Our membership pack for Education Otherwise has just come through the post. It contains all the help and guidance we'll need as we start on our home educating journey. Yippee!
Jonty & I went to our first big Home Ed Essex Group meeting in Chelmsford on Saturday. It was fantastic. Lucy got stuck in with the other kids and made a few friends as well. It has made us feel a little less weird about home educating and was a great opportunity to meet others on the journey. Scarily, a fair number of the folks there currently worked in education (teachers, TAs, education officers etc.) and would rather juggle their working lives about than send their kids to school!
The kids themselves were amazing. Teenage boys who held a conversation while looking you in the eye and demonstating a level of care for the younger kids hurtling about. They all seemed so polite, so normal, so intelligent, so focused when working (it was a technology day for the kids). Here's looking forward to more days like that.
About Us
New Every Morning
Every day is a fresh beginning,
Listen my soul to the glad refrain.
And, spite of old sorrows
And older sinning,
Troubles forecasted
And possible pain,
Take heart with the day and begin again
Susan Coolidge
Listen my soul to the glad refrain.
And, spite of old sorrows
And older sinning,
Troubles forecasted
And possible pain,
Take heart with the day and begin again
Susan Coolidge
6 comments:
Wow, I forgot about the whole homeschooling thing.
How are you going to manage with a new baby, a 2 year old and a 7 year old?
I am sure you will invnet some cool and organised system to keep it all running smoothly!
Good question I think I'll play it by ear!
Hopefully the music will be sweet in the ear!!
I have a feeling the first few months will be punctuated by high pitched screaming (mine) before anything resembling music emerges!
I became a school governor when Lucy started Infant school basically because I was nosy and I wanted to know exactly what went on behind closed doors (control freak tendency showing)... and then a few things began to niggle just a little.
As a complete aside I hooked up not long after with 2 cousins who I hadn't seen in 20 years (eek old) who both home school. One in Tobago/Trinidad/Miami the other currently in France.
To cut a long story short I began to question the why, what and how of Lucy's schooling, her emphatic responses of 'because the teacher said so', parent/teacher meetings that left me wanting to strangle the teacher etc.
Lucy has known for a year now that we are going to home school her and in that time she has become more excited about being able to spend more time on her photography, pottery & physics...works for me!
Things that irked - 1.how L was taught to read. School method didn't sit well with home method and caused huge amounts of angst!
2. Aspects of British culture taught as Christianity when they clearly weren't!
3. Grammatical skills taught in an un-holistic manner.
4. Inability of teacher to distinguish L from other 29 kids in class and have meaningful conversation with me during meetings
There is more but I won't bore you.
The socialisation question is a fascinating one. I'm not overly convinced of the benefits of kids spending 6 hours a day with one another. How do they learn to socialise with adults & the world in general? L will have the opportunity to meet up with other home ed kids from our local group as well as those she still knows from school, karate, church, music lessons etc.
Exams - can still take GCSEs if she chooses using local schools or adult education colleges to sit exams or can skip if so desired and do an access course for Uni. Cambridge Uni is quite keen on home ed kids and a lot of home ed kids in the area have passed through there.
As for how to teach I have no intention of following the National Curriculum and may just play it by ear. Might try a bit of autonomous learning ie she picks the subject and we run with it until she loses interest or whatever. May also try a bit of the Steiner method. We'll see.
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