Schooling

John and I have been talking over our schooling situation. We've talked in person to the ESL teacher at the elementary school as well as a few other teachers twice now, as well as having phone conversations with them. We've toured the school, talked to the principal, etc. We've talked to the ESL coordinator at the University, international students at the U, plus we've talked to lots of other adoptive families as to what they have done.

The school district has basically told us that if we want to get some ESL help that we have to put the kids in with some other ESL students (who happen to be kindergarteners), since the ESL teacher isn't allowed to do extra work for a not-enrolled-in-the-district family. We have the option of partial enrollment, but we would be required to put them in school a quarter of the day and transition asap to full days. Then we could get the ESL help. Not crazy about that idea at all. I asked about classroom size, and they have FULL classrooms. Adam's would-be-teacher has 26 students already, including an autistic child and gifted/talented students. How on earth is she going to have the time to help my kid? I asked her what she would do with Adam to help him catch up and one of her ideas was to read to him individually since it "immerses him in the language." Ok, so she *might* have time to read him ONE book a day between 8:45 and 3:45 in between trying to juggle her time with the rest of the class. We read to the kids a minimum of an hour a day! She also said that she'd have him color so that his fine-motor skills would develop. Oy. Definitely need a school building for that! Also, she said that her classroom is like one big family. That sorta bugs me. WE are their family! Talk about confusing the poor kids to death. "Great, I have two families? Is this my new family? What's this all about?"

There really isn't the smaller-classroomed private school option for us for a number of reasons. There isn't one within "normal" driving distance for us, and besides the cost is a major issue with John's layoff underway. (As is the case if we wanted to hire a private tutor.) Many families in our church homeschool, and there is already a group organized to do special activities and projects, so that's great that the support is there.

We definitely see a lot of pros to school - the facilities, the "stuff" etc., but there is sooo much riding on this decision. We have a curriculum that we're using right now for ESL at home, and this company also has actual k-12 curriculum too, which is self-paced, so we will likely keep them home and let them continue to bond with us, us to them, and continue to try to cover three grades as quickly as he's able. I'm scared to death to continue to homeschool, but I think that it's a healthy fear that will keep me digging for more ideas, more resources, more connections, etc. I've already joined several Yahoo groups having to do with homeschooling, just to get an idea of what is out there.

Plus, we've only been their parents for 7 1/2 weeks. WE want to raise our kids; we don't want to school district to. As for the "what-about-peer-socialization-of-your-kids?" question. Well, the way we see it, our kids have had nothing BUT peer-socialization for the past two years. The kids at the orphanage only had each other and from some of the horror stories our kids are starting to tell us, the "caregivers" were "not," so they barely had even them. We have seen what kids raising kids does, and frankly, we don't want any more of that for ours. Our kids are still learning what family is all about. Granted, they've settled in remarkably well, but does that mean we should rock the boat? Not sure I'm willing to take that risk. Stakes are too high.