Unschoolers

[eggs4sale]

I HATE public school. I am IN public school. I teach MYSELF more than public school does. I'm not very old, either.

That's very interesting. How do you feel you teach yourself better than they do? I agree with you already, by the way!

 

[Farmfresh]

[
I've seen (and had) many teachers who were not "qualified".

Boy you are preaching to the choir here.

I had mostly GREAT teachers as a kid. My hubby however had some REAL doozies!

One of his teachers only taught part of the year, the other portion was a long term sub while she was in a MENTAL hospital.

One of his teachers used to publicly embarrass her students, to "push them into doing better". My hubby who suffers from dyslexia (and by the way ALSO has a gifted IQ) was forced to read aloud in front of the class while the teacher made fun of his reading and called him "dumb" and "lazy" in front of the other students. By the way it is good to note she is no longer a teacher ... she is a school counselor now!

Another of his teachers was a screamer. I have talked to OTHER people that went to his school and they tell me about being able to hear Mrs. _____ all over the building screaming at the kids.

Currently I work at a public school. I have been working in public schools for 14 years now! Many of the teachers I have worked for are good teachers. Seven of the teachers that I have been in contact with are AMAZING teachers. A few of the teachers - 8 come immediately to mind were highly trained and qualified ... AND I wouldn't let them train my dog! Teaching is like singing. If you can do it - training only perfects it ... if you can't - no amount of education will ever help you.

As a parent I am all about being involved. Visit that classroom. Sit in. Ask questions. Then don't be afraid to move your kid OUT of a bad teachers class and report to the principle WHY. Schools these days are scared to death of a lawsuit. Anyone with knowledge of a "bad" teacher should be sure to make their information known by the principle and the school board.

 

[patandchickens]

I think a lot of the problem is the common fallacy that the function of teachers is to teach, i.e. to insert information into the student's brain.

In actuality, the critical action is LEARNING (which may or may not require teaching as such) and learning can only be done by the student himself (or herself). A teacher's function, when there is a teacher involved and there needn't always be, is a) to set things up to facilitate that learning (and in the case of primary school, to capture the students' interest long enough for them to get themselves learning) and b) to help when things get confusing or confused.

The biggest problem IMO with the attitude that 'you go to school and teachers teach you' is that it usually results in a laid-back 'ok, go ahead and teach me if you want, I suppose I don't mind too much' attitude in the students, rather than the kind of 'hey, cool, I need/want to LEARN that!' attitude that motivates a person to continue learning things all their whole entire life.

The latter is EVER so much more useful.


Pat

 

[Farmfresh]

Pat
I totally agree.

Those terrific teachers that I mentioned above did not so much "teach" a lesson as they did inspire learning! They made a subject interesting, fun, and adventuresome.

The kids were EXCITED and wanted to learn.

Kids need to be taught how to learn and how to think on their own. That is our job as parents. I never wanted any of my kids to just accept things they were taught! They need to be able to understand the why and reason the truth of a subject out for themselves.

Any truth will stand the scrutiny!

 

[lorihadams]

I have taught before and the new Standards of Learning (SOLS here in Va) are so ridiculous that all you can do is try to cram them all in and hope they retain enough to pass the testing at the end of the year. You don't have time to make anything a fun learning process anymore.

Example, when I was in student teaching I had 6th grade english classes. My remedial class was having a hard time grasping adjectives. So I took a whole class period and let them all draw their own creature. No restrictions, just make something up and draw a picture of it. The next day they all had to spend 20 minutes writing a description of their creature as if we were seeing it for the first time and knew nothing about it. Then we all took turns reading them aloud and showing the pictures to the class. The next day their assignment was to go through each paragraph and underline all the descriptive words (adjectives). Ta Da! They got it.....took 3 days of fun stuff, IMO waaaaaay better than trying to preach it to them from a textbook. But you don't always have the opportunity to do that when you have so much content to cover. That's what makes "unschooling" so much more fun and productive.

The other thing is that students don't get enough encouragement in "regular" school. Another example, same class, my cooperating teacher would hang up all the a's whenever the students took tests. I graded all my kid's papers and had a couple b's and even a c that I hung on the board. My reason for this was that those particular students had raised their grades by one or even 2 letter grades from their previous tests. I was proud of them and wanted them to know that I valued hard work and improvement more that what the actual letter grade was. I had several students come to me and thank me because they never got praised before. Okay, now THAT is what makes kids want to learn and grow and better themselves, right? Proof positive, they did at least the same or better on their next tests!

Too many kids fall through the cracks in a public school setting. I don't want my kids to be one of those that slips through the cracks and ends up hating learning as a result. What use is life if you can't learn and grow and better yourself.....at any age?

 

[noobiechickenlady]

Too many kids fall through the cracks in a public school setting. I don't want my kids to be one of those that slips through the cracks and ends up hating learning as a result. What use is life if you can't learn and grow and better yourself.....at any age?

That right there is why my daughter is going to be homeschooled this year. She was falling through the cracks of the so-so public school system we have. She's very distracted and in a class of 20 kids or even 15, the teacher can't always tell when a child is distracted. Her daydreaming faze might last 10 minutes or more before the teacher or assistant notices she's not paying attention. Daddy will notice within 30 seconds. Plus she learns just like daddy (they both have ADHD Inattentive Type) and he can teach her the tricks he's learned to manage it.

Funny story on that: I came home from work one day and as I walked through the door, DH called out "M! Spell Horse!" She looked around in panic for a moment. Then he tapped out a rhythm on his leg and she spelled it instantly. He had taught her how to make the letters make a rhythm in her head to help her remember the spelling. That was at age 4. She won last year's spelling bee for the entire first grade. Beat 58 other kids

We do a lot of unschooling as it is, cooking, clothes and feeding chickens teaches sorting, units & measuring. We used army men to teach addition, subtraction, multiplication & division and places (ones, tens, hundreds)

 

[Farmfresh]

All of this is so true.

In addition to CRAMMING stuff at kids - there are just too many of them.

In our school last year the KINDERGARTEN classes had 25 children and only 1 teacher! In that situation only the most talented can succeed.

 

[jessejames]

i have alot to say about "education" etc. but will not get into that now.
what i will say is that after dropping out and running away from home at 14 that is when my real education began. luckily i was brought up in a house that supported and encouraged independent thought.
now 15 years after i would have graduated from high school i am sure i made the right choice.
i have always thought of high school especially being a training ground for low wage workers what would prepare you more for a lifetime of a job you hate than high school it just seems wrong to keep kids going through puberty etc. locked inside for 8 hours a day.
since i didnt have this experience i can say that i have always made my living at something i loved. work has never been work for me but life. for this i am ever great full.
i also had the chance to live with a couple people on the for front of unschooling here in canada when i first ran away out west, Matt Hern and Selena couture they started a small school in the lower east side of vancouver and have done many great thing since matt i know has a couple of great books out now 1 of which i know is called unschooling our lives. also grace lellwyn has written a least a cpl great books on the subject, john gatto too.

ok ok i know this disjointed rant is not a good advertisement for unschooling but i have so much to say about it and am quite ADD myself so it takes awhile to get coherent. i will write more on this subject when i am not feeling so scattered.

just do it (take your kids yourself out of school) stop being taught and remember how to learn.

be well

 

[Puck-Puck]

JesseJames,

I am sure that I was reading Unschooling Our Lives just a couple of months ago. Although I don't remember the author's name--or should I say the editor? he was Vancouver-based. A very compelling collection of essays. If I had kids, I am sure I would be unschooling them. What you said about high school--after a fairly stimulating experience of school in the elementary years, I felt numb through most of high school, and spent time teaching myself things, as I couldn't get into the school's alternative programmes: demand exceeded space. In retrospect, I think a lot of the high school teachers (not all!) were in jobs they hated, and were training the kids for the same. Sad. And all that time, I could have been unschooled, for I lived in Vancouver, myself!

 

[jessejames]

ah ya unschooling our lives was a anthology you are right matt has written a tonne of great stuff on unschooling aswell.