was on the verge of tears in the principal's office and I have finally had it with their lofty speeches about how to get kids excited about school but their actual pettiness and by-the-book bullsh*t.
They've done 1 experiment in science class so far.
They're still working on rounding in math. ROUNDING.
(advanced 6th grade math, mind you)
He's learning how to slice bagels in his technical class. (actually this is probably one of the classes where he's actually learning new stuff)
No chance for foreign language for another 2 years.
I just think we can do much much better.
