LOL, I forgot not everybody is up-to-date on everything!

[conuly]

Eva and Ana have been homeschooled the past few years specifically to avoid our god-awful middle school. It's really, truly, legitimately bad. Like, they had to invent a new circle of hell bad. Like, in the past month, multiple students at that school have told me, apropos of absolutely nothing that there are a lot of fights and people get beat up every month. Like, people who don't live in this neighborhood and aren't zoned for that school know how bad it is.

(The academics aren't so good either.)

So if you were scratching your head wondering "But is she not already attending school?", well, no, that's the point.

(And I feel her when she says she wants more social time. I think that's extremely valid. It's not something I wanted at that age, but she's much more extroverted than I am. I'd be happier about it if she didn't vehemently shoot down everything her parents and I have tried for the past three years to get her more social time during the school day.)

Comments

[nicki]

IDK what the laws are in NY so IDK if this is an option, but could she do a shortened or partial day? Or does your district have an independent study or charter option?

[conuly]

1. No shortened or partial days.
2. She wants more socialization. Independent study is not gonna do it :(
2a. But she doesn't want to do a single homeschool or afterschool class or activity, like, ever.
2b. Not even a two or three times a week park day with the same kids.
3. The charter school options available to us are worse academically than most of the public schools, and I don't like their models - very prisonesque.

[redbird]

It sounds like she wants an instant best friend, which no she won't get from a soccer team or regular park day or Scout troop, but she also wouldn't get from school. (Scouts come to mind because adrian_turtle's other partner's daughter goes to Girl Scouts, and his wife/her mother has been active in scouting for years.)

I assume you've already tried asking "OK, if you don't want A, B, C, D, E, or F, what would you like?" and gotten a frustrated "I don't know!" or "I told you that, I want to spend more time with kids my age."

[conuly]

We've gotten "I want to go to school!" which... look, kiddo, meet us halfway before giving up, would you?

[siderea]

It sounds like she wants an instant best friend

Hmmmm, no, I think it sounds like she realizes she's being abandoned: her big sister won't be home schooling with her any more, because big sister is going to school.

I think her freak out is that she's going to lose her best friend. Or rather, lose the one friend she's been going through the majority of her days with.

I think it's because she doesn't want to be home schooled alone.

[conuly]

I think you're right. The irony is that she hated being schooled with Ana. It was constantly "she's doing less work than I am" (she wasn't) or "she's in my space" or "I can't work if you two are talking and I refuse to go to another room" or "I can't work quietly and I refuse to go with Connie to another room" or "I don't want to participate in this thing where we both are being schooled together unless she lets me do all the talking".

[siderea]

Awwwww, the poor bubbeleh is losing having someone to complain about. That must be terribly hard on her.

(Only half joking. Aunt C and D's relationship was 80+ years of continuous sniping punctuated by brief periods of comparative peace when one or the other Wasn't Talking to the other. D was devastated when Aunt C died. Also, is now having trouble managing her snarkiness, no longer having a designated victim for it.)

[conuly]

:)

I'm reliably informed by the homeschool forum I frequent that 7th graders are just major jerks and this is normal. I believe it - I remember middle school! No way all that awfulness can be blamed on the administration. (A lot of it can, though.)

[redbird]

Right. I hadn't connected that.

[nicki]

Ugh. Our ISP students have to come in for math tutoring twice a week and are eligible for all activities at their school of residence.

[conuly]

Yeah, that'd be great. There's no reason for NYC public schools to NOT allow kids to do dual enrollment for middle and high school - after all, they're switching rooms on a bell schedule anyway! But they don't.

[chelseagirl]

Sorry to hear about school woes; we don't have children, but from observing my friends who do and who've stayed in the city, it seems such an incredibly complicated thing, finding the right school.

[conuly]

You can say that again....

[sabotabby]

I truly don't understand the concept of middle school. When I was a wee one, we had K-8 (4-8 in my school because it was big), then 9-13. It still meant that 10-12-year-olds had to attend school together, which is unfortunate as I'm convinced they're, en masse, the worst demographic of children, but at least they were split up a bit rather than all grouped together.

I wish you luck.

[conuly]

The idea is that kids in that age group are miserable, so you want them separated from the other children.

Decades later, the reality seems to be that they do better when they're NOT separated, when they're either with younger kids (and Being Looked Up To) or with older ones (and Not Wanting to be Babies).

Also: Smaller schools, smaller class sizes. My god, all the middle school options on Staten Island have more students in one year than the high schools we looked at for their entire four years.

[nicki]

Pft. They aren't miserable, they are confused (and a lot of fun). We all have a hard time when we have to learn a completely new set of social rules (learning adult ones in this case).

[conuly]

And they're doing it while largely unsupervised. Lord of the Flies has nothing on the middle school I attended.

[sabotabby]

Ugh. My friend has 35 kindergarteners and I think I'd die. I have 25-odd teenagers in one class and that's exhausting.

[kitcatwoman]

My middle school was the same way. The first year was fine, but we got a new principal the next year and things got progressively worse. She didn't give a crap about the students and that attitude seemed to spread to the rest of the administration and some of the teachers. By the time I left, fighting was an everyday occurrence and someone actually started a fire in the girls bathroom.

Is the high school any better, or will you continue to home school them?

[conuly]

The NYC high school admissions process is... uh, involved. Most students outside of Staten Island don't even have a zoned option anymore, although all Staten Island students do. And even if you do, you still have to wade through the process and fill out the forms and whatnot.

There are many good options for high school.

[shadowkat]

Read all the comments first...so Staten Island? Not sure there's much you can do. Not that there's a lot of options.
My brother moved clear up the Hudson River Valley to get good schooling and pays a lot. Although, when they lived in Hawaii for 9 months, they homeschooled their daughter. And for extracurricular activities? She joined a swim team (it's Hawaii), and took hulu dancing and surfing classes (again Hawaii).

So...is there any extracurricular courses available? Like say fencing, dancing, something along those lines? I know there are elsewhere in the city. Not sure about Staten Island -- only section of NYC that I haven't been too.

[conuly]

Oh, there's lots - not just on Staten Island, but in Manhattan, and programs just for homeschoolers. But - and here's the rub - she doesn't want to do them. She only wants to be in school, not in any other form of class.