I need advice on dealing with another mom.
Sorry about this being long but I have to explain and really need help.
I am homeschooling my last child. He is a junior in high school. I have a good friend whose son (same age as mine) wanted to homeschool as well. My friend felt inadequate as a teacher and asked me if I would help her. We worked out a sharing system of teaching. We have been doing this successfully for three years. She has always taught the history (social science) class and I have taught the remaining classes.
As far as English, both boys are good writers but could use some tweaking to become excellent writers. They are creative but one lacks understanding of grammar and the other has need of more understanding of vocabulary terms i.e. metaphor usage and such. At a homeschooling conference, I found the answer to both issues in one English curriculum. I ordered it and my friend and I together watched the teaching videos. I thought this would be an opportunity for her to teach another subject, a bit of a break for me, and she was eager to teach it.
This was going to be a good year, right? Until I realized my friend has virtually no proficiency with the written English language. I did not know this going in because she speaks well and during the exercises of the program, she wrote beautifully. These exercises were homework for us so I did not realize it was taking her 6 hours to write a story, which should have taken at most one hour. She has no knowledge of the terms verb, noun, or adjective. To top it off she is having them rewrite HER versions of the story instead of their own so creativity is lost. There is very little grammar involved let alone vocabulary building.
I am adamant that my son’s, if not hers as well, skills in writing improve. Academically I classify proper use of the language with not only intelligence but also differentiating between job applicants.
I do not want to humiliate her but the entire program suffers considerably if I do not say /do something.
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