Home Schooling: Time to Jump In?


Just_A_Guy
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So, we have five kids in five different grades from K-8.  Their schools are shut due to the COVID-19 thing, officially until May 1 and realistically, probably through the end of the school year.  They’ve been doing “distance learning” through their schools, and I’m getting increasingly frustrated by the demands on my own schedule as I try to make sure they’re doing what the school wants them to be doing while also doing my own work from home (Just_A_Girl is pretty much bedridden for the next month or so due to recent surgery and complications therefrom); the inflexibility of the program is leaving me pretty disgusted.

I figure we can finish out the year this way—you can do anything for two months, right guys? (Right?  Guys?)—but it’s starting to hit me that we could well see  schools start up again in the fall and then close again if there’s a second wave.  If so, I don’t want to have a school district breathing down my neck saying what I have to go with my kids and when and where I have to do it—if I’m going to be doing the work of homeschooling either way, I’d like to chose the program myself, thankyouverymuch.

Just_A_Girl hasn’t signed off yet, but assuming this was something we committed to do—where would we start? 

 

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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Another thought - you're probably within 20 miles of half a dozen homeschool groups - coops, facebook groups, moms groups, etc.  You're close to a new group of knowledgeable and supportive folks.   It's ok to look around.  We despised the LDS-centric group in our area, the secular group were full of snobs, the lutheran group was by far the nicest, but not our style.  We had a great experience teaming up with the co-op that operated out of a local megachurch. 

Anyone can homeschool, but you absolutely have to have one thing: A parent that likes to spend a lot of time with the kid(s), every day, with few or no breaks.  If that's not you, it has to be your wife.  And your kid's thoughts on the matter are absolutely important here. 

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1 minute ago, NeuroTypical said:

Another thought - you're probably within 20 miles of half a dozen homeschool groups - coops, facebook groups, moms groups, etc.  You're close to a new group of knowledgeable and supportive folks.   It's ok to look around.  We despised the LDS-centric group in our area, the secular group were full of snobs, the lutheran group was by far the nicest, but not our style.  We had a great experience teaming up with the co-op that operated out of a local megachurch. 

Anyone can homeschool, but you absolutely have to have one thing: A parent that likes to spend a lot of time with the kid(s), every day, with few or no breaks.  If that's not you, it has to be your wife.  And your kid's thoughts on the matter are absolutely important here. 

Neuro, could you give an idea of a semi-typical “day in the life of a home schooling family”?

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Guest MormonGator

Be careful.

The blunt truth is that some of us lack the ability to properly convey information to our children because we aren't, you know, teachers. It's the same reason why not everyone is qualified to give legal advice-becuase we haven't been trained to be attorneys. Well, teachers require training and education too. Not everyone can do it. 

Don't get me wrong, I've met many home schooling families whose kids are brilliant, can split the atom and quote Shakespeare at age 12. And, one of my closest friends homeschools her two children and they are fantastic. But I've also met homeschoolers who, at age 18, have basically a 5th grade education. 

Edited by MormonGator
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4 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

The reason Jim the carpenter isn't my heart surgeon is because he lacks training to be one

Any time you need a heart surgeon, I'm happy to assist, although I may have to clean some of the rust of my saw - but not all of it. 

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Guest MormonGator
2 minutes ago, askandanswer said:

Any time you need a heart surgeon, I'm happy to assist, although I may have to clean some of the rust of my saw - but not all of it. 

lol. 

Just to be clear, I have nothing against home schooling and I know many lovely families who homeschool. But you have to be fair-if you forgot high school algebra and can't locate Japan on a map, maybe you should let the professionals do their job.  

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1 minute ago, MormonGator said:

lol. 

Just to be clear, I have nothing against home schooling and I know many lovely families who homeschool. But you have to be fair-if you forgot high school algebra and can't locate Japan on a map, maybe you should let the professionals do their job.  

I would take things a step further and say that even some of those who have been formally trained still cannot teach very well. 

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1 hour ago, MormonGator said:

lol. 

Just to be clear, I have nothing against home schooling and I know many lovely families who homeschool. But you have to be fair-if you forgot high school algebra and can't locate Japan on a map, maybe you should let the professionals do their job.  

As long as the professionals are doing their job in a way that I can’t replicate via other resources, then great!

But to be blunt, right now the professionals are *not* doing their jobs in a way that I can’t replicate via other resources.  They are, with varying degrees of success, turning themselves into a correspondence course—but a correspondence course that still wants to set my kids’ schedules and calendars, install a raft of wonky and mutually-incompatible programs on my computer, and threaten my kids with poor grades or even failure of the year if my family doesn’t do things their way.  And it seems like there are better than even odds that the same thing will be going on for a substantial portion of next year, too.

If I’m going to be shepherding my kids through a correspondence course either way, I’d rather they be in one that recognizes it exists to serve my family; rather than one that thinks my family exists to serve it.

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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2 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Neuro, could you give an idea of a semi-typical “day in the life of a home schooling family”?

Sure - here you go: It's whatever you want it to look like.  

That's not meant as flip, but it's the truth.  Consider the bell curve of a public or private schooled family day.  Homeschooling has a much wider and flatter bell curve.  You have your rigorous families with a lot of structure on one end, you have your fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants "unschoolers" on the other.  Colorado requires certain subjects to be "taught", and education for a certain amount of hours per year, with some sort of test or evaluation every 3 years.  Looks like Utah doesn't have any requirements at all, besides "teach your kids".  So it really is up to you.

Basically, if you don't know what to do, or what to teach, you need to figure that out.  That's why I suggested the local resources - you might find existing programs, or fans of this or that curriculum.  You can buy packaged curricula and have desks and alarms and different classes.  You can go to a co-op and do whatever they do.  You can do whatever you want.   (And, as Gator said, you can just neglect your kids and not teach them anything.  I'm guessing you might want to avoid that option.)

My wife ran homeschooling for our kids.  There was structure at first, then there was much less structure.  It's what Mamma felt was best individually for each kid.   Once she asked them to pick a topic, and structured an entire unit of everything around it.  They, being little girls, picked My Little Pony.  So they learned about everything that went in to producing a show.  They learned about voice acting and producers and background artists and storyboarding.  They learned the math and science behind color palettes and how a toy company runs a product line.

Every year, she asked them "do you want to go to school", and their answer was always "no", until it became "yes".  So now they both go to a hybrid online school run through a school district, with classrooms and teachers/mentors - and a full fledged high school diploma when they graduate.  Older kid has done this for 3 years, and was "dual enrolled" in high school and community college for the last 2.  That got 2 years of her nursing degree paid for by the school district.  She passed her CNA exam one week before Colorado went on lockdown - the students after her are going to miss a year.

It can be daunting, but I stand by what I said.  The only thing you have to have, is a parent willing to devote a lot of time, every day, month after month, tirelessly and eternally engaged.  At least one of you HAS to love to spend endless time with your kid(s).

Edited by NeuroTypical
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1 hour ago, MormonGator said:

Just to be clear, I have nothing against home schooling and I know many lovely families who homeschool. But you have to be fair-if you forgot high school algebra and can't locate Japan on a map, maybe you should let the professionals do their job.  

Yep.  I absolutely stink at math.  I remember the exact minute my 9 year old passed me in mathematical ability.  We were doing a big bunch of addition, and I was showing her the shortcuts I'd learned to add bunches of numbers in multiple columns.  I was halfway through explaining one step, and she just blurted out the answer for the entire problem.  Dang kid.   I kept teaching her math for several years after that, but she did most of the teaching herself by just reading the math book and understanding it.  Can't do algebra and geometry and whatnot, that needs a tutor or someone else. 

One mommy at the co-op had a PhD in microbiology - she had paused her career to homeschool her kids, and taught a few science classes at the co-op.  Eclectic stories like that are the rule of the day for homeschoolers.  Your mileage will vary, you'll get whatever mileage you decide to get.

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I graduated homeschooling in the South in the late '90s with about 16 other people, so my parents didn't have all the resources that're available now. We lived on several acres of land so my typical day was to wake up, go to seminary, come home, read a module and answer the questions in the back. Do this for 1 or 2 modules and then work on an extended project for one of the longer modules (I remember scaling up a mural for a scene from the Book of the Dead, book reports, working a mini-loom, among others). Then go outside and help Grandpa with the garden, the plumbing, or whatever project he was working on. When lunch rolled around we'd usually watch some video from the library about one of the modules we were studying. Then either do another workbook (if it wasn't finished in the morning) or go outside and play with the dog/mow the lawn/shovel the sand off the front walk.

I can't tell you much about the administrative challenges my parents faced except that we didn't have access to labs (which made high school chemistry and physics challenging) and my brother (who had an interest in sports) wasn't able to be part of a school league. Oh, and when I applied to college and they wanted to know which percentile I was in my mom took my coursework and grades to the local high school and they said they really didn't know what to do with that.

As a student, I love reading. I was already learning on my own which is one of the reasons I got pulled from public school. So even though the hands on resources were basically whatever the family could supply it worked well for me. I didn't love writing, so those assignments were where I butted heads with my mom. For my brother, he would get a mental block (not necessarily with one particular subject, just in general) and would spiral down from there. Mom's solution was to send him out for a half hour or so and try again when his brain and body cleared.

I will admit that my greatest fear as a homeschooler was that my peers were learning things that I wasn't. That I was behind but didn't know it. I shouldn't have feared that. My cousin used the same math textbook I did. And his brother used the same social studies text book. But the fear was there. Oh, and because I wasn't taking a bunch of bubble chart tests all the time I needed some assistance with filling in the student information section when I took the ACT. There was another issue with the citizenship question, but that was more a problem of dividing by 0. My fears went away after a few weeks of college.

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8 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

Can't do algebra and geometry and whatnot, that needs a tutor or someone else. 

Yup, same here. I passed high school algebra with a D, and stumbled through college algebra by agreeing to write term papers in exchange for math homework.

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3 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

So, we have five kids in five different grades from K-8.  Their schools are shut due to the COVID-19 thing, officially until May 1 and realistically, probably through the end of the school year.  They’ve been doing “distance learning” through their schools, and I’m getting increasingly frustrated by the demands on my own schedule as I try to make sure they’re doing what the school wants them to be doing while also doing my own work from home (Just_A_Girl is pretty much bedridden for the next month or so due to recent surgery and complications therefrom); the inflexibility of the program is leaving me pretty disgusted.

I figure we can finish out the year this way—you can do anything for two months, right guys? (Right?  Guys?)—but it’s starting to hit me that we could well see  schools start up again in the fall and then close again if there’s a second wave.  If so, I don’t want to have a school district breathing down my neck saying what I have to go with my kids and when and where I have to do it—if I’m going to be doing the work of homeschooling either way, I’d like to chose the program myself, thankyouverymuch.

Just_A_Girl hasn’t signed off yet, but assuming this was something we committed to do—where would we start? 

If you truly want to homeschool and you're committed to it (which, as NT points out, means you like spending copious amounts of time with your children), then by all means you should homeschool. If you're lukewarm and not really sure, then I'd say go ahead and try—but when you try, give it your all, acting as if this is the most exciting thing in the world and you're 110% committed to it. Then re-evaluate after six months.

To start, Google "homeschooling" or "how do i homeschool" or "beginning homeschooling" or something like that. Look around on Facebook and find homeschoolers in your area. Find out who in your ward or stake homeschools, then go to them and pick their brains. I can almost guarantee you they'll be happy to share. That's sort of the homeschooling ethos. Some homeschoolers are evangelists, others are live and let live types, and others really don't want to broadcast their status, but pretty much all of them will be happy to give you some ideas.

Not all homeschools are the same. To say it in a different way, every homeschool is different. Homeschooling is a matter of trying out lots of different ideas and finding out which ones resonate with you. It's a lot of work, as in a LOT, and it's a blast.

2 hours ago, MormonGator said:

But you have to be fair-if you forgot high school algebra and can't locate Japan on a map, maybe you should let the professionals do their job.  

Or better yet, learn algebra and geography so you can teach them to your children. In many cases, there is no reason you can't be learning right alongside them. Lead by example, and learn to be a guide on the side rather than a sage on the stage.

As a rule, homeschoolers tend to be slightly better at academics and MUCH better at meta-academics than their publicly (or privately) schooled peers. That idea of "learning how to learn" is perhaps the single biggest advantage that homeschooled students take to college and on into adult life.

48 minutes ago, mordorbund said:

I will admit that my greatest fear as a homeschooler was that my peers were learning things that I wasn't. That I was behind but didn't know it. I shouldn't have feared that.

When my second son at 12 started going part-time to public school, he was just sure that his peers would be way ahead of him in many subjects, especially sciences. He discovered that in almost every case, the reverse was true. My wife did most of the formal teaching at home, but I certainly engaged my children and talked to them about science and physics and math and stuff. My son found that he actually knew significantly more about science than his peers did, both in amount of content and the simple ability to think in a logical way.

Obviously, how the parents are involved will have a lot of influence on any specific child's abilities. But if you ask around, you will hear dozens of stories like this. It's not unusual; on the contrary, it's somewhat the norm.

But you DO need to commit to it. No half-hearted efforts, or you'll have disappointing results and bored children.

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Here's my suggestion.

1.) First thing to do is find out how your school district/$tate accredits homeschooling.  This will shape how you structure your homeschool plan.

For example:  Florida homeschoolers are in the Magnet program just like the Charter schools.  They evaluate student grade proficiency through a State Assessment Exam in March.  Homeschoolers take the tests at their neighborhood school.

2.) Figure out a plan and curriculum that fits State accreditation and your family life. There are plenty of options.  Several people above mentioned that you have to know the subject matter and know how to teach it to effectively run a homeschool.  I disagree.  A perfect example is Dr. Ben Carson's mom making him read books and write book reports when she can't read.  But, not having any teaching or even subject matter proficiency will require you to choose a homeschooling plan tailored for this.

In Florida, we have a Virtual School that is part of the Magnet program.  Your child logs on to the Virtual School website and goes through online instruction managed by an online teacher.  If there's online material your child doesn't understand, he can call the teacher for clarification/tutoring.  This method basically requires no more parental involvement than traditional school except for making sure your child uses the computer/internet responsibly.

My favorite and most recommended method is Montessori.  Especially for K-5.  You're not the teacher.  You're just a facilitator.  The world is your child's teacher.  Your job is to direct your child's natural curiousity to resources that can provide learning.  For example - your child is learning Addition.  You can give your child beads and have him solve problems like "If Susie gives you 5 beads and Tommy gives you 7 beads, how many beads do you get?".  You don't have to know how to add yourself.  All you need is to work out "where/how can my child learn to add?"  You can either learn it together or let the child learn on his own - it's completely fine for children to know more than their parents.  My child has been out of Montessori for over 5 years and he continues to amaze me with the things he is curious in that he learns on his own.

Montessori method doesn't do tests as it is self paced and self directed with proficiency measured in what the student sets as goals rather than goals imposed by others.  So, to get a child's grade-level accredited by Florida, we have to modify Montessori method to "force" the child to learn thing he's not interested in and to learn how to take a test.

There are many other methods and curricula and plans, etc. including designing your own.  You really just need to sit down and figure out what works for your family dynamics.  One of my favorite youtube channel is Tania who is a mother of 10 kids who homeschooled all of them.  Last year, she put all 9 kids (10th got married) in a C-class RV and toured Europe for 6 months homeschooling all the way.

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Guest LiterateParakeet

As a homeschooler of almost 20 years,  choosing the curriculum and educational philosophy our family will use has been one of the main reasons we homeschool.    I love it.  I love Thomas Jefferson Education (with it's focus on classics and critical thinking), Life of Fred for Math (amazing!) and Moving Beyond the Page for Language Arts, Science and Social Studies..  We also participate in co-ops, groups, clubs...etc.  I mention this just to point out that most homeschoolers do no do school at home all day the way everyone is temporarily right now.  

The downside has been the stress....I always worry that I will FAIL my children somehow.  But I have four children who are old enough to go to college and three have done so and are doing well (the fourth has his own plans).  

We have been blessed by homeschooling.  My family is close, my kids are friends.  I have no regrets.   @MormonGator has met my daughter  (she and I had a great time meeting him and @LadyGator) last year.  They can vouch that she is not socially awkward (which used to be the first question people asked me about homeschooling...."What about their socialization?")  

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Guest MormonGator
9 hours ago, LiterateParakeet said:

They can vouch that she is not socially awkward (which used to be the first question people asked me about homeschooling...."What about their socialization?")  

Yup, she's not socially awkward at all. Quite the opposite in fact. 

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I had this bumpersticker for a while.   

  image.png.fda4f1536bbe0e83d2b885127f532e66.png 

This was back before the nationwide study that showed what homeschoolers already know - homeschooled kids (at least in the '80's and '90's) were in more extracurricular activities, interacted with kids not in their core peer group, basically were better socialized than their public school counterparts.  Not sure about the last decade, public schools seemed to have caught up a bit from what I can tell.  Of course, there are exceptions.  As I alluded to before, take any bell curve that public schooled kids fit into, and the homeschooling version is broader and flatter.  

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2 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

As I alluded to before, take any bell curve that public schooled kids fit into, and the homeschooling version is broader and flatter.

Yes, broader and flatter, but I believe the mean is offset to the right of public/private school children, as well.

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18 hours ago, Vort said:

But you DO need to commit to it. No half-hearted efforts, or you'll have disappointing results and bored children.

To expand on this just a bit, or at least to clarify, I don't mean to say that you have to be super-parent-teacher on Day One. Not at all. It will take some time, months or perhaps even years, before you really find your stride, and you'll be making adjustments right up until high school graduation. I meant simply that you really need to invest yourself in the effort. Homeschooling doesn't have to consume every waking moment or become the central focus of your entire life, but it does need to be A central focus and given more time than a few minutes' prep for the day.

And there again: Some days, you might only have a few moments in the morning to prep for the day. So be it. No crime there. But in general, you should be planning and preparing for homeschool just as you would plan and prepare for any other significant event in your family. Of course, vacations and birthdays usually only come once a year, and homeschooling is an every-single-day sort of thing.

But you get used to it. Like any other worthy goal that's a lot of work, it's worth it in the end. The simple fact of getting to spend the entire day with your children, watching them learn and grow, letting them soak in your attitudes and work ethic and values, makes it the most rewarding and natural thing in the world.

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On ‎3‎/‎28‎/‎2020 at 7:35 PM, Just_A_Guy said:

As long as the professionals are doing their job in a way that I can’t replicate via other resources, then great!

But to be blunt, right now the professionals are *not* doing their jobs in a way that I can’t replicate via other resources.  They are, with varying degrees of success, turning themselves into a correspondence course—but a correspondence course that still wants to set my kids’ schedules and calendars, install a raft of wonky and mutually-incompatible programs on my computer, and threaten my kids with poor grades or even failure of the year if my family doesn’t do things their way.  And it seems like there are better than even odds that the same thing will be going on for a substantial portion of next year, too.

If I’m going to be shepherding my kids through a correspondence course either way, I’d rather they be in one that recognizes it exists to serve my family; rather than one that thinks my family exists to serve it.

THIS is the primary problem right here.  Teachers SHOULD NOT be able to demand all various different programs installed on a computer.  The district should boil down to ONE singular program to utilize.  Insisting that everyone use various programs (and I've seen some that are out there, some of the professors are going cheap and wanting to use Chinese made apps or other items which who KNOWS who's getting what information from that, while others point out that apps that may cost some money but be more secure are hostile to students...we have NO basic program that everyone should use which is a PROBLEM) that may or may not be compatible with students is a horrible decision from my viewpoint.

Everyone should be using the SAME programs to interact.  I think if we did that, even in higher education rather than the haphazard way it has been going, would standardize how we do things and how students can set up their computers.  If we did that, we could also have IT help guide students through the process of setting things up easier, make it easier for Professors to coordinate between each other (especially if there needs to be coordination between different departments), and even have classes set up at different times to use that apps so that it is as easy as walking from one class to another for a student to visit.

Not being standardized I think is one HORRIBLE way many schools are handling this because we are loading students computers down with bloatware.

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This is just my opinion, but when people say that homeschooling can't provide an adequate social education, that's total bologna.

Why not send kids to a prison? They'll get the same quality of social education as in a public school.

Hot takes aside, I believe that the bulk of a child's social development happens during activities outside of school. 

For this reason, homeschooling isn't going to fix the issues kids are now having to endure because of the pandemic.

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