Adventure in home-schooling

I'm home-schooling my daughter for the 2nd semester of 10th grade due to ongoing health issues and the rufusal of her doctor to authorize homebound instruction through the educational special services in our area. It wasn't an easy decision. After all, it's been awhile since I studies geometry, health or English. But I figure, I made it to a Master's degree so I can do this. It's a monumental responsiblity to home-school. I have to make sure she learns the same things that her classmates will learn this semester because her credits from home school have to transfer back to the high school for her to stay caught up and re-enter high school as an 11th grade student.

Not everyone agrees that I made the right choice. Most people I talk to have agreed that it's pointless to send a child to school who feels nausous most of the time. But there are some who think that just because "other people" function when ill that everyone should be able to do the same. I know there are many people with cancer or HIV/AIDS who continue to work or go to school despite overwhelming nausea and other physical discomforts. Having worked with people who are HIV+ for five years I know for a fact that for all those who were able to keep working or going to school that there were just as many who couldn't. It would be a slap in the face to imply that people who are ill and can't bring themselves to lead a "normal" life are somehow weak or inadequate. I also know, from working with terminally ill people, that continuing with normal activities is extremely important to them. I think it's because giving up a job or education feels like a step closer to the end. If they stop working then they may never work again.

Now, my daughter is NOT terminally ill. She's temporarily ill. She knows she's going to get better. She knows she will go back to public school when this is over. For her this is a speed bump in the road of life. Will it make her inferior, weak, lazy or undersocialized to be home-schooled for a semester? Hardly. She has to take the initiative to learn on her own, she has to organize her time to get her assignments done, she has to do a lot more reading and problem solving. She doesn't have a handful of teachers to spoon feed her the information and answers or help her figure out what she doesn't understand. She will have to improve her problem solving skills, reading comprehension and independent thinking in order to finish the 10th grade. If anything, I think home-schooling is a peek into what it will be like to go to college. What I recall from my college days are reading reading reading, studying for hours, and doing an inordinate amount of research. The lectures were only a small part of my college education.

This is turning into a long rant. I'll stop now.