Poetry reading and Home-schooling with Te Kura...

 

Last week, I was invited to read some poetry, at our local library, of some poetry pieces that younger writers, who weren't able to attend a function at our local library, who had submitted poetry for our latest book that I'm currently collating regarding local intergenerational responses to COVID-19.

The VIP (very important guests) were from the Turnbull Library, in Wellington and they were archivists on a nationwide roadshow to promote their attempts to archive the COVID-19 public information both digitally and in hardcopy.

I decided, to instead, ask our middle child to read the poetry as it seemed more apt to be heard from a younger voice. The audience responded very favourably to both the poems and the speaker, and I was very proud of her.

This was especially possible in that she has decided for the last two years of her high school to be Home-schooled and to complete her NCEA National Certificate of Educational Achievement as a current, Year 12 student, through the Correspondence school, Te Kura.

The interesting thing was that I was asked to be a guest speaker at one of the correspondence school's group meetings that they had and unbenounced to me that my daughter would the following week make that decision to change modes from attending high school to working from home.

I applaud her and the many students who have joined the Correspondence school, Te Kura in learning from home as I know that in the early years, our middle child had preferred that mode of learning but because we weren't able to support her then. It's a real blessing to finally be able to support her in this.

In speaking with an educator from Te Kura, she spoke about how many families have since the situation with COVID-19, pulled their children out of school and enrolled them into Te Kura to keep them safe at home with opportunities to digitally connect or to attend group connecting meetings.

The neat thing is that at the age of 16 years, NZ students are able to freely change to this mode of learning. I'm not sure that many people of aware of this as sometimes schools aren't the best places of learning with not only the COVID-19 situation but also as places of bullying, teaching values and principles that often are sometimes not shared by the family and in having some questionable practices that I don't always personally agree with and I say this as a former high school English teacher.

So now we've been able to discuss community projects for her where she will be able to continue her learning in the community and in some real-situations. I see her now more confident and happy with our decision and already she's thriving.

It's definitely a decision that I would support especially for students who are self-motivated, can work without supervision, and who are often introverts (like me) i.e. as people who draw their energy from doing things alone rather in crowds...