Maybe you don’t have a masters degree in education. Maybe you have no formal training as a teacher. Maybe you never graduated from college or even high school. Maybe you were a poor student yourself. How could you possibly offer more to your child than a system (public or private) with its vast and collective experience and knowledge? You must not be qualified to educate your own child.
I often hear, “Oh, I could never do that! I couldn’t stand to be around my kids all day. I wouldn’t know how to teach them.”
Well, with statements like that, you’re right. You probably shouldn’t try to homeschool your children. There certainly isn’t overwhelming popular support for those parents who do choose to travel this path. So, why do it?
Do you have what it takes? What does it take? Is this the right decision? Will you harm your child and her future life? Can you assume responsibility for your child’’s education? What if you fail? (What does it mean to fail?) Self-doubt, anxiety, hesitation, pondering and questioning should accompany not only the decision to home educate, but the continuation of any home education program on some level.
It is positive to examine your resolution and to evaluate progress along the way. Ahhh, there’s that word — evaluate. Judgment. By yourself, by the school district, the legal system, family, friends, strangers, and the often state-mandated evaluator. That’’s the wonder of the human existence – the ability to judge for ourselves -to think – to make choices. To examine a given set of circumstances and produce a solution. This is how you decide. It is a resolute decision and a choice.
It is not an arbitrary selection. Home educators are a committed lot. This fact alone — that a choice is made to homeschool — is demonstrative of strong conviction and independent thinking. That in itself is a good measure toward success.
If you think you can, you can.
Tags: education, Homeschooling, learning, parents, students, teacher qualifications, teachers
We slid into homeschooling sideways … and I admit, I would have been one of those parents who would have said, squeakingly, “me? I could NEVER homeschool my child.” But when the need arose, it became a different story: if your child needs — and I mean, needs — a different setting in which to learn, you seek it out. And keep seeking until one works.
Homeschooling encompasses an enormous range of ways, goals, beliefs, people, methods, reasons, settings. I, personally, was enormously fortunate to have met a variety of homeschoolers before my daughter needed homeschooling. Watching others go through the process of figuring out when/why/how to homeschool made me feel far less alone when we set to considering it. I had seen a little slice of their paths and, importantly, witnessed their courage, doubts and triumphs.
I still have so many ideas about what we would / could / should do, but at least the beginning of our path has seen R blossom and grow out of misery into learning-hunger and social confidence.