Getting Started with Homeschooling
Practical Considerations for Parents of School-Aged Children
© Beverley Paine
Index
Homeschool
Australia
Determining Immediate Educational Goals
Having carefully discussed and recorded your educational beliefs and long term goals, and reviewed other examples of educational philosophy, you are now in a position to evolve a learning program to suit your immediate educational needs. This program will naturally reflect your beliefs, and therefore be more satisfying for both you and the children. When you try to implement learning programs which do not reflect your own educational beliefs you place unnecessary stress on yourself and your children, and the outcomes often lead to feelings of frustration and failure.
Your long term goals should already be stated in your philosophy, especially if these reflect the type of people you ant your children to be as they enter the adult phase of their life. If is useful, however, to look at what you expect to achieve in education terms for a specified period of time. All parents have a vague idea about this. By recording your more immediate goals on paper you are able to critically review them, particularly focusing on whether they are realistic within the prescribed time frame. This aspect is absolutely essential for success.
The short term goals included in your educational program will reflect the progress or achievements in your children’s intellectual, physical, social, emotional and spiritual development over a given period. This is best if it does not exceed a period greater than twelve months. These goals are not usually specified in great detail, because it is difficult to accurately plan ahead for such a long period.
Your short term goals will allow you an overall perspective or continuum of development for each child.
Stating details goals beyond this period can also be a waste of time because of unexpected changes in family life and circumstances. In addition, children usually grow in leaps and bounds, with their interests and development following suit. Predicting their learning needs beyond twelve months is unreasonable. One major advantage of home schooling is the flexibility of the home to maximize learning opportunities as they arise.
Short term goals need to be fairly general statements, such as “Understand how the library can be used for personal research (gathering information), including how the library is organized.” This type of goal will take time to achieve and will involve many educational activities.
From your short term goals you need to form a set of objectives. Objectives ten to be more specific and related to behaviors, such as what children will demonstrate in terms of processes, skills and knowledge under given conditions. These can include the criteria indicating acceptance of the behaviour demonstrated. Objectives are most often stated in a manner similar to this: “She will be able to use the computer library catalogue to confidently and independently locate information about a given subject and to be able to find suggested titles and files.”
In determining objectives you need to question the relevance of those things you are asking your children to learn. All learning has to be meaningful, useful and interesting to the child. Goals and objectives need to be realistic and practical.
All too often goals and objectives in learning programs have been written or determined to suit the needs of the educator. If you wish to be a successful educator you must consider the individual children for whom you are writing these goals and objectives. When reading material specifically written for teachers in school settings it is easy to feel inadequate by comparison. Trying to translate classroom goals into the home setting is usually an unsuccessful and often depressing experience! At home you can make your education goals personal and relevant – don’t make goals to satisfy or please people other than yourselves or your children.
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Excerpt from Getting Started with Homeschooling, Practical Considerations
© Beverley Paine, 1997
