More than a year ago, I wrote this post about the path ahead. And at the beginning of this school year, I wrote about how planning for the year felt and looked a little different because weren't sure what school would look like for our family in the 2019-2020 year. Well, it turns out that planning for the year (or ~4 high school years) ahead touched and affected almost every aspect of this current school year and yet we didn't know what we would be doing until this past week or so.
We spent the entire 'first semester' of this school year supporting our 8th grader through a series of evaluations to help us better understand and support her. She's a differently wired kiddo and it felt important to have whatever services she might receive, in place, before transitioning to the next stage of learning. (Even if we were to continue homeschooling, the charter school that provides us with support, structure, and community ends with 8th grade, so transitions are inevitable.) It turns out that we know her strengths and challenges really well (i.e. we didn't learn much new) and her differences don't qualify her for support, so we felt as though we were left stumbling a bit. We don't want to reinvent the wheel, but it has felt exceptionally difficult to find the support for her differences. In addition, at winter break, the kids' occupational therapist, with whom Lala Bug had been working and in relationship with for 3 years, moved. It has been an emotional year and emotions are hard to process.
In the weeks and months after winter break, I attended more homeschool high school workshops and learning opportunities, and we attended a number of high school information sessions. Then application time began, including applications from a reluctant Lala Bug, followed by interviews and shadow days. We explored both paths, homeschooling high school and brick and mortar high school options, wanting to know what our choices are, and trying to respect her consistent and strong desire to homeschool, in balance with my uncertainty about providing all she needs at a high school level, without proper support.
I am condensing a tremendous amount of intensity, emotional fluctuation, anxiety, uncertainty, discussion, and decision making into very few words for the sake of this post, but it has been a very full year of considering what is coming ahead, which feels contradictory, considering my word for the year is Present. I have felt anything but.
At this point, we are still waiting to hear from the homeschool charter schools that serve high schoolers in our area, because they don't accept applications and do lotteries until quite late in the year. I suppose this could change our plans slightly, but given the experiences of friends who have forged ahead of us, we are assuming we won't 'win' a spot.
So...next year, we will be doing a hybrid of homeschooling and school. Lala Bug was accepted to a part time program at a school that supports differently wired kids, so we are hoping she has the best of both...community, support in learning and emotional growth as well as some freedom to really pursue her own passions. She will attend the very small high school for a couple of core classes and we will create the rest of her learning plan together. She is reluctant to change what we are currently doing, but I think we are both excited at the ideas of all the amazing classes that we can create, tailored just for her.
As we were exploring schools for her, we explored schools for Brown Mouse, as well, but he too, will continue homeschooling.
I would love to hear what others are doing for the coming year, high school or not. I will link to this post on Facebook and Instagram, where these posts tend to get comments, so feel free to comment here or there, if you prefer!
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