But I’m Not
A Teacher!
By Sasha Mercer
Homeschooling Blogger
www.TheAmericanRefugees.com
When the
topic comes up with parents that haven’t had a lot of, if any, contact with
other home schooling families, this is often their first fear. A fear that has
been perpetuated by our culture of institutionalized education.
There is a tremendous amount of money vested
in the lie that parents are not equipped to teach their children what they
themselves have already been taught and can, in most cases, do very well
themselves practicing it on a daily basis! Your children are seen as dollar
signs. Each child that is not sitting in a public school classroom means
anywhere from $8,000 to $18,000 depending on the state, that that school is not
getting. One would think that with all the gnashing of teeth about smaller
class sizes that schools would be delighted to have fewer students, but this is
not the case. Keeping your child in a classroom is about money, and whatever
route they must take to make you feel incapable of teaching your child on your
own, and keep him in that desk, they will do. This is the most important thing
you must keep in mind before you embark on this journey of home schooling. Wear
it as armor because you will be hit hard with this in the beginning!
Many parents
that decide to home school often have educators in the family that take this as
a personal affront when you express your plans. They often make the false
syllogism of “You aren’t going to become your own doctor, too are you?” This is
such an utter nonsense comparison that it isn’t even worthy of a debate and
should send a red flag up right away! Anyone making that logical fallacy
shouldn’t be teaching anyone. So just smile and nod and move along.
I have
several home school friends that did teach school before deciding to teach
their own at home and all have admitted to me that it didn’t prepare them for
teaching their own child. More than one has said they learned what they called
“crowd control” and how to follow a planned curriculum but actually teaching an
individual child, they didn’t feel any better prepared than the mom that
doesn’t have a degree in education.
If our
schools are doing their jobs, any person being granted a high school diploma
should easily be able to turn around and teach a child what they have just been
taught! Any school official saying any different should be asked to review
their education system if this isn’t the case. If you just spent 12 years in an
institution and you aren’t equipped to teach any of what you just learned to
another human being, you might want to demand 12 years of your life back.
The fact of the matter is you’ve been
teaching your child since it was born. Whether you believe in
God or that we evolved from bacteria, you can’t argue the fact that nature set
us up to be taught by the being that birthed us.
The brains
of children are sponges, ready to learn something as complex as language just
by listening to those around them speak. We teach them how to dress, feed
themselves, behave out on the playground, everything that involves functioning
as a person but yet we are trained to believe we are incapable of teaching them
how to add 5 apples and two apples or how to read a book. One of the most
humorous things I was ever told by an “educator” when my children were very
young was not to teach them anything they would learn in school. They will be
ahead of other kids and be bored, was their reasoning. This was one of my
“smile and nod” moments because I knew my kids wouldn’t be stepping foot in a
classroom but I wasn’t about to engage in THAT conversation.
Every subject to be taught to a child has a
whole library full of books to guide the parent in teaching it. There are books
that will tell you what to say verbatim as you teach a topic with the lesson
plan already laid out for you, or if you are confident in teaching the topic,
you can pick a book that provides you with less hand holding.
The internet
is an amazing resource for homeschoolers. Any topic you wish to teach your
child can be found, most likely with step by step instructions and pictures
that another homeschooler has already laid out for you. Struggling with a math
concept? Khan Academy, for example, is an outstanding resource. It takes you
step by step through the problems. It can either be a refresher for the parent
to teach the child, or it can teach the child directly. We live in an amazing
time for learning, with everything we ever wanted to learn literally at our
fingertips. The idea that children must sit in a sterile classroom for 7 hours
a day in order to learn is fast becoming an outdated notion.
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