Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Monday, April 15, 2013
Why Homeschool - Part II
I am ready to share a few more thoughts about our choice to try and homeschool for a year. (See also part zero and part one).
It is hard to know where to start, so let me talk about the most concrete issues first. One that I already mentioned, of course, is the cost. Summarizing what I already said, we are not ready at this point to try a government school and private schools are expensive. Without being too specific, overall yearly we are talking about the equivalent of a few thousands of dollars, and in addition to this many schools ask for an initial "donation", i.e. a non-refundable fee that is almost as high as one full year of regular fees. In the school we almost enrolled our kids in, this fee was intended to cover the cost of a new building. After an initial moment of doubt, we were satisfied that this was a legal and legitimate request, but you can see how this kind of commitment can only make sense if there is a long term plan of staying in the school all the way (the school does cover the whole K-12 course of study). It does not however make sense for us, given that we do not even know right now whether we will still be in India in one or two years time.
When we explained this, the first reaction of many generous family members was to offer to help pay some of the fees, so I feel compelled to clarify that while money is a very important factor in our decision, it is not the only one. There are other reasons that are just as important: I mentioned some in my earlier post and I will try and explain more here.
Avoiding the daily commute ranks high on our list of reasons. We live a bit out of town and most schools that could be acceptable to us in other ways are really far. We have subjected the kids to a long and stressful commute - hours in the car *every day* - for almost two years now and we would like to try and simplify our daily life a little. In addition, even though our job allows us to work from home every now and then, at the moment we are very rarely able to take advantage of this. Maybe I am experiencing a dangerous wave of optimism here, but I imagine our quality of life really improving substantially with this choice.
These are our main reasons: money, uncertainty about our future whereabouts, a very stressful daily life. I will leave my wisdom about education for part III :)
It is hard to know where to start, so let me talk about the most concrete issues first. One that I already mentioned, of course, is the cost. Summarizing what I already said, we are not ready at this point to try a government school and private schools are expensive. Without being too specific, overall yearly we are talking about the equivalent of a few thousands of dollars, and in addition to this many schools ask for an initial "donation", i.e. a non-refundable fee that is almost as high as one full year of regular fees. In the school we almost enrolled our kids in, this fee was intended to cover the cost of a new building. After an initial moment of doubt, we were satisfied that this was a legal and legitimate request, but you can see how this kind of commitment can only make sense if there is a long term plan of staying in the school all the way (the school does cover the whole K-12 course of study). It does not however make sense for us, given that we do not even know right now whether we will still be in India in one or two years time.
When we explained this, the first reaction of many generous family members was to offer to help pay some of the fees, so I feel compelled to clarify that while money is a very important factor in our decision, it is not the only one. There are other reasons that are just as important: I mentioned some in my earlier post and I will try and explain more here.
Avoiding the daily commute ranks high on our list of reasons. We live a bit out of town and most schools that could be acceptable to us in other ways are really far. We have subjected the kids to a long and stressful commute - hours in the car *every day* - for almost two years now and we would like to try and simplify our daily life a little. In addition, even though our job allows us to work from home every now and then, at the moment we are very rarely able to take advantage of this. Maybe I am experiencing a dangerous wave of optimism here, but I imagine our quality of life really improving substantially with this choice.
These are our main reasons: money, uncertainty about our future whereabouts, a very stressful daily life. I will leave my wisdom about education for part III :)
Friday, April 5, 2013
Early morning
A few photos taken while getting ready for school in the morning. We ended up being a bit late out of the door, but I couldn't resist Lila in her new dress :)
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Why Homeschool - Part I
Following a request from a large fraction (one) of my readers, I will try and explain how we came to the decision of homeschooling. Before I go into the reasons though, I think I should give a summary of how we got to this point. This is going to be long and probably boring, but since you asked, here it comes..
Goa
Photos from our trip to Goa two weeks ago. Nonna was with us too, and will stay with us until early April.
A spontaneous tree hugging session on our first morning of holiday.
A spontaneous tree hugging session on our first morning of holiday.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Rajiv likes detective stories, just like mamma and papa
Rajiv is reading his first chapter book all by himself. I bought the first four "A to Z Mysteries" and I planted them on S's desk, where I knew at some point they would be noticed. It worked and now he is reading the book to me - nice change!
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
School update
For lots of reasons that I might explain later, it looks like we are going to homeschool next year.
Yup, "Wow" is the right answer.. :)
Yup, "Wow" is the right answer.. :)
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