CHASING IDEAL EDUCATION:

Series 7-Episode 5:Exploring Nutrition in Schools Article coming soon!

Sharon Roberts, Laura O’Neill and Jess Vandecar will have an informal discussion about home schooling/home learning and the many options available.  If you have an option or options to offer, please email us at info@thewds.org or just register to attend the Live Chat.  It will be edited and broadcast in our podcast series.

A Mother’s Account of Moving from Traditional Brick and Mortar Schooling to Home-based Learning

By Jessica Vandecar, April 2025

There is nothing worse for a parent than watching your child or children struggle in any aspect of life, and to feel helpless to support them. I am a mother of four children. We are a neurodivergent household; each of my children have added support needs in a variety of areas. We are a traditional “nuclear” family and up until the summer of 2020, our family included two working parents. My first two children are 7 & 9 years older than my #3, and 10 & 12 years older than my #4, so to say we have a unique family is a bit of an understatement. My first 2 kids academically excelled in the public school system and were close to being finished or actually finished before my next 2 were entering the school system.

This is an account of the journey through our first few years of the public education system in BC involving my 3rd child. I’ll give some background to his specific needs, the biggest contributing factors for us choosing a home-learning approach, how we decided on a school and learning system, and finally how things are going as we move forward. It is my goal to provide an account for others that can help decrease some of the overwhelm that comes with switching from a traditional “brick and mortar” schooling system to a more child-led home-learning system. There were many barriers that I saw to having us switch even though I knew it would likely be a better system for my son, but initially it felt insurmountable.

The Background and Contributing Factors:

Right from birth I knew my #3 was different. He needed touch almost constantly, unable to use a stroller, I carried him everywhere; he was a mover, walking and climbing everything in sight at 10 months old; he was chatty, speaking with a vocabulary well beyond his years and would randomly sing/hum when he felt joy; and despite his burning curiosity for learning, love of books and stories, he just couldn’t seem to grasp letters, numbers, and symbols with any sort of consistency, particularly on page. Right from the get-go, he made his neurodivergent and sensory needs known.

When he started Kindergarten, I was his advocate and tried my best to ensure that his teachers/school understood that he was neither academically ready nor socially ready for school, but we were encouraged to follow through with Kindergarten and still felt it was the right choice for our family. Those first few months of school exposed some differences in academic learning that my #3 experienced that were unlike my first 2 children. I could see the differences in how hard my son was working with very little pay off; his frustration grew day after day, week after week. Letter reversals, difficulty with holding a pencil including difficulty with colouring & writing, his speech began to become more affected with word reversals and mixing up common words that he knew, were just some of the most obvious struggles. These struggles began to degrade his self confidence. In addition to his neurodivergent sensory needs, I began to suspect my son was dyslexic.

I brought my concerns forward; teachers reassured me that the mistakes he was making were common for Kindergarten students, and that it would work itself out in time. A sentiment that I believe many parents of dyslexic kids are told about their young learners. In my heart, I didn’t buy it, I knew he was different and needed something different from his education, but felt trapped as my knowledge of providing alternative forms of education was limited as was my understanding of dyslexia; I was trying to both honor my instincts and trust the “professionals” to know their job best.

Then the world came to a halt. The pandemic hit and education as we knew it was forever changed.

Knowing my child needed more time and more understanding, I approached the school to plead for them to return him to kindergarten the following school year. He needed time, and I needed time. He had no friends that he could name, his social challenges continued to hinder building relationships with peers; and his academic status continued to be well behind his peers. With his kindergarten year halting at ⅔ of the way through, I felt it would have been an easy transition back into kindergarten and would perhaps give him the extra time he needed to catch up to his peers. It turns out, in BC, children are not held back - so I was told -, but pushed forward to remain in the grade/age group that they are in based on their birth year, regardless of their readiness or capacity to learn.

Over the next 3 years, my need to support my child in his need for alternative education grew. I sought support from our family physician, local pediatrician, and local therapists to question and dig for alternatives and options for my child who with each passing day in the school system was having his light dim. The singing and humming stopped, emotional outbursts increased, he became mean and impulsive instead of his usual fun and playful demeanor; it was heartbreaking to watch.

I had to advocate for assessments within and without the school system, and although he did eventually receive diagnoses of both ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder - a horrible name for this learning challenge in my humble opinion) and ASD (autism spectrum disorder), with additional persuasion, the school finally agreed to perform standardized reading assessments. Although I was unsurprised, the school staff were shocked at the results, not realizing that my chatty, hyperactive, charming kid was reading at a Kindergarten level while in grade 3, and had been “fooling” them into thinking he was performing at a much higher level. I was frustrated that these “tests” were necessary to ensure he received the attention he needed, but also grateful that they were finally done, and now we could put a plan into motion. Finally support was starting to be put into place; he now qualified for an IEP (individual education plan) that would keep the school accountable to follow academic support that would best benefit my child. This is what I believed.

It was at this time that I really began to investigate dyslexia. Who did I know with dyslexia, what is dyslexia exactly, and what are the best ways to support dyslexic kids in their education journey? From my standpoint it was the most difficult challenge to address with his IEP and support needs. The ADHD and ASD needs were easy to facilitate through multiple strategies, but the only thing that was presented to us to support his dyslexic needs was phonics, pushing more phonics, and “doing more” phonics work at home. My child, after spending the day in school masking his ADHD/ASD symptoms, had zero capacity to add additional learning at home.

My only starting point was that I knew what wasn’t working for my kiddo - the phonics learning system that is prioritized by BC’s education system. What I found through online research was the Davis Dyslexia Program, and a beautiful human by the name of Sue Hall. Sue not only had the knowledge I needed, but was full of compassion for our learning experience. Sue provided us with a new objective in our learning, and she also provided hope. I cannot express the relief I felt as a parent when I watched my son grasp the concept of dyslexia through Sue’s gentle explanations; something clicked, he lit up, he understood there was nothing wrong with him, he just had a different skill set that wasn’t well understood by the masses in education.

This began our Davis journey.

I pulled my son from classes for 2 weeks and we began to work with Sue; before my eyes my son’s reading ability soared. We accomplished more in 2 weeks than the previous 3 years in school with reference to his reading skills. The Davis system worked, and it worked well for him. Knowing this system worked gave me solid ground to advocate for his reading/writing support to be guided by Davis principles, but unfortunately, the school was not on board. I received push back from teachers even though I could feel that some were understanding of our success; they felt their hands were tied to school district procedures, policies, and guidelines. I was frustrated, and I began to seriously consider moving to home-learning. Even though my son now had assessments done and an IEP in place, my position on his learning vs the school’s perspective were at odds; I felt his needs were not being met by the available supports in his school. The brief reprieve of sadness and frustration with learning we had achieved with our dedicated time with Sue became quickly overshadowed as our capacity to continue with Davis interfered with him attending school and vice versa.

The move into grade 4 broke the camel’s back, so to speak. My #3 went from a grade ⅔ split class in the primary grades to a grade ⅘ split class in the intermediate grades where there is a big jump from “learning to read” to “using reading to learn”. This change in expectations demolished any self esteem my son had built up with our own commitment to using Davis principles, as they continued to expect phonics to work for him in school, but also learning to read was no longer their priority. My boy’s mental health began to decline and I watched him turn into a shell before my eyes. He was sad. He was desolate. He hated himself. He hated school. I knew in my heart that I had run out of time, and needed to change things for him, asap. I swallowed my fears of potential failure and overwhelm, and got serious about enrolling him into some sort of home-learning system.

I didn’t know where to start; I felt overwhelmed about having my son’s education be completely reliant upon my shoulders which already felt bogged down with managing my own complex chronic illness that I had been battling alongside his school journey.

My main concerns:

How would I support my son’s learning?

Would we be able to get through the curriculum with my own limitations?

What does home-learning/homeschooling mean?

What about his social needs?

What kind of time commitment would be required?

Will we be able to meet curriculum guidelines set by the province?

I began to explore online and became even more overwhelmed with all of the different terms - homeschooling, home-learning, online learning, hybrid learning, reporting. There were faith based schools, there were outdoor schools, there were so many schools to choose from; there were just so many options available.

Things I knew. My son needed a slower and 1:1 learning approach, he needed Davis programming to support his dyslexic needs, his ability to hyperfixate on learning subjects could be used to maximize learning by integrating multiple subjects into lessons, and he needed movement, touch, and experiences to learn, not worksheets. I wanted a learning platform with flexibility, but also one that continued to adhere to provincial standards. I didn’t want to compromise his future school endeavors by choosing something that would have educational consequences later in life. I wanted a school that would recognize his additional learning needs and support them in the best way possible, in other words school’s with a designated seat and supports that were centred around his personal needs. I had some learning to do, and quickly.

Choosing a School and Learning Platform:

To start our home-learning journey, I joined many local and provincial FB (FaceBook) groups that involved ADHD/ASD learners, home schooling groups, and mom groups. I polled people I knew. I searched local school district websites. The internet is a beautiful thing in what it can provide at your fingertips, but it also provides an incredible mass of information that can lead to confusion and/or overwhelm. My first goal was to understand the different terms and what the future implications of choosing one method over another would be long term for my child.

Some important terms that I learned:

Homeschooling:

Parent-led education that does not follow any specific curriculum needs set by the province and ministry of education. You register with your local school and then are set free to follow through with learning however you decide is best for your child. This method provides the maximum amount of flexibility to both the parent and the learner; there is no reporting and no evaluations of any kind. This form of schooling, although very flexible, can create barriers to further education as the child gets older if wanting to attend college and/or university.

Home-learning:

Parent-led education that continues to follow the BC curriculum set by the ministry of education, and is registered to a specific school district where there is a teacher connected to the student. This method is still considered to be public education, but has the benefit of flexibility in how the learning is applied. There continues to be reporting periods and does not affect the child’s ability to attend college/university in the future. This can be provided by having a class that is attended on a regular or irregular basis, or it can also be accomplished via online versions.

Online-learning:

This is a version of home-learning that enables the learner to live outside of the catchment area of the school district they live in. This provides an abundance of choice when it comes to school philosophy and method of engagement.

Reporting:

This is how parents communicate the home-learning that their child is accomplishing to the teacher they are connected with in their school, and does not apply to homeschooling. In my research, I found that this is one of the most variable aspects of home-learning. How and what is communicated is determined by the school, and what is provided by the parent/child is what is used to determine if they are meeting curriculum guidelines/requirements. How the information is reported varies as well as timelines for reporting; some schools require weekly reporting, some monthly, and some only each term.

Designated Seats:

As my child has a “designation” which means they have a specific diagnosis that can affect their learning progress, they require additional support areas, and they follow an IEP, I needed to understand that enrolling in a home-learning program wasn’t simply a matter of applying to the school, there are only so many designated seats available in each school district and/or school even within the home-learning community. That meant, I may or may not be able to get my child into the chosen program I wanted based on their needs. It is recommended that parents apply to multiple schools and then choose the best option once it is available.

Hybrid Program:

This is a home-learning option that has specific scheduled class time with a teacher outside of the home with other home-learning children enrolled in the program. This option provides an alternative to families who may not have the opportunity to provide home-learning on a full time basis. It offers a social aspect to home-learning; the social concept of home-learning is often clouded by the perspective that these children do not get the social intelligence that children who attend brick and mortar schools do. Parents that decide on a non-hybrid option for their child likely engage in social activities via social groups set up by home-learners in their community, but also these children engage in the same after school programming that is available to children who attend brick and mortar schools. In my limited experience, I have not witnessed any negative impacts to social skill set in children who participate in home-learning.

Once I gained some insight into the different terms around this new method of learning, I began my school search. For the sake of this article, I will not list every school that I investigated and/or applied to as there are so many across the province, but I will give an overview of the school we chose and why.

We decided on enrolling with Partners in Education (PIE) which is an online home-learning school program offered through school district 47 in BC. As a frame of reference, SD47 is located on Vancouver Island, and we live in BC’s interior. Some of the big reasons we went with this program were the flexibility it offered for providing my child’s education, it offered a hybrid program, the frequency of reporting is by term and uses an online platform where you can upload photos, videos, document, etc to support your learning, and it met my requirements of using the BC curriculum to continue to support his education. PIE offered a designated seat which allowed for us to access additional support in our own community to supplement his learning needs such as his occupational therapist and behaviour interventionist. In our community, the SD47-PIE program is known as Roots to Sky locally, and is a hybrid program where 2 days per week children attend outdoor school with their teacher and peers.

How we Navigate Child-led Learning and Results:

The biggest challenge that I have found with moving to home-learning has been trying to find our own rhythm that both meets learning expectations as well as honouring a child-led approach. And it began a bit bumpy, we seem to be nearly through the growing pains of the change. We are almost a year into our home-learning journey and I have zero regrets about making this switch. Not only have I seen the return of happiness in my child, but I have a whole new perspective on what it means to learn and what learning looks like.

Along with discussions with our appointed teacher and learning support navigator, I have been able to access tools that help navigate how curriculum fits into the activities that we do, and we are able to turn almost any experience into a school “lesson” while also integrating multiple subjects. With the integration of school subjects and life experiences, we are able to meet curriculum outcomes in multiple ways that mostly do not rely upon computer/sit down work. We are able to utilize cooking, cleaning, trips to museums, outdoor recreation, lego project building, playing family board and/or video games, and subscriptions to science and technology kits, just to name a few. We are also not restricted to set “school time”; we are able to have some set aside focused learning time of up to 8h per week that focuses on some foundation work including Davis support of language arts and math skills, but also benefit from learning that organically happens during play, engaging in community sporting/artistic programs, and maximizing family vacations or simple outings. The world is our oyster.

I have been able to utilize Davis program principles in our learning, and follow my own child’s needs to accomplish his learning goals. Our school does not dictate how we meet our curriculum goals, only that we provide evidence of our work, so the use of Davis principles are not only tolerated, but encouraged if that is what I have identified as the best avenue for my child - a complete switch from our local public school/district. My child’s need for being outdoors, movement, and his innate curiosity is served well in the hybrid program and it has the added benefit of giving me the opportunity to continue to treat my own health needs without sacrificing quality of education.

The barriers I initially imagined to moving to home-learning were less impactful than I had originally anticipated. We fully operate at my child’s pace. Time commitments to learning are much less than I initially thought would be required, curriculum is easily accomplished through a variety of methods and supports available to us, and his social needs are met in a way that better suits his needs. This more relaxed approach has promoted a resurgence of my son’s curiosity with the world around him; not only is he happier, but he is regaining self confidence, pride in his skills, and he is better able to make friends as his own academic/social overwhelm is not routinely impacting his behavior.

Starting up with Roots to Sky, it took all of 2 weeks to see the beginning of positive change. The 2 days/week of outdoor schooling provides a mountain of experiences; it provides a smaller group with low student/teacher ratios, and my son could name every student in his class before the first month was through. He had made friends in his new school. He was excited to attend class to see what they would get up to. Some examples of their outdoor activities that get integrated with play are: mushroom/tree/plant identification, building projects with nature, learning fire starting skills, cooking in the wilderness, building shelters with what the forest provides and/or snow, investigating local historical sites, maps and navigation, animal print tracking, cloud and weather tracking, rock and mineral exploration, as well as the many invited guests to enhance learning about culture and careers such as ecologists, biologists, geologists, and indigenous elders and experts to name a few. This school is a model for inspiring curiosity about the world.

I could go on forever about all of the benefits I can observe in our own family that have come from moving my son to a home-learning child-led approach to education. My only regret is having waited so long to make the change. Every child is unique in their needs and the beauty of home-learning is being able to adjust the learning approach to meet their needs on an individual basis as opposed to a broadened approach that works for a set number of the population. My youngest continues to attend our local school in our own school district. He does not have the same needs nor struggles that my #3 has, and continues to function well in the more classic brick and mortar school setting. I am not anti-brick and mortar, I just believe that education needs to meet the needs and capacity of the participant, and students who live and breathe outside the box can still achieve great education with a modified approach that is designed for them through home-learning. The choices available for home-learning are nearly endless in BC, and are becoming more and more accessible every year.

Our Home Learning Journey 

By Laura O’Neill - April 29th, 2025 

Laura is a freelance web & administrative services provider.  She worked as school secretary at Island Discovery Learning Community DL program in BC from 2008 to 2020. Administrator at The Whole Dyslexic Society from 2016 to present.  

We met a Davis Facilitator while our daughter was just about preschool age. This woman was visiting our home for other reasons, not Davis-related. While we visited, she watched our daughter playing.  When she was getting ready to leave, she said you need to read The Gift of Dyslexia by Ron Davis.  Your daughter may have the Gift of Dyslexia.   

We already knew by age 3 that we may not put her into preschool and very likely wouldn’t put her into a brick-and-mortar school because we observed her high energy and busy body as something to cultivate and nurture and not squash and constrict in traditional educational settings.   

We met an exceptional preschool teacher in our community and decided to put our daughter into that preschool.  It was a perfect fit and worked out beautifully.  The preschool teacher was able to nurture Lacey’s talents and cultivate the early childhood life skills.  When it was time to leave the preschool and start thinking about kindergarten we had some options in our community.  Public school in a brick and mortar classroom, Montessori, and Support Home Learning (a hybrid program).  Our preschool teacher encouraged us to consider home learning for our daughter.  

We enrolled in our local Distributed Learning program – Supported Home Learning.  We would meet 2.5 days a week in a small one room church hall that was set up like a hybrid classroom/home-type setting with BC certified teachers. The bulk of the BC curriculum would be delivered in the program, and we would attend to the rest of the curriculum at home. Class size was capped at 12.  With an emphasis on child-centered learning.  Rich in community engagement and mentorship.  Parent and Teacher collaboration.  

At the end of grade 1 we found that she had difficultly reading the short little kindergarten readers.  I had read The Gift of Dyslexia by then and felt prepared.  We reached out to a local Davis facilitator, Sue Hall, and our daughter was booked for her program beginning of Grade 2 (2007).  

She spent 5 days with the facilitator.  At the start of every Davis program the facilitator and student develop a goal together.  This is a self-directed goal. However, if a student does not see value in exploring their unique learning style, acquiring skills to support that style, and thriving within the education system (or in work and life for adults), they may not be suited for the Davis Method programs.  Empowerment and ownership are foundational principles with Davis. This Davis philosophy aligned perfectly with our home learning philosophy.  

Our daughter’s goal was to be able to go from a kindergarten reader to reading a chapter book by the end of the 5 days.  She accomplished her goal.  It happened that fast!  

Other Key foundational principles in our home learning community were: 

• Intrinsic motivation-based learning - cultivating a love of learning – focuses on helping children learn because they’re curious or interested — not for external praise or fear of punishment. 

• Respectful parenting/respectful education where there was an emphasis on mutual respect and connection over control and included collaborative problem-solving with teacher and parent and student.   

• Strong adult-child relationships where behavior was guided through connection, not control or punishment.  

At the end of our daughter’s Davis program we were able to have a meeting with her teachers and design a plan that would support her throughout the remainder of her schooling years.  No labels were used, no accommodations were implemented.  No psych-ed assessments or government funding.  With her Davis tools she was able to move through the BC curriculum with no issues.  It wasn’t until grade 5 or so that her classmates (that had been with her since kindergarten) even heard the term Dyslexia mentioned by my daughter. They had no idea she was Dyslexic. We were fortunate to have been prepared early and able to give her the tools at an early age. For more information about early intervention using Davis Methods visit our page HERE.  

Our daughter entered high school at grade 9 – received honors each year of high school. Completed several AP courses. It wasn’t until grade 11 that she happened to mention in passing that she was dyslexic to her English teacher.  She continued on to complete a Bachelor of Design Degree in Industrial Design at Emily Carr University of Art & Design. 

The combination of home learning and the Davis Method has been a powerful match, and our daughter’s journey is a testament to how education can be filled with success, joy, confidence, and self-direction. Not to mention healthy collaborative learning relationships with all of her teachers and mentors. Her story reflects a deep love of learning, a strong sense of ownership and independence, and the nurturing of her natural talents. Over time, this fosters deep, respectful relationships and a strong sense of closeness within the family.  

A home learning philosopy and the Davis Method philosopy are both rooted in the belief that every child has unique strengths and needs and that learning is most effective when it is personalized, empowering, and respectful. While home learning focuses on individualized, flexible approaches in a home environment (or hybrid classroom environment), the Davis Method offers tools and strategies for overcoming specific learning challenges, with a similar emphasis on student autonomy and empowerment. 

These philosophies are truly aligned in their child-centered, holistic, and supportive nature. 

Given a supportive learning environment and the right tools to empower them, a child has every opportunity to thrive and shine into adulthood.   

BC School Finder

https://search.onlinelearningbc.com/schools?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR432ON0YQu_2xL1sV2wf_khcdMCPzwdjzLlUVvPxg-dxpmygZGfJ9S1Hfdzhw_aem_JaXKtDeDkgf3sBLrirV_bw