Parent Friendly Homeschooling Tips
Teaching Children at Home During Coronavirus: Homeschooling’ Expert Advice
We write a lot about student well-being at Education Week. But first, let’s talk about parent well-being, especially for those parents who have found themselves essentially homeschooling their children without notice.
An unprecedented number of schools have been closed for several weeks, with the possibility of more closures. Hundreds of millions of K-12 students across the country are out of school, and parents are being asked to help them learn. Even President Trump is encouraging families to educate their children at home whenever possible. That’s a massive undertaking. (For the most up-to-date information on school closures, go here.)
Some students are required to complete their schoolwork through the internet. Others are on a spring break that will last forever.
So, what do you do if you’re a parent seeking to supervise your children’s education while still being expected to continue working remotely? How do you maintain your sanity while ensuring that your children continue to learn, carving out time for yourself to work, finding your voice as a teacher, and staying sane?
Homeschooling are people who do this every day. Ed Week contacted a few of them for advice.
A lot of their advice revolves around one crucial factor: shifting mindsets.
How Do You Plan Your Day?
First, contrary to a lot of suggestions she’s seen online, Paul Leary, a home-schooling parent in Lowell, MA who also works part-time as a teacher, suggests ditching the daily schedules.
“Do not plan the day around a school day,” said Leary, whose oldest son attended home school and is now in college. Leary continues to home-school her 13-year-old son. The family was featured in the video series “Home Schooling in America” by Education Week.
Allow your children to sleep in if they are up late reading or playing video games, and use that time to work. After that, have a leisurely breakfast before returning to school.
“I believe parents are overly concerned with getting a schedule,” she said. “When everybody needs to be out of the house by a certain time, schedules are essential.”
If it’s too much to try to work and keep your kids on an educational mission at the same time, Leary recommends setting aside time for each. For instance, home school for an hour and then work for another hour.
Pam Leo, a Massachusetts state homeschooling mom, makes time for her other duties by front loading the school day—doing the rigorous subjects including math, science, and English in the morning and saving the afternoon for more self-directed work.
In an email to Ed Week, Leo explained, “They have had plenty of attention from me by that point, so they usually give me free time… so I can focus on running the household and fulfilling my duties for my volunteer positions.”
Don’t just concentrate on your children, Leo advised. “As a mum, I also believe it is important to take care of yourself, get good nutrition, rest, and exercise,” she added. “I do yoga in the mornings before the kids get out of bed, and I usually go for a run right before dinner. It helps me get through the rest of my day.”
It is also a great way to connect the dots, so to speak, and synthesize the knowledge that one gets. It is actually what makes the students use their knowledge properly.
In the same way almost, the internet is also making us dumber. The Internet is making us lazier to learn, simply because we know that we do not have to know everything, because we have the internet. Having said that, how many times have you read something online that was absolutely false? What happens when hackers change some of the facts that you are absolutely certain of and that appear even on the most trusted websites? Should you really rely on the internet alone, to provide you with information that is trustworthy? In fact, no. This is the time when you have to think with your own head and really find reliable and trustworthy information in this sea of information that is called the Internet.
During the freshmen seminar course, you will receive the subject that will increase your thirst for knowledge and interest you. This is why the freshmen course can really give students a new perspective in education. This is the chance that you must use as a student that will give you the chance to take up a class that will give you the chance to see what your strengths and weaknesses are and which subjects you should pursue in the future.
Those who have studied the damningly slippery language of campus speech codes will recognize in the NCAA’s decision to enter the business of adjudicating which mascots and nicknames are and are not hostile and abusive the self-defeating hubris of the institution that has assumed the mantle of moral arbiter. Sensitivity cannot be imposed from above without creating a mockery of the very tolerance it is intended to create. The NCAA case is no exception. Realizing that the NCAA had entered the business of politically correct censorship and manipulation, the animal rights group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has asked the NCAA to include animals in its sensitizing endeavors. In the process, PETA has unwittingly exposed the logical fallacy at the heart of the NCAA ruling–that “hostile” and “abusive” are whatever the organization wants them to be, and can be defined according to the prerogatives of whatever pressure group exerts the most force. Last week, PETA wrote to Myles Brand asking the NCAA to prevent the University of South Carolina and Jacksonville State from using the “Gamecocks” nickname because gamecocks “are named after the birds used in cockfighting, a hideous ‘blood sport’ that, like spousal abuse, bank robbery and driving while intoxicated, is illegal in both South Carolina and Alabama.” (By contrast, PETA approves of teams such as the Oregon Ducks and the Baylor Bears, which “highlight the power and beauty in the natural world.”)
Make sure that you as a teacher use technology to motivate students to do some independent research in their free time as well. Motivating students to do independent research on whatever topic can be a lot easier with the use of technology, because it will also be a lot more interesting to them to do the research if they are using technology. This is the approach in teaching that definitely deserves a lot more attention from many teachers, and if you are using it at the moment, make sure that you continue using it for research.
Social studies are also a great way to start exploring social networks and teaching up to date history, from the aspect that is close to your students. You can teach sociology, history, philosophy and many other social studies, in a lot more efficient way, with the help of technology. You can also implement new teaching strategies and help shape the way students explore these subjects and investigate more about them through the medium which is currently the closest to their interests – and that is of course technology. Also your teaching process will be facilitated with the help of technology and you will also benefit from this approach. So for the sake of your students and yourself as a teacher, if you want to upgrade your teaching and transfer the knowledge to your students, this is a great way to start doing just that.
The key is learning how to connect subjects, so that the approach to learning is as natural as it can get. As it has been mentioned, learning how to navigate through the world that we live in is often difficult, but learning how to connect things is what counts. No one will ever ask you to define the cell, but learning how to connect all the facts and information about the world, often has beneficial effects not just on the development on the brain, but the understanding of the world. Integrating art into other school subjects is actually pretty easy, if only you have some ideas how to do it and the freedom as a teacher to try a different approach.