I long for our time at home to be what it was a few years ago. There were more moments of this in the beginning. Playing in a tree not feeling the school pressures too strongly. I want this to be a time of reflection for us. It is against this backdrop of fear and knowing this can quickly become horrible and has for many many people already. I scurried to go back to how we did things. I started ordering from Azure Standard. I am cooking more and from scratch. I filled our pantry and each week I went shopping bought a little extra to build up our emergency stores. It is for six people now. My father has moved out here too and lives just a few short blocks away so are watching out for him and making sure he has food.
It seems the first priority in all of this was to be safe and to stock up so we wouldn't have to go out for food too often.
I bought seeds and started preparing some garden beds in my father's backyard. I find myself considering chickens.
The part that bothers me now is the pressure from our school. We have four weeks left, and I am in charge of 4 of my son's classes. Credit for proficiency, c4p, it's called. We are a part of a homeschool charter that offers on site classes. It's not going ideally for us. It has been unsustainable for our family in so many ways but what locks us in are some things that we didn't have before when we more traditionally homeschooled. Community, and teachers, and some guidance, friendships where my kids see the same kids more regularly. Some of the teachers are wonderful.
There are four weeks left now, and there are a surplus of expectations flooding my inbox. I spent all day Saturday trying to catch up and figure out schedules and then three hours yesterday morning creating assignments and gathering materials for one of the c4ps, and answering emails. This is on top of what i normally need to do such as instructing and meetings and figuring out the day's schedule.
I am working as a teacher but I am not paid. I didn't mind this role as much when I was "homeschooling" but now that i have accountability and pressures from the school as paid teachers do, such as the threats of my son not receiving credit, etc, I start to feel "used" and it starts to feel like I am sacrificing too much for this.
There have been too many aspects of this that have been unsustainable for us. For one, all the trips back and forth. Last year, I had days I made 3 round trips twice a week, or the equivalent of that, 3 hours a day in driving/transition. This year has been much better with that aspect; however, it is replaced with all the prep of "teaching" each morning, and then the headache of top down accountability that tells me what and how to teach and if I ignore that, I am threatened with my son not receiving credit.
There is even less flexibility than I realized; and this realization has become apparent to me recently.
At least when you are homeschooling, you have flexibility and when kids are in public school, they are at school for the day freeing parents to work or do projects, or what they need to do for a few hours. I have neither flexibility or time off to work on the work I need to do.
That realization is becoming greater and less and less acceptable for me.
If I am in charge of my kids education, I at least want flexibility of time and schedule and methods, or if my kids are "in school" more traditionally, I want to be able to work on my photography business or other job, or even be able to clean my house.
I wrestle with this every day. This choice after three years of this path.
I resent, also that this time of quarantine, is taken over by school pressures and deadlines. I am still too busy, and the pressures are impacting me in ways that are affecting my relationship to my kids. The top down deadlines, I find myself having to pressure my kids to also meet, and it hasn't been good for my relationship with them. Yes, some pressure is good, but it's starting to feel more desperate and unchecked. It's my job to also hold that retainer wall of expectations from pressuring us too much into an unhealthy place. Some of these expectations are not reasonable. I was given 2 days notice to scramble to turn in this semester's work for one of the classes. With four weeks left, I did not expect suddenly to have to gather, organize, and turn in the incomplete work. (as one example). I also had vowed not to have my kids take any 8am classes, because attempting to be there at 8 pushes the experience from something we can handle into an awful experience. I have been now pressured into an ultimatum that forces me to break that vow for next year. I told them it was not possible for us or sustainable for us, but they pressured us into it by giving us a consequence of that choice that was also not acceptable. I should be able to set limits, I think, when I know it will push us over the edge of being okay/not okay, but they did not accept the limit we had set.
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