CHASING IDEAL EDUCATION:

Series 7 - Episode 4:Home Schooling

Sharon Roberts, Laura O’Neill and Jess Vandecar will have an informal discussion about home schooling/home learning and the many options available.  If you have an option or options to offer, please email us at info@thewds.org or just register to attend the Live Chat.  It will be edited and broadcast in our podcast series.

A Mother’s Account of Moving from Traditional Brick and Mortar Schooling to Home-based Learning

By Jessica Vandecar, April 2025

There is nothing worse for a parent than watching your child or children struggle in any aspect of life, and to feel helpless to support them. I am a mother of four children. We are a neurodivergent household; each of my children have added support needs in a variety of areas. We are a traditional “nuclear” family and up until the summer of 2020, our family included two working parents. My first two children are 7 & 9 years older than my #3, and 10 & 12 years older than my #4, so to say we have a unique family is a bit of an understatement. My first 2 kids academically excelled in the public school system and were close to being finished or actually finished before my next 2 were entering the school system.

This is an account of the journey through our first few years of the public education system in BC involving my 3rd child. I’ll give some background to his specific needs, the biggest contributing factors for us choosing a home-learning approach, how we decided on a school and learning system, and finally how things are going as we move forward. It is my goal to provide an account for others that can help decrease some of the overwhelm that comes with switching from a traditional “brick and mortar” schooling system to a more child-led home-learning system. There were many barriers that I saw to having us switch even though I knew it would likely be a better system for my son, but initially it felt insurmountable.

The Background and Contributing Factors:

Right from birth I knew my #3 was different. He needed touch almost constantly, unable to use a stroller, I carried him everywhere; he was a mover, walking and climbing everything in sight at 10 months old; he was chatty, speaking with a vocabulary well beyond his years and would randomly sing/hum when he felt joy; and despite his burning curiosity for learning, love of books and stories, he just couldn’t seem to grasp letters, numbers, and symbols with any sort of consistency, particularly on page. Right from the get-go, he made his neurodivergent and sensory needs known.

When he started Kindergarten, I was his advocate and tried my best to ensure that his teachers/school understood that he was neither academically ready nor socially ready for school, but we were encouraged to follow through with Kindergarten and still felt it was the right choice for our family. Those first few months of school exposed some differences in academic learning that my #3 experienced that were unlike my first 2 children. I could see the differences in how hard my son was working with very little pay off; his frustration grew day after day, week after week. Letter reversals, difficulty with holding a pencil including difficulty with colouring & writing, his speech began to become more affected with word reversals and mixing up common words that he knew, were just some of the most obvious struggles. These struggles began to degrade his self confidence. In addition to his neurodivergent sensory needs, I began to suspect my son was dyslexic.

I brought my concerns forward; teachers reassured me that the mistakes he was making were common for Kindergarten students, and that it would work itself out in time. A sentiment that I believe many parents of dyslexic kids are told about their young learners. In my heart, I didn’t buy it, I knew he was different and needed something different from his education, but felt trapped as my knowledge of providing alternative forms of education was limited as was my understanding of dyslexia; I was trying to both honor my instincts and trust the “professionals” to know their job best.

Then the world came to a halt. The pandemic hit and education as we knew it was forever changed.

Knowing my child needed more time and more understanding, I approached the school to plead for them to return him to kindergarten the following school year. He needed time, and I needed time. He had no friends that he could name, his social challenges continued to hinder building relationships with peers; and his academic status continued to be well behind his peers. With his kindergarten year halting at ⅔ of the way through, I felt it would have been an easy transition back into kindergarten and would perhaps give him the extra time he needed to catch up to his peers. It turns out, in BC, children are not held back - so I was told -, but pushed forward to remain in the grade/age group that they are in based on their birth year, regardless of their readiness or capacity to learn.

Over the next 3 years, my need to support my child in his need for alternative education grew. I sought support from our family physician, local pediatrician, and local therapists to question and dig for alternatives and options for my child who with each passing day in the school system was having his light dim. The singing and humming stopped, emotional outbursts increased, he became mean and impulsive instead of his usual fun and playful demeanor; it was heartbreaking to watch.

I had to advocate for assessments within and without the school system, and although he did eventually receive diagnoses of both ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder - a horrible name for this learning challenge in my humble opinion) and ASD (autism spectrum disorder), with additional persuasion, the school finally agreed to perform standardized reading assessments. Although I was unsurprised, the school staff were shocked at the results, not realizing that my chatty, hyperactive, charming kid was reading at a Kindergarten level while in grade 3, and had been “fooling” them into thinking he was performing at a much higher level. I was frustrated that these “tests” were necessary to ensure he received the attention he needed, but also grateful that they were finally done, and now we could put a plan into motion. Finally support was starting to be put into place; he now qualified for an IEP (individual education plan) that would keep the school accountable to follow academic support that would best benefit my child. This is what I believed.

It was at this time that I really began to investigate dyslexia. Who did I know with dyslexia, what is dyslexia exactly, and what are the best ways to support dyslexic kids in their education journey? From my standpoint it was the most difficult challenge to address with his IEP and support needs. The ADHD and ASD needs were easy to facilitate through multiple strategies, but the only thing that was presented to us to support his dyslexic needs was phonics, pushing more phonics, and “doing more” phonics work at home. My child, after spending the day in school masking his ADHD/ASD symptoms, had zero capacity to add additional learning at home.

My only starting point was that I knew what wasn’t working for my kiddo - the phonics learning system that is prioritized by BC’s education system. What I found through online research was the Davis Dyslexia Program, and a beautiful human by the name of Sue Hall. Sue not only had the knowledge I needed, but was full of compassion for our learning experience. Sue provided us with a new objective in our learning, and she also provided hope. I cannot express the relief I felt as a parent when I watched my son grasp the concept of dyslexia through Sue’s gentle explanations; something clicked, he lit up, he understood there was nothing wrong with him, he just had a different skill set that wasn’t well understood by the masses in education.

This began our Davis journey.

I pulled my son from classes for 2 weeks and we began to work with Sue; before my eyes my son’s reading ability soared. We accomplished more in 2 weeks than the previous 3 years in school with reference to his reading skills. The Davis system worked, and it worked well for him. Knowing this system worked gave me solid ground to advocate for his reading/writing support to be guided by Davis principles, but unfortunately, the school was not on board. I received push back from teachers even though I could feel that some were understanding of our success; they felt their hands were tied to school district procedures, policies, and guidelines. I was frustrated, and I began to seriously consider moving to home-learning. Even though my son now had assessments done and an IEP in place, my position on his learning vs the school’s perspective were at odds; I felt his needs were not being met by the available supports in his school. The brief reprieve of sadness and frustration with learning we had achieved with our dedicated time with Sue became quickly overshadowed as our capacity to continue with Davis interfered with him attending school and vice versa.

The move into grade 4 broke the camel’s back, so to speak. My #3 went from a grade ⅔ split class in the primary grades to a grade ⅘ split class in the intermediate grades where there is a big jump from “learning to read” to “using reading to learn”. This change in expectations demolished any self esteem my son had built up with our own commitment to using Davis principles, as they continued to expect phonics to work for him in school, but also learning to read was no longer their priority. My boy’s mental health began to decline and I watched him turn into a shell before my eyes. He was sad. He was desolate. He hated himself. He hated school. I knew in my heart that I had run out of time, and needed to change things for him, asap. I swallowed my fears of potential failure and overwhelm, and got serious about enrolling him into some sort of home-learning system.

I didn’t know where to start; I felt overwhelmed about having my son’s education be completely reliant upon my shoulders which already felt bogged down with managing my own complex chronic illness that I had been battling alongside his school journey.

My main concerns:

How would I support my son’s learning?

Would we be able to get through the curriculum with my own limitations?

What does home-learning/homeschooling mean?

What about his social needs?

What kind of time commitment would be required?

Will we be able to meet curriculum guidelines set by the province?

I began to explore online and became even more overwhelmed with all of the different terms - homeschooling, home-learning, online learning, hybrid learning, reporting. There were faith based schools, there were outdoor schools, there were so many schools to choose from; there were just so many options available.

Things I knew. My son needed a slower and 1:1 learning approach, he needed Davis programming to support his dyslexic needs, his ability to hyperfixate on learning subjects could be used to maximize learning by integrating multiple subjects into lessons, and he needed movement, touch, and experiences to learn, not worksheets. I wanted a learning platform with flexibility, but also one that continued to adhere to provincial standards. I didn’t want to compromise his future school endeavors by choosing something that would have educational consequences later in life. I wanted a school that would recognize his additional learning needs and support them in the best way possible, in other words school’s with a designated seat and supports that were centred around his personal needs. I had some learning to do, and quickly.

Choosing a School and Learning Platform:

To start our home-learning journey, I joined many local and provincial FB (FaceBook) groups that involved ADHD/ASD learners, home schooling groups, and mom groups. I polled people I knew. I searched local school district websites. The internet is a beautiful thing in what it can provide at your fingertips, but it also provides an incredible mass of information that can lead to confusion and/or overwhelm. My first goal was to understand the different terms and what the future implications of choosing one method over another would be long term for my child.

Some important terms that I learned:

Homeschooling:

Parent-led education that does not follow any specific curriculum needs set by the province and ministry of education. You register with your local school and then are set free to follow through with learning however you decide is best for your child. This method provides the maximum amount of flexibility to both the parent and the learner; there is no reporting and no evaluations of any kind. This form of schooling, although very flexible, can create barriers to further education as the child gets older if wanting to attend college and/or university.

Home-learning:

Parent-led education that continues to follow the BC curriculum set by the ministry of education, and is registered to a specific school district where there is a teacher connected to the student. This method is still considered to be public education, but has the benefit of flexibility in how the learning is applied. There continues to be reporting periods and does not affect the child’s ability to attend college/university in the future. This can be provided by having a class that is attended on a regular or irregular basis, or it can also be accomplished via online versions.

Online-learning:

This is a version of home-learning that enables the learner to live outside of the catchment area of the school district they live in. This provides an abundance of choice when it comes to school philosophy and method of engagement.

Reporting:

This is how parents communicate the home-learning that their child is accomplishing to the teacher they are connected with in their school, and does not apply to homeschooling. In my research, I found that this is one of the most variable aspects of home-learning. How and what is communicated is determined by the school, and what is provided by the parent/child is what is used to determine if they are meeting curriculum guidelines/requirements. How the information is reported varies as well as timelines for reporting; some schools require weekly reporting, some monthly, and some only each term.

Designated Seats:

As my child has a “designation” which means they have a specific diagnosis that can affect their learning progress, they require additional support areas, and they follow an IEP, I needed to understand that enrolling in a home-learning program wasn’t simply a matter of applying to the school, there are only so many designated seats available in each school district and/or school even within the home-learning community. That meant, I may or may not be able to get my child into the chosen program I wanted based on their needs. It is recommended that parents apply to multiple schools and then choose the best option once it is available.

Hybrid Program:

This is a home-learning option that has specific scheduled class time with a teacher outside of the home with other home-learning children enrolled in the program. This option provides an alternative to families who may not have the opportunity to provide home-learning on a full time basis. It offers a social aspect to home-learning; the social concept of home-learning is often clouded by the perspective that these children do not get the social intelligence that children who attend brick and mortar schools do. Parents that decide on a non-hybrid option for their child likely engage in social activities via social groups set up by home-learners in their community, but also these children engage in the same after school programming that is available to children who attend brick and mortar schools. In my limited experience, I have not witnessed any negative impacts to social skill set in children who participate in home-learning.

Once I gained some insight into the different terms around this new method of learning, I began my school search. For the sake of this article, I will not list every school that I investigated and/or applied to as there are so many across the province, but I will give an overview of the school we chose and why.

We decided on enrolling with Partners in Education (PIE) which is an online home-learning school program offered through school district 47 in BC. As a frame of reference, SD47 is located on Vancouver Island, and we live in BC’s interior. Some of the big reasons we went with this program were the flexibility it offered for providing my child’s education, it offered a hybrid program, the frequency of reporting is by term and uses an online platform where you can upload photos, videos, document, etc to support your learning, and it met my requirements of using the BC curriculum to continue to support his education. PIE offered a designated seat which allowed for us to access additional support in our own community to supplement his learning needs such as his occupational therapist and behaviour interventionist. In our community, the SD47-PIE program is known as Roots to Sky locally, and is a hybrid program where 2 days per week children attend outdoor school with their teacher and peers.

How we Navigate Child-led Learning and Results:

The biggest challenge that I have found with moving to home-learning has been trying to find our own rhythm that both meets learning expectations as well as honouring a child-led approach. And it began a bit bumpy, we seem to be nearly through the growing pains of the change. We are almost a year into our home-learning journey and I have zero regrets about making this switch. Not only have I seen the return of happiness in my child, but I have a whole new perspective on what it means to learn and what learning looks like.

Along with discussions with our appointed teacher and learning support navigator, I have been able to access tools that help navigate how curriculum fits into the activities that we do, and we are able to turn almost any experience into a school “lesson” while also integrating multiple subjects. With the integration of school subjects and life experiences, we are able to meet curriculum outcomes in multiple ways that mostly do not rely upon computer/sit down work. We are able to utilize cooking, cleaning, trips to museums, outdoor recreation, lego project building, playing family board and/or video games, and subscriptions to science and technology kits, just to name a few. We are also not restricted to set “school time”; we are able to have some set aside focused learning time of up to 8h per week that focuses on some foundation work including Davis support of language arts and math skills, but also benefit from learning that organically happens during play, engaging in community sporting/artistic programs, and maximizing family vacations or simple outings. The world is our oyster.

I have been able to utilize Davis program principles in our learning, and follow my own child’s needs to accomplish his learning goals. Our school does not dictate how we meet our curriculum goals, only that we provide evidence of our work, so the use of Davis principles are not only tolerated, but encouraged if that is what I have identified as the best avenue for my child - a complete switch from our local public school/district. My child’s need for being outdoors, movement, and his innate curiosity is served well in the hybrid program and it has the added benefit of giving me the opportunity to continue to treat my own health needs without sacrificing quality of education.

The barriers I initially imagined to moving to home-learning were less impactful than I had originally anticipated. We fully operate at my child’s pace. Time commitments to learning are much less than I initially thought would be required, curriculum is easily accomplished through a variety of methods and supports available to us, and his social needs are met in a way that better suits his needs. This more relaxed approach has promoted a resurgence of my son’s curiosity with the world around him; not only is he happier, but he is regaining self confidence, pride in his skills, and he is better able to make friends as his own academic/social overwhelm is not routinely impacting his behavior.

Starting up with Roots to Sky, it took all of 2 weeks to see the beginning of positive change. The 2 days/week of outdoor schooling provides a mountain of experiences; it provides a smaller group with low student/teacher ratios, and my son could name every student in his class before the first month was through. He had made friends in his new school. He was excited to attend class to see what they would get up to. Some examples of their outdoor activities that get integrated with play are: mushroom/tree/plant identification, building projects with nature, learning fire starting skills, cooking in the wilderness, building shelters with what the forest provides and/or snow, investigating local historical sites, maps and navigation, animal print tracking, cloud and weather tracking, rock and mineral exploration, as well as the many invited guests to enhance learning about culture and careers such as ecologists, biologists, geologists, and indigenous elders and experts to name a few. This school is a model for inspiring curiosity about the world.

I could go on forever about all of the benefits I can observe in our own family that have come from moving my son to a home-learning child-led approach to education. My only regret is having waited so long to make the change. Every child is unique in their needs and the beauty of home-learning is being able to adjust the learning approach to meet their needs on an individual basis as opposed to a broadened approach that works for a set number of the population. My youngest continues to attend our local school in our own school district. He does not have the same needs nor struggles that my #3 has, and continues to function well in the more classic brick and mortar school setting. I am not anti-brick and mortar, I just believe that education needs to meet the needs and capacity of the participant, and students who live and breathe outside the box can still achieve great education with a modified approach that is designed for them through home-learning. The choices available for home-learning are nearly endless in BC, and are becoming more and more accessible every year.

Dyslexia: 37 Common Characteristics

Most dyslexics will exhibit about 10 of the following traits and behaviours. These characteristics can vary from day-to-day or minute-to-minute.  The most consistent thing about dyslexics is their inconsistency.

General

• Appears bright, highly intelligent, and articulate but unable to read, write, or spell at grade level.

• Labelled lazy, dumb, careless, immature, “not trying hard enough,” or “behaviour problem”.

• Isn’t “behind enough” or “bad enough” to be helped in the school setting.

• High in IQ, yet may not test well academically; tests well orally, but not written.

• Feels dumb; has poor self-esteem; hides or covers up weaknesses with ingenious compensatory strategies; easily frustrated and emotional about school reading or testing.

• Talented in art, drama, music, sports, mechanics, story-telling, sales, business, designing, building or engineering.

• Seem to “zone out” or daydream often, gets lost easily or loses track of time.

• Difficulty sustaining attention; seems “hyper” or “daydreamer”.

• Learns best through hands-on experience, demonstrations, experimentation, observation, and visual aids.

Vision, Reading and Spelling

• Complains of dizziness, headaches, or stomach aches while reading.

• Confused by letters, numbers, words, sequences, or verbal explanations.

• Reading or writing shows repetitions, additions, transpositions, omissions, substitutions and reversals in letters, numbers and/or words.

• Complains of feeling or seeing non-existent movement while reading, writing or copying.

• Seems to have difficulty with vision, yet eye exams don’t reveal a problem.

• Extremely keen sighted and observant, or lacks depth perception and peripheral vision.

• Reads and re-reads with little comprehension.

• Spells phonetically and inconsistently.

Hearing and Speech

• Has extended hearing; hears things not said or apparent to others; easily distracted by sounds.

• Difficulty putting thoughts into words; speaks in halting phrases; leaves sentences incomplete; stutters under stress; mispronounces long words, or transposes phrases, words and syllables when speaking.

Writing and Motor Skills

• Trouble with writing or copying; pencil grip is unusual; handwriting varies or is illegible.

• Clumsy, uncoordinated, poor at ball or team sports; difficulties with fine and /or gross motor skills and tasks; prone to motion-sickness;

• Can be ambidextrous, and often confuses left/right, over/under.

Math and Time Management

• Has difficulty telling time, managing time, learning sequenced information or tasks, or being on time.

• Computing math shows dependence on finger counting and other tricks; knows answers, but can’t do it on paper.

• Can count, but has difficulty counting objects and dealing with money.

• Can do arithmetic, but fails word problems, cannot grasp algebra or higher math.

Memory and Cognition

• Excellent long-term memory for experiences, locations and faces.

• Poor memory for sequences, facts and information that has not been experienced.

• Thinks primarily with images and feeling, not sounds or words (little internal dialogue).

Behaviour, Health, Development and Personality

• Extremely disorderly or compulsively orderly

• Can be class clown, trouble-maker, or too quiet.

• Had unusually early or late developmental stages (talking, crawling, walking, tying shoelaces).

• Prone to ear infections, sensitive to foods, additives and chemical products.

• Can be an extra deep or light sleeper; bedwetting beyond appropriate age.

• Unusually high or low tolerance for pain.

• Strong sense of justice; emotionally sensitive; strives for perfection.

• Mistakes and symptoms increase dramatically with confusion, time pressure, emotional stress, or poor health.

From Ronald D Davis, ….. Ref