A dear friend of mine told me she may be home schooling her daughters. I have compiled a list of things to realistically consider when deciding to home school or not.
1. Do you (the home schooling parent) have enough time and energy to invest in this? Teaching is a full-time job. Remember that. Full-time. You can't do it justice if you treat it as any less.
2. Do you have any experience teaching? Being good at something is not enough. Many people are good at things and totally incapable of teaching them. Do you know any teaching strategies? Do you know how to communicate ideas and facts in a way that will help your child or children learn effectively?
3. Do you have a curriculum? Do you know anything about the curriculum or anyone who has used it? Do you have all the material for the curriculum?
4. Do you have a plan for your children to meet other children? Preferably children outside of their own racial/socio-economic/religious groups? This, in my opinion, is one of the most valuable services of public schools.
5. Do you have a plan for your children to learn to work with other children? Not just their siblings. In school, children learn to work with people they may not like, may not understand, may not get along with. This is an important life skill.
6. Do you have a grasp on all the subjects you will be teaching? In addition to teaching skills, you must understand the subjects. This is much easier with younger children and harder with secondary school, where most teachers specialize in one subject.
7. Can you handle being around your children all day every day with no breaks at all? This is too much for many people.
8. Are you willing to get professional help (teachers or tutors with the appropriate experience and credentials) if needed?
9. Are you willing to put in the time and effort to make sure you're meeting all your state's requirements? If home schooling high school students, are you willing to make sure you are meeting the requirements for college entrance?
Teachers, any more things to think about?
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Comments
On a different note, the new New Zealand curriculum is very flexible (vague even) and accessible to all online: http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-documents/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum
Yes, that's it, just one page, that's the curriculum. See http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-documents/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum/Learning-areas for learning area statements which then have links for strand information.
There are slightly more in depth guidelines (see the achievement objectives on the left hand side) but educators are free to write their own if they want to. Could make it easy, could make it hard.
Of course, by the time National qualifications kick in (about age 15) everyone is teaching to the test, but there's nothing new about that.
But I digress.
I'd homeschool if it was right for me and my child/ren but I'd also have them participate in team sports, solo sports, guides or scouts, and I'd actively seek out a home-school co-operative for both their and my benefit. And if they were eligible, the One Day School for Gifted and Talented http://www.giftededucation.org.nz/onedayschool.html also takes home-schooled students.
Would you remove your child's tonsils? No? If you haven't been trained as a teacher, what makes you think you can teach?
The obvious point is that for some reason, a medical doctor's education is something that is revered and gladly paid for (for the vast majority).
With teaching, on the other hand, the training that we underwent and experience that we have is seriously undervalued.
I can't imagine my son not having more influences in his life (including a teacher or two I haven't been in love with). Of course, we made sure he never knew when that was the case.
1. Homeschooling is not a full time job. It is a way of life. When you homeschool your life is not divided into learning time and play time. I was riding a chairlift with a friend's son during a school day. He wanted to know how long the run was. I didn't know. He sat in silence for a while and then asked if I would time how long it took us to get to the top on the next ride. He then set about estimating the speed of the chairlift. He told me: "If I know how many seconds the ride takes and how many feet per second the lift moves I can figure out how long the chairlift is. The run goes mostly under the lift so it will be approximately the same as the length of the chairlift." He was nine years old at the time.
2. Learning out of school is so different. You don't need classroom management skills to help your kids learn. My kids don't like me to teach them anything. They want to teach me. They get passionate about a subject and read lots of big thick books on it and talk me into letting them get beehives or quail. We go on a hike and they point out all the native plants and their medicinal uses. My oldest daughter tries to teach me Latin.
3. Curricula--you certainly don't need them. You can use them, of course. My kids prefer to take an assortment of classes outside the home or via internet and then read and travel. We just go to the library and check out an absurd number of books and books on tape and listen and read our way through the ones that we like.
6. My children vastly prefer to learn things I know nothing about. Older homeschoolers regularly use online and community college classes. In our area there are oodles of classes available to homeschoolers on everything from Shakespeare to Quantum Physics.
7. Classes mean that you don't have to be around your kids every day. My biggest problem is having enough time at home with my kids. Between instrument lessons, kayak polo, Latin, physics, reading group, biology, Japan studies, chemistry, ceramics classes and park days. I often feel like I only see them in the car as we drive from class to class.
9. In our home state of California homeschools, like private schools, are not required to adhere to state standards. State standards give people the misguided idea that there is some discrete body of knowledge that children must master. The reality is that there is more out there to be known than any one person can possibly learn. It matters far more to me that my children learn how to work hard and how to delve deeply into a subject that interests them, than that they acquire any particular subset of knowledge.
I think great teachers are great. I am glad that there are so many of them out there in public and private schools all over the country. I don't think teachers and homeschoolers need to have an adversarial relationship. Schooling and homeschooling are simply very different.