Volume 2 - Edition 6 - May 2006
A Mom's Thoughts
by As a homeschooling parent, I find there are a lot of opportunities to worry. It creeps up on me slowly. I find myself worrying about small things and then before you know it I’m worrying about whether my children will ever be prepared for adulthood. Never mind that my eldest is only ten; I panic because she isn’t prepared today!
As an administrator at HCOS I receive a lot of emails from parents. I know there is a lot of worry right now about the changes the Ministry is making regarding how we use their funding. Can I just reassure everyone that we are behind you? We are committed to ministering and serving homeschooling families. We are committed to building a real community with you. We are committed to partnering with your family to ensure that all of your children receive a quality, Christian education.
I hope that as the years go by the families that are enrolled with us will begin to see that we aren’t a typical “school”. We do not approach our program from the top down. Instead, we start with our families and look at how we can best support their children’s education. We go from there.
We’re careful with our hiring process to ensure that our teachers are either homeschooling parents or homeschool friendly. All of our teachers receive a week of training in August where we go over different philosophies of homeschooling, look at a range of curriculum, and talk about learning through real life. We also require our teachers to attend the homeschooling convention each year as part of their professional development. We encourage our teachers to get involved in their local homeschool communities. Please read Janet Rainbow’s article to see how our teachers have enjoyed their time with homeschooling communities across the province.
My children were personally blessed by HCOS teachers who helped at our local homeschool co-op and by one of our teachers who ran the Kelowna Kidz Choir.
We have decided to look at this Ministry change as a blessing. This allows us to stop what essentially was our school borrowing from you. Instead of having our parents pay for the educational resources for our students out of their pockets, we can now pay for the students’ resources directly. I think this is awesome! Now, we just need to develop policies that will be flexible enough to ensure that we are able to pay for the resources that you need. We have a growing list of vendors who are working with us. We are also looking at ways to fund various activities, used curriculum, supplies, and out-of-the-ordinary resources. We are relying heavily on our amazing families. I have received many comments and suggestions that have helped us to look at new ways of providing resources for families. If you have any ideas that will help us to serve you better, please email us. Please remember that we are here to minister to and to serve you. We are listening to you; your suggestions are shaping our new policies.
Sarah Bennett: sbennett@onlineschool.ca