Lindina, I would love to hear how you run your school. How much time do you spend with individual students? Do you plan any of your lessons where you do things as a group? What is your schedule like? How many students can you handle at once? I think I remember you saying your husband is involved in some way. How does he help? What are your school hours, and how many hours do you spend planning outside of school hours? How much do you charge your students?
Don't get me started -- I love talking about my school! Well, okay, you twisted my arm!!! LOL We start tomorrow. Since we're schooling OPKs, we have to have a specified start time and stop time, so I chose 815 to 245 officially, but some days can start as late as 830 and end whenever the moms come pick up their kids. These times help us miss the ps bus traffic. We start the morning with pledges to the US flag, the Christian flag, and the Bible, with a song for each after its pledge. Then we have prayer, led by DH. This year, I'm going to teach them the Lord's Prayer in sign language. (We'll move on to other things too, but we'll start there.) Then we go to our desks. This year we're going to do Sequential Spelling first. I have a whiteboard where I write their assignments for each subject, but generally they're free to do them in whatever order they want to. We break for lunch and free time at about 1145-ish, until 1230-ish. I have tons of puzzles and games to play with, legos, wooden blocks, etc. Sometimes I'm using my time to finish checking papers, but sometimes I'll get us all going on a many-player game like dominoes or Chinese checkers or Yahtzee, Monopoly Jr., Aggravation (Trouble), something like that. When lunch is over, we go back to our desks to work. Last year I started reading aloud after lunch for about 20-30 minutes (my dh loves this!), and I plan to resume doing that this year. If they finish all their assignments with time left to spare, they can read or play a game or draw/color. DH and I split up the instruction - he does most of the Bible and math and some of the science and history, while I do all the reading/language arts, and some of the science and history, and all of the administrative stuff. How much actual instructing is being done will depend on the child, the subject, the level, and the assignment. In general, the idea is that they work independently to read and answer the questions, then we check, then discuss any parts of it they don't understand. Sometimes we will read the assignment with the student, and together find the answers to any review questions the materials contain. Most of the time I have adequate time to plan the next day during the day when they are working independently - but sometimes I have to finish checking work and plan for an hour or so after they've all left, write stuff on the board I want to start with, write their assignments on that board, print out or copy work sheets for the next day, etc. Very rarely do I have any students doing the same subject at the same level with the same materials. On the occasions when we've had two like that, I've tried to "teach it as a class" but more often than not, they don't stay together lesson by lesson because one will be absent and the other goes on, or one is just quicker at grasping it, or one neglects to do the homework, or SOMEthing comes about that gets them each into a different place. So we have to proceed from there at each their own pace. Sometimes we get it back together again, and sometimes not. This year we're going to start out with each their own science to finish from last year, then we'll get to a place where we're going to try Considering God's Creation together. We're also going to do together some little geography units I've found on the internet. Sometimes I don't really want to have two or more together because they tend to compare/compete and SOMEbody ends up feeling badly because they don't work at the same speed while the other gloats.... This year we'll only have two, so it shouldn't be too tough, but if you have two together and three or four others who all need your attention, it can get hectic! If I find myself with two together, I'll try to get them together at a "set point" like first thing in the morning, or right after finishing read-aloud time, something like that, because if you don't, they will NEVER at any point in the day finish something at the same time that they've started independently earlier. How much time I spend with a student depends on how much time that student needs - some of the older kids can rock along reading for themselves, answering questions, a brief discussion and they're good to go, while naturally the littler ones need more teacher attention and direction. Sometimes I have found that I've needed to give one student priority for my time all day because that one was behind, or had been absent, or was just having difficulty for one reason or another. That doesn't mean that I didn't see about the others, just that when it came to a choice between one student and the others, the one got the attention that day. Other days it was someone else's turn, or pretty well distributed attention to everyone. Usually I like to work with CLE because it's very independent. But, depending on the child and the subject and the level, I might choose R&S or something else. I've used Abeka, BJU (not so much), CLP, ACE, Lifepacs, Saxon math, Pathways readers, Easy Grammar Plus, all the Daily Grams through 7th and Jr/Sr Hi. I've used units I've made up myself, and adapted materials I've collected from all sorts of sources through the years. I love the CLE, but it's very handy to have R&S or something else on the shelf that I can pull out when someone else comes in unexpectedly and put away again when they leave, and not be waiting for workbooks to come in or be left with unused workbooks when they leave before the year is out. When I was getting started with this, I tried to find a "price point" that was more affordable than the bigger private schools in the area. Worth the effort for me but not out of reach of most of those who might be interested. In practice, though, I end up making individual arrangements with each family according to how much I think I can trust them to pay me, or be honest with me about it when they can't. Last year was the first time that I ended up taking somebody to our little city court over non-payment because the mom kept lying to me about when she was going to kick in, when she really had no intention of paying me at all (and her child was the one last year who just didn't want to do his work - sweet and polite on the surface, but shiftless and conniving otherwise, and would lie like a green rug!). Last year was also the first year when we actually were scraping and scrounging for pencils, erasers, etc., just to get by and not have the lights turned off. With most people, though, I can tell who can/will and who honestly can't, and we can work something out. For the most part, as long as I get enough to pay for their workbooks and pencils and such, and keep the lights on, I don't worry about it too much, because the child's education and them hearing the Gospel is more important to me than what goes into my pocket when. God has provided, and I'm not too good to barter for goods or services. Usually the first year I tell them it's a bit more, because often enough I've had to stop a course and use something different because I guessed wrong and it just wasn't working. After that, if they stay a second year, the price is less because by that time I pretty much know them and won't be changing nearly as often, and it remains stable after that however long they stay with us. Payment schedules vary according to how the parent gets paid - once a month, every other week, the first and the fifteenth, weekly, whatever. The fewest we've ever had is one, and the most at one time is ten. When we had ten, that group included three or four who just did not want to work, were attitudinal, etc., so it wasn't nearly as much fun as it could have been. Tomorrow we're starting with just two, both of whom were there last year and both well-behaved sweet kids, so we should be able to relax and just enjoy school. But we never know when someone will pop up out of the woodwork - after the first ps report card, or second, or at mid-term, even as late as March. We never know when somebody will leave, either, and for some reason the parents don't seem to understand that they need to talk to me and tell me what they're planning - to move out of town, go back to public, whatever - and I have to try to track them down after the child has been absent several days.... I try to take us to the library once a week, but I come up with some sort of research project, not just "spending time looking". I like to take field trips, and if we can get in one a month I'm happy (even if it's just twenty miles - a minimum distance around here), but most of the time it ends up being four or so a year. Any students who are 12 or older, and in good health (no recent absences), and their work is caught up, can choose to volunteer at our church's Food Pantry once a month - my dh is the director of that project and drives the church van that day to go to the Food Bank to pick up the groceries to be distributed, so he'll stop by school on the way back and pick up any kids who are volunteering that day. (The local ps -- right next door to the church -- also makes it possible for their highschoolers who are members of FFA to volunteer and earn service hours.) My school is registered with the state as a "non-approved non-public school", the same as many homeschoolers (the other option for homeschoolers is Approved Home Study), so my kids are not considered truant when they go back to public schools. The state is making it less and less possible all the time for little schools like mine that aren't run by a church in age-graded classrooms like public schools do, so I'll never be an Accredited school. Private accreditations cost way too much for a tiny operation like ours, and there are far too many hoops to jump through. If there's anything I haven't addressed for you, or you come up with anything else you want to know, just ask!
Thank you for taking the time to share your insight. I would love to do what you are doing! How did you find a space for your school?
I already owned a storefront where I used to teach karate. It's about 21x40 feet inside, with one corner taken out for a restroom.
