I wasn't one of those moms who knew from the outset that I wanted to homeschool. When we adopted C (who is from China, by the way), I envisioned her trotting off to public school and having a long and successful school career in the midst of the diverse school community there.
Kindergarten through fourth grade went great. She went to our local public school (a medium-sized K-6 school) and we were delighted with the quality of the teachers there. C is quick and picked things up fast, so academics were never a problem. But as the fourth grade year went on, we starting seeing signs of ... something. C would often come out of school sad, or crying, or grumpy about having hated the day. She liked her teacher, she was sailing along with the school work, but the social world was becoming complicated. We chalked it up to the whole girl clique thing, and her teacher told us that C was clearly gifted and gifted kids don't always fit in well with their peers. It was clear that C just wasn't interested in the things the other girls her age were interested in. By the end of the year, C was flat-out miserable, so we started taking her to a counselor who specializes in working with kids, Judy. And Judy immediately wondered whether Aspergers was at issue, although she agreed that if so C was presenting "borderline" symptoms. We also wondered whether the issues stemmed from that particular cohort of girls in her grade, few of whom seemed interested in school or in doing well.
For 5th grade, we moved C to a very small local public school to see if a new mix of kids and a smaller environment would help. For a while, it did. C got a wonderful, experienced teacher whose focus was on helping the kids to identify their own learning styles. She was flexible and allowed the kids to do what they needed to do to learn comfortably. For C, that meant that she often chose to sit outside and read by herself where it was quiet and she could focus. We wondered further about Aspergers, kept watch, but overall it was a pretty good year.
That all went downhill fast in 6th grade. C's teacher was pleasant but pretty clueless woman whose classroom strategy seemed to be to put them into groups for constant group- project work, and if problems arose to leave them to deal with it themselves until things really got out of hand. It was a disorganized, noisy room, just the sort of environment in which C had the hardest time. She was frequently unhappy, and started having melt-downs in class. We became more confident about an Asperger's diagnosis, and realized that she was spending a huge amount of energy to cope with the environmental stresses of noise, chaos, negotiating the social skills necessary to work in groups, and a clueless teacher no matter how many times I went in to talk with her.
We eventually had C undergo an in-depth evaluation by a neuropsychologist, who confirmed the Aspergers diagnosis and was able to pinpoint some specific issues we'd seen C experience but hadn't really understood. We learned that she has an amazing memory but that she has a hard time selecting material out of a bigger pool of information. We learned that she has specific difficulties recognizing faces and, to some extent, facial expressions.
Armed with that information, we decided that our public junior high school option was not a viable one. It is a big, chaotic place, with even less oversight by teachers (especially at unstructured, out-of-the-classroom times that are the hardest for Aspies) and we knew C would not cope well there. We enrolled her in a very small, new private school in our community which promised very individualized attention and very small groups. C's 7th grade class had 12 students in it. We'd talked to the headmaster and teachers about C's Aspergers, how that would affect her in school, and what sort of support she would need from them. They said all the right things, and off we went. The first few months were great. C was happy and reported that she liked school. Her best friend was there too, to C's delight.
And suddenly, things changed. We still don't know why. C started having almost daily migraine headaches, often so severe that she could do nothing but sleep all day until it went away. She hated going to school and often begged to stay home. We weren't able to learn about any specific issues causing all of that -- and believe me, we asked questions and watched and tried to figure out what was going on. Now, looking back, I know that there was some subtle bullying going on, and that C's core homeroom teacher -- who was also the person designated as C's "safe" person to go to if she was having any difficulties -- provided no assistance or support at all when C went to her. She got more migraines, then missed more school, then fell behind, then was even more stressed and got more migraines. It was a miserable time for all of us, especially as we worried about the causes of her migraines. A neurological work-up with a pediatric neurologist assured us that she had no organic issues, but "just" suffered from chronic migraine syndrome which can get quite severe during puberty when hormones are running rampant.
I could rant for a while about my unhappiness about how that teacher and the school in general treated C and us through all of that, but suffice it to say that we realized that C was not just missing school constantly, but also that her being at school seemed to be affirmatively harming her emotional state and self-esteem and feelings about learning. I spent a lot of time at that school during those months, and what I saw from C's core teacher just appalled me. She didn't understand Aspergers and, it seemed, she didn't want to. Ultimately, we chose to remove C from that school and allow her to just focus on feeling better.
So, suddenly I was homeschooling. We signed up for Time4Learning, an online learning site that has game-like lessons in the core subjects. My thinking was that the main goal was to have C be stress-free and have schoolwork be really different from classroom work and more like game-playing. We figured that academically C was ahead of most 7th graders her age anyway, so the academic content took second place to the low-key and fun aspect of it. We also arranged to have C meet once a week with the science/math teacher from 7th grade, a guy who was amazing and delightful and made learning fun. He "got" C, and made her feel good about her abilities. So school during that phase meant daily online lessons through Time4Learning, and weekly tutoring.
And it worked. Having the time away from a school schedule meant that we could focus on getting Grace's migraines under control. We let her sleep and play as much as she wanted to. We went on field trips, to the local parks and to the city for museums and zoo trips. Life started looking up.
We were so encouraged by C's improvement that we wondered if some sort of virtual school-from-home program would work. We liked that a virtual school - where you "attend" by being at your computer with microphone and webcam at class times to participate with other students and the teacher online -- would give C the ability to be at home while also maintaining contact with classmates and teachers. It seemed an ideal solution. And, we wondered, if the environmental and sensory stresses of being in an actual classroom were removed, would C just zoom forward with the academics?
We ended up applying to Stanford University's "EPGY" -- "Education Program for Gifted Youth" program. It's a virtual school with solid looking academic classes, a great deal of flexibility, and the whole virtual thing. Husband and I were greatly reassured that if C had to do a "nontraditional" school path, at least it'd be something with a reputable name attached to it. C wrote her entrance essay (shades of applying for college -- it was a detailed application), was accepted, and away we went for C's 8th grade year.
I'll cut to the chase. Some things worked, some didn't. The virtual aspect was cool and worked well. C's classmates were located all over the world. The teachers were, for the most part, really excellent, and the content they covered was well presented. But we saw that C started in with migraines and stomach aches, even while she had A's in all of her classes. She could handle the academics. But the schedule of work, even with virtual classes, seemed to stress her out a lot. She'd get sick, then fall behind, and we'd be in that same circle of stress-sick-stress-sick thing. By Christmas time, we saw that she was starting a decline in her health again, and she was increasingly depressed.
By spring of 8th grade, it was clear: this wasn't good for her. She had A's in her classes, but she was falling apart emotionally.
Homeschooling, here we come.
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