Homeschooling in Ontario

I was asked by The Canadian Homeschooler to write a blog post about starting homeschooling in my province.

Here in Ontario we're pretty lucky to live in a no reporting area. We need to provide a letter of intent to homeschool to our local school board and that's about it!

If you are pulling your child from public school, you must do this so your child isn't considered truant. You do not need to send a copy of the letter to your child's principal, but it is generally considered to be a common courtesy. If you are homeschooling from the start, it's not completely necessary to do this unless you are "discovered" by the local board, but people often do file the letter of intent just to cover all bases. In my case, I pulled my daughter Brianna from public school, so send a letter of intent each year. For my younger daughter Olivia, who will never be in the public school system, I will just add her to Brianna's letter of intent when the time comes (6 years old in Ontario).

Some school boards will try to tell you that you have to inform them of curriculum plans or do testing. This is not true. In Ontario there are no laws for homeschoolers that require you to submit curriculum plans, text book lists or reading lists. There are also no required testings in Ontario. You do not need to have approval to teach what you wish to you child.

You do have the legal option for your children to take the EQAO in grades 3, 6 and 9 and the Literacy test in Gr. 10, but they are not required. If you choose to have your children take these tests simply notify your child's old school (or in the case of homeschooling from the beginning or due to school closure, a nearby school) the year your child will need to take the test (the earlier the better) and the school is required to provide your child with space to take the test. The results will be returned to the school the test was taken at and the school is then to forward the results to you.

If you'd like, the Ministry of Education has the general Ontario curriculum on their website, Elementary and Secondary and also the French Language Education. You can closely or loosely follow this curriculum. Some parents choose to do this so their children will stay at the same level as their classmates in the case that they would have to be re-integrated into the public system.

Other parents choose other methods of homeschooling that have nothing to do with the Ministry of Education's planned curriculum. These are all perfectly legal for parents to do. If there was a point in time that you had no choice but to place you child back in public school, the school would simply administer a placement test to verify learning levels.

 The Ontario Federation of Teaching Parents is the best resource for parents new to homeschooling. It give a breakdown of the laws and provides parents with blank letters of intent that they can fill out and mail to provided school board addresses. The site also provides a list of homeschooling groups by area. You can use the information on their site for free and/or become a member of the OFPT for a small fee.

Some people will make out homeschooling to be difficult. In some ways it is, but at least in Ontario you don't have the added problems of cutting through miles of red tape from the government.

ETA - Here is the link for the post on The Canadian Homeschooler

Homeschooling Tanya

Background: Tanya is my niece-by-choice. Her mother, Lisa, is actually not my sister, but one of my best friends. We choose to be family.

Last summer, Tanya did some summer schooling with us as she felt she needed some extra help in math. Boy did she ever. She was supposed to be going into Gr. 6 that September, but was struggling with grade 3 and 4 math. She decided right then and there that she wanted to BE homeschooled. My sister wanted Tanya to pass some expectations first and sent her back to school. I told Lisa that I would support whatever she chose, but if any time she wanted to pull Tanya, I only needed a few days to get together some assessing work.

Over the last 5 mths, Tanya continued to complain about not being helped in her problem areas and made to stay behind in areas that she excelled. When her bullying situation got worse, my sister went to the principal. However, Tanya's teacher insisted that the bully in question "would never do something like that" *roll eyes*

This progressed to the point that by Christmas, now even the TEACHER was bullying Tanya. Lisa decided, enough was enough, Tanya was going to be homeschooled. Tanya asked to go back for January in order to say goodbye to her friends.

The last week of January was the worst as the teacher was now constantly harassing Tanya about the fact that my sister "wouldn't be allowed" to homeschool. Now we live in a "no reporting" area, where the only thing we need to do is send a letter of intent each year. We reassured Tanya that she *would* be homeschooled no matter what her teacher said.

That week my sister got a phone call from the school requesting a case conference. Legally, we don't need to meet with the school, but wanted to for humour's sake and out of courtesy to the principal, whom Lisa gets along with. The day of the meeting we were informed that the school requested that CAS (Child Services/CPS) be involved. While normally this is a scare tactic pulled by the schools, thankfully in our situation, CAS was already involved in helping out with my nephew's issues and knew of and supported Lisa's choice to homeschool.

So the meeting was a bunch of "you have to do this" from the school board lady and a bunch of "here's what the LAW says" from Lisa and I. The board asked about socialization *roll eyes* and I explained that even in a town as small as ours, we have a fairly large homeschool group with many children to socialize with. When asked how we're going to stay with the curriculum for "when" she's put into public school (cause of course it's going to fail) we explained that first she needs to be assessed to see what blocks she's missing and "catch up". The board then, ever so nicely *sarcasm*, said that she could remain in school until the school board got (around to processing) the letter of intent and she could do assessment there. Um, no. This is the same school who has been giving a struggling child almost straight As.

Speaking of, I asked about how Tanya herself could complain about not understanding this and that and yet get good grades. How every report card she got said that she "needs improvement" on homework completion and independent work, yet still get good grades. The principal explained (while trying very hard not to roll his own eyes) that with the current grading system, grades are only given on completed work. Translation: a child can do really good on whatever work they actually complete and get good grades, even if they are only completing 1 of 10 pieces of work through-out the year! What great work ethics!

So we walked out of there knowing that they can't do anything to stop us from homeschooling Tanya. We even went so far as to hand deliver a 2nd letter of intent to the local branch of the school board. On Feb 8th we got word that (they finally got around to looking at the damn paper and) we're official!

Here's to a long and successful homeschooling career!

Homeschooling and Divorce

I have read several things the last couple days that make me realize how lucky I am.

My ex and I don't have a custody agreement at all. It's verbal. When I told him about homeschooling the only thing he had to say was could *I* handle it (being having Brianna home all the time with her current behavioural issues). He didn't question whether I had lost my mind or that there was no way I could teach her, just whether I thought I could handle it.

I'm now seeing how much problems he could have caused but didn't. He's even purchased curriculum for us and helps with Brianna's French (his family is French, I am very much not). If I'm having issues with Brianna dawdling or whatever, he speaks on my behalf to her rather than telling me just to put her back in school.

As funny as it sounds, I feel very lucky to have divorced the person I did. 

Letters of Intent

Mailed out the letter of intent to the school board. Apparently they don't always respond, but I can request it if I need it. 

Also met with Brianna's principal today. First to bring up the bullying again and second to give him my other letter of intent. He was surprisingly very open to HSing. He wants my name on the school list to be mailed school newsletters so I can stay in the loop and mentioned that at one of his old schools that they invited HSers to field trips and such. He also has no problem with Brianna coming back to the school to visit her old teachers and such (obviously out of school time)

I am very surprised by the show of support. From what I hear it's quite rare. He did mention some paperwork, which I assume is to relieve the school of any liability to Brianna while doing school stuff once she's no longer registered, but I'll be going through the paperwork with a fine toothed comb to make sure there's nothing else in there. 

In Ontario, we're lucky enough to have zero regulations on HSing other than providing a letter of intent, so I know the schools can't "make" me do reports or testing. I *can* have Brianna tested during the EQAOs if I chose, but I don't have to. I also know that I don't have to let anyone from the school/board look over Brianna's work or my plans. Hopefully the paperwork is solely what I assume... removing liability from the school (which I have no problem with).

Making the decision

I'm still not 100% certain that we are going the homeschool route, but I wanted to start this blog in the event that we do so that I can keep track right from the start.

My daughter Brianna is 8 and in Grade 3. I have been toying with the idea of homeschooling since before my son Isaac started school. He lives with his father so won't be being homeschooled if that's the route we take. Brianna loves school. Why would I pull her out then? I personally hate the system. I love her school and her teachers, but I hate the system they are forced to follow. I think 90% of High School is useless. We've also had problems with Brianna not paying attention in class and not completing work. I believe this is due to boredom.

So, I've spent the last 2 weeks (since school started) researching homeschooling. It appears in my province, Ontario, that homeschooling is as simple as notifying the school board that I will be homeschooling. No approved curriculum, no testing, no one to answer to. I've read the policies and laws from the Ministry of Education and have read dozens of websites that put the policies and laws into layman's terms.

This week I started preparing. Right now I am looking at the possibility of pulling Brianna out of school after the Christmas break. I've gotten my "curriculum/planning binder" started. As I come across interesting things I'm putting it in there so I don't have 35,615,465 bookmarked web sites to go through.

I've also started picking up materials we'd need. The normal workbooks that I normally buy her, but now paying more attention to content rather than just grade level. There's soooo much I'd like to buy, but I don't want to get too ahead of myself either in case we don't go this route then I'd have too much material for my usual part time homeschooling.