I spend all my time worrying about my kids education. I often question myself. Am I spending too much time on it? Do I worry too much? Should I just take a step back and stop being overly involved? I realize that all things in life have a good and a bad side to them. Education shouldn't be any different, only where is the line. That line that people over step and invade your comfort zone. I am feeling invaders in my space. There are certain things I will tolerate, and maybe they just do not see themselves over stepping their boundaries.




I really thought we found our home, a place we could feel our kids were safe, respected, and treated as an equal. It started out that way but as the layers peel back we are discovering that things are not what they always seem. As I said before, there is a good and a bad side. The good side is just amazing. The discovery that goes on, the time for research and true learning is there. Taking a small thing like an maple leaf, and learning its parts, its life history, how it produce sap, how the sap is then turned into syrup, the math of the measuring how much sap it takes to make a gallon of syrup, learning about the farmers and their lives, and how commerce works, it is endless. And these amazing things happen all the time.But at the same time a child can focus on their maple tree all day and never learn to spell maple, or know how to say tree in a native language, or have an adult near by to explain why sap only comes in February and March. Those things are missing from this amazing place.



Those things could be over looked because I can at home help them with those addtional things they may miss while away from me. What they cannot get from me is my protection while I am away. Protection from words, and actions that can break the soul of a child. I cannot protect them from being singled out, or made out to be strange, not part of the group, or not fitting into the mold that they so desperatly try to have families conform to. The word "cult" has passed my ears before from ex-attenders. Those who have left the "family" to move on to more "mainstream" or " more structured" environments. I was warned of this indoctrination that would happen to my family and I was blinded by my desperate need to have a place my children could be all that they could be.



So here I am.. back where I started. There are times I watch them with their peers and see them collaborating on projects together, learning about things far beyond their years in sciences and math, I see them read stories and novels of great literature, and I wonder would it be right of me to remove them from this group of thinkers. Then there are times when my son comes home and tells me what some students and even staff voice to him, he is the outcast of very few, which is almost harder then being alone in a crowd of 1000. He feels he is unheard, misunderstood, and that no one is listening to him. There are times when they over step their boundaries as educators and try to parent, even in front of me. As if I am not even standing there, or capable of making good choices for my sons.



I thank those of you who took the time to once again listen to my constant battle of the educators. I thank you for allowing me to spill my frustrated soul. Just hope for me, and my family, that these choices I am about to make are the right ones.