My Experience with K12 Home School and Raising a Home Schooled Child

Fifteen years ago if you mentioned the words "Home School" people immediately had visions of socially unfit children who must be hiding behind their mothers apron and who would soon become adults that could either not cope with the world or would be very uneducated. I can remember being told my son had ADHD and that he had to be put on medication or he would never be successful in his school career. He talked too much and disturbed the class, gave answers without being asked or raising his hand and constantly dropped his pencil. This I soon found out was why he was spending most of his time in the principal's office instead of in his class.

I was a young mother and listened carefully to what I was being told by someone I assumed must know far more than I did about children since she was so much older and, after all was a teacher. I also remember thinking several other things as she told me she knew my son far better than I did since "she spent far more time with him than I did", the first thing I knew she was wrong about was this statement.

Thank the lord I listened closely to several other key things I was told by my son's teacher that day. The most important thing was that she "knew my son better than I did" and the second was that he was answering the questions she asked before he raised his hand, and before anyone else had a chance. Certainly this meant my son was not mentally challenged, after all he knew the answers and he knew them and had processed his thoughts before the rest of the class could. His biggest problem was he was disturbing others around him and disrupting his teacher's idea for how the class should be ran.

I never believed in giving drugs that would alter my child's state of mind and I started searching for an alternative. We tried all kinds of different types of schools from private to religion based learning and finally ended up choosing two different methods of home school for our two sons since they both had issues that apparently needed to be dealt with and my husband and I had already decided it would not be with drugs. Our oldest son was home schooled with what 15 years ago was known as the Un-Schooling method, and our second son had dyslexia so he was put into a brand new online school that helped him get through his lessons quicker. That way we could spend more time learning to deal with the dyslexia without him missing any lessons or falling behind like he might have if he had been in a typical school setting.

Deciding to home school isn't any easy decision under any circumstance.The time spent on home school can make it very difficult on parents trying to earn a living and can even become a financial burden, thankfully now there is K12. I was already familiar with K12 because I wanted to put both of my son's in K12 when they were teens, it made things so much easer to keep up with since the records could easily be kept by K12 and in a convenient online file. For my very unorganized mind this was a much easier solution to being under the world of umbrella homeschool systems.

The issue at the time was the price, there was no way we could afford to put both our sons in K12 because the cost was beyond our reach, so we kept treading along under the same old umbrella system, all the while wishing we had access to K12.

Now thankfully in many states K12 is free and offered as public school. Thats right I said public school! So you can keep your kids at home and have control over when and where they do their school and know exactly where they stand when it comes to test scores and homework. You have control over how much time they spend on different subjects, so when they get bored and are not paying attention to what they are being taught you can easily slide into another subject until they are awake again and able to focus on what they are being taught.

Our 9 year old daughter wasn't really having too much trouble with public school, but we did notice the difference in attitude, and the bad habits that were being picked up at school and they weren't all from other students. After home schooling our sons, putting our daughter in public school was a big eye opener! We didn't get half the sass out of our sons at age 16 as we did from our daughter at age 6. In our case, I also couldn't help but notice that the majority of the learning was being done every night at home during the four (and sometimes more) hours of home work she had.

When fourth grade came around and we found out that K12 was now free and considered a public school, plus they offered broadband classes with teacher interaction, we were on it before the commercial was off the TV. The best part was they supply everything, even the computer. We chose to opt out of the free computer because this is a Mac household and my daughter already has a desk top available.

I have to say that I was more than surprised when I saw the massive amount of materials that were supplied by K12. After the enrollment process was complete it took less than two weeks for us to receive our daughters supply for the fourth grade. There was a student and teacher's edition for each subject. All the art supplies for the year were there along with all the basic item we would need for her science projects. Along with the regular subjects tittles there were also plenty of supplemental books that our daughter would learn from, and she was just as excited as we were to see them all come to the house, neatly packed in their individual subject boxes.

I won't say that this entire home school experience is without challenge, as a matter of fact it isn't for the weak at heart at all. Even though K12 has made it a lot easier for us to maintain test scores and organize school work, it still takes a lot of concentration on both the parents and the students part. You need to log at least six and a half hours each day and complete each lesson pod and attend the online broadband classes that are scheduled by your assigned teacher.

I will say I love the fact that I can communicate with the teachers and other faculty members via email since I really am not a phone person. It also makes it easier on me as a parent for the teacher to back up my daily lessons with the online broadband classes that have actual class and teacher interaction. It helps keep my daughter focused and realize that it isn't just me planing the lessons, the teacher is there to help make the entire process seem just a little more real to our daughter.

The most challenging part is to get my daughter to stop for cheer practice before 4 everyday! She loves her art and music classes the most, so I always have her complete the other classes before we eve begin the electives. The most exciting things for her are that with every elective class she completes, she earns avatar bucks that she can spend on her personal avatar. She also plays games after learning lessons that back up her classes and this helps hold her interests and keep her focused. I am very excited about what the possibilities are for these classes, and I can see how they will improve her test scores since she has both me and the teacher to help back up the lessons she learned.