HSA(Homeschool Spanish Academy) Choosing teachers?

[rjand6more]

We are new to HSA.  I am overwhelmed with choosing a teacher.  Please PM me with good and bad experiences.:)

 

Thank you!

[RootAnn]

There are a lot of new teachers. My DD just scheduled a few lessons with different ones to see who she clicked with. Once she found someone she liked, we scheduled as far out as possible because the good ones go quickly.

If I were doing it over, I'd have her schedule a different teacher every day this up coming week (making sure I gave her time in her day to do the homework). She should know by Friday who she prefers. Then, I'd schedule two or three lessons per week with that teacher for the rest of the year (knowing some weeks will be one & others will be three plus cancellations happen).

That DD is in college now, so my HSA experience is now a couple years old, so your mileage may vary.

Edited August 30, 2020 by RootAnn
Eta that it has been a couple years for us

[rjand6more]

4 hours ago, RootAnn said:

There are a lot of new teachers. My DD just scheduled a few lessons with different ones to see who she clicked with. Once she found someone she liked, we scheduled as far out as possible because the good ones go quickly.

If I were doing it over, I'd have her schedule a different teacher every day this up coming week (making sure I gave her time in her day to do the homework). She should know by Friday who she prefers. Then, I'd schedule two or three lessons per week with that teacher for the rest of the year (knowing some weeks will be one & others will be three plus cancellations happen).

That DD is in college now, so my HSA experience is now a couple years old, so your mileage may vary.

Thank you!  I scheduled for all of September.  2 days each week and 5 different teachers, I think.  Thanks!

[Runningmom80]

13 hours ago, RootAnn said:

There are a lot of new teachers. My DD just scheduled a few lessons with different ones to see who she clicked with. Once she found someone she liked, we scheduled as far out as possible because the good ones go quickly.

If I were doing it over, I'd have her schedule a different teacher every day this up coming week (making sure I gave her time in her day to do the homework). She should know by Friday who she prefers. Then, I'd schedule two or three lessons per week with that teacher for the rest of the year (knowing some weeks will be one & others will be three plus cancellations happen).

That DD is in college now, so my HSA experience is now a couple years old, so your mileage may vary.

 

This is what we did too.

[RootAnn]

If she finds one or two she likes right away, start scheduling out w.ith them (Oct & beyond) right away. You can always cancel & reschedule if she finds a better one.also, note that once you have a set teacher, you'll male faster progress. So, don't expect to move quickly at first. 

You, as the mom, can request things from HSA. We were using it for review & conversation practice, so I wanted them to move through material she already knew faster. Her normal teacher would do a sort of pretest for each semester of material and spend more time on what she needed more review on vs. the material she was solid on. I also asked him to assign her more homework but I didn't get my wish on that. ;)

They will occasionally ask to talk to you to let you know how things were going and see if you want anything different. I waived almost all of those meetings (because we used other providers as our main instruction) so I don't know how often they happened. :)

¡Buena suerte!

Edited August 31, 2020 by RootAnn

[Runningmom80]

I really love the meetings. They ask me every time how I think it’s going and if I want anything to change. It’s refreshing after experiencing the opposite in public school! 😂

[shelleysboys]

Not on teachers - but at what pace is the vocab?  My kid struggles - wondering if he will be buried by words!  Certainly

is it your own pace but if there are so many new words each lesson he will have a hard time progressing through the curriculum. 

[cintinative]

8 hours ago, shelleysboys said:

Not on teachers - but at what pace is the vocab?  My kid struggles - wondering if he will be buried by words!  Certainly

is it your own pace but if there are so many new words each lesson he will have a hard time progressing through the curriculum. 

 

Similar question. We are struggling with our current Spanish provider because we had about 40 terms to learn for this week and an additional 70 plus for next week. 

[Miss Tick]

9 hours ago, shelleysboys said:

Not on teachers - but at what pace is the vocab?  My kid struggles - wondering if he will be buried by words!  Certainly

is it your own pace but if there are so many new words each lesson he will have a hard time progressing through the curriculum. 

HSA didn't work out for us, but they are pretty flexible. If you days you wanted to spend an extra lesson or two practicing vocab I can't imagine they would object. Or you could just cancel the next class to buy some extra vocab practice time. I mean, you are pretty in charge, and as mentioned above they have parent meetings where they ask for your feedback.

Somewhere on their website they have the syllabus for the high school and middle school tracks. That might give you a clue about speed of new vocab?

[shelleysboys]

May I ask you why HSA did not work for you ?

[Miss Tick]

12 hours ago, shelleysboys said:

May I ask you why HSA did not work for you ?

 

I have twins, and although they offered pricing for groups of two students, they did not manage it well. My other concern was that I couldn't seem to get enough homework to fill an hour's worth of time on the remaining days.

I am uncomfortable with the payment model, although I don't think there is anything particularly wrong with it.

[cintinative]

2 hours ago, SusanC said:

 

I have twins, and although they offered pricing for groups of two students, they did not manage it well. My other concern was that I couldn't seem to get enough homework to fill an hour's worth of time on the remaining days.

I am uncomfortable with the payment model, although I don't think there is anything particularly wrong with it.

 

This is good to know. If I switched, I would have both of my kids together.  How much time do you think they spent per week?  

 

[Miss Tick]

17 minutes ago, cintinative said:

 

This is good to know. If I switched, I would have both of my kids together.  How much time do you think they spent per week?  

 

At the time I felt lucky to get a worksheet to do outside class. However, I think you would get a more reliable answer from someone who has used them more recently and for a longer time. 

[chiguirre]

23 hours ago, cintinative said:

 

This is good to know. If I switched, I would have both of my kids together.  How much time do you think they spent per week?  

 

 

22 hours ago, SusanC said:

At the time I felt lucky to get a worksheet to do outside class. However, I think you would get a more reliable answer from someone who has used them more recently and for a longer time. 

My dd has taken lessons from HSA for three years. There is very little homework, maybe 15-30 minutes per session. Their focus is very much on speaking and not as much on writing. This worked for us because dd had already done 4 years of regular high school Spanish at the defunct Landry Academy, so she could read and write decently but hated to speak Spanish. For someone who is starting out with HSA, I'd combine it with DuoLingo and a workbook like 

https://smile.amazon.com/Practice-Makes-Perfect-All-One/dp/1260121054/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=spanish+all+in+one&qid=1599151374&sr=8-2

for more written practice. 

[Jackie]

We’ve used HSA for years, but at levels lower than high school. I also recommend scheduling with a variety of teachers and seeing who a particular kid clicks with. Some popular teachers didn’t work well for my daughter; some less popular teachers did. We like to keep one main teacher, and two or three in rotation as additional teachers. Therefore, my kid hears more than one speech pattern, talks to people with different interests (they chat a lot once they’ve covered the main lesson), and if a teacher leaves we don’t feel completely adrift.

They’re very responsive to requests. In the four years we’ve used them, we’ve changed focus a few times, and they always immediately adapt.

As for the writing, I note that when I took a foreign language in high school years ago, I probably did about 30 minutes of written work per week on average. Therefore, I actually find HSA pretty much in line with my expectations.