THE BEGINNING of OUR ODYSSEY!!

I believe that this is a great title for this new adventure. An ODYSSEY.. An extended adventurous voyage or trip.  An intellectual or spiritual quest: an odyssey of discovery.

That is what this is.. An Intellectual Quest of Discovery!

I have decided to pull my Youngest Daughter, Andrea, out of Public School and Home School her.  This has not been a light decision. I have struggled with the idea or a while and after recently getting her grades for the 5th grade and another letter saying she needed immunizations in order to return to school in September, I decided to just take the leap! So, here is a chronicle of my ramblings and the information that  have gathered in my research, my quest if you will, to give my daughter a fighting chance at a great education.

My daughter is 11 years old and despite my best efforts, she will be entering the 6th grade when school resumes.  I have fought with the schools and teachers about my daughters education. She has struggled through out the years and despite me pleading and trying to reason with teachers and anyone else who would listen, to hold her back they would not. I got excuses from teachers, the principle and the social workers, psychologists.. Not one person would help, hence my journey to home school!

 I got all sorts of reasons, she would have emotional issues. She is bigger the the kids already, If we hold her back, she will be much bigger then the other kids and get picked on. She is past the point where it would do any good..??? Really.. Since when is it NOT beneficial for a child to learn the things that she was supposed to learn even if that means staying back a year?? Moreover, wont the picking and ridicule be worse as a teenager who cant read and write properly??? Seems to me they are all wrong!!!!

 She has been pushed through despite not learning the material that was necessary for her to learn which would create the foundation of her future studies. She moved forward to the next grade each year and gotten "Extra Help" thru AIS classes.Which has not helped at all!! Got to love "No Child left behind"  They are kept with their age group but the are behind in their learning. Which I think is way more important!

My daughter currently has a final average of 77% in 5th grade. If it weren't for that 90 she got in PE, she would be have failed. She has a 67 in ELA-Writing as well as a 69 in ELA-Reading. Here state/local test scores were 52 in each.  She ended up with a 70 in Math but her local test score was also a 52.  These are unacceptable scores in my mind and yet the school passed her on to the 6th grade. Passing in New York State is 65. That is unacceptable!!!

She doesn't read well, She doesn't write well, She doesn't comprehend what she  reads.  Its hard to read her writing and understand what she wrote. I see her doing things that I did when I was in school. Things I still do on occasion still as an adult.  She has been tested in the Schools and they have not found her to have any issues.  She is great at memorizing things. She can memorize the combination of letters that form words long enough to get them on the paper for her spelling tests. But she does not know what the word is or how to read it.

A little family background... I also have 2 older children, Korey-Mikel who is 21 and Whitney who is 18.  My Son is smart! He barely had to study.  My girls on the other hand,  have both struggled in school. In my family, On my mothers side, All of the women have dyslexia.  Now, I know it comes in varying forms and some people have it worse then others, I dont have it as badly as my sister does. But we do have it. I was "diagnosed" with it in the 4th grade when I had a great teacher who helped me a lot! She was able to teach me a different way of learning, Different ways to study.  I ended up being a great student and graduated from College with a 3.6 GPA.  I know that it is possible for her to be a great student.




Andrea and I have a lot of things to work on.  I have been doing a lot of research and found a ton of information and My mind is spinning. However, I am sifting through all of the information and coming up with a curriculum that will work great with my daughter. I plan on putting stuff here so that I have it all in one place. Stuff that I work on while on 3 different computers. This will be the string that ties them together.