I home-school my nephew ( I call him Cousin Oliver here on the blog).  I wasn’t looking to add to our home school, in fact, years ago a friend asked me to home-school her 3 kids and I declined.  I knew that somewhere between her boisterous kids (we are quiet folk), my unstructured/ planning-phobic / scattered ways, and her expectations – that I would disappoint her and possibly damage our friendship.  And- going from homeschooling your own 4 to suddenly 7- that would have been huge.

So- I went ahead and offered to homeschool my nephew.  A move, I didn’t think would end up hurting my relationship with my sister…but in retrospect, maybe it has. Ugh.

We began homeschooling him in 2nd grade (he’s in 5th now) because, frankly, it was a train wreck happening.  Let me set the scene of what morning drop-off looked like for my sister.  She- in front of the school with her son inside the car, or often on top- screaming and crying and cussing (the son) while horrified teachers/ principal, parents looked on.  She would end up taking him home or to her office where he would watch cartoons all day and eat junk food in the conference room.  This scene was escalating in frequency, and she was just letting him stay home.  I saw truancy court looming, real soon.  (the cussing was learned from her older, kind of trouble kids).

Cousin Oliver has a few learning disabilities.  The public school promised her pie-in-the-sky help if she would just enroll him in time for Summer school.  She did.  They didn’t even begin testing him until around Thanksgiving.  The testing results were really helpful in figuring out why he has trouble learning, and how we can help him.  The IEP they offered however, was a joke.  They offered 2 hrs. a week pull-out time.  The boy could not read.  (I thought about offerring to homeschool him then, at my worse, I could work with him one-on-one more than 2hrs. a week) She hired a special education advocate and got his pull-out time magically increased to 1 hr. a day plus a special 2hrs. once a week, plus speech therapy.  When I heard this, I decided not to offer homeschooling, since it sounded like the kind of one-on-one time I could offer (I teach most subjects all-together) – plus, these were special education professionals…I had faith they knew what they were doing and had special expertise I didn’t.

By March, he had regressed in his reading abilities- which were a mid-k going in…he was regressing in Math, and the school was sending home these crazy spelling lists of words he could not even read.  Also, this school was a “Blue-ribbon reading School” which meant they did standardized tests every few weeks to try to boost the scores and prep the kids.  Oliver was then diagnosed with an anxiety problem on top of all this.  He was a boy being left far behind.  I seriously wondered what they did with him for an hour each day for his “pull out” time…it was billed as one-on-one instruction, but we were having serious doubts.

I had been pulled out for a time in 4th grade for Math problems. I sat in a trailer with 4 other kids and did worksheets while the teacher looked on.  My problem was that I hadn’t learned multiplication- which the teacher could have figured out by asking me, or by watching me while I worked on the endless worksheets- but, no- did not happen.  So, I had some serious misgivings about what was going on during his pull-out times.

It was at this time, hearing daily what was going on, babysitting him some days while his mom went to work, knowing he was going to be called truant as soon as the school got tired of trying to “work” with his mom.

So yes, we offerred.  I figured the bar was so low, I couldn’t do any worse then the public school did.

It’s been okay so far.  He has gone from a K reading level to a mid 4th grade level.  His Math -which seemed to be his strength- has admittedly slowed, he is at a mid-4th grade level…between my casualness and his mother’s fear of his tantrums (so she resists me ever sending work home with him for evenings or weekends or days off) and his pokiness some days getting through a page, he hasn’t gotten as far as we should have.

Somehow, I thought I would have him till before 9th grade.  I was working towards getting him on grade level for everything so they could choose whatever opportunity they wanted for him- or he could remain with us.  (in 2nd grade, she was unable to send him to private school because they would not take someone with his learning problems).  Somehow, I didn’t think he would leave me before then.  It looks like he will be leaving me at the end of this year- though my sister hasn’t said anything to me, but Oliver has said things to that effect.  I’m sad.

more later…