Getting Started with Homeschooling
Practical Considerations for Parents of School-Aged Children
© Beverley Paine
Index
Homeschool
Australia
Introduction: Homeschooling In Practice
Mention home schooling to most people and they immediately think of ‘school at
home’, with a parent playing the role of teacher and the children behaving as students
between nine and four each day. In practice home schooling is very flexible, offering a
different kind of education from that available in school.
Some families manage to achieve ‘school at home’, but most children reject the model of parent as ‘teacher’, especially when they have already spent some years as students in a school classroom. For them parents and teachers have very separate and clearly defined roles.
Parents have a special place in their children’s lives and hearts, and can seldom achieve the objectivity required by teachers in schools. This does not mean parents can’t ‘teach’ their children. Although children tend to reject parents role playing ‘teacher’, they are more than happy to welcome them as mentors and tutors when the occasion demands. It is all a matter of balance and sensitivity, and tends to flows naturally from a flexible approach to education in the home.
When a family decides to home school, there is a shift in the focus of family life, as parents become inevitably more involved in their children’s day to day lives, interests, curiosities and activities. Often what begins as an adventure in alternative education becomes a deeper and more meaningful adventure in parenting. After many years of educating children at home it is difficult to separate the ‘educational activities’ and those that occur naturally as both parents and children seek to live full and interesting lives.
All home schooling families experience a period of adjustment to this new lifestyle. It can last months or even years. Most often families who seek and find support from other home schooling children living near by, adjust relatively quickly, learning from offered advice, understandings and past experiences. Being aware of how home schooling effects family life will help prepare families for this transition, and lessens the urge to try to replicate ‘school’ in the home, with its unnecessary pitfalls and problems.
Considering carefully how it will impact on both parents and children, and life at home in general, is an important first stage of home schooling.
There is a growing trend to home school adolescent children, and in these cases special consideration must be made for adjustment to differences in learning styles and methodologies between school and home learning. Educating young people at home can be very rewarding, offering a wide range of opportunity and experiences.
Excerpt from Getting Started with Homeschooling, Practical Considerations
© Beverley Paine, 1997
