Homeschooling Support Group
This community is dedicated to parents, educators, and students involved with home schooling. Home schooling - also called home education or home school - is the education of children at home, typically by parents or guardians, rather than in a public or private school. If you have chosen to provide education to your children at home, join the group and get support.
I have been homeschooling my son for over a year now. He was in public school and after he was having troule and failing, i went to the school to see what we could do for him to get him back on track. They said that they would send in to get him tested to see if he needed special classes. He ended up failing the 4th grade and had to repeat it. Well after 6 months of waiting he came home with his report card and he was failing the same two subjects again. The next day i started making calls and asking for meetings to get to the bottom of it. When i called the schoolboard to see what was going on, the women on the phone told me to put him on meds, he has ADHD. He had been on meds for a few years and i didnt feel like it was really helping him so i stopped giving it to him. I was so mad that a person that didnt know my child and wasnt a doctor told me to put my child on meds. My family ended up calling the school board super and told him what was said and being done, well not being done. he was not happy about it either. Well in the same time I was looking into some other routs for my child with school. I had found one school that was online where they would send the work for him to do and it was for children that had ADHD but it was just too much money for me to be able to afford. I looked into a local homeschool in my area where he goes once a week to test and they give you the books, they are like workbooks, and they also have tutors onsite to help with math and english. When I went to pull him out of the public school, they finally had gotten the paper for me to sign to give them permission to have him tested. I said nope, you took too long to do your job. The following week he was signed up with the homeschool group. He did good for the most part last year with it. But now this year he ishaving some trouble with math and english again. I am trying to help him the best that I can and i have trouble with english myself. I hae thought about contacting the schools campus in the next town over and see if they could offer any extra help for him or any ideas what could be done to help him. I dont want him to fall behind and have the chance of him getting kicked from the program. He sees the tutors there and sometimes they are able to help him and other times it does nothing for him. Like today he went for his tests and spent almost 2 hours with the tutor for english and still didnt understand want he had to do. I am coming here to see if there are anyone out there that could give me some ideas on what to try or where to look for to get him more help. He is a smart kid, but he just has a hard time with math and english and i dont want to put him back in public school bc they have failed him once already and there is only the one grade school for him to go to in my city without going to another city for school. i just want him to do his best in school and to understand what he is doing so he dont keep falling behind. Any advice or thoughts would be helpful. Thanks.
Sorry to hear your child is having trouble. It can be really hard to homeschool a child in subjects that you also have trouble in.
There are so many things that can affect learning. There are different styles of learning and different styles of teaching. Maybe your son could benefit from a more hands on approach, or something that goes beyond just the words on a page that you get from the workbook approach. Could your son maybe have some other kind of disability (in addition to the ADHD) that could be affecting his learning (maybe an evaluation would help)? Has your son or someone else in your family gone through some kind of difficult situation in the past few years that is spilling over into his school time? (If so, maybe some counseling?)
I'm not in TN, but it sounds like you are homeschooling through some kind of umbrella school. Do they have any suggestions or a different curriculum that might work better for him?? Or, do you have the option to try public school at home through a website like Connections Academy or K12? Lastly, I wonder if there is a homeschooling co-op or homeschooling parents support group in your area where you might meet other parents who you could trade tutoring with (you tutor their kids and yours in the subjects you do well in and they tutor both sets of kids in the subjects they do well in)? Since there are some subjects that are hard for a lot of people that last idea is a little bit of a long shot, and I'm not sure where TN draws the line between teaching and tutoring and what the exact requirements are there so be careful if you try that one.
That's all I can think of at the moment.
I hope you'll find a solution that works for you and your son.
We don't have K12 here and after somethings I have heard from there from a person that I know that has used that program, I wouldn't go there. We don't live in TN, just about 5 minutes over the boarder of TN. There isn't much of choices for schools around here where we live and the part of TN that we are close to I wouldn't even let him go there for school bc I don't even go there alone without my bf with me bc of how bad the area is.
I have thought about looking into seeing maybe the local college around here would know if they have any students that are in the early education program would be willingly to do some tutoring with my child and it go towards part of their class or something.
There has been something that has happened in the last 6 months and I don't know if that has affected him any or not. But I think that I am going to looking to getting him tested to see if he has a learning disability like his younger brother and also have him start therapy and hope that that helps him some too.
The school that he goes to has a campus in Memphis, TN and they have their extended program here in my area, 5 mins from Memphis, tn. I even thought about calling the campus and asking them some for advice or ideas that they may can do that could help him out so that he don't fall behind anymore.