A Long And Winding Road....

Can i tell you a pretty cool story?

My son Josiah, who is about to graduate from his last year of high school, has been taught at home by his Mom every since he was about three years old... we have never been interested in making statements about the state of the public school system in our country or anything like that. My mother was a public school teacher in New York City for well over twenty years! i loved the schools that i attended growing up and as a matter of fact, i have friends to this day that i attended school with!

We actually started teaching Josiah at home because Ruthie had originally intended to become a public school teacher... She's a very talented and creative writer and for several years she regularly contributed curriculum to several large children's curriculum publishers. So for her, teaching our children at home was, in many ways, the fulfillment of a dream.

Several years into teaching first Josiah, then our next oldest son Jonah, our daughter Hannah and now Levi, we observed that Josiah was having some difficulty reading. After some assessments we were able to do on our own, we determined that Josiah seemed to have slight dyslexia... Dyslexia is a learning disability that causes the brain to process information differently and often manifest itself in that individuals may have difficulty with written language in particular with reading and writing... and as you can imagine it can be extremely frustrating to both the student and his teachers.... now magnify that by about a bizillion times in a homeschooling setting!

Josiah and his mom however persevered and even to this day continue to do the hard work of not allowing this disability to keep either one of them in check! Now add to this the fact that a foregone conclusion is that one day when you're done with high school the obvious "next step" would be college... for Josiah (and maybe even his mom) knots in the stomach accompanied that thought! The key would be taking the ACT test... Josiah studied extra hard... even though he had taken other standardized test in school this one was different... he took the test, half believing that double digits would be a miracle...

Fast forward to the past two weeks... Josiah received his test score from the ACT which when submitted to the college he wanted to attend.... along with his current academic record and other funds made available... qualified him to receive scholarship funds which will underwrite his college tuition by at least 50% for the next four years!
i'd say between Josiah and his Mom they should both be very, very proud!
i am... of both of them.