Whenever You’re Ready

We are t-minus 8 days and counting until our school year with Ohio Virtual Academy officially begins. I alternate between an eerie, uncharacteristic, zen-like calm and the familiar panic that seems to always set in this time of year.

Since we returned home from vacation in mid-July, I’ve been steadily preparing for the onset of September in small chunks.  I attended online Learning Coach and Mentor Institute classes until I stopped learning anything new. I unpacked OHVA-sent boxes full of curriculum and school supplies, ogled what looked to be a challenging curriculum, resisted the urge to start organizing everything, then sealed the boxes back up so Emily could have the same pleasure I’d just experienced. I helped set up the new computer and joined three Facebook groups and two Yahoo groups dedicated to OHVA or home-schooling (even though that word still makes me shudder). I even hosted a park day where (miraculously) 5 veteran OHVA families showed up and Emily made some new friends.

But today – today it got one step closer to real. Today we received k-mail (the internal school system email) from her main teacher, complete with one page introductions to her entire teaching team. Oh, if you see my zen-like calm, please pat it on the head and urge it to come home soon, will you?

When I opened the first bio, I discovered that this teacher, who I THINK is Emily’s main or homeroom teacher, is doing her Masters’ degree work in gifted and talented education. This feels like a VERY good sign that we are on the right track!

So, despite the fact that we cannot POSSIBLY be ready for this experience, I think we may actually be ready! In the spirit of Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be a redneck if…” jokes, I offer my current list of “You might be ready for online schooling if…” ideas.

• If your kids begs to be allowed to start school early because she wants to get right into reading “The Iliad and the Odyssey,” you might be ready for online schooling.
• If you AND your kid get excited that she gets to read & study Shakespeare and Homer as well as the Greek and Latin roots of English words – in 7th grade, you might be ready for online schooling.
• If you meet other parents who don’t think you’re crazy for having no TV service in your house and suggest that some awesome Discovery and History channel videos are easily found online, you might be ready for online schooling.
• If you want family trips to museums, weekly ski outings, horseback riding lessons, and “extra-curricular” art classes to be regarded as the contribution to a life’s education that they are, you might be ready for online schooling.
• If your child can make a friend at a park in just a few minutes based solely on a mutual love of Harry Potter and tree-climbing, you might be ready for online schooling.
• If you tell your kid she can have a play-date during your girl scout planning meeting, completely forgetting that the other kids will be at school, you might be ready for online schooling.

Ready or not, here it comes! Let the adventure begin…