Our first days in Massachusetts’ new virtual public school

December 16, 2010


Christmas in December!


Look what arrived on Monday:
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Inside these boxes is our new curriculum. We are officially now part of MAVA, the new virtual public school in Massachusetts.

(well, at least the girls are. My son, D, is still a free-flowing, hippy homeschooling kindergartner)

We’ve plunged right in which is why you haven’t seen anything new on this blog all week. Holy crow, there is a lot to figure out, though I’ve had enough people say TAKE IT SLOW that I get it.

Take it slow.

But, ZOMG, look at all of this? I’m part giddy with excitement and faint from fear.
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But thank goodness for my friend Miriam who is a few months ahead in this journey and has answered my desperate, need-an-answer-right-now questions like, CAN WE WRITE IN THESE BOOKS?!?!?!?!?! (her voice-of-reason answer? yes, most of the materials are consumable and here is where you could’ve found out the answer for yourself before you wrung your hands for an hour).

The best was last night when I told her about my hatred of Study Island, a standardized test-prep program, where new math concepts were being thrown at my girls in multiple-question format and threatening to sink our floundering ship. She looked concerned and asked, did they watch the lesson first?

Lesson? There is a lesson? Somehow, without a smirk or an eyeroll, she dragged me over to our friend’s computer and pulled up the program to show me where “Lesson” clearly was stated next to the test area.

So, that has been my week in a nutshell: Moments of Oh My God I Can’t Find Anything How Can They Expect Me To Do This I Don’t Have All The Materials followed by oh. it’s right there.

We’ve also “met” our teacher on the phone and in virtual classrooms, and we all like her. She is thankfully also the same teacher that my friends have, so the kids can “wave” to each other when they are in the same class.

I’ll try to chronicle some of our new homeschooling journey here even though some people may not exactly call this homeschooling. But, to me, this doesn’t feel all that different from what we’ve been doing for the past four years except we have more of a schedule now and some online classes to attend (though almost everything is flexible). I’ll let you know if at some point I really feel like we have entered Public School Land.

Maybe it’s when we get the School Lunch requirements. Heh.
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Filed Under: Fairly Odd Kids, Fairly Odd Me, Homeschooling, MAVA 11 Comments

Wordless Wednesday: Leaping

November 4, 2010

We’ve submitted our application:

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I’ll know in a short while if we will be public-school-sanctioned homeschoolers. Or virtual schoolers. Or oh-my-goodness-what-have-we-done-and-do-you-really-need-our-immunization-records-you-do-realize-you-can’t-catch-anything-through-the-computer schoolers.

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Filed Under: Homeschooling, MAVA, Wordless Wednesday 8 Comments

When is a homeschooler not a homeschooler?

October 26, 2010

I live in Massachusetts which, in homeschooling terms, is an “approval state”. This means that the calendar year your child turns six, you must send a “Letter of Intent to Homeschool” to your local school department. I then send my Lesson Plan for the year to the school district and, at the end of the year, send a Progress Report.

We now have a “new” way of doing things which has some people shook up a bit, while others are breathing a sigh of relief. It is a “Virtual Public School” and the first one just started up in this state this school year.

By joining this Virtual School, I would sign my kids up with the Greenfield (MA) School District which is actually more than two hours away on the other side of the state. My town would send this school a check for the amount in taxes they would use if he/she was in the town’s school system (I’ve read it’s about $3,000 per child, but don’t quote me).

In exchange, I would receive a computer (don’t get too excited; I’ve heard they are a bit old and creaky) and a complete curriculum from K-12. Oh and a teacher would be assigned to my child, and I would no longer call myself teacher but “Learning Coach” (oy, schoolspeak).

The other biggie is that my kids would be required to take the MCAS which is our mandatory standardized achievement tests.

Even with the evil MCAS, I have to admit my interest has been piqued. We now pay $20 a month for one of my children to do two subjects online. I have spent countless dollars on curriculum, some of it which I never use because I don’t understand it, don’t make time for it, or forget I have it (seriously).

But the initial reports I heard about the virtual public school were full of alarming details: Teachers will check your work daily! You can never miss a day! No flexibility! Six hours of busy work a day!!!!! (subtext: Your children will hate you, you will become a frumpy nervous mess and your house will start to smell!)

So, I’ve been asking around, reading the message boards, looking at the website. It’s not like Massachusetts is doing something totally new: My very good friend does a virtual school in California and one of my fave online homeschoolers does it in Canada.

And what I’m hearing right now is pretty interesting. There seems to be some flexibility in curriculum if the school agrees that what you are using meets their standards. You can tweak your schedule around a bit so that you can take a field trip one day, or just have a needed “sanity day”. The teachers are available but not hovering and checking every last thing.

The one thing that irks me is that there seems to be some quibbling over what to call these new Virtual School students. Are they homeschoolers? Public Schoolers? Traitors to the cause?

Really? Give me a break. I don’t care if you teach your kid math by counting the chicken eggs they collect in the morning, or if they run off every Friday night to a paid Russian Math class for two hours, or if they are enrolled in a public school curriculum two hours away: A kid who does most of their work at home, is a homeschooler.

Agree? Disagree? Feel free to discuss, but if you get nasty in the comments, I’m coming after you with my metal ruler. I am still the teacher after all.
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Filed Under: Fairly Odd Me, Homeschooling, MAVA, New England Mamas 36 Comments
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