Let's Talk About: My Story

How we arrived at Kleos.

We all have a story to tell about our lives and experiences.  Long before I was school director at Kleos Open Learning, my story included that I was a parent.  A parent with a kiddo who wasn’t thriving. A parent who felt like the battles - with my son, with the school, with teachers, and even with extended family at times - just never ended.  A parent who felt sure there had to be another way. A parent who, above all else, loved her child deeply and who was desperate for help and understanding.  

When my oldest kiddo started school, we struggled.  Okay, full disclosure, we struggled everywhere, not just at school, but school was really where the square peg met the round hole.  And I say ‘we’ because, let’s get real here parents, when our kiddos suffer, we suffer right along with them. By the end of grade 1, my son came home from school one day crestfallen.  All he could express at the time was that he was sad because he was a ‘know nothing’. A ‘know nothing’ was his words for describing what he believed about himself. As in he wasn’t smart because it took him longer to come up with answers and longer to write his assignments, and longer to adjust to any transition and longer to eat his lunch and go to the bathroom.  My sweet, bright, as it turns out quite smart kid saw himself as a know nothing. My heart broke into a million little pieces.  

I really debated what to do for grade 2.  That summer I turned the options over and over in heart and mind.  Home school? Unschool? Back brick and mortar school - public or private? None of the options felt right, for me or for my son.  I debated right up until Labour Day weekend. The only option I felt sure would really be the ‘one’ was home learning with a distributed learning school.    

In the end, I leapt, despite my fear.  We enrolled with Kleos Open Learning and my story evolved.  I was a parent of a student at Kleos. And while it wasn’t always perfect, or - again, let’s be real - easy, the difference it made was palpable.   It took time, and patience but little by little school became easier. Life became easier. My boy came back to life.  

I can’t say that Kleos is the be all end all school of choice.  In fact, I’ve always been clear that we can’t work miracles and we don’t have magic wands and that there is no such thing as the perfect school.  What I can say is that at the core of who we are, we are a team of people listening.   We know first hand how it feels to be alone on the journey when school, for whatever reason, isn’t working.  And we are grateful to be able to offer an option that isn’t home school or unschool but supported at-home learning.  With a teacher backed by a team of professional educators on your side, stepping up alongside your family to help carry the load.  

If the greek term ‘kleos’ means what others hear about you, then you need to know we’re listening.  

So tell us, what’s your story?