P-p-p-PRESSURE

Some of you may remember that line from an old (80's ?) pop song. Recently it's been on a commercial. Today it's the title of my blog.



I awoke feeling pressure and yes, singing the tag line to that song. P-p-p-pressure, coming down on me... Let me explain.



While I consider my family to be a homeschooling one, we are probably more accurately a school at home family. We are part of a VA. (that's virtual academy for those of you not in the know). This is not exactly the place I want to be in, but one that is a compromise for my family. My husband was not a fan of the idea of homeschooling (after all...HIS tax dollars pay for a public school education...) and I just could not send my innocent 5 y.o. off to a place that she cried over every time you mentioned the word (school). After some quick research we found a public VA that uses the curriculum I had been wanting to use, or at least check into using, for a few years before my DC was even school aged. I had always hoped to home school. A public VA gives me the option of teaching my DC at home, while using my husband's tax dollars to pay for a top notch curriculum. We are reimbursed for internet (half anyway... they still think people are actually using dial-up) and are loaned a very nice pc and printer. Those are the positives.

The pressure comes in as the negative. Because we are technically public schoolers, we have to jump through all the public school hoops. The one I dislike the most is what the school calls "teachers" and our bi-monthly conferences we are required to have with them. I have a problem calling them teachers. I do all the instruction-the teaching. I would rather call them payed paper pushers- Or the VA KGB. In our 5 years of being with the va, we have yet to be taught anything from a teacher. They collect our portfolio samples, make sure we're doing our work, inform us of yet another policy change, etc, but not teach. Let's not get it twisted. I am my child's teacher. I am the one that taught this child to read, and write, and appreciate history. I am the one that has to deal with her crying over her frustrations in struggling with a concept or miscommunication with her teacher.



Pressure comes from going to bed at night realizing that you have a conference tomorrow. It comes from waking up in the morning thinking that today is the day. I've not sent in samples yet, we've not hit some controversial deadline that I was told isn't really a deadline one day, and the next told that indeed it was, and I don't enjoy my conversations with the kgb.



So first thing this morning, I went to the post office and mailed the samples. I showed dc the math questions her teacher wants to go over, and now I will finish this post so I can log into our online conference.