Thankfully, we are no longer in our homeschooling drought. What do I mean by "drought"? I mean that for almost five months, we've lived here in New Orleans and have not been able to find any homeschoolers with tweens and teens. It's crazy.

A few weeks ago I found a Classical Conversations group having a 3-day practicum on logic. Long story short, I wanted to attend the practicum, but ended up teaching the IEW Intensive Writing B class for the nine to seventeen year olds. That was a first for me. My kids had taken the Style and Structure last year with Miss Alicia and then I had bought the teacher's curriculum to go further with them. Apparently, CC couldn't find anyone else to teach it and were desperate. The great thing was, my kids could take the class too. So, we all benefited. I acquired a new teaching experience, that went rather well if I do say so myself. And the kids harvested a classroom full of new friends.

It was hilarious the first day. There were 26 kids and all but my three and one other 9yo had never even heard of IEW and key word outlines. Their question was, "Is this school? 'Cause this seems alot like school."

"Noooo" I exclaimed. "This is a "creative flow workshop"....we are learning to flow our creative thoughts from our brains, down our arms, through our fingers and pens, and on to paper.....it'll be FUN!" There were many moans and groans that followed, but I tried my best to keep it fun, entertaining, and a bit different from the normal "school scene".

All in all, by the end of the three days, most said that even though they didn't think they were going to like it, they had now changed their minds about writing and in fact, had alot of FUN. Hooray! Maybe I can get my kids to get one of their writing pieces to a final draft and we can share it here.

Sidenote: In our quest for finding new homeschool friends, we have started a new yahoogroup: NOLATween2TeenHSClub.  Wish us luck!