I wrote the following article for a local magazine in 2007
Before I had my children I’d imagined teaching them at home myself in the same whimsical way that I imagined my home births, I hadn’t really thought about the effort involved but then I didn’t know about the rewards either. I felt in control of my labour as I now feel I’m in control of my children’s education but more than that so are they.
You may think that you don’t have the qualifications a teacher does and sometimes I think maybe I’m not an expert but then again I’ve been educating my children at home since the day they were born and more often than not a mother’s instinct is better than any expert advice. The real turning point for me came when my first born turned 3 years old and her peers started at nursery and parents at toddler groups started to talk more about this. Conversations turned toward future schooling and I realised that I wasn’t ready to take J to nursery, or in fact school.
Why would I not want to take the conventional route, people who know me would be forgiven for thinking that maybe that rebelling against the norm is the main reason why I would want to home educate! However apart from not wanting to conform I do have many other reasons. The first I suppose is the difficulties I had with my own education at school. I did enjoy school most of the time and I was interested to learn but not academically clever so I was always in the lower sets with a mixture of kids some of whom had more fun disrupting the class than learning. The teachers I had ranged from disciplinarians to the emotional kind that some of my classmates took great pleasure in reducing to tears. I lost interest in learning and spent more time bunking off in my final years at school and because of exam anxieties left school with 1 ‘O’ Level (Art)
Unfortunately when the adverts for recruiting teachers were on the TV last year and the catch line was ‘you always remember a good teacher’ well with regard to my schools I don’t. My best teachers were my parents then and now funnily enough so are my children, I’ve learnt so much since they were born. I want to home educate because I want to continue to see my children develop and explore the world around them, I want them to reach their own conclusions and discover the world for themselves, I want to be there as a guide not as a teacher, I want us to learn together and when I can’t answer a question find out together. I don’t want to rush my days with my children I want to treasure the time I have with them, I don’t want routines and schedules holding us down, I want to allow my children the freedom to make their own choices and mistakes. From birth they have learnt so much and I’ve never sat them down in a ‘school’ environment to ‘learn’. How did our children learn language? Maybe they can learn anything they want in the same way. I’m just starting out and I don’t know how this is all going to go but I know I’m on the right track.
My track led me on a Tuesday afternoon with my kids to Mount Pleasant Park where I stumbled upon the home educating group who meet at Highfields playground next to it. I had seen children playing in this fenced off area next to the main park and as I wandered past on our way to Highfields library a lady spotted me having a nosey and asked if I was a home educator! I excitedly told her I’d been thinking about it and she invited me in, I spent the afternoon chatting with Mum’s and other children and playing with my kids in the adventure playground.
The group meet every Tuesday from 12 noon in term time and you will get so much help, support and advice from everyone there, from parents who’ve been home educating for a long time to those who are just starting out like me to young adults who’ve either been educated at home all their life to kids who’ve had to come out of school because of bullying etc. Education Otherwise (EO) www.education-otherwise.org provides lots of information, support, practical information on home-education and there is experienced help available to guide you through the process and procedures of deregistration and subsequent interaction with the Local Education Authority if required and they can refer you to specialists within EO if necessary, e.g. special needs, dyslexia, school phobia, legal, etc.
I imagine it would be more difficult but not impossible without this support network, I’m lucky that I have my Husband as my main support. He is quite relieved that we will Home School as his education experience is much worse than mine having been only recently diagnosed with dyslexia through work but being labelled lazy and a troublemaker throughout his school life.
Highfields library have some interesting books I’ve invested in 3 that I’ve found helpful – ‘Educating Children at Home’ by Alan Thomas, ‘The Unschooling Handbook’ by Mary Griffith and ‘How Children Learn’ by John Holt. The internet is such a valuable resource to find out more about Home Education but by far the best way to learn more is to talk to people who are doing it. Everyone I’ve met at the Highfields home educator group have been happy to talk about their experiences and through them I was invited on the Sheffield Home Educators forum where I get regular emails regarding events such as trips to local museums and parks, meets at the ice rink to coach trips to the seaside.
As you research the option of home education along the way you may get funny comments like ‘is it legal’ or ‘what about the social side’ and you’ll be able to confidently smile knowing that education really does start at home.
No comments:
Post a Comment