Teachers are trained to deliver a curriculum to large masses of students in a school setting. It’s an incredibly challenging job. They have to first have an understanding of the curriculum they are teaching, which is often complicated, and ever-changing and constantly reviewed. They have to know the standards in which their students will be assessed, and they have to be skilled at carrying out a range of assessments to determine this data. They have to be creative in knowing how to teach skills and content to large groups of students who are all at different developmental levels and who have differing abilities and backgrounds. This is why teachers are trained to be proficient at implementing a plethora of different teaching strategies. They also have to draw on a range of behaviour management and engagement skills in order to effectively run a classroom of up to 20 or 30 students at once. They have to be excellent relationship builders and be sensitive to students’ individual challenges and personal lives. Teaching is an incredibly challenging profession and all of the teachers I know do an absolutely amazing job.
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But here’s why choosing to homeschool doesn’t undermine the skill and expertise of teachers. Homeschooling isn’t running a classroom in your house. You are not delivering a curriculum to masses of students at once. You are working with your own children, one-on-one. You do not need to collect and analyse data in the ways that classroom teachers do. You do not need to differentiate activities, because homeschooled children are working at their own level 100% of the time. You don’t have to spend time on behaviour and classroom management, because you know your children better than anyone else, you know their ins and outs, what makes them tick, what works for them. And with information at our fingertips you can learn together, research, or source an expert to explore new or unfamiliar topics.
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Home educating, despite its most common name – homeschooling – is not creating school at home. That’s the point! It is something completely different. But wonderful.