Travis Academy is a fantastic organization. It is designed to meet the needs of homeschool parents seeking a quality Arts education in a Christ-centered environment. With over 800 homeschool students and 100 classes it meets a great need in the homeschool community in the DFW area.
Excellent teachers who are qualified and care about the students.
Their heading reads "Travis Academy of Fine Arts partners with families..." We did not find this to be the case. Our experience of TAFA proved that TAFA's priority is for Teacher/Student communication rather than Teacher/Parent communication of weekly assignments. We asked, begged, and pleaded for the band instructor to provide to PARENTS the weekly assignments but the band instructor, supported by the TAFA director, refused and instead holds to a mind set of Teacher/Student communication over Teacher/Parent JUST LIKE the public school system.
So if you home school to escape the public school system mentality of "leave the parent in the dark regarding weekly assignments and classroom happenings" then I'd say TAFA is not the place for you. However, if you are looking for a place to drop off your kids to let others instruct and take over your duties to instruct, only maintaining the job at home of "reminding your child to do their work at home" (of course without knowing in detail what the work entails) then I'd say TAFA is a great place for you.
This of course is my opinion based on our experience. We left TAFA after being there a little over a month, having discovered the hard and expensive way (because they won't refund you though I have proven they are guilty of false advertising saying they "partner with home schools" when in fact they take over) that they didn't support our value of PARENT LED EDUCATION rather than hired teacher led.
We hoped we'd have the opportunity to enroll our children into classes where we'd as parents get a break from instruction but yet maintain our roll WITH TEACHER COMMUNICATED KNOWLEDGE OF CLASS ASSIGNMENTS. That is not what we experienced. In fact, we experienced a very controlling teacher who was set in her ways, refusing to regularly communicate weekly assignments directly to Parents in a timely manner. The arrogance we dealt with was astounding and shocking. The band teacher literally told me that she has had issues with parents, God forbid, who try to get involved with their own child in her class! LOL
The administration says "all the other parents are fine with this mode of instruction" and though that is not entirely true (there are several families who have left TAFA reporting similar issues), that is saying the following: There are a lot of parents who want to drop their kids off and hand over their duties of instruction to another and maintain ONLY the roll of "reminding their child to do home work without knowing from the teacher what those assignments are." That is perfectly fine as everyone is free to do as they wish. However, for home school parents who home school IN ORDER TO KEEP YOUR GOD GIVEN DUTIES TO BRING UP AND INSTRUCT YOUR CHILDREN, you may want to know that TAFA will remove you from that roll and leave you with peripheral at home duties just like the government educational system does.
TAFA administration denies this fact but I have a string of email proving we as parents were denied regular, weekly, timely, detailed assignments and told instead that those would be given regularly ONLY to the students and NOT in a written form but given verbally where very young students are expected to write verbal instructions quickly and accurately which we all know is NOT going to happen all the time - Kids NEED a shepherd! To get these instructions we were told to attend the class or accept the "way it was done"! Why pay for a class to get a break if you have to attend it to stay the LEAD of your home school? And finally, on more than one occasion, messages were sent out to Parents stating that parents were not "holding their children to their responsibilities to practicing at home" and urging parents to do this task at home, suggesting we parents were "failing at our jobs." To that I reply....the fact that many students are not meeting your expectations for their weekly assignments at home may in fact support what I'm saying here! Parents don't know what their children are supposed to be doing at home!!!!
The easy solution is to clearly inform the parents of weekly assignments in a TIMELY WRITTEN manner! It really is a very simple concept. I wish I'd have had a review to read before I spent my money thinking their idea of partnering with the family matched my values of Parent lead home schooling.
Travis Academy of Fine Arts Reviews
Travis Academy of Fine Arts
Travis Academy is a fantastic organization. It is designed to meet the needs of homeschool parents seeking a quality Arts education in a Christ-centered environment. With over 800 homeschool students and 100 classes it meets a great need in the homeschool community in the DFW area.
Excellent teachers who are qualified and care about the students.
Their heading reads "Travis Academy of Fine Arts partners with families..." We did not find this to be the case. Our experience of TAFA proved that TAFA's priority is for Teacher/Student communication rather than Teacher/Parent communication of weekly assignments. We asked, begged, and pleaded for the band instructor to provide to PARENTS the weekly assignments but the band instructor, supported by the TAFA director, refused and instead holds to a mind set of Teacher/Student communication over Teacher/Parent JUST LIKE the public school system.
So if you home school to escape the public school system mentality of "leave the parent in the dark regarding weekly assignments and classroom happenings" then I'd say TAFA is not the place for you. However, if you are looking for a place to drop off your kids to let others instruct and take over your duties to instruct, only maintaining the job at home of "reminding your child to do their work at home" (of course without knowing in detail what the work entails) then I'd say TAFA is a great place for you.
This of course is my opinion based on our experience. We left TAFA after being there a little over a month, having discovered the hard and expensive way (because they won't refund you though I have proven they are guilty of false advertising saying they "partner with home schools" when in fact they take over) that they didn't support our value of PARENT LED EDUCATION rather than hired teacher led.
We hoped we'd have the opportunity to enroll our children into classes where we'd as parents get a break from instruction but yet maintain our roll WITH TEACHER COMMUNICATED KNOWLEDGE OF CLASS ASSIGNMENTS. That is not what we experienced. In fact, we experienced a very controlling teacher who was set in her ways, refusing to regularly communicate weekly assignments directly to Parents in a timely manner. The arrogance we dealt with was astounding and shocking. The band teacher literally told me that she has had issues with parents, God forbid, who try to get involved with their own child in her class! LOL
The administration says "all the other parents are fine with this mode of instruction" and though that is not entirely true (there are several families who have left TAFA reporting similar issues), that is saying the following: There are a lot of parents who want to drop their kids off and hand over their duties of instruction to another and maintain ONLY the roll of "reminding their child to do home work without knowing from the teacher what those assignments are." That is perfectly fine as everyone is free to do as they wish. However, for home school parents who home school IN ORDER TO KEEP YOUR GOD GIVEN DUTIES TO BRING UP AND INSTRUCT YOUR CHILDREN, you may want to know that TAFA will remove you from that roll and leave you with peripheral at home duties just like the government educational system does.
TAFA administration denies this fact but I have a string of email proving we as parents were denied regular, weekly, timely, detailed assignments and told instead that those would be given regularly ONLY to the students and NOT in a written form but given verbally where very young students are expected to write verbal instructions quickly and accurately which we all know is NOT going to happen all the time - Kids NEED a shepherd! To get these instructions we were told to attend the class or accept the "way it was done"! Why pay for a class to get a break if you have to attend it to stay the LEAD of your home school? And finally, on more than one occasion, messages were sent out to Parents stating that parents were not "holding their children to their responsibilities to practicing at home" and urging parents to do this task at home, suggesting we parents were "failing at our jobs." To that I reply....the fact that many students are not meeting your expectations for their weekly assignments at home may in fact support what I'm saying here! Parents don't know what their children are supposed to be doing at home!!!!
The easy solution is to clearly inform the parents of weekly assignments in a TIMELY WRITTEN manner! It really is a very simple concept. I wish I'd have had a review to read before I spent my money thinking their idea of partnering with the family matched my values of Parent lead home schooling.