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This Q&A video is going over another specific list, and I don’t know where this list originated, but I’ve received several emails from homeschooling parents which all have the same list of questions, like word for word. They evidently copied and pasted it from somewhere, I don’t know where, but they’re good questions, and I wanted to respond with a video to answer these questions.
1. What does a typical year of homeschooling with your board look like?
I responded that the words “typical” and “homeschooling” don’t often belong in the same sentence. I really can’t answer that. I’m not sure what a typical year will look like for you because every parent is going to have a different experience from year to year. I know that for us, that can mean that we’re heavily involved in supporting you. Maybe you’re having a year where you have lots of questions, something unique going on. Maybe a high school student wants to earn a diploma, and so we’re interacting quite often, helping your student earn the credits that he or she needs for the diploma. In other years, it could look like we’re not even around except for the two required visits. So it really depends on your needs and what you’re wanting to accomplish, and just how much support you need from us.
2. It is my understanding that two facilitator meetings are required per year. When do these meetings typically take place?
That’s correct, those meetings are to conduct the required evaluation. I do have another video that talks about how we conduct our evaluations, but yes, that is correct, two meetings or two evaluations per year. The first meeting typically takes place somewhere between early October and early December, and then the second meeting or the second evaluation would take place sometime in early March all the way through early June. Those are the typical times where you will be meeting with your facilitator.
3. Are home visits compulsory? Is it possible to do virtual meetings?
No, we do not have to meet in your home if you’re not comfortable with that. When I was a facilitator, I often times in these situations where the parent wasn’t comfortable meeting in the house, I would meet at a Tim Hortons, a local restaurant, a library, just any place where the parent felt comfortable meeting. So no, you don’t have to meet your facilitator in your home. Yes, we can certainly do virtual meetings. During the COVID restrictions from last year, we did all of the second semester meetings online or through telephone, so we can certainly do that going forward.
4. There is a good chance we will be out of province for several months. We will be maintaining our home in Alberta, etc., etc. What will the facilitator do during our meetings? What do they expect to see? What do we have to show him or her?
I told her that’s absolutely no problem as long as you are a resident of Alberta as of September 30th, a parent and a child, and you meet the residency requirements. We have families who travel all over the world, so yeah, not a problem. I do have a video on the evaluation meeting in this virtual open house webpage, so please refer to that video where I describe a typical evaluation meeting. But suffice it to say, our required meetings, the required evaluations, are meant to be a positive experience. We want to really find ways to support you and help you. We want to evaluate so that we do our due diligence as we are required to do, but it’s in no means, not supposed to be, a stressful event. Hopefully, your child or children will look forward to seeing the facilitator, and it’s it’s not a stressful environment. It’s about, it’s like an awards ceremony where the child gets to present all the things that he or she has learned and earned and achieved since the last visit.
5. What is your perspective about the role of the supervising authority or school board in evaluating a child’s progress? What is approved curriculum?
Again, I would refer you to the the videos in the “Facilitation and Evaluation” section of the open house video. I’ve got videos that talk about this this topic already. I’m not really sure what she means by “approved curriculum” because there’s no official thing called an approved curriculum. She could be referring to some other home ed programs which have what they call “approved curriculum.” I don’t know if it’s approved for reimbursement or if they’re saying it’s approved for an aligned program, whatever that is. I have a very low opinion of an aligned program. I’m not really sure where the term “approved curriculum” is coming from, but no, we do not, we don’t, I don’t recognize the term “approved curriculum.” The parent approves the curriculum, the home ed program does not. So if you have identified learning resources that fit your learning plan, well, then you’ve approved them. And if she’s talking about “approved curriculum” in a sense of approved for reimbursement, well, that’s different. Yes, we do have, I actually have a video on that here in the virtual open house webpage that talks about what’s allowable for reimbursement. But oftentimes when I hear the term “approved curriculum,” it means something else. It’s not talking about reimbursement. It’s as if the parent has to choose curriculum from a certain list, and that does not exist here in our program.
6. Do you offer assistance with developing the education program plan?
Our answer is yes, but by regulation, all home ed programs must help the parent if the parent wants help with developing the education program plan.
7. What methods of home education do your facilitators support and oversee?
I’ve identified five, I have a video for this as well on the open house virtual open house, talks about styles of homeschool, and I’ve identified five as I mentioned before, and they are: traditional, which just means it’s your, you know, Abeka, Bob Jones, Saxon Math, kind of your your method of somewhat following a school approach, right? So you’re following resources that are pretty standard in in in content. They follow the curriculum that’s pretty common from the United States. So that’s what I would call traditional. Maybe that’s not the best term, but that’s what I’ve come up with. The next is called classical, which is its own method, fantastic way of learning. Charlotte Mason method, again, fantastic way. Unit studies, which are fantastic, all five are fantastic. Unit studies, some people call them theme-based or interest-based learning. Great, yeah, I I really like unit studies. Again, videos on all five of these methods are on the virtual open house website, so please refer to those videos for more information. And then last of the five but not least, unschooling. A lot of people are asking about unschooling. Sometimes they call it non-schooling, but it’s basically learning, well, I have a video on that, so you can certainly check that out as well. But those are the five main methods of home educating that I know about and that we certainly support here at THEE. So your facilitator is going to be able to support you in any of these five methods. I said the only method that we don’t support is the “do nothing” method, but if you are doing any one of these five other methods, then we can certainly support you.
8. What is my recourse if, during the year, we don’t agree or if we don’t agree with the facilitator who’s been assigned to us?
Well, I explained to to this mom that you don’t need to agree with us. You are the authority, so we’re not going. The only time we may disagree with you legitimately is just over a simple, I would say, a reimbursement item, whether or not it’s reimbursable. That’s all another discussion, but we you don’t need to agree with us. You are the authority, and we’re here to support you. I can’t really think of a time where you would need to agree with us and we would need to agree with you in terms of your methods, your resources you’ve chosen. I just can’t think of a situation where we don’t agree just because we don’t, you don’t need us to agree with you. Again, you’re the authority. There can be a situation where you’re just not clicking with the facilitator. Sometimes, usually it’s mostly a personality issue, or maybe the facilitator just isn’t supporting you in a way that’s meaningful to you, but I think that’s very different from agreeing with you. But anyway, if you don’t click with your facilitator and you would like a new one, please talk to me. You can call me or email me. I will need to talk to you about the situation because we can, I will certainly do my best to find another facilitator to assign to you. But if you live in an area where we only have one facilitator assigned, let’s say you’re up in Fort McMurray or up in say La Crête and you want a new facilitator, I’m not going to be able to help because I only have one facilitator for those areas. So that situation, we might have to look at other alternatives or we may just not be able to to support you unfortunately.
9. How do we receive funding? What kind of expenses can be submitted?
That question is answered with many other related questions on the “Section Number Two: Funding and Reimbursements.” So at THEE, I don’t want to repeat anything that’s there already because there’s a lot of information, so please see the “Section Number Two: Funding and Reimbursements.”
10. Do you require religious teachings to be included within the education plan?
The answer to that is no. Remember, this is your plan. Even though we are part, we are the home education program of Saint Isidore Learning Center, so we are part of a Elk Island Catholic School Division, but this is different from a school-directed, teacher-directed program of Elk Island Catholic. So home education has you the parent as determining the program. In a classroom situation, the teacher determines the program. Well, this isn’t classroom, this isn’t teacher-directed, this is parent-directed. So parent-directed, you the parent direct and make all the decisions concerning the who, when, where, why, and how of home education. So absolutely, no, there’s no requirement from a school board on to the the parent in terms of religious education at all. And I think I’m going to make a video on that topic because I see a lot of family, especially in Facebook, talk about, “Well, I don’t want to go with this program or that program because they’re with a faith-based school or a religious school, and I don’t want any religious education.” Well, I would like those families to know that you don’t, you will never be required, at least not from us, you’ll never be required to have religious education because this is your program, not ours.
Alright, well, that wraps it up for this Q&A session, so thank you so much for watching.
