One Month Down, Nine More To Go!

Well it is the last day of September 2013 and I am still adding to my home classroom. We have made it through the month of September with only a few tears...mine!  I would be lying if I said, "they were tears of joy" because they haven't all been tears of joy.  Some have been tears of frustration, some of them have been tears of realization and some have just been tears because I needed a good cry.  A few have been tears of sadness because my husband's mother passed away this month.  But through it all I have stayed on the course that my husband and I agreed upon back in May of this year. Ironically, a staff member of one of the Charter School's that I applied to in the Spring called my husband last week to apologize because the boys paperwork was misplaced with another grades and we can still apply in October if we are still interested in having our sons attend and they had seats in the 4th grade available now.  Well, considering that they are both in the 3rd grade that does NOTHING for us and  NO, thank you anyway!  If they are just finding paperwork NOW and we are now two seasons past the time that I applied then that is a sure sign of disorganization and other negative attributes that I personally don't want any parts of!!  I was very grateful that my husband received the call and not I because I would not have been as cordial as he was.

I am still getting acclimated to the scheduling of classes and just figured out last week that when I have appointments, etc., that I can rerun the schedule to shorten the number of lessons for that day or even postpone them to another day.  This worked out great for my mother-in-law's Memorial Service.  I put it on the online calendar, checked off that it would affect the whole day, reran the schedule and Presto, Change-O, no classes for that day.  The BEST part of all is that it will not affect the end date for lessons/school because the lessons were set up to gradually end a few days before the last day of school, which by the way is June 6th. So by the last day of school the boys will have 1 lesson to complete in 1 subject compared to now where they have 5 lessons in 5 different subjects plus an hour a day of Live Lesson with their teacher. This also applies to standardize testing so they won't get bogged down with lessons and testing all in the same day like the "brick and mortar" schools.

So with the month of September officially over I am pleased with the progress that is being made so far and looking forward to see what else the future holds.  But for now I will continue to take it one day, one week and one month at a time.

Peace & Blessings Always.

Uniforms, Id's & Behavior Charts!

   We are now at the end of week 3 and if I said that it's getting easier then I would be lying.  My intentions were to have my sons/students in full uniform by day 1 of Cyber school but that didn't happen.  However, they were in uniform with id's around their necks by this week.  I also HAD to make up a behavior chart because no matter how many times I give directions and instructions and post the classroom rules on the wall my sons/students are intent on doing their own thing.  It is truly frustrating and takes away from times that we should be moving forward in lessons. All of my years of working in the behavioral health field with problem children and working with students in the public school system should have more than prepared me to be able to educate and discipline my own sons right? Yeah, right!! Because the lines have been crossed between parent and educator (although the parent is a child's first teacher and I've been informally educating them from day 1) and I am now educating my sons in a more formal setting they are challenging me everyday. 

   We will occasionally find ourselves falling behind, sometimes because of appointments, other commitments or just getting started later than usual but mainly because of them being off task and trying to engage in nonsense. When this happens we find ourselves having to do an extra lesson the next day or God forbid over the weekend which is what happened this past weekend. Like everything else there are going to be good days and bad days and I can honestly say that the good is outweighing the bad. This Cyber School "stuff" is still a work in progress and even during my moments of frustration I wouldn't change a thing.  My sons are slowly adjusting and making great progress so far, Twin A is averaging 93% and Twin B is averaging 92% so with that being said, "onward and upward."

Peace & Blessings to you all!

We Survived Our First Week of Cyber School!!!

         Well our first week of cyber school is officially a thing of the past and even though it was only a 4 day week since last Monday was Labor Day it felt like a 5 day week if not longer.  Now that I am in the capacity of my sons Learning Coach and I'm in charge of their learning I can fully see their deficiencies that may not have been caught by the classroom teachers of yesteryears.  One of the main ones being that they do not follow through with the directions that they are given.  They hear me speaking but they clearly are NOT listening to the words that are coming out of my mouth! One important direction being to reread your assessment questions and answers for a 2nd time before pressing the submit button.  Each son has failed to follow these basic instructions which now forces me to hover and make sure that they are doing so. I also caught my youngest son answering questions during an assignment without bothering to read the passage first. Now this we have discussed on numerous occasions prior to cyber school because this seems to be his mode of operation which always works against him as it would for anyone.

By day 2 I had to put up a partition between my sons because they would not stop talking to each other even during the times that I was trying to give instruction which was very frustrating! I know that this is still new to them as well as to me but my sons know me and they know what my rules are as a parent and as a learning coach but yet they are still willing to see just how far they can test my patience. Nowadays it doesn't go very far especially since they  have a lot of work to get done.

     Now that we are into week two and the Live Lessons have started with the classroom teacher it gives me a break from having to "teach."  The classroom teacher teaches Language Arts and Math (a half an hour for each subject) but they still have to complete those same subjects once the live lesson is over which actually adds to the the length of our day because the actual lesson is about an hour long and the teacher isn't necessarily going over the lesson for that particular day especially, since we are four days ahead of her schedule. So for now this is working against us. I've already told my sons that they will have to start their cyber lessons a half an hour to an hour earlier in order to make up the time spent in Live Lessons.  We will see how that works out for us.  Well, that's all for now. 

Peace and Love.

    

We Survived Our First Day of Cyber School!!!

     

Well, nothing ever goes according to planned but somehow it always manages to work out.  According to my carefully and meticulously laid out school schedule my sons and I were suppose to start by 9:00AM and be finished no later than 4:00PM if not earlier.  HA!  We officially started around 9:20AM and was finished approximately 9 hours later, YOU do the Math!  Now don't misunderstand me we did not work all of those hours because there was a lunch break, recess, bathroom breaks and "I need to stand and stretch breaks." For the most part following the curriculum of Commonwealth Connections Academy Charter School is easy and straightforward.  Since I love being on the computer and I didn't have any technological issues I can honestly say that working from an online curriculum in the capacity of a Learning Coach was a cakewalk especially since everything is already set up for you. My sons and I all agree that it seems to be much more work than a brick and mortar school and they have projects to work on already and this is only the FIRST day!!! Our schedule got turned around because I did not find out until trying to get them logged in for the Live Lessons that the Live Lessons portions of subjects do not begin until September 9th but we know now for the rest of the week.

     The issues that I did encounter stemmed from my two sons who I lovingly like to call "the dynamic duo." They are still in "summer brain vacation mode" and getting them to pay attention and stay focused was a challenge.  Unfortunately, for them and me I wasn't able to ease them into their lessons it was full blown lessons which consisted of them working on the laptop, reading from their textbooks, workbook assignments, writing in notebooks and on looseleaf paper, setting up folders AND taking Math and Reading Assessment tests. Oh, and I almost forgot they also had a Spelling Pretest. So needless to say we had a VERY FULL first day of Cyber School.  

     I have to keep in the back of my head that this is new for them as well as for me and it's going to take baby steps for all of us to come to a happy medium on how we want our days to progress. I MUST make time for them both to get up and "GET THE SILLIES OUT!"  That way we will all avoid becoming stressed out and irritable. Were my feelings hurt when my oldest son Jason (older by 1 minute) said that he wanted to go back to his old school?  Nope because I have to remember that he has feelings also and I have to validate them. Now did I entertain his statement?  Of course not, we've been down this road many times before and I'm sure we'll go down them many more. My sons are learning at an early age that sometimes change is good not just for them but for all involved.  This journey is a labor of love and I'm in it to win it!

     May peace, love and blessings follow you all the days of your life.