Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by MJ on 4th mo. 17, 2009 at 9:02pm

This is just wonderful, thank you Tom, and all else, who have helped with this. My boys are ages 5 and 6.

Blessings to all,
MJ

Permalink Reply by Kristen McLewin on 5th mo. 20, 2009 at 10:49am

I am a WA state certificated teacher currently teaching for WAVA, a K12 curriculum, public online school. I'd love to be involved with discussions about what a virtual Friends school might offer to families.

Permalink Reply by Kristen McLewin on 6th mo. 1, 2009 at 3:22am

Hystery,

WAVA is Washington Virtual Academies (http://www.wava.org), a public virtual school for WA state students. We provide K12 curriculum, certificated teacher-parent partnership, and accountability and support for families schooling at home. It's a great fit for families who want to homeschool, but need some outside structure or want additional support.

Permalink Reply by Richard B. Miller on 6th mo. 3, 2009 at 2:15pm

We are just finishing up homeschooling. Our youngest heads off to Guilford College in the Fall. If anyone is interested I just spend most of last year developing web-based critical thinking instructional units. I've taught critical thinking at the college level for nearly thirty years and I think the material I've put together would work for high school or even smart middle school kids. I developed this for my University but with the current budget crisis it looks like they won't be using it in the near future. I do want to see it used so I'd be willing to make it available to Quaker homeschoolers.

Permalink Reply by Richard B. Miller on 6th mo. 4, 2009 at 8:49am

Tom,

Do you think we could just post a link to my critical thinking materials on virtualfriendsschool.org?

Richard

Permalink Reply by Jan Lyn Lewis on 6th mo. 24, 2009 at 10:04pm

Greetings to All,

I recently learned of this site and was pleased to find this topic being discussed amongst Friends. I am a speech/language specialist that came home to educate my children and have just completed our eighth year. My daughters have been home educated from the start and my oldest son I schooled from grade 5-9 and he just graduated from the public highschool here this June. We placed him there as I am dealing with some chronic illness and felt we needed help in the upper grades and are not able to afford a Quaker Education or any of the numerous private schools in our area.

It is our desire to continue homeschooling our daughters after our experience, especially encountered at the highschool level of public school. We began this journey due to some health problems our son was experiencing and it was going to simply be a one year experiment. Out of that grew a freedom and a great love of an educational lifestyle that afforded us so much more time together, the ability to individualize instruction and move beyond the classroom as well as teaching our children values. The past few years, I have been attempting to bring some Quaker ways to our days.

I'm very intrigued by this idea of a Quaker virtual school or even just lists of resources or book lists. We were very literature based learners using a combination of Charlotte Mason and Classical Education, but find now I must be very flexible due to my illness and some voice difficulties. I hope to continue, but know that I will need assistance to do so as my daughters get older. They will be starting grades 4 and 8 this September. I'd love to join in any on-going conversation and am wondering if any of you have children around this age range.

In Friendship,
Jan Lyn

Permalink Reply by Jan Lyn Lewis on 6th mo. 26, 2009 at 11:52am

Thanks for your thoughts, Tom. I'd be very willing to do that when you or the group decides upon the most appropriate place. I'm curious as well as to how many children we are discussing and ages at this point. Just the connection to others teaching around the same age students is helpful in itself. I'm excited about the entire idea and am going to try to look for the book and pamphlet that you mentioned to Jennifer in the discussion earlier on.

In Friendship,
Jan Lyn

Permalink Reply by Gwen Giffen on 7th mo. 21, 2009 at 11:08pm

I joined QuakerQuaker a couple of days ago, at the Facebook invitation of Raye Hodgson for writing memorial posts for Ed Kirk. While surfing the site, I was excited and happy to find this thread. It was a pleasure meeting you and your wife over lunch at the Walton a few months ago, Tom. It didn't settle in how serious you were about the virtual school idea. We would most definitely be interested.

My 17 y/o just finished her first year of homeschooling - her junior year in high school. We've used an eclectic/traditional approach, and will continue to do so for her senior year. We also have a 3 y/o we intend to homeschool. We are already using a combination of Kumon, Hooked on Phonics and Rod & Staff for pre-K preparation. I'm very impressed with Rod & Staff - the thoroughness, the simplicity and the affordability. I wish there were something like it that was a little less fundamentalist.

I've used PYM's resource lists numerous times. Even something as simple as that with homeschoolers in mind would be wonderful. Putting together an actual virtual school seems a huge undertaking.

Permalink Reply by Kristen McLewin on 7th mo. 30, 2009 at 12:51am

Very nicely put, Hystery. Balancing materials of different foundations provides a true challenge, but it will be a gift to your children. I love surfing/morphing/creating curriculum, and hope that discussion here will help all those able to homeschool. I don't know if I will get to school any of my kids at home. They are all high needs kiddos in various ways, and I am a single mom who must work full-time. I am hoping to eventually incorporate our own religious education here at home.

Permalink Reply by MJ on 3rd mo. 3, 2010 at 6:20pm

Update......

We pulled our first grader out of public school and enrolled him in a cyber school. It's still public school with the curriculum and supplies provided to us free of charge, but we have more influence and flexibility with what he is learning and have been able to eliminate much negativity that was occuring at his local school.

Our kindergartener wanted to finish out the school year in our local school and wants to begin cyber school in the Fall.

So far, so good. We are pleased and my son is happy, happy, happy! We are still getting adjusted, but it's a quick process and we are hoping next year to incorporate a bit of Quakerism as well. It comes up often at home during our lessons naturally, but i'm hoping to add a bit more structured learning of Friends and our Faith, although I'm not sure what I want that to be just yet....baby steps.

Many Blessings,
MJ

Permalink Reply by Tom Smith on 3rd mo. 4, 2010 at 12:06pm

MJ,

This actually is the way I envisioned "Virtual Friends School" could be used. There are fairly reasonable "public" cyber schools and in most "real" Friends Schools the "academic" curriculum is usually independent of the Friends approach, except for a generally "open" classroom atmosphere.

For reasons yet to be explained by us, we have not done much, if anything, on VFS. We were told a year ago that things would soon be resolved. Here it is a year later and still no resolution in sight.

We trust that we, including all those interested, can have at least a skeleton for this coming fall.

Permalink Reply by Kristin S. Kight on 7th mo. 20, 2011 at 12:41pm

Hello,
Some homeschooling Friends here in Maryland are pulling together a group to qualify as a supervisory entity (aka an umbrella group) for homeschoolers in MD, which will function as a MM here and virtually. Eventually we want to be accredited and pull together folks who attend "real" schools, as well as a broad spectrum of learners. The central idea is to reimagine the structure of education in Quaker terms using current methods of coming together in the light. We need a name for it. Any ideas?
In peace,
Kristin