Friday Reflections

We have made it to half term. It has been an interesting 8 weeks from the start of term. Together collectively, we have worked on just under 27,000 maths and English questions in that time. The good news is that everyone except three year 7's have earned their half term.

Here at Orchard Training you loose your right to the holidays when you are not pulling your weight and are deliberately slacking, not doing maths, english, PSHE, theme, projects, not doing sufficient reading either for pleasure or as a set assignment or not writing up your spelling into interesting sentences on time - looses your time off. As these 3 have just learnt the hard way, this half term. They have just found out, your parents will back me up. You can't get away with only doing 3 questions per unit, stopping and telling me that you can't do it. Then complete the other 27 questions without my help during your lesson. Our time together is for teaching you what you don't know and the rest of the week is for you to get on with what you can easily work on by yourself. Your parents don't pay their hard earn money for a teacher to watch you do stuff that you know, they are paying for the gaps to be filled in, the scaffolding to be structured - so you can work independently.

If you are still thinking that homeschooling is the easy option your in the wrong place. If you want education to just happen to you like in school, then school is where you need to be. if on the other hand you want to work faster, or in a different direction to the national curriculum and your willing to put both the time and effort in then homeschooling is for you. I am proud to say that we have a number of you this year who do just that. I felt so proud of one young man who told me his art piece for the fourth week of history, this week, was not good enough - that he was going to redo it using a different media. He didn't wait for me to see it, he took pride in what he was working on and got on with it - that is what homeschooling is about.

This is also what homeschooling is all about - it is half term and yet a good number of you have signed up to a school trip on Monday, on your half term. A large number of us are going off fishing on Monday, and this year for first time - the girls are joining us. I am so please to see you young ladies. Always happy to sit and chat with the boys whilst fishing but I am really pleased to see the girls take part in such a lovely sport that supports our mental health and socialisation. See you all on Monday!