Homeschooling Parents and Teachers
On the one hand, there are the teachers who believe that their degree has prepared them for the work they’re doing. It’s hard for them to see that someone could do a good job of what they imagine to be the same work without a similar credential.
On the other hand, there are the parents who stay home with their school-age children, who have daily evidence that they are doing a good job, and that it can be done without a background in educational theory. It’s hard for them to see that teachers need their specialized degrees: after all, they have elementary educations themselves, don’t they? Do they really need to know how to teach long division, as long as they remember how to do long division?
The two sides feel understandably threatened by each other. I am here to tell you that both sides are confused. They think they’re doing the same thing: teaching kids the stuff they need to learn how to do. They are wrong. The two jobs are so dissimilar as to be just barely related.
Classroom teaching is an incredibly complex task. Let’s not even think about what it’s like to teach kids how to take standardized tests in a public school… mostly because I don’t know what that’s like. The teaching I was doing was child-centered, organically connected to the children’s needs and interests, with a flexible, individualized approach to curriculum that could speed up for intellectually gifted kids and slow down for the differently gifted. It was, in many ways, the classroom version of homeschooling, in which the child’s need for freedom and autonomy, both physical and intellectual, were respected.
But I was doing it with a bunch of kids, and most of the time, not one of them was my own child. I was spending my days with a group of other people’s children. I needed those educational theories I learned in my Master’s program. I needed to refer to those books I’d collected about how to differentiate instruction. I needed the philosophical underpinning that taught me how to proceed with a child who was acting out in class. I needed to remind myself of the words of one particular professor, who had told us it was our responsibility to love every child we taught.
Teaching my kids at home, in contrast, is so smooth as to be barely perceptible as work. I don’t need educational theories, because I know my kids. I don’t need to remind myself that I love them. When Big is stuck on something, I don’t need to refer to books that will tell me a different way to approach the concept. Because I know him well, very well indeed, I can intuitively find an approach that will work. I understand how his brain works because it’s very similar to mine.
I don’t need to know much of anything that I learned when I got my teaching credential, because all I really need to know is my kids. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t need it when I was teaching other people’s kids.
And here’s the thing that’s been really sticking in my craw lately: it seems that some homeschooling parents believe that because they deeply understand that they don’t need a credential to teach their kids, the credential must be worthless.
It’s not.
Teachers really do know some things about teaching that parents who teach their kids at home don’t know. Because they have to.
It’s completely different work.
Read the original post, as well as more from Elsie and Joe and be sure to subscribe so you can keep up with her remarkable insights as teacher at school turned teacher at home but also to see what she’s knitting up next!
Editor
squirrel68
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March 17th, 2009
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Category:
Author-Elsie and Joe Deluxe, Channel- Education, Children, Kids, Teenagers, Editor- Tracy Inspired Family, Education, School, Family, Featured 2, Homeschooling, Parenting, Tuesday 2
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This is a great post! It clearly identifies a major difference between homeschooling and institutional teaching. I appreciate this point of view. Very nicely done!
Jodys last blog post..AfterMath…
Very nicely put. Although I am a certified teacher, I have never mastered the patience of working with my own children on their homework. I ask my students, one day per year, to behave for their parents the same way they behave for me (after ascertaining that they save their best behavior for me). It really trips out some parents. I like to think of it as my gift to them.
Middle-Aged-Womans last blog post..Cake and Accolades
Ignorance is simply, lack of understanding…how can one truly grasp the importance of credentials/licensure if they do not understand the impact…many things have been done successfully without a significant impact from education…it would be difficult to argue the importance with John Travolta who dropped out of school at 16, Bill Gates, Walt Disney, or Michael Dell (Dell computers) to name a few. These individuals make millions so there is no guarantee that credentials will make one better per se.
I would argue that our foci must instead be on supporting parents as teachers…we need to develop parent education programs that do not impede on “educational choice.” Instead, we must create programs that promote life long learning through various modes of instruction. There are several factors that play into learner success and they do not all evolve around licensure…we owe it to our children to support parents as teachers in the homeschool environment. We must assess the needs of our parents and offer relevant professional development opportunity.
I love that you took so much time with your students. I homeschool my two youngest children, most recently through a charter school. The relationship with our assigned Learning Specialist was more of a partnership, which I greatly appreciated. I never once thought that her education was worthless, nor do I think that she ever thought I was lacking in the ability to teach my children at home.
This fall, we’ll be going on our own. After two years, I’ve become comfortable in what it is my children need, as well as keeping us on track of our curriculum requirements. We’ve been able to do all of our book work plus quite a bit of enrichment. I will definitely miss being able to call our Learning Specialist, but I think we’ll be okay.
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