SCHOLA: Another reason I'm glad my DSL's back

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Another reason I'm glad my DSL's back

I have a project to do.

Florida gives you two homeschooling options. One is that after notifying your county school board, you maintain a portfolio of the child's work to be reviewed at the end of the year by either a certified teacher or psychologist, or take a standardized test, either of which only have to show the child made improvement commensurate to their ability. The other is that you can register your child in a "600 school," which translates, loosely, very loosely, as a private school, and be exempt from any of the aforementioned requirements.

You can set one of these 600 schools up for yourself, so long as you have at least one student registered other than your own. The beauty of the 600 school, is that the state does not require any record keeping more than attendance. Mark 180 little Xs off on your calendar and you're done. Physical presence at the school is not even required; guardians are free to teach the child in their own home, using a prescribed curriculum or not, just as long as they have learned for 180 days.

Cool, huh?

A few years back I'd considered this. An unschooling friend had established one and invited us to join, but I wanted something more classically oriented, or at least something with a classical sounding name, if only to make high school transcripts seem a bit more solid. Alas, no other classical-leaning homeschoolers, eclectic or otherwise, were to be found. One friend was interested, but for the time being, her family only spends part of the year in Florida and residency status was unclear.

But now, I have someone willing to pursue this venture with me, someone with a permanent Florida connection, who recently returned to homeschooling and blogging after a brief hiatus, and who sounds less like a haughty New Yorker and more like a California girl, except for the rapid fire delivery, but hey, she's got a lot going on and time is of the essence, someone whose blog might be listed over there in my sidebar, but I'm not naming names.

So, off to research I go.

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SCHOLA 101

schol' a: 1) An intermission of work, leisure for learning, learned conversation, debate, disputation, lecture, dissertation. 2) A meeting place for teachers and pupils, place for instruction, place of learning, school. 3) The disciples of a teacher, body of followers, school, sect. 4) An acronym for my tortuous blog title "Secular Classical Homeschoolers' Odyssean Learning Adventure." 5) How my Boston cousins pronounce "scholar." 6) Someone who studies at 10 o'clock for a dilla or a dolla.

These are the blatherings of an introverted, autodidactic, champion of The Enlightenment raising three daughters. At one time or another we have homeschooled, public-schooled, Catholic-schooled, cyber-schooled, unschooled, and even threatened boarding school. We have been inspired variously by The Well-Trained Mind, A Thomas Jefferson Education, and Climbing Parnassus, tempered by the writings and wisdom of Charlotte Mason, John Holt, Benjamin Franklin and Michel de Montaigne.

I try not to get wrapped up in labels, but we are secular and we are classical-ish.

We travel. A lot. Sometimes to the other side of the state and sometimes to the other side of the planet. Join us on our journey as we search for our home, navigate the waters of self-education, lounge with the lotus-eaters, and bash a Cyclops or two.