AIBU to wonder how home educators feel confident teaching children?

[Toodledootwo]

Genuinely interested in those that home school? What do you think you can do better? Do you plan the full curriculum till 18? It is an ethos? how do you have the confidence to teach?
as an educated professional, doing training courses drains me from the stress. I have a masters in engineering but can’t possibly believe I can teach my child maths. So how do home educators have the confidence to think they can do it?

Did you miss the “wide range of children”…….?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zxdcbqt

Hope this helps 😝

Op I think you are missing the fact that a teacher is someone who has learnt to convey information in age appropriate ways. They are not necessarily specialists in that subject or that part of the subject.

These days there are so many resources, on line teaching, one to one tutoring available so that once your child has mastered basic English writing and reading plus maths, that any adult could teach, there are many options available.

This has the advantage of being able to tailor the teaching style to the child rather than the one size fits all approach of school. Plus it enables the parents to work harder on areas where the child isn't as strong.

There are also many home schooling clubs to pool knowledge and teaching materials.

I've never done it but a close friend has started and asked my view, knowing how I research such things.

We didn’t “teach” them formally and we certainly didn’t follow the curriculum.

When we removed them from primary school it was to protect their mental and physical health. The school were doing a shit job at that.

They learned autonomously. They read books, lots of them, for pleasure and not because they had a 10 minute allotted reading time in school. As adults, they now regularly still buy themselves books. As kids, they couldn’t pass a Waterstones without asking to go in.

They returned to a small school at 14 to take their GCSSEs. They both passed with flying colours despite never having taken an exam or SATs. Both went to college, and again passed everything first time.

Their teachers always commented that if there was something they didn’t understand in class, the next day they would come in with more knowledge about it because they had willingly gone away and researched it and asked questions. Instead of being spoon fed information like many other school kids.

As adults they continue to enjoy learning what interests them, including subjects unrelated to their careers. One of them has just rebuilt a classic car. He’d never had any interest in being a mechanic as a profession, but researched it and got on with it, learning all the time.

We couldn’t be more proud of them.

I left school with no qualifications, my husband the same. We ran our own business for nearly 30 years. Mortgage paid off at 40. Make of that what you will.

If you have the time to devote to it (and don’t have to work- I imagine it’s a full time job) I’m guessing there are lots of resources online, at least enough to give a rounded, albeit general, education. There is also the outside world- nature, museums and other places of interest, libraries, animal parks etc…..I’m thinking home schooling a secondary child might be more difficult when the subjects become more focussed and in depth. I feel I could teach my child English pretty well, with resource help for them to reach exam standard, possibly modern studies, maybe a bit of music, a rudimentary attempt at Science. But stuff like art, history, more complex math and science I’d be useless. But maybe at that age it’s more about focussing on what the child is actually interested in (bearing in mind most universities require 3/4 highers - I’m in Scotland- including English and Maths in most cases).

I couldn’t do it.

The bit I don’t get is, parents might say they’ve no choice, but many have no choice but to work! If my daughter was unable to continue in education (she’s s1) there’s no way our household could afford to drop to one wage. We’d have to find another solution that involved trying to help her manage in school. And we are comfortably off. I feel that those who homeschool will comprise mainly middle to upper class families who can get by on one wage. Sadly I think there are also families out there who have simply lost control of their child. No additional needs, just no boundaries and a lack of appropriate role models. Those who say they are homeschooling but are just allowing their kids to do as they please.

@EmmaB1309 lots of families are in that situation and there isn't another solution. If there wasn't a school your child could attend, and they needed you at home, you would have to manage.

I am a teacher and couldn't home educate my child and yet that is where I have found myself. Part of me is sad that I have given so much to teaching other children yet the very same institution has failed my child due to unmet needs. We decided the only way to do it was get him to do some online learning - we found a superb online school, and there are great people out there like Lara at the theatre of science. Later on he attended a college at 14. I think home ed has made him more sociable. It has been hard though and my other children have stayed in school. Home ed isnt just for one type of child - there are many reasons and for many its because they have been failed by the system. Many many children succeed being home ed but I also know that many children do not and I do think thats a big worry.

Oh I don’t. But my child has been awaiting a place in a SEN school for 2.5 years, and he was self harming (aged 7) in mainstream, so there’s no choice.

I heard of one last week where a relative of theirs said that the parent responsible went out to work three of the weekdays every week. That is not home education.

We tried to manage in school for 3 years. We did every single thing possible to try and get him to manage in school. He was self harming, he was biting his own arms so hard that he was puncturing the skin and the wounds were getting infected. This only happened at school.
Would you keep sending your disabled 7 year old to school if they were self harming to this extent?

Why is that not home education? What's special about those particular days?

I think teaching is actually a bit of a rarer skill than that. I agree it isn't necessarily learned simply by having done a teaching course, but whilst it might be something most people can do on some level, to be able to do it well is, as with a lot of things, a different level.

Teaching adults in the workplace is different to teaching children. Adults have a vested interest in learning how to do their job. Despite the plethora of parents on here whose children are these amazing independent learners who just love to research, etc, a lot of kids aren't like that.

Parents with those sorts of children will often say, 'oh, but all kids are like that if you do this, this and this', but they really aren't.

As a teacher, whether at home or at school, you have to be able to get kids to do things they don't want to do. Because not all kids will enjoy every aspect of learning things they need to learn. Given the battles some parents here have just with getting their children to clean their teeth, etc, I can imagine having to play that out with academic learning as well takes a lot of thought, research, and, yes, skill. At least teachers can leave it behind at the end of the day.

Any lesson a child doesn't want to learn is a hard one. You have to be patient. You have to not put them off the subject. You have, with some children (and I was one of these, so I know what I am talking about) to get past a natural indolence towards anything they don't find easy (and in my case, that was most things).
In addition, if you have more than one child and one is more the independent study type and another needs chivvying all the way, that's a dynamic to manage.

Teaching is a skill that we really don't think enough of, until our kids aren't being taught well. I think it's a good thing if OP genuinely recognises she might not have it. Many teachers in schools don't have it. You can be the brightest star there is at your subject academically, but still be useless at teaching it.

And unfortunately, whereas music teachers can and do lose students who have no real aptitude or interest, you can't simply drop maths or English if the child isn't that into it.

The specific days don't matter, it's the quality of education that counts.

Many home educators use the national curriculum and the same resources which support teachers. Most teachers don’t plan everything from scratch. Plenty of HEdders use tutors or online classes or teaching videos.
I’m a qualified teacher and very little of my teacher training was subject specific & a large part was about managing a class of children which obviously isn’t needed.

Loads of home educators work. Your child being home educates doesn’t mean you individually have to provide all education. It means you plan and curate it rather than the school.

Why?
It leaves 4 other days in the week, as well as evenings, and you’re assuming nothing happens when that parent is at work

Unfortunately, there isn’t really another option. When your child is mute, at a dangerously low body weight and nearing hospital admission, so overwhelmed by school that they can barely leave the house, or so dysregulated they’re throwing the furniture… you wouldn’t be going to work anyway. You can say ‘no choice but to work’ but sometimes work isn’t an option and you have to manage.

I think you’re underestimating human beings’ natural drive to learn. They might not learn in the way you want to see it happen, or learn the things you consider important, but they will definitely learn what is relevant to them, given the right environment and an engaged adult who can facilitate it

I keep coming back to this comment as it’s the silliest thing ever. Children are in school for 30 hours a week?

There’s far more than 30 hours left of the week outside that parent’s working hours.

Home Education does not have to look like school or work like that, but even if it did, there’s ample time!

Children also only have about 1 hour 45 mins per day of active learning in school, once things like registration, break and lunchtime, moving between classrooms, setting up, tidying away, being disrupted by others etc are taken into account.

If the kids ask me something and I don't know the answer, we find it out together. Have you never sat with your gp and he's sat there googling things? Because I have and they've been to university and I haven't. Nobody knows everything and no one needs to now we have internet

Because you have posted stuff like this:

If people are researching an answer online becaue they don’t know the basics themselves, how can they be confident in the answer. Sure, if you’re just happy to take the first google so be it.

Assuming that home educators are incapable of research or of objectively assessing the usefulness of Google results is an insulting and provocative position to take.

It also seems odd to assume that teachers in a school are never asked a question they don’t know the answer to.

I know!
One parents evening I was reading through my daughter’s work, and pointed out to the teacher 3 words that she had crossed out and replaced with the ‘correct’ spelling. Except my daughter had spelled it correctly and the teacher had ‘corrected’ it with the wrong spelling.

Exactly. Honestly, the post in your quote made me pretty sure this is just a wind up not genuine interest. Assuming the best - If you as a parent don’t know “the basics” yourself, then whatever education you received failed you spectacularly.