Home School News Blog

Posts Tagged ‘family’

Homeschooling is legal in every state, but the choice to homeschool should not be made lightly. Research and discussion are required to make a wise decision. How do you tell if homeschooling is right for your family? Here are a few questions to ask yourself when considering homeschooling as an option for your family.

Am I comfortable spending all of my time with my children? One of the main reasons that people homeschool is because they love their children and want what’s best for them. They also genuinely like spending time with their children, which is good since you’ll be spending all of your time with them. If your children frustrate you easily, homeschooling might not be a good match for you.

Will questions bother me?

Homeschoolers are usually asked a lot of questions. Those questions could be about what curriculum they’re using or about socialization for their children. If you homeschool, it helps if you don’t mind answering the same questions more than once.

How can I find out about homeschooling?

Check out books from your public library. There is more than likely a large selection of books that will tell you everything you need to know. The librarian might even be able to tell you if there are any homeschoolers in the area, since most homeschoolers rely heavily upon the library for source materials.

Is there a support system available?

After you’ve read some books, find local homeschoolers, or do an online search for “homeschool groups (your city)” or “homeschool groups (your state).” There are homeschooling co-ops available in many places, as well as opportunities for families to get together and have fun.

What if I have other questions?

After you’ve found some families that already homeschool, and ask them about the pros and cons of homeschooling. Most families will be honest about their reasons, and will be more than happy to help you make an informed decision. Ask them what types of hardships they had to deal with when starting out. Should you be concerned about socialization for your children? What about curriculum? Do they have suggestions about what to use or not to use?

What curriculum do I choose?

Curriculum choices are astronomical — in the variety available, and often in the price. While it is possible to have “school at home” by choosing books very similar to what are offered in public schools, it is also possible to homeschool without using a set curriculum at all. The library books you checked out earlier should have explained about the different methods, and should have given you an idea of what your child should learn in each grade.

If you are considering homeschooling your child, or children, answering the above questions should help you make an informed decision. Not everyone will choose to homeschool after investigating the option. However, if you want to be more involved in your child’s education, homeschooling might just be right for you.

I’ve been a private tutor in New York City for the past five years, and in that time I have worked extensively with eight different homeschoolers and had contact with a number of others. Some of these families are providing their children with absolutely magnificent educations. Others are doing a very poor job of it. I’ve given a great deal of thought to the characteristics that set successful homeschooling families apart from unsuccessful ones, and I believe I have some useful ideas for helping families determine whether or not they ought to take the plunge. Of course there are both academic and non-academic considerations to take into account with education, but my topic here is to primarily discuss the academic issues.

My first question for any parents considering homeschooling is: Why? There are many possible answers to this question, but I think most of the time, the answers fall into one of three categories. First, there are families who simply feel that they can provide their child with a better education than they could get in any available school. Next, there are families who find themselves in a difficult situation, and homeschooling seems like it might provide a solution (although it was never a first choice). Finally, there are families with children who work (usually as actors) and who can’t reasonably go to regular school, too.

All of these categories contain both successful and unsuccessful homeschooling families, although the most common the pitfalls seem to be different. Among families who want to try homeschooling because they believe they can provide a truly superior education, I’ve noticed one major downfall- parents who assume that their interests form the core of a good education. For example, I had a friend in college who was rather bitter about the fact that her parent’s (both math majors from Harvard) version of homeschooling led her to be rather competent at beginning calculus by the age of 11, but sadly unable to write more than a simple sentence or two until she entered public school in the 6th grade.

On the other hand, I now have a homeschooling student whose parents know they can’t do math or science justice- that’s why they’ve hired me and it’s why they make a great effort to make sure a variety of adults who are fluent in math and science contribute to her education. That child is getting a great education in the humanities from her parents and a great education in math and science from me and other people.

Unfortunately, no one is fully competent in every subject that a child should be exposed to, especially as they get older and material gets more complicated. Have you thought about how you will address all of the subjects that your child should be studying, and not just the ones that are your own personal favorites? Have you considered what the implications are of potentially passing on your own academic weaknesses or prejudices to your child? Do you have a plan to avoid, or at least ameliorate, this potential pitfall?

In my experience, families who consider homeschooling because of a difficult situation are perhaps the most diverse group. These are also some of the families who have the most trouble making homeschooling work, for the simple reason that they are already under some sort of intense stress, which makes everything more difficult. The questions I would pose to these families are: Why do you think homeschooling will improve your situation? Do you realistically have the time and energy to devote to this important project? I have seen families who were forced into homeschooling make it work very well and I have also seen homeschooling degenerate into something quite awful.

My favorite example of a family that was forced into homeschooling by circumstance but made it work well for them is a family consisting of an aunt and uncle who adopted their very troubled and severely school-phobic nephew. By the time they adopted their nephew, he had already learned to associate school with failure and responded to it with a mixture of indifference and aggression. It was bad enough when he was a prepubecent child, but as he entered adolescence the situation became absolutely untenable. For this student, homeschooling has been a wonderful second chance that has allowed him to begin learning without having to carry the baggage from his previous failures around. He has made enormous progress in the years since I began working with him. I truly believe that he could not have made this amount of progress in any other environment.

On the other hand, I once participated in the homeschooling of a boy whose mother was terminally ill. The situation was even worse than you might think because she was on medication that made her quite literally and dramatically insane. The poor woman had many frightening hallucinations and became so fearful that she sometimes didn’t allow her son to leave their apartment for stretches of several days. Although homeschooling by a team of professional educators allowed him to more or less keep up academically, the emotional cost of being isolated from his friends and the outside world while he was trying to deal with his mother’s illness made a terrible situation even worse. I truly believe that it would have been better for him to go to school. Even if he had failed every subject, just getting outside of the house and seeing his peers would have been an improvement.

Finally, there are families with a professional child. In these situations, the relevant questions aren’t so much about homeschooling, they’re really about the child’s career. Can this individual child handle a career? Is the desire for a career truly coming from the child? If the career doesn’t carry over into adulthood, will he or she have the skills necessary to make a life in another way? I’ve only known one professional child personally, and she was a charming 8th grade girl who truly loved acting. I homeschooled her while she was performing in an off-Broadway play. She was quite driven to succeed in all aspects of her life, and she was able to do remarkably well in terms of keeping up with her academics as well as her career. I had a lot of admiration for the way she handled all aspects of her life. I also respected the fact that her parents supported her desire to pursue a career in acting, but they absolutely did not push her. Her situation was close to ideal. On the other hand, she told me some disturbing stories about other professional children that she knew who were essentially coerced into pursuing acting careers that they did not want for themselves. Obviously, that is a deeply unethical choice for parents to force on their child. Homeschooling is really beside the point.

In my experience, homeschooling families generally do pretty well (and often extremely well) when they enter into homeschooling with their child’s interests truly front and center. They often run into problems when homeschooling is more about the parents than the child. Ask yourself why and how you want to do this before you start. Be as honest as you can with your answers. The way you think about your child’s education will undoubtedly change over time, but if you keep those questions in mind, your chances of making the right choice for your family is quite good.

http://www.timhawkins.net

Oh, the misconceptions and realities of homeschool life, from comedian (and homeschool dad) Tim Hawkins. To view this video in HIGH RESOLUTION, click on the above link.

O ne of the things that I find most difficult about homeschooling is narrowing down our choices each year. There are so many products and websites and curricula available that it makes it next to impossible to choose only a few. These guidelines help me decide if the product is worth the investment (in time, money, or both). Is this something I think the children will enjoy (or is it more to my liking?) (Conversely) Is this something that I won’t dread if they need more than cursory h

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Four Points to Help You Choose Curriculum

Mon 5 Oct 2009Life at Home Janet comments here on Corn and Oil. We have a lot in common, even though she’s way out west in Idaho. She graduated with an Ag degree, as I did. She loves 4-H, and is involved in leadership even though her boys are still not old enough to be full-fledged 4-H members. (It’s in the blood, after all.) She has 3 little boys; Christian, Sam and Jake. Janet homeschools those little guys because that’s what she and her husband Dave chose to do for them.Janet and her b

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A Homeschooler’s Life Tragedy

Why?Someone asked me if my kids went to school or my husband had a job. Sometimes I forget how odd we are to the average person. Heck, to every other person in the United Sates! Even by homeschooling standards we’re odd. I often ask myself why I feel such a need to be different than everyone else. Tonight I was reading my kids bedtime stories from Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, (Speaking of odd.) He wrote of Lycurcus who exiled himself because of plots to overthrow

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The Hidden Treasures of Work

Call us crackpots, but our kids spend their days at beaches and museums, not in school [tip: The American Conservative : Home schooling is still seen by many as the domain of the hippie Left and Christian Right. But parents of all backgrounds are starting to wonder whether mass schooling, public or private, is right for their children.] Posted in Education, Family, Scott Lahti Tagged: homeschooling

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Confessions of a home-schooler

Home schooling is becoming an increasingly popular method of educating children. Anybody who is considering home schooling, or already home schools, will enjoy reading home schooling blogs. There is a wide variety of information to be found that can help a parent choose what method and what curriculum to use when deciding to home school their child. Check out the following blogs to learn more. 1) Who Needs School? There are many methods of homeschooling to choose from

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A Few Great Home Schooling Blogs

by Owen Jones Home schooling or homeschooling, if you want (in deed, you even see it hyphenated, as in home-schooling) has been about for about 30 years now, although, of course it was all parents had before state involvement in education. Remote thinly-populated places in large countries like the USA, Canada and Australia still have to rely on home schooling to a large degree, although it is less difficult now with the wide-spread use of radio, television and the Internet. Video packages also

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Home Schooling and its Effects.

(Update: Giveaway added below!) When I pick up a book these days, it is usually to learn something. I want something to encourage me spiritually, or organize my life better, or help with homeschooling, or deal with adoption issues, or….you get the idea. It’s been awhile since I read just a story. In fact, it has been so long that when I was asked to review HALF WAY TO EACH OTHER by Susan Pohlman, I almost refused. But the topic of this book! An escape to Italy. Trying out li

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Book Reviews: HALF WAY TO EACH OTHER and NOT SO FAST