Evenstar Academy

School started back before Labor Day.  Evenstar Academy is open for business!

Dress Code:  Yes, you must be dressed. No Pajamas allowed.

School Hours: 0800 until we’re done with the day’s lesson plan

Curricula:   Calvert School 7th Grade, Keystone School 10th Grade (including American History, Geometry, Biology and English)

Campus:  Saloon & Cockpit of Evenstar; field trips TBD as needed.  To really cool places.

The routine is pretty simple, the kids get up and get ready which is a lot simpler and easier.  Colors go up at 0800 and school starts.  The night before Kathy has reviewed the days lesson plans (while I surf the web or read a book) so she knows exactly what we need to set out to accomplish.

Each of the curricula have an outline for a rough day of work on each subject.  Unlike traditional school you can be a bit more flexible about what you do and where.

As expected the actual time commitment is a lot less for a full day’s work.  If you consider the time lost in a school day, from changing classes, going to the locker, breaks and recesses, waiting while other kids ask questions you don’t need answers to, and the “business” of school such as handing back papers, collecting work and so on – it moves at your pace, not the group’s.  Without so much wasted time we can cover a full day of school most days by not much later than 1:00. Without the extra hours of homework for which everyone is appreciative.

No longer locked into the Monday-Friday, long summer break agrarian model of the U.S. schools, we can work on the days we want to and take the days off when we see fit.  Let every one else make up the weekend crowds, we can do school on a Saturday and beat the crowds on a Tuesday.  We plan “do school” year round with some shorter breaks when we need them for passage-making or particularly special events.

Sure, there are disadvantages.  You don’t get the social aspects of schooling and team sports are pretty much a non-starter.  Both children miss that end of school, especially Will who had such a great time with High School Sailing in ninth grade.  A variety of teachers with better subject knowledge and formal education training of course provide an advantage, though they will never know their students strengths and weaknesses the way you know your own child.

Both of us are involved…but mom seems to be the preferred instructor.  One of us graduated Magna Cum Laude from a prestigious university, the other one graduated Magna Cum Barely…the difference tells in our approach to eduction.  Kathy drives the process and I pinch hit or jump in where there are topics that I know particularly well or am fond of, or there are tasks like reviewing and quizzing to do.  And of course I’m around to ask confusing and irrelevant questions at all times.

What is really cool about it is our direct hands on involvement in our kids education.  We know exactly what they are studying, so we can draw what we are experiencing in the real world now (or what we have experienced before) into their lessons and bring out their lessons into the world.  For which they are eternally grateful (Daaad!  We’re done with school today, OK?).  But how many kids that have studied Darwin’s finches are going to get to sail to the Galapagos Islands, or visit historic forts and installations when they study American History?