"There is only on thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience "
Archibald McLeish
Salute to a Passionate Teacher
For ten years The Househusband and I home schooled our Sensational Son (they like their monikers that preserve a modicum of anonymity). We spent five years, from his conception until his fourth birthday, investigating all the options and in the end we decided on home schooling because we couldn't enroll him in the public school until the next year. His birthday is in September and our school district follows rules to the letter so he'd be delayed. He decided he wanted to learn and we just followed along. Since The Househusband stays at home, cooking and cleaning already, it felt natural for him to teach the Sensational Son as well. Why then did Sensational Son attend public high school?
What I have to say may anger some home school parents and at the same time, probably won't satisfy those opposed to home schooling. I know some of our friends have given a great big sigh of relief, others wailed, "You're the parents! Make him stay home!" Our primary goal throughout this experience was to do what was best for him. There was a time when learning everything about dinosaurs, as quickly and as in-depth as he wanted, was the best. Then, he decided that he wanted to go to school and experience a classroom lecture style.
My husband, our son, and I created a learning organization. We taught him and he taught us. Many of the subjects he wanted to learn needed the foundation of reading and mathematics, so he quickly and eagerly learned to read, add, subtract and multiply. By the end of his Kindergarten year, Sensational Son took tests that indicated we succeeded in teaching the foundation. He read at the Fourth Grade level and performed math operations at the Third Grade level. We couldn't go back at that point! We loved learning together at home, in the museums, the grocery store and the library.
Everything became a school field trip; an occasion for learning. The butcher gave them a tour of his shop, explaining weights, measures, safety, and grades of meat. They practiced fractions by cooking and math functions while grocery shopping. We traveled during the school year to avoid crowds, reaped the benefits of cheaper hotel and resort rates, and enjoyed vacations from work when nobody else wanted to go. For the previous four years, we had vacationed at Disneyland with the Chinese tourists on their holidays. We enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, and the Indiana Jones Adventure without long lines. What a wonderful time!
Sensational Son works hard, because he loves learning! He favors math because learning math leads him to learning about codes. Codes fascinate him. When he was assessed for school placement, he scored at twelfth grade for everything but spelling. Now, if only I could get him to see it as a code (unfortunately texting has squelched that even further)! If he had been placed in school strictly by age, he would have started the eighth grade. As it stands, he was enrolled in ninth grade honors classes.
This was an adjustment for our entire family, and with his fantastic attitude, it was a lot of fun! He made a lot of new friends. At the end of four years he loved most of his teachers and they loved him. They awarded him with the college scholarship given each year by teachers and staff to a promising senior. His high school teachers remarked that he was quick to grasp what they were teaching because he was so grounded in the basics. The Sensational Son agreed that it helped, but he was also not burned out with being in a classroom. It was all fresh and new for him. Whenever we met one of his teachers or administrators when we are on campus, they told us what a wonderful student he was and that he sparked the whole classroom.
We home schooled when it was right for us to home school and then it was right for him to attend public school. It was a joy to hear the PTSA President read off all the reasons why they too had chosen him for their scholarship. He acted in every play during those four years; joined the drama club; tried out for baseball; learned mime from the master himself - Marcel Marceau; earned certificates all but two quarters for having straight A's. He took a dozen Advanced Placement classes and exams; chartered a Literary Society; helped organize an annual Drama Department awards celebration and trips to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon; participated in Boys State; tutored students on Wednesdays (they had a long schedule the other days and a half day on Wednesdays); was a mentor for incoming freshmen his junior and senior years; was the eagle mascot at the football and basketball games (as well as at community events and parades); videotaped news items for the morning news program broadcast to home rooms and at the end of it all was admitted to four major universities: NYU, University of Chicago, University of Washington and the University of Southern California. USC and UW also admitted him to their honors programs with the UW offering a full scholarship and USC a one-fourth scholarship. Thankfully, USC came up with an aid package that also gave him grants and a minimum of loans because the UW was too close to home for his liking and USC truly awakened a desire in him to go home to his California roots.
He's a senior at USC now and has carried his academic excellence and community service to their campus. He took enough Advanced Placement credits with him to put him a year ahead so he's been able to focus on a major in English- Creative Writing and a minor in Theatre. He's also acted in a sitcom for USC TV, mentored a group of middle school students all four years, been a camp counselor at Troy Camp, served as a Trojan Ambassador for visiting prospective students, been a Resident Assistant for two years and last summer was an Orientation Assistant. He's going to be home next week for his 21st birthday to watch with his dad as USC plays UW on the gridiron.
I'm sure Sensational Son's academic career will carry on for years and I'm happy to say what a great part The Househusband played as both his first and best teacher and active, supportive father. I know it has made the difference between Sensational son succeeding and becoming truly exceptional.
© Susan K. Barton 2007
This is written in response to Rose's Thursday Writing Essentials at Gather Essentials:Writing prompt for 9/20/07 - Teachers.
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Comments: 25
Cat-House Sonnets
Thanks for the feature Rose - it made it to the front page :)
It was really important to us to get this right. We only have one child and we wanted him to have all the educational benefits we could give him. Both The Househusband and I had times of boredom at school to say nothing of years of dealing with the attacks on self esteem. So many friends counseled us to put him in school so he would be socialized. My response was always, "you want him to learn socialization from a bunch of children?" He is one of the most tolerant, polite, responsible kids I know and because of all the time he spent with adults, he gets along with people from all generations.
Mario - real world uses for knowledge was always one of my quests when I was in school.
While I homeschool, and hope to continue doing so throughout my children's k-12 years, I wholeheartedly agree with responding to each child's needs and choices. And socialization - bah. In my early elementary years I would get into trouble for thinking I was there for socialization, my teachers thought I was there to learn, not socialize. ;)
Well written, as always, Susan. Congrats on the front page feature. It's well deserved.
Rose (Have I ever told you how much I LOVE your name!?) Thanks so much for the topic and for featuring it :)
Not all home schooled students can successfully re-enter a public school. My daughter hasn't been able to and will graduate from high school in January (instead of next June), after being home schooled since seventh grade.
Kimberly - It is REALLY good to have options and our state fully supports home schooling
Susan and Corina - I hear ya!! It is all very individual. All of my siblings are home schooling their kids - all for different reasons and using different methods and we all live in different places with varying levels of support. At least we have each other to lean on.
ALISON!! Thank you for your constant support. Your energy totally boosts me.
When a home-schooling neighbor asked me why I, as a certified teacher, didn't teach my children at home, I replied, "I do. I also send them to school to learn things I can't teach them." All of our vacations, even the one-day trips, were, when you come right down to it, educational. I tried to make our home a place of learning - filled with books and art. We read and argued about literature and traveled to a lot of "off the beaten path" places in addition to popular places like Disney and Busch. I put two children, both of whom turned out to be writers, through 13 years of public school, but I am not naive enough to believe it was just the schools that made them successful - it was also our efforts to create a culture of learning 24/7.
Kudos to you, Susan, for loving your child enough to trust his instincts about what's best for him. (I have to think, though, from what you tell us, this young man could have learned from even inferior teaching. Sounds like all three of you in your family are fortunate, indeed.)
I have nothing but respect for teachers. The Househusband wasn't unprepared either, but was just short of finishing his teaching credentials when they dumped him from the program for reasons that were specious at best. Essentially they said he didn't have the right temperament to teach. Anyway, public school was always an option as long as it fit our son's needs.
It sounds like you had some of the same philosophies of education that we do - children learn best when presented with answers to their questions, that an environment rich with books and experiences feeds them with opportunities to ask questions, and that nothing is off limits. Whatever any of us in our family wanted to know became important and we sought out the answers. We also made a point of telling him that we didn't personally have all the answers, but we knew how to use the resources around us to get the answers.
Now to Kate: Although I think it's great that you teach your kids at home as well as at school, I feel I have to say that most homeschoolers are similarly insulted, as you say you are, by your judgments on them/us. I have been a homeschooler from the birth of my first child 'til now (over 16 years), and I can tell you that no one expects you to be a fundamentalist or an 'ultraconservative,' or to teach like one; we know only too well the type of values of the teachers who label us with such terms, and that is why we do it ourselves. Furthermore, one cannot help but feel the envy and animosity of people whose deity and control has been stripped of them, but even those 'ultra' conservative values remain our right-- from G-d AND from our government-- and our choices on how we educate our children remain just that-- ours. If there were some obvious proof for how the homeschooling movement has failed children-- especially in its modern, sophisticated methods that supply everything and more that any mass-management system could provide-- there might be some sympathy for the hostility of such statements. Unfortunately, all most of us can see is the control-envy. We have taken on the 'system' and bested it—with children who can outdo their peers in everything from the most standardized exams to the arts—and, best of all, in moral and behavioral excellence. Are those not the supposed goals of education? Lest one assume I know not whereof I speak, I believe I understand only too well both sides of the educational system: before and after homeschooling, I taught public school, private school, a community college class, community-access classes, large homeschool classes, partially state-funded 'problem' school, and Sunday school (children and adults). I have designed my own curricula, studied many forms of other curriculum writers, been apprenticed in (and designed my own) early-reading methods by the best master-teachers anywhere, and could probably go toe-to-toe with most of the public school educators and aficionados in this country for education and experience. This is experience from which I can make pretty informed judgments on what methods work best for children—especially in the formative years in which their values are being most solidified by peers and teachers. I would, in fact, be one of 'those' homeschoolers that you and other homeschool-haters tend to approve and to whom you grant a magnanimous 'exception.' While I have myself chosen NOT to use the public school sports teams, I can understand that it is not exactly the same academic environment and structured impartation of values being taught. Either way, it is the right of parents to determine how much of that jurisdiction over their children they want to release and when-- not that of a communist state. You will find, if inside the circle (and not merely on the outside, judging with guesses or misinformation), that MOST homeschooling parents are not the lazy, uneducated yokels most of the uninformed assume us to be. Although people tend to be frightened by what they do not understand, different does not necessarily equal worse. Only the smallest leap of logic makes it evident that a parent who wants to take on the huge commitment of personally overseeing (and not always directly providing) his child's education is often MORE, not less, dedicated to the specifics of the standards of said education. Homeschooled, private-schooled, or public-schooled, every child is socialized—for better or for worse. In this country, we get to choose; whether or not everyone is informed as to what they are, the options do exist.
Having said all that, please understand that I fully respect your right to your opinion, as well as your right to express it. You just needed to know that the other side is fairly constantly similarly insulted, and that one's opinion may be better informed. Teaching is clearly one of the noblest of professions, and I applaud your having entered therein. I appreciate all good teachers everywhere (in public or private settings), and trust that you appreciate all your students equally, treating even your homeschooled students with the respect they deserve.