We're a month in for Imp's new educational situation. He's doing very well, I think. Today's a day off--the public school has a teacher training day.
So far, he's passed his OSHA training, and all of the associated tests for certification--which were required before they get into the fun stuff for his Advanced Manufacturing program. The first in his class to pass all the required tests, and he passed with flying colors. Since then, he's been playing with Fusion, learning how it works, because the shop teacher was out at a conference.
He's doing really well at the homeschool stuff, too, but I had to adjust my plans. Hard. Because what I'd had planned...triggered panic attacks.
I failed him. Egregiously. For years.
My plans were to provide books, and to blend literature in with history, and blend both of those with the development of the unique form of government our Founders created for us* with books and documents provided for him to read through. I figured he's actually good at it if he's not required to sit still and be still. I thought it would be enough.
It wasn't.
I've adjusted, hard, on the fly. Instead of being handed textbooks, I've gotten him audio. It isn't that he can't read (he keeps up with subtitled anime. He reads well, quickly, accurately, and with better retention of what he's read than probably 80% of his age and education experience). It's that textbooks trigger the panic reaction.
So do binders. And any and all organization style that isn't a fucking toolbox.
I had not realized how badly the school he's been attending since he was six actually fit. They didn't just refuse to adjust for his educational needs and learning style; they worked to break him to fit what they provided.
So, again, we switched to audio. He's been focusing on history, Econ (Sowell's Basic Economics is the textbook we're working from) and literature/political science (not that he knows we're focusing on that, not really).
He's doing incredibly well. He's choosing what to listen to on which day, and sometimes he stops the audio, and goes away to think about things. And reconcile what he's just learned with what he'd learned in the past. Some of it meshes okay, but some has been a revelation.**
Other than that, he's also begun listening to Starship Troopers. It was something I wanted him to read not just because I think he should, but because I was pretty certain he'd enjoy it...and that his current favorite computer game is a blatant rip-off of it. So far, so good, but he's only just started it.
(I plan to have him listen to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, as well, and perhaps Have Spacesuit--Will Travel. I've got both of those in Kindle, and the audio's heavily discounted if you've already got the Kindle version.)
I'm also strongly considering making him subscribe to Audible (and paying him back for it), and encouraging a lot more reading of whatever he feels like alongside the things I want him listening to so that I can point out tropes, techniques, and things that will be tested over when he goes for his GED.
Because I am damned if I'm going to hand him back to the people who tried to break him to fit their educational models. Nor will I trust the public school to not make it worse in the academic classes.
*"A republic--if you can keep it."--Ben Franklin
**Indentured. Brides. Women bribed from poor families and/or snatched off the streets and shipped over to marry tobacco farmers. WTAF.
