Post by Smallz on Feb 21, 2019 8:51:30 GMT
Connections Academy is an online public school available in a few different states in the USA (they also have an international version). I can only speak on what I am familiar with, but I think it can be a great option.
My family decided to enroll our 8th grader for the first time in Connections, and again now in 9th grade. Our student loves it, and we as parents like the fluidity of the school day. The teachers lessons are recorded and can be attended live or at a later date or time depending on your ability to make the class, or if a student falls behind. The students can enter act with the teacher, and each other during the lesson, just like normal classmates.
When we looked into homeschooling our child we thought that we wouldn't be as good as a "professionally trained" teacher at teaching our student. Also our main concern was the graduation/diploma process of many home school curriculum. In public home school the student (from my understanding) will get a normal public school diploma. When we first started looking into it all we realized, to get proper accreditation we would have to pay big money for structured curriculum that would lead to a recognized diploma, and not just a diploma from "the school of Mom & Dad's house".
For these reasons, and many more we picked Connections Academy.
Some of the down sides would be that the curriculum is very similar to the public fool system and what they push is questionable occasionally. Like any good parent we try to participate in the process daily, and steer the student down the path that we want them to go, or give them some of our experience on certain situations.
Also there is a demand for internet speed that may be unattainable for some. Although we use cell phone hot spot data to connect a laptop to the internet. It works just fine for us, and we don't live in the city, but have 3-4g service that throttles back mid month, with no real issues.
I would like to hear from anyone that this information helped, or if anyone has alternative ideas, or opinions that works for them. I know each state is different, so this topic can be hard to compare sometimes.
"Stay Motivated Everyone!"
My family decided to enroll our 8th grader for the first time in Connections, and again now in 9th grade. Our student loves it, and we as parents like the fluidity of the school day. The teachers lessons are recorded and can be attended live or at a later date or time depending on your ability to make the class, or if a student falls behind. The students can enter act with the teacher, and each other during the lesson, just like normal classmates.
When we looked into homeschooling our child we thought that we wouldn't be as good as a "professionally trained" teacher at teaching our student. Also our main concern was the graduation/diploma process of many home school curriculum. In public home school the student (from my understanding) will get a normal public school diploma. When we first started looking into it all we realized, to get proper accreditation we would have to pay big money for structured curriculum that would lead to a recognized diploma, and not just a diploma from "the school of Mom & Dad's house".
For these reasons, and many more we picked Connections Academy.
Some of the down sides would be that the curriculum is very similar to the public fool system and what they push is questionable occasionally. Like any good parent we try to participate in the process daily, and steer the student down the path that we want them to go, or give them some of our experience on certain situations.
Also there is a demand for internet speed that may be unattainable for some. Although we use cell phone hot spot data to connect a laptop to the internet. It works just fine for us, and we don't live in the city, but have 3-4g service that throttles back mid month, with no real issues.
I would like to hear from anyone that this information helped, or if anyone has alternative ideas, or opinions that works for them. I know each state is different, so this topic can be hard to compare sometimes.
"Stay Motivated Everyone!"