It's been a busy year working as an online support teacher. Yep, I lend my educational expertise (I hear those snickers..you know who you are.. and more importantly, I KNOW who you are!) to families that are home educating their children. I really DO think of the moms as the teachers, because they are in the trenches doing the hard stuff, day in and day out, and reaping the rewards of it. :) Really, what I do is hopefully be an encouragement to the moms as I keep the Ministry happy by meeting their requirements for 'distributed learning programs'.
It seems there really was no break this year for me, except for a bit of a slow time in January (when homeschooling families are putting their hands to the plow and getting lots done after the Christmas celebrations die down and before the nicer weather shows up to distract them!)
A new year begins in the 3rd week of August. From then through till the end of October, we support teachers are busy with Staff Convention and Training, and helping parents decide which curriculum to use, then writing up Student Learning Plans, reading emails and entering information about the educational activities completed each week, and generally getting to know the families we are assigned. Most of this is done through phone calls, emails, snail mail, and sometimes in-person meetings. Fortunately, a good number of my families live near me.
Come November, portfolios come rolling in (Report Card #1) , and this keeps me good and busy until a week before Christmas. For Christmas, everything pretty well shuts down. Parents and children are in the celebrating mood, and through their emails to me in January, I'll hear all about the educational activities ( math (i.e. baking, spending money!) learning new games, community service (Christmas program at church, food bank, etc.), geography skills ( learned while traveling to a warmer climate), social skills (visiting with family and friends, sharing toys, saying sorry after not sharing toys, etc) that they took part in.
February means Portfolio #2 - busyness once again. Marking these lasts about4-6 weeks or so, by the time I'm done. I always want to be done by Spring Break, but that doesn't usually happen.
Throw in learning camps, staff meetings, and the April convention, and the end of the year approaches rather quickly! In the Spring I'm helping parents decide on curriculum ideas, and then by mid May, the last round of Portfolios start filtering in. It's the final Report Card time! Deadline: June 30!
Besides the fact that education is one of my interests, what I love about this job is that I can choose how much work I want. If I take a few students, that leaves me more time for other important activities that I want to be a part of (but less $ to do those activities! :), and if I take a full load, I make oodles of moo (ya, right!) , but have no life. So.... I choose the middle road. Enough students to keep me busy, but hopefully not TOO busy. I like to be able to take time off now and then, to take part in Ladies' midweek Bible Study in the daytime, to visit with friends during the day, to be a part of other community organizations, and, of course, to be a mom and wife who isn't stressed out all of the time with feelings of overwhelmedness. Oh, stress does happen at times, anyway... due to lack of personal organization, I'm sure. I'm a wanna be filer who ends up being a piler!
Anyways, all that was to lead up to this most important point: My REPORT CARDS ARE DONE!!! Oh, what a feeling! Now I can choose what will keep me busy this summer. I've got 101 things that I want to do. We shall see if I'm successful!
Happy Canada Day, everyone. Have a great summer!
I will let you know how it goes. Literally.
