Homeschooling and Sunday School (PSR)

Last year, Noah’s third grade Sunday School teacher was a public school special education teacher by trade. She was always telling Mr. Pete (who is the 6th grade Sunday school teacher) that she thought Noah couldn’t speak clearly, or that Noah was not reading at grade level, etc. etc. Mr. Pete listened to her regular concerns, but inside he was very uncomfortable. We were not sending Noah to Sunday School for academic assessments, but rather to supplement his religious instruciton.


The truth is that Noah is hard to understand when he is excited and talking fast. Get him to slow down and he is very understandable. I also like to follow the Raymond Moore philosophy of “wait til eight” when it comes to reading. As I was working with Noah every day with reading I could tell he was making great progress and was even starting to figure words out on his own just from phonics and context. And now a year later he is almost at a fourth grade reading level and I think he’ll be there by the end of the year.


However, my daughter is a different story. At her yearly reading assessment it’s clear that she is having some reading issues and we are doing very specialized things with her under the reading specialist’s instruction. We are also going to have her vision evaluated and make some arrangements for speech therapy. So we are aware and we are working on it.


But Mr. Pete was so afraid of this third grade teacher, and how she was going to react to Izzy, that he did not want to put her in 3rd grade Sunday school this year.


I totally understood his concern. But Sunday school is more than just this one teacher. The Sunday school (PSR kids for my Catholic readers) also get to sing at special masses and do other fun activities. I didn’t want Izzy to miss out on that because of one teacher!


So last week at the open house, I made it a point to see this teacher to explain what was going on. She was very kind but she also started going down her litany of services to homeschoolers and the problems with homeschooling etc. I had to firmly let her know that we knew about Izzy’s problems and that we were working with them. Izzy is a good, funny, loving kid. I think she will continue to be an asset to her class and if the teacher could work with me on this, we could have a good school year. The teacher agreed but I could see concern etched in her face.


Izzy went yesterday and had a good time. She said her teacher was nice. Mr. Pete said that she didn’t talk to him at all and wondered what I said to her.


In the meantime, just in case, I am documenting everything we do and keeping my HSLDA membership current.

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