Anyone can home their student as long as the law allows it.   In more practical terms however, it very much depends on your personality as well as your child’s personality and your own education as to whether or not you are able to give your child a good educational experience that they deserve.You are the one that knows your child better than anyone else, and if you feel that the current school environment is detrimental to their education or that the student would be happier at home with you, then it’s worth considering the possibility of home schooling.  The first step you must do however – once you know that it’s legally possible – is to do a skills and personality evaluation of yourself.  If you don’t have the right kind of aptitude for teaching oar the right kind of personality, then your child may have a worse experience at home as far as learning is concerned.  So what does it take to home school your child?  Organization is primary.  Home schooling may be done in an unconventional environment, but in order to keep your child up to the acceptable standard for your area, then you must cover all of the subject matter that other children his age will cover.  This means that you will need to be focused on teaching, and ensure that all of the subjects are learned.  You’ll need to keep notes of what needs to be taught, and if necessary, at what grade.  You need to be firm enough to make sure your child realizes that school time or the hours you set aside is for study.  You may decide to have different school hours to traditional education institutions, but that just means that you start school at a different time to normal students.  You should still have the same amount of study hours per week.  You also need to ensure that you are able to commit those hours to your child’s education every school day of every school week.You need to be innovative.  Sometimes there will be subjects that your child hates or is slow to learn.  You’ll need to have ideas on how to get those ideas and concepts through to your child in such a way that they understand the material.  In this you have a greater advantage than a school because you are working one-on-one with your child and can be instantly aware of problems and be ready to work on correcting them.You need to be patient!  Just because you understand something and think that it’s an easy point to learn, doesn’t mean your child necessarily will.  It could be that you cover the same ground many times before you are confident enough that they understand enough to move on.  Are you patient enough to keep repeating the same thing over and over without getting frustrated?

As far as your own education is concerned, you don’t need to have a college degree in order to teach your child.  However you do need to have the ability to communicate information effectively, and to be able to understand educational subject matter at the level your child is at. If you can’t understand it, you’ll find it difficult to teach.  Should you think you can do most subjects but have a problem with one or two, get in touch with other home schooling parents in your area.  It could be that you could do an exchange where you teach their child something you are strong in, and they teach your child the subject that you have a problem with.  Tutors are also handy at this point and also can break up the monotony of teaching for both of you.

Home schooling isn’t easy, but many parents find that with the help of specially designed material that educational businesses have produced, they are able to cope with giving their child at least the same level of schooling that they would have received in a traditional classroom.  In some cases they even thrive academically.  But before you get your child excited about the possibility, make sure that you have the right kind of personality to be able to lead your child’s learning process. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Home School. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.