This is kind of a sad post for the end of the year.
I have been homeschooling for 11 years. Besides kindergarten, Westwind Alternate School has supported me all along the way. In Alberta, you need to tell the government that you homeschool. You can choose to go off the grid completely and not get any support, but if you want to, you can go with a school provider.
When I first started Westwind, the founder of the Westwind homeschool program, Granny Wendy, was my facilitator.
She would do one on one tutoring with Maxwell every week. She was a wealth of knowledge and love, and I sincerely appreciated everything she taught.
Then she retired.
That was okay because her son took over.
John. He is full of enthusiasm and love of learning. I was in good hands again.
And then a year or two later, Heather Burton was hired. She had so much to bring to the table. She has studied the Arbinger Institute philosophies and helped our kids think deep and broad. She also taught them to love plants.
This was an excellent time to be part of Westwind Alternate school. We even had two full-length plays: Neverland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was amazing.
Then there was some government audits of homeschooling facilities, and our school had to figure out how to make a clear distinction from "distance learning" and "home learning." I know it doesn't sound like it should have been a huge issue, but....it was.
There was many tears, hurt friendships, and I'm pretty sure our principal had some more grey hairs by the end of it all, and she quit soon after. I wrote about it in this blog: https://lindyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2016/09/an-enlightening-first-week.html
I was considered "distance learning" and nothing much changed except I needed to have the school's secretary order all my school supplies instead of being reimbursed.
That was in 2016.
Then, this year...I believe in December 2020, Alberta changed a sentence or two in their definition of distance education, and just like that:
I was no longer in distance education.
Mike, our principal, spent hours and hours and HOURS trying to figure out what parents wanted and how to make a distance education that would work. They are trying it out this year. I hope it works, I sincerely do, but I knew from the on set that it wouldn't work for me.
I want more freedom in my curriculum and learning style, and I'm going to be gone for half the year. Ironically, that doesn't work with "distance" education.
This means that I have to give up Heather and John. No more collaborations. They won't teach my kids any more.
It's pretty sad, actually.
I'm still going through Westwind for homeschool. They're even letting us homeschoolers use their facilities for "mom school" and Mike is still over me, but I feel like it's not a team effort any more.
John made me this video of all the years he was my facilitator. It made me cry:
There's still my group of homeschool moms, and through it all, we've stuck together. We all go to different facilitators, but we still support one another. So at least the main reason I even live in Cardston hasn't changed.
Anyway, let's go over what we did our last month of school (yes I'm writing this on September 1st....stop being so observant!)
I'm just going to write about what I have pictures for, because I'm lazy:
Okay so social studies: we learned about latin immigration. I decided to have us watch a bunch of news reports and mini documentaries PRE Trump to get a more unbiased view of what went on. Guess what? We saw cages for children in those documentaries done during Obama's reign.
Then we briefly watched the current news. It's all so depressing. I certainly don't know the answers.
We made a pinata for our activity.
Then we learned about the women's movement. I really taught differently than most would. That's for sure! I did a pendulum of women's struggles. On one side it showed how bad women can have it. The men get paid more for the same work, men are womanizers and that is deemed alright, women should be domestic slaves, the male gender is better than the female gender, judges chose the men's side when at court, men are predators, women are useless without men, and there is a stereotype of what the perfect man should be.
Then there is the opposite side of the pendulum swing. (Where much of society is right now.) Where all men are considered womanizers until proven innocent, all men are idiots and ridiculous, the female gender is superior, motherhood is not something to aspire to, in fact, it might wreck your life. Men's rights are overlooked in court. All men are predators until proven innocent, and a family with no dad is great. No one needs a dad.
We watched this TED talk as part of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlSwsE22nX0&t=2s
And then we talked about how there is a balance that we should strive for and to stay away from each of the extremes. This balance includes getting paid the same for the same work, mutual respect for each gender, an involved dad who is needed in his family. Getting equal rights in court. Realizing each gender has household duties. Men should be the protectors of their family of predators.
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