Parents: how is homeschooling going?

Just received a huge packet of work from my kid's teacher but no share of her paycheck. That birds not going to fly.

A Hungry, Violent Mob wrote:

Just received a huge packet of work from my kid's teacher but no share of her paycheck. That birds not going to fly.

Teacher still has to grade the school work. Must be less stressful for the teacher unless issues with their own kids.

former teacher/current dad wrote:

A Hungry, Violent Mob wrote:

Just received a huge packet of work from my kid's teacher but no share of her paycheck. That birds not going to fly.

Teacher still has to grade the school work. Must be less stressful for the teacher unless issues with their own kids.

You must have taught eons ago. All work is done in an iPad now. The app grades the work as it's complete. I actually don't know what the teachers do anymore except send emails trying to get me to sign up to the PTA.

A Hungry, Violent Mob wrote:

Just received a huge packet of work from my kid's teacher but no share of her paycheck. That birds not going to fly.

Agreed. If I don’t get a tax refund or something I’m not doing the teacher’s work.

A Hungry, Violent Mob wrote:

former teacher/current dad wrote:

Teacher still has to grade the school work. Must be less stressful for the teacher unless issues with their own kids.

You must have taught eons ago. All work is done in an iPad now. The app grades the work as it's complete. I actually don't know what the teachers do anymore except send emails trying to get me to sign up to the PTA.

Spoken like someone who has no clue what's going on in schools lately. And you actually admitted you have no clue what teachers do anymore. They try to get your bratty little kid to get off their phone and pay attention.

Just received a large packet of labor from my kid's teacher however no share of her check. That birds not progressing to fly.

You’re one of those parents! You just give your kid the packet, they complete it without your supervision or assistance (cause you’re playing Candy Crush or on Facebook), have them place it in their backpack (that’s stuffed with graded work, that you haven’t looked at in three months), and your kid turns it in. So typical. This is what’s wrong with these kids. Parents complaining that they actually have to teach their child. I’m sure when you take them to club soccer practice, you 100% participate and put in extra practice with them.

wonderful! Love having both kids home.

I'm ecstatic my kids are home. If they could stay at home while still being involved in band and athletics at the school I'd be forever grateful.

happydays wrote:

You’re one of those parents! You just give your kid the packet, they complete it without your supervision or assistance (cause you’re playing Candy Crush or on Facebook), have them place it in their backpack (that’s stuffed with graded work, that you haven’t looked at in three months), and your kid turns it in. So typical. This is what’s wrong with these kids. Parents complaining that they actually have to teach their child. I’m sure when you take them to club soccer practice, you 100% participate and put in extra practice with them.

I’m one of those parents. My excuse is my kid is in kindergarten. I’m not sure how much of a push I should be giving him in school and I’m too afraid to ask at this point. And I don’t want to stress him out about school and learning.

former teacher/current dad wrote:

A Hungry, Violent Mob wrote:

Just received a huge packet of work from my kid's teacher but no share of her paycheck. That birds not going to fly.

Teacher still has to grade the school work. Must be less stressful for the teacher unless issues with their own kids.

Schools are closed in my state. I (a teacher) am not allowed to assign or grade any new work.

The kids are still expected to learn. My hope is that kids start to realize that you can learn things without the need to be graded on every little activity.

Thanks for shearing this info.

My son has never been so happy. We put together some home schooling stuff for him to do that we found on the web and we’re able to buy in stores before they closed. He loves it and is racing through the material. Whenever we try to get him to do work out of what his district sent home, he starts to cry. The district materials are all tied to standardized testing. Endless word problems for math and random reading passages with trick questions for reading comprehension. It has never been so clear how much we have destroyed elementary education with standardized testing.

We need to decouple learning from immediate, automatic rewards, like grades. It makes adults who have no interest in learning for the joy of it.

Thanks for the laugh. I needed it. Worse than that, my kids are in parochial schools, so I’m paying for the privilege of teaching them!

Been homeschooling for 25 years, we have a wide age spread among our four kids.

Not against public schools. Our older two kids finished high school at public school and it was good. One went to a private college, the other a state U. Our younger kids are homeschooled in high school but we live in a place where homeschoolers can take math and participate in sports at the local public school so they were there a few hours each day until the quarantine. They're still working hard on their math. They are in touch with classmates and there seems to be a competition among their classmates to see who can get the farthest ahead during the shutdown.

We've been fortunate to be able to choose the best of both worlds. Impressed with the excellence and dedication of the public school teachers, but like being able to do things ourselves too. My wife has a Masters in Education - Instructional Design and I'm an engineering professor, but I don't think that much formal education is needed to teach your own kids.

I have 5 and 8 year olds. I’m a certified teacher with nearly a decade of experience, so that helps. They love having me teach them. The challenge is teaching two different grade levels at the same time. However, it’s an opportunity to get creative. Creating various instructional stations is a good approach to help with that. Here’s an example of how I rotate them through Reading stations for one hour. I start each kid on a different station.

STATION 1 - Reading Workbook (15 minutes) I work with them one on one in this station.

STATION 2 - Reading related IPad Apps (15 minutes)

STATION 3 - Active Learning (15 minutes) Heres a good one that’s free rate now

https://fluencyandfitness.com/

STATION 4 - Silent Reading (15 minutes)

For younger kids who can’t read there’s lots of online books that read to you. Check out BookFlix or Tumblebooks.

I do something similar to get an hour of math in too.

Your may never have this opportunity again to spend time with your kids in this way. It’s a gift so have fun with it.

My wife stays home so kids out with me back at work won’t be an issue. However, I’ve long resisted home schooling because I think it’s important for a person to be exposed to several points of view while learning (eg I’m not going to color in historical events the same as others will).

My kids are in elementary school. This hasn’t really been home schooling though because we haven’t selected or curated the curriculum. As such, it feels much more like busy work. We set our kids up on Kahn Academy and added 1 hr per day of any subject they choose, providing at least 2 hours per week is math, to their school’s work to add a little rigor to the busy work. We also mandated a minimum of 1 hour per day of exercise/ electronic free time. On sunny days, we’ve kicked them all outside for several hours at a time. Finally, we make a daily chore list that is posted and must be completed before any gaming, electronics, movies, etc. So far, they basically are busy most of the day while still having breaks throughout to enjoy themselves.