A Shocking Announcement...

I have a shocking announcement to make. (This line is only funny to me, and maybe one other person. Inside jokes are the pits.)

Anyway, as I was saying... I have a shocking announcement to make: We joined WAVA. It's okay! We're just part-time, and we kept our home based status. I only turned to the Dark Side a tiny bit.

Most of you are probably going "huh? that's not shocking." (ha, ha, ha... again, inside joke. I'm slaying myself here!)

Well, here's the deal: WAVA stands for Washington Virtual Academy, and they use the K12 curriculum. We used K12 years ago when we lived in California (through CAVA - I want to live in Jamaica so we can join JAVA. Is it late? Am I sleep deprived? I'm just loopy tonight). Anyway, K12 is inherently evil. They've mastered the art of marketing themselves to homeschoolers and enticing them with a great curriculum, but then charging ridiculous amounts of money that most nearly-broke homeschool families can't afford on their own, so they join these public school (or charter school) programs. In the process, homeschoolers usually have to give up their homeschool status (something I refuse to do because I'm stubborn and it just makes me feel more in control), but the rest of the world still sees them as homeschoolers (you educate your children at home, that must mean you're a homeschooler, right?). The whole thing really muddies the waters and blurs the lines between what is homeschooling and what is public schooling. The virtual academies actually piss off the NEA and the homeschool activists about equally. Anyway, here in Washington state, homeschoolers have the legal right to access any public school offerings in their district that they want on a part-time basis, and I'm choosing to take advantage of that.

This was a really hard decision for me. I became president of our local homeschool group this fall, and I've been on the board of directors for over a year - I felt like I needed to set an example for new homeschoolers out there, and that the best way to do that was to take a "pure" approach, free from any ties to the school system. But I kept feeling drawn back to K12. I always liked using their curriculum before, and I really think it's a good match for N. I finally decided I needed to pursue enrollment with WAVA. Hubby thinks it's an outstanding idea (except that he knows that all the paperwork and reporting is going to make me ultra-cranky) - I still wasn't so sure. That is, until I found out we could enroll part-time even though we're from out-of-district. That sealed the deal for me. I needed to make this decision based on what's right for our own family, not based on how that decision is going to be perceived by people I barely know. My friends won't turn away from me - they'll just snicker. LOL

People keep asking me why I felt the need to make this change in our homeschooling right now. There are a lot of reasons. One is that K12 has always called to me. I'm constantly coming back to it, multiple times a year, and trying to figure out how to make it work for us financially. N. still doesn't read fluently. While I'm sure that will come in time regardless of what we do, and many of my friends have had the patience to wait it out longer with their own kids, I found myself losing that faith. Adding more structure seems like the solution for now. N. is going to be 8 1/2 soon. She's a fantastic kid, with a vivid imagination and wonderful ideas - I feel like I'm doing her a disservice by not taking our schooling to a higher level and opening up more of the world to her. I don't feel like I have the self-discipline to see that through on my own. I need the push of an outside "voice" to breathe down our necks and tell us to get our butts in gear. So I'm making myself do this, and I'm going kicking and screaming, and I'll probably compain loudly, but it feels like the right thing to do.