My family and I recently moved from upstate New York to the front range of Colorado. To say many things are different between the two locales is an understatement to be sure! The weather, the accent – even some vocabulary. For example, in New York it’s “soda,” here it’s “pop.” My husband bought what in New York we would call a “truck.” I was informed here it’s not a truck, it’s a “pick-up.” It was described to me like this, “A truck is what you use to take your grain into town. A pick-up is what you use to take your girl into town.”
And the skyline and sense of direction is so different. Here on the open plains you can see for miles and miles and you always know exactly where north is. People use directional terms for all kinds of things. My Grandmother, not far from here, instructed me once to retrieve an item at the north end of the top drawer. I was in a church once where the pastor announced that the west side of the congregation would take communion first. The basic underlying assumption is that everyone knows what direction they are heading. You could never get away with this in upstate New York where we came from! With all the trees and hills and curving back roads, the landscape, beautiful as it may be, does not lend itself to an easy sense of direction.
I think sometimes the landscape in public education can be crowded. Sometimes it’s hard to see around the agendas and policies and standards. Budgets and initiatives and requirements and safety concerns loom large on the horizon. It seems many are asking, “Which way toward academic excellence and fostering a love for learning? We’ve lost our sense of direction.”
Perhaps that is why so many are turning to homeschooling. It can be a way to open the horizon for students and their parents; to add to their educational landscape only what will enhance the sense that they are heading in the right direction.
One online learning resource that offers limitless horizons is Global Student Network. Offering over 600 courses through various curricula that align with state and national standards, honors courses, Christian courses, Rosetta Stone, college readiness courses, Global Student Network provides families with excellent learning opportunities. Global Student Network also offers International Virtual Learning Academy (www.internationalvla.com), a fully accredited, online private school for grades K-12, with teachers for each course.
“Heading in the right direction” is something everyone understands and wants no matter what part of the country they are from!!
Copyright © 2013 J. Hoffman / GSN (NV)
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Email: JHoffman@GlobalStudentNetwork.com