I need everything I need to know about home-educating a yr 8 who is VI

[KatyMac]

Please as currently this is a real possibility

Have you tried posting on HE Special? It's a forum for parents who home educate children with disabilities/SNs and a good place for advice.

Thanks I'll have a look

What sort of things do you think you need to know? Are you worried about the legals, activities, or what?

I really don't know

I think personalities might be an issue, as will my work.

I am worried syllabus's will have changed so much since I was at school I will not be able to keep up.

I worry that DD won't achieve or that I will 'do it' badly

Friend of mine who HE, often start with a couple of GCSEs at this age (Geography, ICT, Maths (maybe)), you can use the National Extension College who provide a lot of support. Why not contact them for advice? The other one I know of is Oxford home schooling?

I'm sorry if it has come to this.

what's VI?

Visually impaired

I don't know - I don't really want to HE but it may be my only choice

Hi Katy,

I think you are somewhere in the Yarmouth area ? There is a yahoo mailing list for home ed people in Norfolk groups.yahoo.com/group/HomeEducatorsNorfolk/ - might well be worth posting there and maybe you can meet up with someone who can talk things through with you.

I don't think keeping up with the curriculum is too hard with an 8 year old - but I have no experience of the VI bit.

Hi Katy

Why do you need to keep up with a curriculum? Why are you finding a need to HE now? How long do you expect it to be for?

It's a bit difficult to tell you everything you need to know without knowing what the reasons are for doing it, as what you need to know changes depending on circumstance.

Is this your child, you're talking about? Has she always been VI, or is this new to you?

My child
Year 8 so nearly 13
VI since Feb
Major problems with school removing her 121 & major concerns about safety
look here HE started as a throw away line/threat but I'm seriously considering it now
I am at home in the day but I'd need to do a major reorganise

So are you intending to put her back into school at some point? Or do you think you'd be able to get into the swing of things and intend to do it for good now (bearing in mind circumstance/need change etc.)?

The reason I ask is that I think that the first thing you would need to do is for you and DD to find your feet and work out how to work together (as you mentioned personality clashes). Try reading some books about autonomous learning/unschooling as a way of changing the way you think about how children learn and challenging the way you and your DD relate to eachother.

We very easily fall into a 'them vs. us' situation, particularly as that is the mainstream way of parenting in our culture, but lots of HEors come to realise that it doesn't have to be like that when you stop having to squeeze your child to fit an average mainstream school peg!

Often children start responding far better to their parents and begin working as a team when they start being trusted to be able to manage their learning themselves...and children are more than capable of doing that and frequently prove that that sort of learning is far more efficient than any other way.

Books I'd really recommend would be 'How Children Learn At Home' by Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison; 'Free Range Education' by Terri Dowty and 'Winning Parent, Winning Child' by Jan Fortune-Wood.

I think that if you gave yourself and your DD a term or two to 'deschool' (perhaps even longer), you may find that you and she find a mutually acceptable (hopefully even a mutually agreeable!) way to manage your time together, and that you can come to a place where you and she can think creatively to come up with ways that she can achieve any learning or experiences she wants.

I think you need to stop worrying about doing it badly (although I know you won't - any good parent worries about that!), but try, instead, to read as much as possible about how much better a parent can do education than a one-size-fits-all school can.

Don't get me wrong - I don't think schools are evil or anything, but undoubtedly, an engaged, loving parent will do better than a school at meeting their child's very individual needs - educationally, emotionally and physically.

I've just read the thread you linked to. My word! Your poor DD and you!

I think in that situation I would just whip her right out! There is no way you could do a worse job than that crappy school!

TBH I don't know

I guess we could start with stuff that she likes like more music lessons - she is working towards a singing exam & has started her GCSE coursework.

I could mess around with a childcare qualification

Will she go back to school? I supposed I'd hope so; which may not be the right attitude I suppose

De-school?

Sorry you said un-school

Deschooling means letting yourselves move away from the view that education is something done to you by people trained to do it to you; and moving closer towards understanding that true learning is something that you play the only active part in and that does not have to look anything like school - it doesn't need to have lessons (unless you want it to); it doesn't need a teacher (unless you want it to); it can be spending 5 hours a day practising your instrument; or drawing; or whatever, and that becoming your speciality. Or you flit from one thing to another for what seems like years until suddenly something touches you and you want to know everything about it, and you read books (or have books read to you), and look things up online, and watch or listen to tv/radio documentaries and visit musuems or you ask a friend who does what you're interested as their job to come and tutor you, or let you have an apprenticeship or work experience....

But after several years in the mindset of 'school is how you learn' it can take some time to switch that sort of thinking off, and to open your mind to the fact that it needn't be like that.

I'm saying this because I'm getting the impression that you're thinking 'how can I do the teachers' job?' when actually it's not like that with HE. You're not trying to be a teacher, you're trying to be someone who can help your child learn what they need to learn in the way they want/need to learn it. You're a signposter, a supporter, a guide.

You may still not want to do HE, but I don't want you to be put off it by being worried that you can't do what teachers do. Teachers are trained to impart set information to large numbers of children. When you HE, you don't need to do that - you just need to be able to talk to your child; to have conversations about what's interesting them. You just need to be able to help them work the internet, or find documentaries; use the library etc.

Unschooling is different to deschooling - that's the American term for 'autonomous learning' but is slightly different as it's more a way of parenting.

But it's basically when children are totally in charge of their learning - what, how and when - and is very efficient...but also very scary for parents who aren't familiar with it!

Probably because I am an educator....

One of my big issues is how clever/intelligent I believe she is

I also like validation (exams/certificates/qualifications)

Our greatest supporters in our HE journey are educators - my mum is a primary school teacher; and my uncle is a secondary school teacher.

Read John Holt books too - he was an educator in the US.

Is your main hope for your DD that she gets lots of qualifications?

Mine for my DDs is that they are happy; confident and successful by whatever measure they set themselves...which may be very different to how other people measure success!

If they need qualifications for whatever they find they want to do in life, I am confident they will get them easily because learning something you have a great interest in is very easy and happens very quickly.

And I know a lot of AEd adults who have gone on to do university degrees, PhDs as well as become very skilled workers in other, less academic areas.

And I read lots of interesting articles about how children learn and how a lot of what we're told we need to learn in school is not necessarily vital to doing what you want in life...particularly when you consider that most of what you memorise for exams, you forget soon afterwards unless it carried great significance for you or you use that information regularly.

I used not to trust this process at all, but my mum encouraged me to research it more, and then I started meeting up with AEors, and now I see my own children learning masses and masses - way more than they would be being expected to at this level were they in school. It's far easier for me to trust in it now, 7+ years after I first heard that HE was even an option!

Woudl you send her to a different school if you didn't decide to HE?

If so, would it be an option to take her out of school for a year or a term while you and she deschooled, met up with other HEors, read as much as you possibly could about how children learn naturally etc., and then made a decision to either keep on with the HE, or send her to a different, more supportive school?

I only do early years - got into a big lecture mode with a parent today about setting up learning pathways in the brain & how we are all different types of learners and that by using multiple methods (sensory/visual/kinesthetic/auditory) you are enabling the child to learn for life

And you are better placed than a teacher who is in charge of 30 children to make sure your child gets the different mixture of sensory/visual/kinesthetic/auditory ways of learning that are best for her. In fact, even better, you are the best person to help her find that all out for herself.

Eg. My DD1 does not like to feel like she's being taught at all. She doesn't like doing things like prescriptive arty things e.g. 'make this, this way'. However, she learnt to read young and so reads and reads and reads and reads. She loves tv documentaries. She loves museums etc. if she's picked them (but not if she thinks we're suggesting she goes there so she learns something we want her to learn).

DD2 is completely different. She will spend hours and hours on an art project. She loves doing jigsaw puzzles and having things explained to her. She can't read yet (5.5) but wants to be taught to read so we're working together.

Neither of their very specific needs would be met by school. I'm sure they would both manage fine, but I don't think either of them would be getting as close to their 'potential' as they are able to being HEd.

Your DD is not the same as the other however-many children in her class. Her very specific needs are not being taken seriously by the school. You are able to do that. You're able to work with her to find out what methods she needs to use to learn the things she wants to learn. You can make sure that if, for instance, she hates reading, she can learn what she wants by visiting places and talking to people. If she doesn't like other people much, you can find lots of books or audio books for her to devour.

You don't have to say 'no, we can't do that now because we're doing this now'. You can say 'you're interested in that castle? Let's go and visit it...maybe they've got some worksheets about castles we can pick up there'.

She loves reading but can't

Combining work & HE would be hard, she used to like working through stuff on the computer. But she has got in to the habit of TV watching

Music is very definitely the way to go if we do it

But, from your other thread, you said she improved when she got the right support. You'll be offering her the right support. If her VI is a psychological condition, then removing as many stressors as possible (which probably includes school) could help with that. And there are other ways to read - audio books/ipods/radio.

You're a CM aren't you? I have four children, and some HEors I know have 6. They combine HEing each child with caring for 5 others (and of course HEing them too!). It is hard - I'm not going to pretend it isn't. But do you think it'll be much harder than what you're going through at the moment?

And remember that HE doesn't have to take place in school hours - maybe you and she will find you have long, rambling conversations about things (and purposive conversation (the term 'they' give it) seems to be the most efficient way for children to learn) while you're cookign the dinner, or driving to places. You can visit places at the weekend, or with your charges when you only have a few. You may find she can go and spend time with other HEing families as you build up friendships.

Think creatively - open your mind (and I don't mean that rudely!)

Think to yourself: how likely is it that HE will be worse than what we're currently living? If you decide it's unlikely, then go for it and just let her 'be' for a few weeks - if it lets you settle into working and having her around all the time, then let her watch tv for as long as she wants. I bet you a million dollars she'll get bored of it eventually and start getting twitchy to do other things.

I have 9 under fives each day - it's really a small nursery.

I would have to factor in time off - but I work 7:30-18:00 so it needs a rethink