Last week, danamelana commented on my post about curriculum. This led me to her homeschooling blog and her page about why her family homeschools. I decided to share this page in my “Another Voice on Homeschooling” post this week.
Here is a homeschooler who comes to homeschooling after a career as a classroom teacher. “I never intended to homeschool,” she writes, echoing so many other homeschoolers. And yet (like so many other homeschoolers) here she is.
From “Why Homeschool?” on Homeschool Planet:
There are very few homeschoolers where we are now and it seems like everyone raves about the public school. It’s small and quaint with excellent teacher-to-student ratios. I’ve met the principal and several teachers and they are equally wonderful. My children’s friends go to public school. If I taught there, it would be a dream: involved families, small class size, great hours, no commute. However, in the meantime, we have become hooked into homeschooling.
I know a rather large number of public school teachers who have become homeschoolers. It is a transition that interests me a lot. Every now and then someone suggests that, once my kids are off at college, I should get my teaching certificate and become a classroom teacher. This implies that the experience of homeschooling somehow prepares me for a career as a classroom teacher, but based on what I hear from friends and relatives in the field, I don’t think the skills I’m learning homeschooling my children would carry over well to classroom teaching. While I’m certain that many teachers develop close bonds with their students (the fact that I still keep in touch with my kindergarten teacher is part of what I use as evidence for this claim), teaching a classroom of other people’s children seems like a dramatically different animal than sitting one-on-one with a child I have known from birth (actually, even before that) and with whom I spend essentially 24 hours a day. Moreover, I don’t think I’m cut out for classroom teaching; I like to be able to go to the bathroom whenever I need to and not have to spend my day in front of dozens of little eyes.
So with this in mind, I find it especially interesting when someone goes from teaching in a classroom to homeschooling his/her own children. I wonder how well classroom teaching skills transfer to homeschooling.
If you have a moment, please check out Homeschool Planet and leave a comment to let her know you stopped by. And while you’re there, read some more of danamelana’s posts about homeschooling her two boys in a cabin in rural Texas.
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Love your commentary! Thanks for linking. Other than lots of resources and a confidence that comes with experience, I’d love to know how other former teachers have made the transition to homeschooling.
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