Well, I was initially hesitant to even include this on the website because we've come so far in the last couple of years and many of our concerns at the time have happily become pretty meaningless in the context of our unschooling lifestyle now. But then I figured it may help others (especially those considering unschooling) to read about our school experience and how we came to discover and embrace homeschooling as an option.

I have been writing here and there even before unschooling came along (I find it helps me clarify my thoughts) so I decided to include on this page some writing I did about our situation at various points in time. It may help you see my changing perspective. The hyperlinks below are for convenience only to jump to the various entries on this page. To read all the entries all just keep scrolling!

HRC Submission
Is a piece I wrote to be included in a submission to the Human Rights Commission hearing regarding discrimination in the educational system here in Canada. This was about 4 months after we started homeschooling.

Message Board Intro
Is an introduction I wrote for a message board about 1 year after we started homeschooling.

Email List Intro
Is an introduction I wrote for an email group in Feb 2004, almost 2 years after we started homeschooling.

HRC Submission

Introduction: I wrote this through a gifted message board I participated on at the time - one of the parents was collecting our individual submissions and combining them. This was about 4 months after we found out about homeschooling and decided to bring the kids home. As an aside, while I found the board very helpful when we were navigating the school system I no longer read or participate there because, frankly, with the kids learning at home I don't need any labels - they can learn however fast and to whatever depth they want. Plus, a lot of it is discussing problems their kids are having with school, and after finding homeschooling, especially unschooling, I started feeling rather bad for the kids. They just seem to be pawns in the game for the most part, not the focus they deserve to be.

We have just returned from another few days "out and about" and would love to contribute. Thanks so much for taking this on! I'm trying to get an idea of what you're looking for ...

<< I would like to hear examples of the types of discrimination that your children have faced as a result of their high intelligence. >>

Well, as most of you know, I felt the discrimination was detrimental enough to my kids to pull them out of the educational system altogether. I’ll give you my take on it. If you need / want further details or I haven’t given you what you were looking for, just let me know and I’ll try again. If it can help improve the educational system so that in the future children will get the educational environment they need and people will not have to resort to leaving the system, I’d love to help.

For us, I think the biggest problem was the lack of knowledge and understanding about giftedness and ALL it encompasses. I’d like to think that if teachers, principals etc. knew enough about giftedness to at least understand how to potentially identify it in kids and how it affects their whole being (from emotional responses, to boredom etc.), not just their paperwork (and how it can often adversely affect their paperwork!), then we could get these kids directed into a specialized environment where they could blossom. That’s my dream anyway.

However, through my journey, I spent a number of years trying to educate my kids’ teachers … in areas even I didn’t know at the time related to their giftedness. I spoke at length to them about how I handle the "spiritedness", the "ADHD", the "anxiety". I brought in articles, donated related books to the school library (in case they ran into other parents searching for info), and even gave a presentation at a school staff meeting on "spirited kids" and some tips on how to "handle them" in a classroom environment. When the response I got was "the teachers really enjoyed the presentation but they don’t have the time to implement the suggestions", which to me just seemed like mostly common sense, I realized lack of knowledge alone is not the key.

I know there are gifted kids who can survive a "less-than-ideal" school environment (though the whole point is not to survive, but thrive), but mine can’t. My eldest son had developed such a hatred for school that he had to be coaxed / coerced every day to submit to their unending sea of worksheets etc. (As an aside, he’s been out of school for four months now and yesterday when we were talking about what they were interested in learning about, he said the thing he hated most about school was that they would teach him something one day, then try to teach it to him again and again!). My daughter was the "teacher’s pet" but was starting to get negative feedback (grade 2) from her peers about her joy of learning – and again, no notice from the teachers on her area of difficulty – since she wasn’t "bad enough". And my youngest son (JK) was hiding out behind furniture to avoid the drudgery of just a couple hours of school.

And not once during that time did any of these "experts" put 2 and 2 together. Once I finally put it all together a few months ago, I also realized that I could not just turn on the principal’s / teacher’s "light bulb" through education so my that kids could get the educational environment they NEEDED. Not an environment that would be nice for them to have if there’s enough money left over, but one I believe they need because I could see my kids deteriorating before my eyes. I also knew that even if I fought and got all the required "labels": "gifted", "LD", "at risk" etc., I was still not likely to find an appropriate environment at the end of it all.

Sadly, it seems they will need to be forced to do it … and then when that's done, they'll need to be forced to do it well. I realized that my kids did not have that kind of time … they need an appropriate educational environment NOW, so that's why they are at home. I'll say this though, I'm very glad we have the choice and that homeschooling is not another big battle I must wage (just some small ones, but that's another story).

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Message Board Intro

Introduction: This is a post I wrote after we had been homeschooling for about a year. There were enough parents of gifted kids choosing homeschooling that the parent who hosted the gifted board created a message board specifically for homeschoolers and this is one place where I participated (though it was not a busy place). To get the board moving a bit someone suggested we do an intro about how we ended up choosing homeschooling so that's how this piece originated. Again, I no longer participate on this board because most questions had to do with curriculum and we don't follow any formal curriculum!

This is a timely question, seeing as this week marks our first anniversary of homeschooling!

It's been my eldest that has led us on our journey ... mostly by virtue of being the eldest!His JK year was pretty uneventful, though I still remember him explaining to me as we left his JK interview that he "didn't feel like talking to her today, but not to worry since he would talk to her once he started school"! I think he was a bit overwhelmed by the environment. SK and grade 1 had experienced teachers so I didn't hear too much from them, though I noticed how little effort he put into his schoolwork. I remember him writing sentences for his spelling words in grade 1 for homework; he would come up with really amazing sentences, and then discard them because they were too much to write. He'd spend 5 minutes trying to come up with the shortest sentence possible ... he didn't like writing even back then!

It really wasn't until grade 2 that the it really started to come apart at the seams. The teacher was new and had no experience with more "challenging" kids. I think he spent at least half his time in the principal's office, though the principal had no clue either. This is about the time the comments started along the lines of "He's very smart, but ...." and the behaviour mods started in earnest. This is also the year I gave the teacher's a presentation on spirited children, but they felt the tips were too much work (acknowledgement, preparing for transitions etc.). Ugh!

Grade 3 brought a more experienced and easy-going teacher and that year was quite good. She loved hearing his comments in discussions and did not force him to participate when he wasn't comfortable. He even started writing, with cursive being his favourite subject.

Then, as I have posted before, came the teacher from he--. The Grade 4 teacher (this school had only one teacher per grade) was a strict disciplinarian with no clue how to actually talk with a child. Even worse, I'd talked to her a number of times and she'd seem to understand what I was saying, but the next day at school would be no different. I got more of the "he's very smart, but ..." conversations and the teacher and new principal treated him strictly as a behaviour problem. I was researching private schools but after yet another phone call and meeting, where the teacher said "I just don't know what to do with him! Tell me what to do", it being only October, I'd had quite enough.

By this time he was very defiant about school and refused to write anything, but the new school said they were up for the challenge. They worked with him and he eventually started to settle in somewhat, though even from his new teacher I got "No, academics are not his problem ... ". No teacher ever brought up giftedness and I was stuck with the view that giftedness equated with "good student". Almost guiltily I started doing some research on giftedness and started to read about how not all gifted kids fit well into a classroom structure. And I started researching about writing difficulties, and found out how relatively common they were with gifted boys. And I found some articles about gifted/LD which really resonated with me.

Come December and the principal from his previous school called me into her office (my other two kid were still there) and said she got the results from the gifted testing they'd done and had I ever considered he was gifted/LD? Argh!! And she apologized for treating him as just a behaviour problem, but said that they would not be able to provide him with the kind of environment he needed to thrive. Hmmm ... that's quite an admission!

So armed with my articles on gifted/LD and his results from the gifted testing at his previous school, I went to see the principal of his new school. She was very easy to talk to, and I briefly went through the articles with her leaving them for her to read in more detail. I had highlighted some of the stuff specifically relevant for my son and by the end of the meeting she agreed to treat him as gifted/LD and would speak to his teacher. The last thing she said was that they "needed to start looking for his gifts".

Meanwhile, my youngest had started JK this year but as January rolled around he was refusing to go to school. I was having to coax him, though his teacher said everything was fine at school. I even had to drag him out from behind the couch a couple times to go. It seemed it was starting all over again with my youngest boy. Yikes! So I started thinking that I would really need to send all my kids to the private school.

About this time while researching giftedness I'd come across an article on homeschooling the gifted, which was my first introduction to homeschooling, not having heard of it before. So after quickly finding out about the legalities of it here the choice became spending over $30k to send my three kids there, or homeschooling. A couple weeks passed and I was not approached by my son's teacher about the meeting. And I started to think a bit more about the principal's comment about how they "needed to start looking for his gifts". He'd been there for 5 months and if they hadn't seen him shine by now, this environment, though much better than the last, probably wasn't the right one either.

So, homeschooling it was!! It only took a couple weeks to decide, which took us to March Break last year. Once we decided to go for it, we couldn't see any reason to wait around until the end of the school year, so they just didn't go back. All the kids were very excited at the prospect of homeschooling, though my biggest surprise was the reaction of my daughter. At age 8, she was doing very well at school, in a teacher's pet kinda way. But she walked around in a trance for the next 3 days muttering "I can't believe I don't have to go to school anymore!".

Just the other day dh asked my eldest how he liked homeschooling, and he replied "Amazing!". We are no longer looking back (though I must admit that when I think about all they put my son through, I still get pretty angry), and, as most people say, wish we had found out about this sooner!

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Email List Intro

Introduction: I currently participate on a couple of pretty active unschooling email discussion lists. This is an intro I wrote in Feb 2004 for one of them. A bunch of new people had joined recently so the listowner asked if we would take a bit of time to write a little intro. In here you'll find a bit more perspective - I'm not really upset with the school system any more - I'm thankful!

Hi everyone, here's my intro. Okay, it turned into a bit of a story! ;)

We have 3 kids ages 11, 9, and 6. They left school almost 2 years ago and our "deschooling period" pretty much eased right into unschooling (with a brief, fruitless 2-3 week period of me trying to interest them in a few workbooks).

My eldest has led me on this journey and I am forever grateful. He and school were kinda like oil and water. I was regularly called by his teachers and they would inevitably say things like "he's very smart but ...", "he needs to pay more attention", and then the writing thing (which I mentioned in an email yesterday). I worked hard with them but after that incident we tried a private school, which was definitely better for him. It was all just a hunt for labels, to try help the teachers understand him enough to treat him with respect, but that I came to realize was pretty futile. About this time I came across homeschooling (had never heard of it before) and I think it took us only 2-3 days of real discussion before we decided it was definitely the way to go for us. I remember it was Friday night before the start of March Break for the youngest two (in grade 2 and JK) and I excitedly went around the house to each child and explained that I had just found out about this homeschooling thing and would they prefer to stay home to learn? Wow! Were they excited!

My eldest is an awesome gamer, and it has led him to so many things! In fact, enough that I'm giving a presentation about it at the Live & Learn Unschooling conference this summer in Boston (www.liveandlearnconference.org if you're interested). And today we're waiting with bated breath for Crystal Chronicles for GCN to arrive at the store (it was supposed to arrive yesterday but was delayed).

My daughter (she's the 9yo), has just really made the leap to reading through her intense interest in Harry Potter. School crushed her interest in reading and books by grade 2 and she spent the first year at home saying "I hate books". It has been an amazing and wonderful journey to watch.

My youngest spent only a few months in school, so he had the least amount of "stuff" to recover from. It's awesome just watching him do things and figuring stuff out along the way. He's likes a good game and has beaten me at chess, cards, and HP Clue (he's memorized the whole game since he doesn't read yet). He loves numbers and money and can work out his score in his head after playing a round of Split. He's seems to have just come out of his long-lived interest in Scooby-Doo. He loves to play video games alongside his brother. And a couple of months ago whispered to me while I was laying with him in his bed "I want to learn to read as long as I don't have to go to school." I assured him he didn't! So we've continued playing with words and stuff, and he is definitely more interested than before.

Dh really enjoys his job as a business development manager at an electronics distributor, and in my free time I love to write about learning and unschooling (and how it permeates into the rest of our lives), I'm developing a web app with my dad and brother (it's almost done!!), I just registered a name for my website (it will be unschooling focused, along with some of our family's interests), and I like to dabble in some new hobbies - vegetarian cooking (my eldest two have recently declared they are vegetarians), wire jewelry, yoga, aromatherapy, and my current, biggest interest - The Lord of the Rings!

That enough?! LOL! Oh well, I was on a roll!

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