Everyone knows that from state to state, education laws and even laws for services for gifted students vary. The story of my son's schooling is sadly one that has a ring of truth
to so many families in the highly/profoundly gifted community. A consistent thread that includes neglected needs, testing, testing, TESTING, hoop jumping, Herculean advocacy efforts, some bullying, possibly some misdiagnosis or missed diagnosis, etc..
We did the dance with school for so many years, and for so many years we got crumbs for accommodations at best and my son suffered for it. He floated along feeling alone in school. He got in trouble, he was labeled a trouble maker (and I was, too). We tried to cram our square peg into that round hole for nearly five and a half years. Much like the peg in the picture, it was damaging.
We Climbed into the Life Raft
Mid 5th grade, the small private school for gifted students imploded. All students were in the wind. Some returned to their previous schools. A few of us who had no where good to return to huddled together in a life raft to maintain some consistency for our kids sake and hopefully figure out how the heck to homeschool. The
silver lining of that school debacle was we had finally found a few true peers. It took a while and some human ingenuity, but we did it!
No more school, the sky is the limit!
Recently, Allison shared this article with me. This part stood out to us,
"These parents homeschooled their children, but not in isolation from their peers. They had teamed up with five or six other families. Each family was responsible for a subject—English, math, history, French, and so on. Each day the children would gather at the house of one of the families to spend the day under their tutelage, learning that particular subject. The results were extraordinary. And the children were very lucky to have parents who were willing to invest so much in them. I’m sure many of us today can’t help but wonder what we might have achieved if we could have spent the whole day learning, instead of having been forced to spend it in school."
THIS! This is the very model that our BRIGHTLinks homeschooling group uses and will continue to use. We have done things ranging from computer science, chemistry with labs, codes and ciphers, biology dissections, and math club. We did it together! We have done this model for the last 5 years. Having each other to lean on and learn with has been such a blessing.
Without question, it is a labor of love. Our parents are amazing and generous. It is because of their dedication that we have seen all of our children thrive along side their peers in this model. The only thing that could make this better is more like-minded and dedicated families to join in and share the load.
Taking on the responsibility of home education has brought such an unexpected and wonderful gift that without all the adversity we might never have received-- the gift of education with true peers.