Homeschooling vs Public School Can We All Get Along?

Homeschoolers and the public system can (and do in many communities) comfortably and successfully work side by side and in the best case scenarios, these two entities actually become benefactors of each others time and talents. As homeschoolers, having the respect of a local educational community is an essential factor in this co-existing equation and is readily achieved by following three very basic, yet vital, steps.

First homeschooling  parents make a point of meeting and talking with the local school  principal. Explain to him or her why the family has chosen homeschooling vs public school and discuss any long term educational goals which may eventually include entering your child into the public school arena.

This would also be a good time to inquire about other homeschoolers in the area, their relationship with the school system, their successes with re-entry, and their possible participation in public school activities such as band, chorus, art programs and physical education. The conversation will also give the principal an overall view of your genuine commitment to homeschooling and the education of your child. Secondly, make friends with the school librarian. He or she can be one of your child’s greatest allies in learning resources! A librarian who is happy to teach a homeschooling student how to use the school library is generally also willing to keep the family informed of new book titles that become available for a particular area of study as well as any upcoming book fairs, clubs, and so forth. This relationship could provide your child with regular access into the school building itself, thus allowing him or her not to seem isolated from the school, but instead befriended by it.

Thirdly, participate in an active, visible homeschooling group. If there isn’t one, consider forming one. The obvious reason for homeschoolers to get together with other families who are homeschooling is to provide support and camaraderie for both the children and the parents, but a secondary and no less valuable reason is the public image the group will no doubt choose to put forth. Providing the public with the opportunity to see a group of conscientious mothers, raising respectful children who are active in community events, charitable causes and educational endeavors, speaks volumes. Homeschooling vs public school – It’s your choice.

As the number of homeschoolers throughout the United States continues to grow, the public school system is being forced to consider the opinions and needs of homeschooling families but how much nicer it is to meet out of respect rather than force, to find a common ground rather than a source of contention and to build a sense of unity in education through mutual understanding. Tested and retested, the steps presented offer tried and true techniques that will assist homeschoolers and the public school system in achieving a successful working relationship in which all those involved benefit. And that’s education at it’s finest! Homeschooling vs Public School- It’s a Choice.

For more information and resources on homeschooling vs public school visit http://www.homeschoolingvspublicschool.info

 

Non-monogamy didn’t cross Marc’s mind until 10 years into his relationship. He didn’t even know it was non-monogamy he would consider when his girlfriend Tina, started mentioning marriage and kids. What did cross his mind and what he began to consider quite seriously was that he’d been sleep-walking through his life and wasn’t sure who it was he’d be bringing to a marriage, let alone if he wanted one at all.
Non-monogamy? Although deeply wanting to explore the edges of himself and his life, including love, intimacy and sex, Marc didn’t want to just throw away his relationship. When we started working together, I asked, “What if you were not confined to any particular model of relationship, but could co-create something that is an expression of you both? What if your relationship was fit to you, rather than you trying to fit into your relationship?”
Marc and Tina’s situation is more ubiquitous than most of us know. So, what to do if the plate that is set before you, piled high with the traditional fare of monogamy, perhaps rounded out with marriage and children, doesn’t look that appetizing to you? Is wanting something besides this “norm” selfish at best, immoral and deviant at worst? And if there were an alternative, what in the world would it look like and how would you go about creating it?
In the section Why ReDefine?, I speak more to this quandary, especially as it relates to choosing to re-define your monogamous relationship – or to considering non-monogamy. Gleaned through work with my clients and a series of recent in-depth interviews, I offer you some examples of non-monogamous relationships, the elements that has them be workable, the challenges that come along with them, and the reasons why the people have chosen to set up their lifestyles and love-styles thus.
A useful term within non-monogamy is “polyamory,” relatively new and admittedly meaning different things to different people. “Poly” means many, “amory” means loving; it includes the ideas that love is not a limited commodity, that it is possible and deeply fulfilling to love and be intimate with more than one (with the full consent of everyone involved), and that you can’t expect to get all your needs met from just one person. Just like it is possible to have multiple children, love them all and have them all be important, so it can be with polyamorous relationships. Polyamory doesn’t necessarily mean license for promiscuity, and “open” doesn’t always mean less committed.
When people think about non-monogamous relationships, jealousy is usually the first challenge that comes to mind. Bitsy is 23, just graduated college, and describes herself at the center of a “V” of two young male partners. One partner of 7 ½ years is away at law school and the other partner of 2 ½ years and she live together. Wise beyond her years, she says, “People give the emotion of jealousy so much sway; we believe that you can deal with and get over huge things in life like being abused as a child, but jealousy, no, it’s too much, it means you’ll just to have to leave. We’re afraid we might not be able to handle what comes up, but you can experience jealousy, you can sit there and it can hurt and that is OK, it’s not the worst thing.”
Reid Mihalko, a relationship and intimacy coach, sex educator and Cuddle Party co-creator, adds, “If people handle jealousy with themselves and partners in the same way they handle ecstasy and intimacy, sadness, love and grief, they would surprise themselves. You are saying yes to emotions when you get into any relationship, and you need to get excited, like bird-watching; quick there is a green-eyed jealousy bird! If you spend some time watching it and not trying to fix it, it can become beautiful; suddenly, nothing’s wrong.”
Some additional challenges of non-monogamy can include: lying, being reactive, being afraid and not taking action, not taking time to honor and take care of yourself, and acting from scarcity. As Reid says, “Being poly, there’s no way to ‘step over the garbage.’” Also, often, one or more lovers are long-distance, which can prove to be a huge challenge, not only because of emotionally missing a lover in between visits, but also for issues of complex scheduling. It can also be difficult to take care of yourself with only one partner, and it is exponentially so with many. And then there’s the lack of privacy and the large amount of emotional energy necessary to be ON with the many people you care deeply for. Of course, for anyone having multiple sexual partners, education around STDs and safer sex protocols are a must, as is being honest with everyone you sleep with, including what kind of sex you have and what is – and isn’t – safe for you. Personal boundaries are vital, since relying on others is not the most powerful or safe choice.
Another layer of complexity is admittedly added when raising children. Rebecca Reagan, a 35-year old relationship coach, offers her unique perspective of being raised by her biological parents in concert with another heterosexual couple, over 30 years ago. The four parents, along with one daughter each, functioned as a single family, sharing a single bank account and trips to the doctor and principal’s office, as well as their beds. Although generally wonderful, there was more tension and rigidity that was perhaps necessary, and Rebecca wishes her parents, with no like-minded community, had the tools she has now. “We were told to lie, and the secretiveness put my sister as risk for an unhealthy relationship with authority and abusive behavior. I felt disempowered and not considered as a person; it formed me as a being and had me not trust my parents to take care of me. I am an advocate for considering that kids are capable of discernment.”
And why, with all these challenges, would people choose non-monogamy? Tessa, a 35-year old psychologist, chose it years ago because the levels of communication and honesty it requires of her brought a kind of intimacy that was deeper than anything she had ever experienced. Getting really good at loving one person made Reid want to love more. Since the age of 14, Bitsy has wanted more than to be clustered off in a single family dwelling, and wanted an intentional family of those she could trust. Bitsy considers children in her future, but would never enter into monogamy. Erik Wilkinson chose to create his relationship with Betty Dodson out of a desire for a lifetime of exploration of human sexuality within long-term partnership. Betty is a woman 47 years his senior and famous, among other things, for her book, “Sex for One,” as well as her promotion of masturbation and female orgasm. Betty also offers Erik her time-won pragmatism and rationality; he’s learned from her that the first sign of strong feeling like connection or attachment isn’t a sign to leave the relationship. He adds, “I love the challenge, the intricacies and three-dimensionality.”
For Birgitte Philippides non-monogamy is about activism. She came to polyamory after having lost several key people in her life, including her father, which left her hating everyone in the world. “When I got introduced to this loving community, it just felt like home, even though it scared me. It is important to me to be vocal about it. There is only one model, monogamy, which works for some, but not everyone; the rest are lying cheating, un-self expressed, and not having relationship situations they desire. What if you knew there is another love-style that includes integrity, honesty, respect, responsibility, self-care, knowing what you want and need as well as a high level of clear, open communication?”
Jenny Block had to be brutally honest about the fact that her seemingly perfect monogamous marriage was not working. For a long time she was angry at herself for her dissatisfaction, but finally acknowledged the need for change, one that was partially based on her bisexuality. She recently wrote a book about her experiences with non-monogamous marriage, “Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage.” Jenny has now had a long-term girlfriend for over a year but wasn’t always so clear and articulate about her ideal relationship situation. She never believed the “myths” about love being a limited commodity or marriage being about sexual ownership, but now she has proven them not to be true. “I know I am not alone here. Happy, healthy, loving marriages don’t exist in the huge numbers we claim. I mean, the real infidelity statistics can’t be good. Because we want to fit in, we cling to a model that doesn’t work.” She adds, “I often wonder how people would really form relationships and how they would really have sex, if we lived in a vacuum. I have an 8-year old daughter, a happy, well-adjusted kid, in no way affected adversely by my lifestyle. We are all so much better off than if I were unhappy with my life. I don’t have a problem with monogamous relationships, although I have been accused of that. I do believe ‘to each her own,’ but not her ‘brainwashed own,’ not her ‘Disney own,’ but her actual own.”
Perhaps it goes without saying that there are no standards for how alternative relationships are configured: Reid has four main partners with many romantic and erotic friends; of his main partners, three are women, one is a man; one of the women is his business partner and two lovers live in far-off cities. Birgitte’s relationships form a kind of tribe: she has multiple non-primary partners, some as long-term as 12 years, 3 new ongoing dating relationships as well as a group of extended friends and lovers. Cynthia Frawley, an “out” bisexual 37-year old woman with a successful radio show, “Out Q In the Morning, with Larry Flick” on Serius 109, has two step children and a son with her husband of over 10 years. Dating women, Cynthia shies from promiscuity, and has a preference is for a “forever girlfriend.” Patricia, a 60-year old psychologist, also bisexual, is in an open marriage with her heterosexual husband of over 25 years. Originally, she was the only one having a relationship with another woman, but recently, he’s begun one as well. “For him it is about enhancing his life, for me it is about sustaining mine.”
For better and worse, with non-monogamy, there is no script, no default, no auto-pilot and no template; you have to make it up as you go along. Rules are co-created and morph and change as they get put to use. Thus, those practicing non-monogamy tend to hold those in their life to high standards, and hold themselves to even higher ones. They often have amassed a wondrously rigorous skill-set of self-awareness, self-expression, “black-belt level” communication, honesty, integrity, transparency and a commitment to grow and learn; a skill-set that isn’t much different, however, than that needed to make monogamous relationships workable, fulfilling and extraordinary.
Support, beyond the relationships themselves, is also key, whether it is an internal support system, a community of like-minded people, online resources, books or a relationship coach. To discover a definition that describes your situation or simply to know there are others just like you can make all the difference. For many, the book, The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities, by Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt, is key. Also helpful are sites: the blog PolyamorousMisanthrope, the message board for married women in love with other women cmwlwdotcom, the dating site OKcupid.
Our culture promises a lot if we follow its rules, but that doesn’t mean we will be happy and fulfilled. This land beyond monogamy, where the rules are made up dynamically by the people applying them, is neither a better nor worse, but rather a matter of self-expression, honesty, freedom, and ultimately, of choice.

South Park is an American animated sitcom created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become infamous for its crude, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics. The ongoing narrative revolves around four childrenâ??Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormickâ??and their bizarre adventures in and around the titular Colorado town.Parker and Stone developed the show from two animated shorts they created in 1992 and 1995. The latter became one of the first Internet viral videos, which ultimately led to its production as a series. South Park debuted in August 1997 with great success, consistently earning the highest ratings of any basic cable program. Subsequent ratings have varied, but the show remains Comedy Central’s highest-rated program even after 188 episodes. Parker and Stone, who continue to do most of the writing, directing, and voice acting, are under contract to produce 14 new episodes a year through 2011. Their staff creates each episode with computer software that emulates the show’s distinct cutout animation style.Following the early success of the series, the acclaimed feature-length musical film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut had a widespread theatrical release in June 1999. South Park has also received numerous media awards, most notably three Primetime Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award.Characters and settingThe show follows a group of four boysâ??Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormickâ??and the adventures they share in South Park, a fictional small town located within the real-life South Park basin in the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado. The town, sometimes described within the show as “a pissant white-bread mountain town”, is also home to an assortment of frequent characters such as students, families, elementary school staff, and other various residents. Prominent settings on the show include the local elementary school, bus stop, various neighborhoods and the surrounding snowy landscape, and the shops and businesses along the town’s main street, all of which are based on the appearance of similar locations in the town of Fairplay, Colorado.Stan is portrayed as the everyman of the group, as the show’s official website describes him as “a normal, average, American, mixed-up kid”. Kyle is the lone Jew among the group, and his portrayal in this role is often dealt with satirically. Stan is modeled after Parker, while Kyle is modeled after Stone. Stan and Kyle are best friends, and their relationship, which is intended to reflect the real-life friendship between Parker and Stone, is a common topic throughout the series. Cartmanâ??loud, obnoxious, and obeseâ??is often portrayed as an antagonist whose anti-Semitic attitude has resulted in an ever-progressing rivalry with Kyle.[9][12] Kenny, who comes from a poor family, wears his parka hood so tightly that it covers most of his face and muffles his speech. During the show’s first five seasons, Kenny would die in nearly each episode before returning in the next with little or no definitive explanation given. During the show’s first 58 episodes, the boys were in the third grade. In the season four episode “4th Grade” (2000), theyâ??along with the other main child charactersâ??entered the fourth grade, where they have remained ever since.Plots are often set in motion by events, ranging from the fairly typical to the supernatural and extraordinary, which frequently happen upon the town.[15] The boys often act as the voice of reason when these events cause panic or incongruous behavior among the adult populace, who are customarily depicted as irrational, gullible, and prone to vociferation.[7][16] The boys are also frequently confused by the contradictory and hypocritical behavior of their parents and other adults, and often perceive them as having distorted views on morality and society.Themes and style All characters and events in this showâ??even those based on real peopleâ??are entirely fictional. All celebrity voices are impersonated…..poorly. The following program contains coarse language and due to its content it should not be viewed by anyone.South Park was the first weekly program to be assigned the TV-MA rating,[20] and is generally intended for adult audiences. The boys and most other child characters use strong profanity, with only the most taboo words being bleeped by censors during a broadcast. The use of such language serves as a means for Parker and Stone to display how they claim young boys really talk when they are alone.South Park commonly makes use of carnivalesque and absurdist techniques, numerous running gags, violence, sexual content, offhand pop-cultural references, and satirical portrayal of celebrities. The early episodes tended to be shock value-oriented and featured more slapstick-style humor.[33] While social satire had been used on the show occasionally earlier on, it became more prevalent as the series progressed, with the show retaining some of its focus on the boys’ fondness of scatological humor in an attempt to remind adult viewers “what it was like to be eight years old”. Parker and Stone also began further developing other characters by giving them larger roles in certain storylines, and began writing plots as parables based around religion, politics, and numerous other topics. This provided the opportunity for the show to spoof both extreme sides of contentious issues, while lampooning both liberal and conservative points of view. Parker and Stone describe themselves as “equal opportunity offenders”, whose main agenda is to “be funny” and “make people laugh”, while stating that no particular topic or group of people be spared the expense of being subject to mockery and satire.The two insist that the show is still more about “kids being kids” and “what it’s like to be in [elementary school] in America”, stating that the introduction of a more satirical element to the series was the result of the two adding more of a “moral center” to the show so that it would rely less on simply being crude and shocking in an attempt to maintain an audience. While profane, and with a tendency to sometimes be cynical, Parker notes that there is still an “underlying sweetness” aspect to the child characters, and Time described the boys as “sometimes cruel but with a core of innocence”. Usually, the boys and/or other characters ponder over what has transpired during an episode and convey the important lesson taken from it with a short monologue. During earlier seasons, this speech would commonly begin with a variation of the phrase “You know what? I’ve learned something today…”.Origins and creationSoon after meeting in film class at the University of Colorado in 1992, Parker and Stone created an animated short entitled “The Spirit of Christmas”. The film, referred to as “Jesus vs. Frosty” by fans, was created by animating construction paper cutouts with stop motion, and features prototypes of the main characters of South Park, including a character resembling Cartman but named “Kenny”, an unnamed character resembling what is today Kenny, and two near-identical unnamed characters who resemble Stan and Kyle. Brian Graden, Fox network executive and mutual friend, commissioned Parker and Stone to create a second short film as a video Christmas card. Created in 1995, the second “The Spirit of Christmas” short (referred to by fans as “Jesus vs. Santa”) resembled the style of the later series more closely. Graden sent copies of the video to several of his friends, and from there it was copied and distributed, including among the Internet, where it became one of the first viral videos.As the short became more popular, Parker and Stone began talks of developing the short into a television series. Fox refused to pick up the series, not wanting to air a show that included the character Mr. Hankey, a talking piece of feces.[46] The two then entered negotiations with both MTV and Comedy Central. Parker preferred the show be produced by Comedy Central, fearing that MTV would turn it into a kids show. When Comedy Central executive Doug Herzog watched the short, he commissioned for it to be developed into a series.Parker and Stone assembled a small staff and spent three months creating the pilot episode “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe”. South Park was in danger of being canceled before it even aired when the show tested poorly with test audiences, particularly with women. However, the shorts were still gaining more popularity over the Internet, and Comedy Central agreed to order a run of six episodes. South Park debuted with “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe” on August 13, 1997.