One of the greatest joys in my life is my relationship with my teenager. He is 14 years old and one of the biggest lights of my life. He and I have been through a lot together in life already. For eight years, he was my one and only child. He has definitely reaped the benefits (and the downsides) of being an only child for eight years of his life :)
He is an amazing big brother ... so patient and kind to his little sisters who rip through our house like tornados on a daily basis. He is a great role model to them and they adore him. He is also very insightful for his age and very interesting to talk to. He tends to be a quiet kid out in the world at large, but there is MUCH he does not miss. He has a definite gift for understanding and empathizing with people. And his sense of humor is just ... honestly ... delightful :)
My dear son has always been a student in the middle though. We had some tough years in his early grades because he just could not keep up with the school work load. With my dedication and his efforts though, he has never failed a subject in school. But, with each grade level, school became harder and harder ... and I became more and more tired, and less and less capable of re-teaching (homeschooling) him at the end of the lengthy school days.
One of the biggest blessings of our lives has been the private school he began attending last year for 7th grade. It is a religious school and, honestly, you can feel God's presence in that building every single minute of the day. Some days I feel grumbly or whatever, and I go into that building and I am ALWAYS just perfectly awed by the teachers, the students and the loving, Christian environment. I know this is a place that God led our family to and wanted my kids to spend some time in.
In the nearly 1.5 years my son has been in this school, he has been anything but LEFT BEHIND. I am a believer, based on my unique school experiences with my son, that it is the children in the middle who are the ones being left behind in our schools today.
The kids who behave poorly for whatever reason have the teachers' attention the entire day, while the kids in the middle plug away and do their best in the same classroom with these kids. And the higher performing kids get to be in special programs, unique environments ... gifted, honors groups, etc. These types of programs have behavior standards and the kids in them are not being left behind for sure either. They are getting a leg up. Just the amount of time that the teachers in these programs don't have to allot to the misbehaving bunch gives these kids an advantage.
So, I have to pay for my childrens' education. I pay twice. Once as a tax payer and once to actually get them educated. It sucks. Our State did recently begin a voucher program though and I am very thankful that any child in our State can now have true school choice. Public school is not for everyone. Children are being left behind there (here in Indiana) every day. The class sizes are getting bigger and bigger while the standards for education everywhere are getting higher and higher. What gets my goat is that parents who already needed to, or chose to put their kids in private school to get them educated, don't qualify for the voucher program. That is just wrong.
If my child was bullied out of public school, our family deserves a voucher no matter how much money we make (and we are not a high income family) .... but I will not allow myself to resort to bitterness. I want to go there, but I won't. I will focus on the kids in our State who will no longer have to be stuffed into an educational system that may not be the best fit for them. I pray that kids who have been bullied can come to our State's private schools and feel safe, find their strengths, gain confidence and learn about God along the way. But I think I am going to tell my story to our Governor in some way. Maybe a letter. The voucher law is a good one, but it is incomplete. This is an issue I am passionate about.
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