I believe that's the graduation my dd and I are supposed to attend. One of her friends is graduating, and I've been waiting to hear if it's still happening.

I have the Circe Odyssey guide if you would like for me to take some sample pictures or give my assessment just from looking through it. I'm planning on using it next year with the homeschool co-op class I teach.

Here's a picture of one of the flooded neighborhoods we drove through. My daughter took it from the backseat so you can see how high the water is.

We had gone up to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts for the day and got caught in the horrible rain on our way back. We stopped in Rosenberg to wait it out, but we almost got trapped there instead. The restaurant we had taken shelter in told us we had to leave because they were shutting down, so we had to try to find a way to get on the interstate to get home, but almost every way out was flooded. We finally used a backroad after driving through some very flooded neighborhoods. So flooded that dh (who just happened to decide to come with us that day) was visibly shaken up driving our SUV through the water. He kept telling the kids, "Don't ever do this! It's really stupid!" We had nowhere else to go though, since all of the hotels were filling up. We made it home around 7:00 PM after what should have been a much, much shorter drive. I still have water in one of my doors from our adventure yesterday.

It's a problem every year (having some students who don't do the work), but it's a problem in any teaching seting. I teach the class, I grade the work, and I give a grade to the parents. What the parents do with that final grade is up to them. I will say that for the most part the kids do the work because they don't want to be the one that isn't participating. Positive peer pressure is a beautiful thing at that age.

I teach high school writing and literature at our co-op. It is a credit worthy class that requires work at home, and time in class is devoted to literature discussions and writing instruction. They also have summer reading and reading over the Christmas break. My class and the high school science class we offer are big draws for high schoolers that homeschool. In fact our high school class next year will have around twelve kids. For our small farming community, that's huge.

I'll probably delete this later so please don't quote. I had a long discussion this past week with my oldest about how her freshman year was going (okay in some ways and not great in others). Over the course of our discussion, I realized that my dd15 had no idea what GPA was, how it was calculated, what a transcript was, the importance of a transcript, etc. I always assumed (no idea why) she knew what I meant when I told her high school "Counted" and "good grades" were important for college admissions. She was in tears by the time I finished explaining and begging to redo her freshman year with this new information. I told her that I don't think that's the best idea since she's already old for her grade and that would put her graduating high school as a nineteen year old about to turn twenty. I'm feeling like I've totally hamstrung her by not being more explicit in what high school is all about, so I'm raw emotionally. Any thoughts or ideas about what I should do?

An old Christmas card that you used a cigarette to "ignite" the design and it revealed who it was from. I'd never seen anything like it, but it was super cool.

Thanks so much! This is helpful.

Currently, I'm teaching a high school level writing class at our co-op. The curriculum we're using is not my favorite. It has some good information, but the presentation is meh. What I've been doing for an online writing class I teach is reading through The Lively Art of Writing, taking the information, and teaching it the way I wish, which is working so much better. I would like to continue reading through books and teacher's manuals to keep cleaning the parts I like and adding those things to my teaching notes, specifically anything having to do with specific essay styles (persuasive, research, compare/contrast, narrative, literary, etc.). Anyone have any recommendations for books or teacher's guides that you think made you a better writing teacher?

Currently, I'm teaching a high school level writing class at our co-op. The curriculum we're using is not my favorite. It has some good information, but the presentation is meh. What I've been doing for an online writing class I teach is reading through The Lively Art of Writing, taking the information, and teaching it the way I wish, which is working so much better. I would like to continue reading through books and teacher's manuals to keep cleaning the parts I like and adding those things to my teaching notes, specifically anything having to do with specific essay styles (persuasive, research, compare/contrast, narrative, literary, etc.). Anyone have any recommendations for books or teacher's guides that you think made you a better writing teacher?

The socialization thing always cracks me up. Not only because my kids are super social, but am I the only one who at some point had a public school teacher remark, "Stop talking! We're not at school to socialize!" 🤣😂🤣

I was told by a member of the school board who found out we homeschooled that I "really needed to support the local school district by sending my kids because they receive money for each kid that's in a seat every day" and "to help raise the district's test scores." Yeah... I'm going to send my kids to ps, so a district with 20% passing in math and 30% passing in reading will get more money and possibly marginally higher test scores. Nope. Education is too important to sacrifice my kids for 💰 and the "greater good."

Here's a review I wrote for another blogger about your exact question: http://holistichomeschooler.com/comparison-a-gentle-feast-vs-simply-charlotte-mason/