Homeschool Decisions

It is coming to that time of year where I am geared up and focused on the new homeschool year. I have been doing a fair amount of research into High School options with Eric entering grade nine this year and the search is far from over. I am glad to be homeschooling in Alberta right now because we are light years ahead of many other provinces, and even countries, regarding governmental support and our options. However, at times it seems even more difficult because with more options sometimes comes more confusion.

The same cannot be said about support for the developmentally delayed. Brendan, our five-year-old has been assessed as having severe receptive and expressive language delay which technically allows him full funding for supportive resources. Ironically, most of those support programs are full with lengthy waiting lists or he has to be in daycare/preschool full time to qualify. Well that is not happening so we have two options, a specialized preschool two days a week specifically for children with delays and one-on-one support with a speech pathologist.

We declined the former last year because upon visiting the program I seen it as a good program indeed, but with far too few staff and I am not sure if a child with his type of delay (needing strong one-on-one language support) would benefit more in a classroom setting where others with delays also need constant attention. Thus we chose the latter and though I had great expectations of his progressing well, I am not sure his speech pathologist is providing the skills he needs. She has more than once thrown up her hands in frustration at not knowing how best to support and teach him... leaning on my knowledge to continue his support. I understand the need for input from me, but given that input she should be able to provide a stronger program than she did last year. We have decided to continue with this one-on-one support, but I will be requesting a different pathologist this year. This is his last year of full funding and next fall we will turn to our school board for support.

Which means we will be leaning on our school board more than ever next year. We have decided to stay with our current homeschool board, Wisdom Home Schooling, this year and will discuss at length with our facilitator our need for strong high school support AND program support for Brendan's delays... and reassess from there.