Reply to What exactly is "unstopping" and is it legal?

Forum Index » Elementary School-Aged Kids

Reply to "What exactly is "unstopping" and is it legal?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I'm 21:34, the homeschooling but not unschooling parent, and I thought I'd say a little bit about how homeschoolers are evaluated in MD, and how it might work for an unschooling family.

In MD, parents are supposed to document that their kids get instruction in the following subjects every year

English Language

Math

Science

Social Studies

Heath

Art

Music

Twice a year, homeschooling parents meet with public school employees for a "review". The kids do not need to come, but you can bring them if you like.   In my case, the reviewer was a Pupil Personnel Worker, who had been pulled from his regular job for the day.

At the meeting, you are supposed to explain what you did for each each subject for the time since you last were reviewed, and show 2 pieces of documentation.  I took photos and screenshots and made PDFs for all my documents, so all I brought was an iPad, but some people bring whole crates of stuff.  To give you a sense of the kinds of things that count, for English, I brought a paper that my son had written about a novel he read, and a screenshot of a grammar test he had taken in his online English class.  For science, I brought a photo of a 3D model of a leg bone he had built.  For PE I brought a log he had taken of the exercise he did over a 2 week period.  For art, I brought a photo of a set he helped build for a theater production.  For music, I brought a screenshot of the facebook page of the theater where they listed the cast for a musical.

The reviewer doesn't ask you how many hours you spent on a subject.  The materials you bring don't have to show that the kid is on grade level.  For example, I forgot to bring math documentation, so I quickly pulled up two iPad apps we had done to review previous grade level work before starting Algebra 2 this fall.  These were quick easy things, like a memory game to review times tables, that I did as a warm up the first week of school, and far below my kid's assigned grade, but they were accepted without question.  I did explain, because I was kind of embarrassed to not have more challenging work to show, but I didn't have to.

You don't leave the materials.  Just spend 15 minutes reviewing them.

I would imagine that most unschoolers would find that in the course of a year, their kid would have had meaningful experiences in each area.  Whether it's a video of the kid swimming across the pool as PE documentation, or a score report from an online strategy game that you claimed as math, or a campaign flyer that they distributed while volunteering as an example of social studies.

I know for me, that if my child was truly going for entire years without picking up something I could label as "math", whether it was measuring as part of a carpentry project, or playing a strategy game, then that would probably be a sign that I needed to stop unschooling, at least for math.  Most of the parents I know who unschool long term do so because they find that their kids do seek out varied experiences on their own, when provided with a rich and stimulating environment.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics