Seewalds 23: Visiting Waco Again

[karen77]

I've seen bad homeschooling and I've seen great homeschooling (both girls got into Stanford for example). I'm not up for it myself, I see what my daughter's teachers do and man, so much!! and trying to teach things in different ways for different kids, its crazy. Plus, I do have an engineering degree, but I do NOT feel qualified to do anything past about 3rd grade.... and my daughter and I would BUTT heads..it would be awful. I still teach my kids to read early though (although man.. my son is challenging!! got one more year to get him going!)

[HarryPotterFan]

15 hours ago, SapphireSlytherin said:

@HarryPotterFan - We just don't know how she's a Gryffindor. I'm Slytherin, my hubby (her stepdad) is a Slytherin. Her boyfriend/hubby-to-be is a Slytherin. Her dad must be a Squib.

 

Haha. He must be! How dare his influence cause her to become a Gryffindor! Lol. One of my friends cried when Potternore sorted her into Gryffindor. It was very amusing.

 

1 hour ago, OyToTheVey said:

Did I mention the only science I never failed was chemistry? I don't even know how I never failed it. The first time I took bio I failed. Hello summer school. Failed physics twice! I got a 3.7 GPA in my psychology bachelors and a 3.9 in childhood education masters. I'm not including all the math and science classes in my gpa cuz then it would be waaaaaaaaaaay smaller lol

Haha. If it weren't for statistics and epidemiology my GPA for my masters would have been higher (maybe 3.9? Lol). Ooh, childhood education? I've always loved kids and wanted to work with them but haven't had interests in being a teacher or administrator. What do you do?

[front hugs > duggs]

Not that I have been deaf to hearing about public school horror stories across the US, I was fortunate enough to have grown up in an amazing public school district, where our high school was actually better than a couple of private schools nearby. With the exception of a few that stick out, I largely had incredible teachers and I was inspired to become an educator (but now i'm in corporate America, go figure). But I also understand that the best schools are probably almost always in high income, expensive areas. I'm married, though a few years away from having kids, but I am not able to afford a house in the district where I was schooled.

Also, my best friend was homeschooled after being in public school through elementary school. Her mom took her out of school due to bullying, and also decided to homeschool her brother as well. They both chose to come to public high school and had little problems readjusting, but academically and socially (but her mom was a great teacher and they also attended a co-op). She moreso just misses some pop culture/fad type references due to not being in public school for middle school.

Also also, I saw an advert on HGTV for Abeka. I would have never known what it was without FJ and also realized I had been pronouncing it wrong in my head this whole time! But I was still pretty surprised to see an ad for it on tv.

[OyToTheVey]

2 hours ago, HarryPotterFan said:

 

Haha. If it weren't for statistics and epidemiology my GPA for my masters would have been higher (maybe 3.9? Lol). Ooh, childhood education? I've always loved kids and wanted to work with them but haven't had interests in being a teacher or administrator. What do you do?

Statistics the bane of my existence! I took it in high school and 3x in college. I had to take it for my marketing degree(huge mistake btw) and for psychology. 

I'm currently on sabbatical. I loved working with little kids but I worked in peoples homes and the parents got to me. I couldn't handle it anymore. So I'm taking a little break from one on one and doing something else. I'm hoping to do administration work. I loved lesson planning. It was so fun planning activities and all that.

[ViolaSebastian]

5 hours ago, HarryPotterFan said:

Haha I can relate. I always struggled in math and it wasn't a good fit when my mom (who majored in math in college) tried to tutor me. We have very different learning styles. She can hear a long, complex string of numbers once and remember it. I need things written down.

Yep, my mom is an accountant and wanted to be an engineer, but this was before women did such things and she was encouraged to go into bookkeeping or teaching math. And I...well,  suspect I have a learning disability with math that has gone undiagnosed. We had many, many a tear-filled tutoring session that ended with slamming doors. No bueno. 

[cascarones]

I don't know about elsewhere, but there's also the "blended method", Texas is a bit weird educationally (and get to pick everyone's books), but by law they're required to educate kids at their level using lottery funds. The top 10% of every HS graduating class means automatic acceptance at any state school. It was designed to protect special needs students and create socioeconomic diversity, but ended up with broader application. For kids on advanced tracks that meant while we took classes at the HS, we were dually enrolled in community college at the cost of the state (paid for AP tests as well). What that looked like varied class to class, some took an off campus college prep method with a syllabus, due dates, discussion days you had to be in the classroom. Some you were taught at the HS, but took the same tests as those at the college/had to take them at the college.  For me that meant between AP tests and dual credit I walked into college only needed one core course (non-Western studies) and credits in my majors, it also made my pocketbook happy by cutting down on tuition and allowing me to work more hours to save for school.

We'd been montessori before Texas through a charter thing and the elder cascarone eggs made my mum lose her mind when they went to normal school and had to deal with "arbitrary rules" like asking permission to go to the bathroom. There was also a lot of compromise, our school had a really low literacy rate so reading class was a thing through grade 7, but the teachers were really flexible. They wanted to be able to focus on kids who needed the help, not discipling bored kids who at or above guidelines, so would let you start a club (newspaper, mystery, etc) or if adults wanted to pick you up that was fine. Some girl did her olympic bound gymnastics lessons then. My mum was doing some sort of community German speaking thing through her redhead club and would come get a few of us and drag us along to learn German and eat pretzels.

Homeschooling can be great, but it's about finding what works for each educator and each child, especially in the family bond. Kids are different and I think sometimes that's what gets lost in the classroom under everything else teachers are trying to manage. I know some of my teacher friends get really frustrated with their district policy on bullying and feel very limited in what they can do/ impact they can make in the situations. 

[Iamtheway]

On 2017-06-15 at 2:58 PM, Carm_88 said:

Here's the picture that @Marly was talking about. Henry's expression kills me, though they all seem very into it.  

Wow! Spurge really is Jessa's mini-me. They are both adorable and if I didn't know about all their awful believes they would look lika a happy, normal family with really good parents and sweet children.

Jessa's note was sweet, very personal and with a minimum amount of god speak in it. Ben sounds like a great dad. Shame about those believes. 

Even if it was legal to homeschool Miniway (in Sweden it's not) I would never do it. I loved school and was pretty good at it. I'm a horrible teacher though and I used to make my sister cry when I tried to help her with her homework. If the stubborness Miniway is displaying now keeps being part of his personality (as it did with his mum) both of us would not survive homeschooling. 

Also. I love my kid more then anything in the world but if I couldn't have my own adult life it would drive me completly bonkers and I would not be a good mother, wife, friend, person. 

[Rachel333]

@Marly  I think with my parents it was that they realized that in higher level subjects I would be better off with teachers who knew the subject well. With science classes it's hard for homeschoolers to replicate the labs you do in high school, and with language classes the twice monthly Spanish classes that were popular among the homeschoolers really doesn't compare to having class every day with a teacher who knows the language well.

In the lower grades, however, my parents felt like they could do a better job than public schools could. They are both educated ; my mom has a master's in education and my dad has a PhD and teaches university classes in a STEM field. My dad helped me a lot with math when I was growing up and that was always a subject I knew very well.

I do wish I had gone to school earlier than 10th grade. It was just such a relief to be around kids who weren't the fundamentalist homeschoolers I grew up with.

[HarryPotterFan]

3 hours ago, OyToTheVey said:

Statistics the bane of my existence! I took it in high school and 3x in college. I had to take it for my marketing degree(huge mistake btw) and for psychology. 

I'm currently on sabbatical. I loved working with little kids but I worked in peoples homes and the parents got to me. I couldn't handle it anymore. So I'm taking a little break from one on one and doing something else. I'm hoping to do administration work. I loved lesson planning. It was so fun planning activities and all that.

Statistics is evil. I have such a hard time even now reading research papers and summaries of them because I can't understand it. Multi-regression what? 

I understand taking a break. Parents are what scared me away from being a child psychologist lol.

2 hours ago, ViolaSebastian said:

Yep, my mom is an accountant and wanted to be an engineer, but this was before women did such things and she was encouraged to go into bookkeeping or teaching math. And I...well,  suspect I have a learning disability with math that has gone undiagnosed. We had many, many a tear-filled tutoring session that ended with slamming doors. No bueno. 

Sounds very familiar. I've wondered for years if I have a learning disability with math too. And lots of fights and me running off to a different part of the house, lol. My brother got roped into tutoring me as well. I like to credit myself for the teaching award he got when he was getting his master's degree. Tutoring me required a LOT of patience.

[ViolaSebastian]

13 minutes ago, HarryPotterFan said:

Sounds very familiar. I've wondered for years if I have a learning disability with math too. And lots of fights and me running off to a different part of the house, lol. My brother got roped into tutoring me as well. I like to credit myself for the teaching award he got when he was getting his master's degree. Tutoring me required a LOT of patience.

Wow, we might be the same person. My brother (who ended up becoming an engineer) was roped into tutoring me too, which worked out as well as you might imagine. When I took the GRE (the exam to get into graduate school), I was in the ninety-something percentiles for reading and writing, but the fifth in math. I remember being evaluated as a child, but I don't recall exactly what they were looking for or what became of it. (As an aside, one of the things they had me do was see if I could do math better on a sheet of green paper--can anyone in the know shed any light on wtf that was all about? Also, spoiler alert: it did not help). This was in 1990 or 1991, so I imagine that today's understanding of learning disabilities is more sophisticated. In any case, I recognize that it spiraled downward: I wasn't good at math, so I hated it, so I avoided it and zoned out in class, so then I'm worse at math, etc. 

ETA: I also grew up in a university town, which tended to be pretty experimental with its curriculum. For math in elementary school, we did a Scandinavian-developed booklet called "Math in Context." MIC Math focused on using real-world scenarios to teach math, and our teacher basically gave us the packet and said "do it." There were no exams, no lessons, and she didn't check the booklets for completeness. (And, surprise, I did not do them). So when we got to middle school, none of us had the proper foundation to move on to algebra and geometry. 

[Irene]

On 19.6.2017 at 10:05 PM, VelociRapture said:

@FlamingFundie

If homeschooling works for you and your kid that's great. But it's not tossing a kid to the wolves to enroll them in public school. As you said, it's the only real option for a lot of families in this country. Some kids thrive in public school and others don't. Some kids thrive being homeschooled and others don't. Just do what's best for your kid and let other parents do the same.

This country? You mean Usa?

[HarryPotterFan]

@ViolaSebastian We must be! My brother is also an engineer! I was never evaluated for a math learning disability though. My mom refused to believe I had one, lol. No daughter of hers could be bad at math! When I took the the GRE I somehow did better on math than reading/writing. Then when I couldn't get a job I considered going back to school but my GRE scores had JUST expired so I had to retake it. I did laughably bad on math that time. If I leave this job and go back to school (which I might do because learning about my field was far more interesting than working in it) I'll probably have to take it again since my score was so bad. I don't remember what percentile I was. I don't see why I need to take it again if I already have a graduate degree. 

[Irene]

I thinking thatI found Jessa to  bee selfrason and belives thats she looks down on people.

but is it bc she pretty and looking good? Or bc of her bevahvor?

[2manyKidzzz]

16 minutes ago, Irene said:

I thinking thatI found Jessa to  bee selfrason and belives thats she looks down on people.

but is it bc she pretty and looking good? Or bc of her bevahvor?

Jessa is very confident in her own social group. She does almost seem to look down on various things, whether it is true or not who knows. 

It is her personality helped along because she is very pretty. They are all very nice looking. 

[Escadora]

See now I just plain up straight hate doing any kind of maths that's not really basic stuff.  I mean, I can do it, but it takes me more time than it probably should, and it upsets me more than is probably normal when I get it wrong. A bad experience with a downright nasty teacher at an age where I was more combative than dedicated to education is what I blame for that (and believe me, I take responsibility for all the shit I pulled in her class).

For my Teacher Ed course we did a term in Human Biology and part of it was a lab report where quite a large portion of it was the analysis of data and statistics. I tried my damn best but, with only a week to go, I was at my wit's end and my dad just ended up pretty much doing that part of it for me. The breakdown of the hypothesis, experiment, discussion of results, and ethical considerations I did really well with, but the maths was horrible.

My mind just tends to go blank and it feels like I'm trying to wade through cotton wool whenever someone brings up anything harder than basic fractions at this point. Of course, it's be worse if I had a maths-related learning disorder, but I don't think that's the case, and I hope everyone here can someday manage to find a way to cope with and perform maths-related activities with more ease than they do currently.

I swear all I do on this forum is complain about stuff. I could talk for hours about all the things I love but that's not really snarky or on subject, is it? (just, y'know, I'm only just beginning to learn how to knit and my colouring's pretty crap so I can't go be happy about all that just yet)  

My point is, either way, that education is important, and parents should be allowed and able to make an informed choice on what is right for that child. Also, I believe that when that child is old and able to be able to be informed, that child should have a right to get a say in how best they learn.

As someone who is aiming to teach or, ideally, provide specialised classroom support for primary school aged children (ages 4-11) with special and extra needs I'd like to be able to say that institutionalised education is the best option for all children, but the truth is that that's just not the case. Homeschooling, when done right, can be hugely beneficial to a child (and I'm sure the parents on FJ who homeschool their children - I'm sure - do a fantastic job). The sad truth is that the majority of these fundamentalist parents we discuss here homeschool their children with the intentions of not exposing them to the ways of the world (which makes no sense because I believe one biblical teaching is that Christians are supposed to be IN the world but not OF it. How are they IN the world if they're sheltered from other people constantly from the day they're born until the day they're married? Just makes no sense to me) and making sure the children are unable to have any references for expanding their beliefs and worldview. It's why I'm hesitant to join in on the whole kid/adult debate, and also really appreciate the term 'kidult'. 

Sorry, educational neglect and abuse is one of my rage subjects. Education, and the pursuit of, should always, always focus on what is best for the student, and not be focused on the parent's, teacher's, or government's comforts and conveniences. It's why I don't join in with the Naugler threads; You think my posts are long and essay-like here? I had to (well, I felt compelled to)  backspace on a really, really, really big post a few days ago because I just couldn't justify doing that to the poor phone users. I ended up forgetting what exactly I was mad about in the end.

Of course, I'm young, inexperienced, and not even working in the field on a regular basis yet, so we'll see how I feel about it in 20 years. I like to believe that I'll always be an advocate for the student/child but this job does tend to wear people down. Of course, it's not hard to understand why exactly that is. 

 - Oh, also, on subject, Spurgeon is so cute. Like I know people are in agreement here in that he's adorable and a total sweetie of a child (those cheeks though) but I just had to say it. Henry's cute in the generic cute baby way, but Spurgeon is sorta beautiful, if you get me?

(I hope Jessa waits a lot longer to cut his hair. I imagine it drives Boob and OfBoob mad ) 

[HarryPotterFan]

22 minutes ago, Escadora said:

My mind just tends to go blank and it feels like I'm trying to wade through cotton wool whenever someone brings up anything harder than basic fractions at this point. 

That's how I've always been on math exams. My mom and brother would tutor me for ages, I'd finally be able to do math problems, then I'd get the test and my mind would go blank.

And yes, Spurgie is a cutie pie. He should do baby shampoo commercials.

[Escadora]

7 minutes ago, HarryPotterFan said:

That's how I've always been on math exams. My mom and brother would tutor me for ages, I'd finally be able to do math problems, then I'd get the test and my mind would go blank.

And yes, Spurgie is a cutie pie. He should do baby shampoo commercials.

Oh man it's the worst. Doesn't matter how thorough they are, right? No matter how much you understand it at the time it just somehow manages to fly away out of the good old brain at the worst of times. I just can have such a perfect understanding as long as the person who explained it properly is with me but as soon as they go away my brain's just like panicpanicpanicpanic-shut down-no maths for you!

I assume - mostly from the username - that you found solace in literature and fiction also? 

(I tried to find a suitable emoji for our shared difficulties and instead found one of two bananas humping. I really love this site sometimes )

[Carm_88]

6 minutes ago, HarryPotterFan said:

That's how I've always been on math exams. My mom and brother would tutor me for ages, I'd finally be able to do math problems, then I'd get the test and my mind would go blank.

Math and physics, I just memorized things and hoped for the best! 

[VelociRapture]

1 hour ago, Irene said:

This country? You mean Usa?

Sorry. Yes. The USA.

[Pasta]

I love finding y's x.  That's about it math wise. 

[HarryPotterFan]

2 hours ago, Escadora said:

I assume - mostly from the username - that you found solace in literature and fiction also? 

Yes, I did. Growing up I would just lose myself in books. I haven't read much for pleasure lately, though. I really need to get back to it.

And Hahahaha about the emojis! There are some amazing ones.

[Seren Ann]

As someone who has been both homeschooled and in public school, I feel like I need to give another perspective. 

I started off just like every other kid, the French equivalent of pre-school, then primary school... Public school failed me very badly when I was ages 6 to 8. I taught myself how to read and was lowkey bored in class, doing my own thing, reading books when I already knew what was being taught. I was never disruptive or rude, I was a very shy, discreet little girl. The teacher decided to single me out and bully me because she felt personally affronted that I wasn't hanging onto her every word. I felt sick every time I went to school. I was terrified and miserable. My father, who is a high school teacher and rather disillusioned with the education system, saw how unhappy and bored I was, and homeschooled me when I was 8. I inhaled the curriculum he chose (which was old-school and much more complex than what is taught in schools). I was homeschooled in a very hands-off way : I was expected to work through the materials I was provided with, and my parents would check I had done it and correct whatever written exercises I had done. I dread to think what would have happened to me if I'd been left in school after being so thoroughly destroyed by that teacher. I had given up.

When I was 13 my parents chose to put me back in public school for 2 reasons : they were worried that I wasn't being socialised enough. Every single person we told we homeschooled would bring this up, I guess it got to my parents. (As the person actually being homeschooled, I always felt this was a bit of a concern troll move... but I disgress) And I was wanting more space from my parents, who were very strict and authoritarian (that's a completely separate problem from homeschooling and it doesn't detract from my overall experience with homeschooling), and this was ruining my motivation to work (I felt I was being forced and that immediately makes learning unappealing, the exact same thing happened to me in public school). Please, if you homeschool, try to preserve your child's natural appetite for learning. It is very difficult for schools to do this in a classroom setting, but if you homeschool you really have an opportunity to tailor the speed and type of material to the child so that they remain engaged.

Back in public school : since my homeschool curriculum was more complex, and back then I was a fast learner, I found everything to be very easy and never had to work to get good marks. I pretty much coasted through high school, putting in the bare minimum of work. Those years in public school have actually done me a huge disservice, learning-wise : now I am at university and I realise, school never taught me to work. Classes were structured in a way that led us to cram short term to get good results in tests. I was very good at that. That is a completely inadequate way of learning when you are trying to actually learn information long term to be competent at your job. I got into a masters program without much trouble, things were still easy enough to manage without work, but now I am struggling and I feel like I was failed by the school system. After so many years of boredom I am finding it very difficult to rediscover an appetite for learning and find a way to learn independently again as an adult when learning was so mechanised by school. I realise some of this is my fault and part of my particular profile, but instead of helping me move past it, school only added extra difficulties and did not teach me how to face the world. I think after spending so many years sitting on a chair in a classroom, the results should be better than this.

If I had to compare both experiences, homeschooling was definitely not inferior to public school. In my case, I would say homeschooling worked out better for me, even though my parents didn't homeschool me perfectly, and there are some things they could have done to make it fit better. I learned more, and I was working by and for myself (which I then lost the ability to do when I went to public school and found it wasn't necessary). The main issues I had as a homeschooler were due to their parenting style and the lack of resources for homeschoolers to meet up and get together back then, not homeschooling itself. 

As for it being impossible for a homeschooled highschooler to learn as well as in school. This is maybe the thing that has puzzled me the most in these posts. In my experience, it is so untrue. I learned nothing from my public high school teachers that I couldn't have learned from a book. (Labs can be done in a co-op just as well as in schools). What counts is how good the author of the curriculum is. If they are a good teacher and explain well, the information is clear, there is no distraction like there is in class, I can learn at my speed. There would really be no advantage for me to be sitting in a class listening to the same information being spoken out loud! If there is really something that is confusing (and if the curriculum is good that only happens very rarely), nowadays with technology it is easy to ask a tutor online and the courses I took at home offer that service. High school is not very specialised or complex, it is not that impossible to learn by yourself if you have good curriculum and an online tutor. And my experience is with French high school which is more specialised and demanding, at least in my branch, Science (bac S), than American high school. So I promise, homeschool in high school doesn't have to be inferior.

College now... That's a different story. Once you start to really specialise in a given field, it becomes useful to be taught by someone who knows the field well and can really explain the subtleties because they understand them completely. Even then, reference books remain useful and can help if you don't connect with your teacher's way of presenting things.

When you are homeschooled, you are learning by yourself : if there is something you don't understand, you read the lesson again, you look it up, you go back to previous lessons, you turn it around in your head, you ask your parent or your tutor if you parents don't know. You move on once you've understood, no time constraints. In school, if you don't understand, class is moving on already. As well as being a high school teacher, my father gives private lessons after school hours. He says basically his job is to find out what the student hasn't learnt in school. Because it wasn't explained in a way they understood and then the teacher kept going because the student didn't ask, because the teacher was going too fast/too slow for that individual student, because they were distracted or were missing previous concepts to understand the new concept. So he does an assessment of everything that they should know. The percentage that they actually do know is often surprisingly low ! And then he fills in the gaps. 

This is not to say that everyone should homeschool. Simply that the school system is far from perfect and we should be working to make it better, instead of touting it as an ideal and judging anyone who tries anything else. Homeschooling by its nature is very unequal, some people won't put much effort into it or will use it to indoctrinate children, but some can, and do, educate their children very well. It's a shame that this second category is often considered exactly the same way as the first! Instead of writing all homeschooling off, let's have exams every year or every two years to make sure homeschooled children aren't falling behind (and I know that already exists in some countries).

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

I think homeschooling if done properly and for the right reasons can be beneficial, especially if a child has learning disabilities, or health issues that being in a petri dish of public schools would make them ill. All the people I know who home schooled did so for "religious" reasons except for 2 1 her oldest had severe learning disabilities and didn't feel the big city school district was meeting her daughters needs, so she kept her home, and they did the same with their son. The boy is in scouts and does a lot of other activities with the district  so he gets some socialization outside of the developmental classes his sister gets from professional educators/doctors. The couple is religious, but not THAT kind, they have a firm grasp of science and technology and teach that to their kids as well. No sheltering them from ebil liberals in book learning. The other one home schooled her youngest of 4 because the poor kid was allergic to EVERYTHING, being in the same room as PB sandwich sent her into anaphylaxis, it was literally to dangerous to take her into public so she didn't really ahve a choice, thankfully as she's gotten older the severity of her allergies has eased up and she will be a senior in HS this year, she went to public schools starting her Freshman year, she was old enough at that point to know how to avoid her triggers and her nut allergies had abated to where she had to have physical contact to react, and ingest it to go in to anaphylaxis.  But the others, just didn't want their kids to learn the evils of science and sex and become heathens.  

Something more to consider in Iowa we've had 2 young girls (aged 16) die from extreme neglect and starvation  in the past 6 months, both girls were "home schooled" so there was no way to check on them. These two girls were tortured to death, and no one noticed, their are over hauling our DHS, but their is talk about making stricter guidelines on homeschooling to avoid things like this in the future.  If someone is required to check the child's progress several times a year signs could have been shown and maybe those girls could have gotten the help they deserved.  I'm not pointing this out to bad mouth homeschooling, but bad people abuse things like this to do what they want with out consequence. 

[mpheels]

When comparing home school vs. traditional classroom settings, it's important to keep in mind that different people learn in different ways. Some people can pick up a text book, read it, and understand right away. Others need to hear a lecture, or see a demonstration. I would never do well in home school - reading is great to reinforce ideas I've already learned, but I have a hard time learning fresh material from reading alone. I need to hear a lecture first. Recorded lectures are OK, but I really need live discussion to thrive (conference calls are OK, but online live chats or discussion boards are not a reasonable substitute for me). I'm fortunate that my high school offered classes that fit my learning style very well - lecture + discussion with an emphasis on integration of concepts across subjects. 

[AudreyE]

I've homeschooled my son since kindergarten, because he is mildly autistic, and our local schools couldn't handle him. He's sixteen now, and does English, physics, trig, history, Spanish, and Japanese.

I've seen the good and the bad.  We were part of a secular homeschooling group, where some people really had their shiz together.