First Evaluation With Resource Teach, "Reinventing the Wheel"?

Part of the requirement of doing your homeschooling through a charter school is that you must meet with your assigned resource teacher every 4 weeks. He or She will evaluate your work & make suggestions or recommendations as needed.

We had our first evaluation yesterday. Apart from her making me feel like an idiot, judging Gabriel's hair and clothing, repeatedly correcting (read reprimanding) my younger two children I did gain one very valuable piece of information from that meeting. According to her standards, I am working too hard. I have been told to "stop trying to reinvent the wheel."

This was a saying frequently used when I worked at Edward Jones, in reference to the younger (inexperienced) brokers in the business. There would be this poor sap beating his brains to go out of the way picking up pennies, when nickels and dimes were laying in front of him. We would all stand around at production meetings and say, "stop trying to reinvent the wheel, others have gone before you and have found a proven method for doing things."

In thinking about my past experience with the invention, reinvention and revamping of the wheel. I'm not so sure reinventing the wheel is a bad thing. It certainly is time consuming, labor intensive, costly and frustrating. I'm going to have to ponder this further as it applies to us.

I am relieved to know that she feels we are spending too much time daily on school. I am also relieved to know that it's OK to do certain subjects only twice weekly. This opens up more time during the day for running errands and taking care of mom business.

This whole experience is a learning curve. I know I will constantly be changing, revamping things.