Part Five of Seven

Part Five of Seven:
“Students in my class have my undivided attention all day long. . . .
I don’t really believe that a mom with children of many school ages along with toddlers/babies can provide for each of their educational needs at the levels they require.”

I’m going to admit that I find this one boggling. Not because I haven’t had conversations with families about how to juggle the littles’ needs with those of the big kids — I have. But because of the math.
I’ve known big families (Phyllis, Marchauna, Amber would you weigh in?) who still have better teacher-student ratios than the typical WA public schools. (We are, by the way, shamefully trying to dig ourselves out of 47th place in the nation for class size — by 2019 — but it’s not really happening: http://www.washingtonpolicy.org/publications/detail/class-size-reduction-effort-sputters-seattle-school-board-announces-larger-classes-at-64-schools-next-year ) Even the very largest homeschool families have smaller student-teacher ratios WA is striving for (15:1). And schools will never achieve the student-teacher ratio we had at my house (1:4) (we have a multi-generational home and an only child). Most families are somewhere in between, but still rocking a better student/teacher ratio than even the most elite private schools offer.

And of course a brand new baby can put homeschool on holiday — but we’ve got 5,840 hours in which to cover our 1,000 hours — that’s enough to homeschool, work a fulltime job, and still have 2,840 hours left for napping with the baby.
~Jen