Facilitator Meeting

Today we had our first meeting with our homeschool facilitator. In my province, we must register with a school board, be it public or private, it's a personal choice. They are responsible for 'supervising' the homeschool process to ensure learning is occurring. It is what it is, we follow the rules.

There are 3 ways to register with the school board.

1 - Aligned - meaning you are following the provincial guidelines to a T meeting all learning outcomes.
2- Blended - meeting provincial guidelines in some subjects and handpicking in other areas.
3- Traditional- parent decides on every aspect of the education, from topics to content.

Many homeschoolers do traditional here. But there is good in all 3 ways.

In fact, I have one of each!

My eldest girl is registered in fully aligned. She is very concerned with getting a provincial diploma to facilitate University application. Also she is just out of school, and prefers sticking with what is most familiar. With her school board, she is actually in a teacher-directed program. This has been wonderful! She is a learning a lot, works well independently. And has some one readily available to answer the questions I can't answer!

The middle one is blended. She is using many of the teacher directed curricula, but has a few she is doing with mom :) Again, she has been in a school until 3/4 of the way through 5th grade, so it is comfortable, the curricula is somewhat familiar. She is also a child that struggles with change. So it seems to be a decent fit for her.

And my baby, who will be 7, is registered, with a different school board, as traditional. When she started at home last spring, we essentially started her grade one over. She hadn't learned a lot in the seven months of school at the ps. So it was easier to just start over and be sure there were no holes, than it was to push and struggle. Isn't that the essence of homeschool? We skimmed what she did know, and studied and learned in areas she needed to learn. We are following a pattern of Classical Education with her. We are covering all of core subjects that is required by the province, however we aren't necessarily covering the content on the same time-line. So, while we aren't aligned, I would estimate that by the end of 6th grade, she'll have covered everything the province required and then some.

Anyway, back on topic..lol. Today we met, dd11's facilitator. I was a little nervous about it, but it was painless. I have experienced that this school board really pushes their teacher-directed program, which is why the littlest one isn't with this board. We'll see how it goes.

The lady was perfectly lovely! She knows why we pulled the girls from school, and is very sensitive about it. She asked dd11 what she was doing with her work. She complimented that she is leaps and bounds ahead of other families, (because mom was technologically savvy) already. She saw where dd was strong in her work, and complimented her. And praised her in areas she's hesitant for getting it done. She had a check list to see what books we were using, asked dd what topics she was doing. She had some forms to dd to use. Reading log, phys ed. log, a few information sheets. It was great. She wasn't demanding of dd11. She didn't intimidate her at all. They even had a discussion on Harry Potter and Star Wars, they were both big fans.

Once she was gone, dd was singing her praises. So with any luck, this is not a super good day for the facilitator, but her usual sweet self and we are off to a fantastic year!

Let the good times roll!