Friday, October 15, 2010

Unschooling to charter high school

My middle daughter,Sarajane, has started her second year of a new charter school, and we just went to a parent-teacher conference. The teacher/crew leader is a brand new teacher and we were talking about how I had homeschooled (unschooling) and told him some of the things we had done through the years. He was really surprised as he was impressed with how well my daughter has been doing in school. I told him how her first year had gone, that she had a difficult time adjusting to a totally new routine having never gone to school before: getting up early, going class to class, etc. and that by the end of the year she was tutoring the other students. I felt the same confidence that I did when this same daughter at five years old, brought out a paper where she had copied the alphabet off of an alphabet poster we had on our wall - having never having talked about writing, maybe we talked about the pictures, but she did it on her own. My oldest daughter had gone to most of kindergarten so this was my first experience with one learning the alphabet on her own. It really does work!

Monday, October 4, 2010

"My friend Mohammed"

This post came on my local homeschool list and I asked for permission to share it. I thought it was wonderful!
" My homeschooled daughter made a decision to go to public school in the tenth grade.
She made many good friends including one of her best friends Mohammed.
The following year the school brought in a Muslim group that's focus is to educate about the difference between Muslims and Jihadists terrorists.
When the presenter asked the audience what is their first thought when they hear Muslim, kids shouted out "9-11" "Al Qaida" "terrorist".
My daughter stood up in front of 800 students and teachers and shouted out " my friend Mohammed!!!!"