Homeschooling and Me ... a Follow Up Post of Epic HOLY SCHNITZ!!!!

So Four YEARS ago I wrote this post "Home Schooling and Me", in which I claimed I would NEVER put my children through the wrath of my own teaching ...

So in the past four years my kids have been delightfully Charter Skooled, however this year we learned about this super fantastic thing called "Online School," or as I now like to call it, "Home Skool Lite."

In a desperate attempt to find my children a better education that would challenge their unfortunately brilliant minds a bit more, (Why yes I did say unfortunately brilliant ... do you KNOW how scary brilliant kids are? They know stuff!!! And they use it against you!!! They're evil I tell you ... EVIL! Good thing they're cute!) as well as remove them from the escalating bullying that continues to plague all schools these days, my husband and I, with the input of our children, decided to enroll them in an Online Academy which we will henceforth refer to as, "Home Skool Lite."

Home Skool Lite had all sorts of promise and hope for those of us *cough* lazy *cough* moms who don't really want to school their children but don't really want to put them in school either. All their lessons are taught online ... teachers even give Live online lessons to them. BRILLIANT! Lazy Mom WIN.

But noooo .... there is no Lazy in Home Skool Lite.

NONE!!!!

I am now a "Learning Coach" to my children. A LEARNING COACH. A coach without a whistle or a court or a field to make them run sprints on if they are out of line. Learning Coach is so NOT cool. I actually have to read WITH them and HELP them. The nerve of Home Skool Lite!!! Asking ME to help!!!

Okay okay, I know I sound like an ass and really I'm not as lazy as I sound ... most of the time ... AND I'm not gonna lie, but um, Tim and Moby of the Brain Pop movies are the schnitz ... but Home Skool Lite truly is harder than I had ever anticipated!

So to redact on my lazy momness, I've compiled a list of reasons why I'm unfit for this Home School Lite life.

Top Ten Reasons Poppins Should NOT Be Allowed to be a "Learning Coach"

1. Did you know that you can write a decimal equivalent to 7.75? Apparently adding zeros anywhere into that number makes an equivalent decimal ... 07.75, 7.75000000 ... Equivalency. I'm clearly NOT familiar, and that's only 5th Grade work.

• Lesson Learned = Poppins is VERY bad at Math

2. Learning Coaches are required to read WITH their children. Now as many of you know ... I'm a writer. I'm grammar police beeeeatch. I'm into making plots that pop and characters with big fat round personalities. Now, however, I am stuck reading tall tails about Thunder Annie or something like that and the characters are flat and boring and OMG!!!!

NOT what I look like while reading a Kid's Book

• Lesson Learned = Poppins will NEVER write Children's Books and Grade School stories are SUPER boring!!!!

3. I still hate science. In Home School Lite ... I'm supposed to do experiments. I took Biology last semester in college ... I don't do experiments. There is nothing cool about a bog and I really hate rock candy.

• Lesson Learned = Poppins poor kids are going to be the worst scientists ever!

4. Bingo Blitz, though a great precursor to excellent hand/eye coordination, is not the best way to keep children focused on their studies. Every time the lady from Madrid yells out B15 ... suddenly everyone stops and stares at me.

• Lesson Learned = Poppins can't play while being a Learning Coach. All work and no play makes Poppins a dull boy ... ummm ... or something like that

5. There is NO Harry Potter ANYWHERE in the curriculum. What crap is that?!?!?!

• Lesson Learned = Poppins can't relate to Home Skool Lite if they can't relate to her!

6. I have 3 kids ... in three different grades ... learning three sets of 7 different subjects. Who can keep up with all that?!?! Suddenly I'm supposed to be an excellent scholar and expert in 3rd, 5th and 6th grade everything! Do you know how LONG it's been since I've been in any of those grades?

• Lesson Learned = Poppins is NOT smarter than a 5th Grader OR a 3rd Grader for that matter

7. We bought a dog. He's cute. I <3 him VERY much. He likes to play. Sadly, this turns out to be a terrible distraction to children. Poor poor puppy.

• Lesson Learned = Poppins likes puppy more than kids and sometimes and wishes she could play with puppy instead of playing Learning Coach

Really stinking cute dog!!! No?

8. Kids are needy. They need to be fed and paid attention to. And then they need all this help and guidance. I used to sit at home and write and edit pictures and now I have no time for such nonsense. I'm stuck with 3 needy kids and a puppy and and and

• Lesson Learned = Poppins is Selfish and hates Paying Attention to things that are not nonsense

9. Kids don't listen. It's in their nature. They come built in with these selective hearing devices that I have yet to learn how to remove. So when I say things like, "You NEED to do ALL of the math assignment before you take the assessment!" or "No, you CANNOT take a 2 hour break between each subject!" or "If you miss another live lesson they WILL flunk you and you will have to take this grade over and over and over!" they appear to not have heard me each and every time. They'll START to listen to me and so I'll START to do the laundry and then when I look back I have one child sleeping, another playing Club Penguin and then the last of them gorging themselves on junk food and watching Cake Boss.

• Lesson Learned = Poppins CLEARLY canNOT be a Learning Coach and a Laundry Doer (This is one of my favorite issues ... not gonna lie)

10. There are these things called "Support Groups" where us moms from Home Skool Lite get together via Facebook and chat about all of the above issues and by the end of the day it feels like we should all be sitting together and drinking wine whilst watching our husband's be Learning Coaches for the rest of the day. I like these groups ... a lot. I may or may not spend more time getting "support" than I do being an actual Learning Coach.

• Lesson Learned = Poppins likes to piss and moan with other moms way more than she likes to teach. It's way more entertaining

So here you have it. It's quite evident that I am not fit for this Home Skool Lite lifestyle. But here I am writing a blog post for the first time in like a year clearly avoiding my Learning Coach responsibilities doing it. I'm braving this new world and putting aside my inadequacies for the benefit of my children and my children's children and their children's children's children. I am a goddess of parenting and I suck at it am rocking it out until the very end of the school year. I am a hypocrite in my own right but it IS possibly not so much a good thing. We WILL conquer this world of Home Skool Lite with the help of my fellow Learning Coaches and we WILL succeed (although we are most definitely all in the process of failing at the current moment) with flying colors!!!!

All in all ... I'm in over my head and any well wishes and/or GOBS of advice are highly welcomed!