Having 8 kids is truly a blessing, but very time consuming and making sure our children have the best experience at school takes up a large portion of our time every day. With my sixteen-year-old son doing eLearning and my other son, Jayden, doing an alternative to traditional schooling with a teacher from his old school at the library, we believe in getting our kids in the most comfortable environment for them to learn and thrive in.
During his sophomore year, my eldest son began hating school. Whether he was not getting enough sleep every night, getting into trouble at school or being distracted by his friends, he came to the conclusion that he was not able to thrive in this environment and felt he would do a lot better doing school a different way. We brought this issue up with the Principal and Vice-Principals in hopes to find a solution and that’s exactly what we did – eLearning.
eLearning is online schooling provided by the school board in our area and allows teens to do the same work being done in traditional schools – just at home, on the computer, on their own time (sort of). My son has to meet with a teacher from his school at the library one day every week to discuss his progress and new work.
After one full year under this program, my son’s grades have drastically improved up to 80’s and ’90s, and he has gotten more credits then we expected in this time period. Jordan has said that working on his own time and being able to sleep in and enjoy more time to himself has greatly improved his life. He has enjoyed the freedom and success of eLearning so much and plans to get his high school diploma this way.
However, there are cons to eLearning as well. Besides the weekly meetings with his teacher that have work deadlines, there is no structure to this program and everything is on our son’s time. We consider this bad for our child because when he’s older and has to work, there’s a big chance he won’t be able to do everything on his own time with no rules or regulations. Me and my husband, while fully supporting and actually preferring the way he’s doing school, have lightly encouraged him, alongside his teacher, to seek part-time employment to continue to develop skills he would be learning in school, as well as to get back on a schedule to prepare him for the workforce when the time comes.
eLearning is a fantastic program and has helped my son tremendously in achieving his goals. However, eLearning is not for everyone, just like traditional schools and classrooms. Not just everybody should be doing their school like this, but instead, just people who are struggling with the regular classroom. While eLearning has perks, it also has downsides, like the lack of structure and schedule we talked about, or the lack of that social interaction you get at school. While my son has his friends from school that he regularly sees outside of school, this may not be the same for every child. All children are different and thrive in different environments. eLearning is a great alternative to regular schools, but that’s all it is, an alternative for people who need it.