How to Improve Homeschooling

Transcript

Hello, again. It’s Caleb here at Homeschool-curriculum.org. Today I want to talk about the third reason that most people come to our site and I’m going to share three things that you can do about that, just right now, today, to take care of that reason. Before we do that, I want to introduce myself and show a little bit about our mission. I’m Caleb. I’m a father of three who got frustrated enough with our youngest education and I decided to finally do something about it. That brought us to homeschooling and Homeschool-curriculum.org, where our mission is to transform the way we educate our children by giving parents or helping parents with the confidence they need to deliver the highest quality, highly individualized education, so that children can maintain, nurture, grow, or develop their sense of originality, creativity, and independence.

 

Now, what’s the number three reason people come to our site? Many homeschooling parents are concerned about their ability to teach. They lack the confidence. They say, I’m not qualified to teach. I don’t know if that’s your situation or somebody else you know, but many people do share that problem. We’ve seen it in our survey data. This video is part motivation and part how to. Let’s get to the how to first.

 

I’m going to give you three ideas or three concepts that you can use right now. The first thing that you could do to improve how you teach is read. I don’t mean read to your child. I hope you’re doing that, or maybe engaging your child in their reading, but read for yourself. Studies show – it’s pretty well documented – that the people that read the most, do better in many areas of their living. It could be in their ability to engage others, it could be their critical analysis, their clarity of thought, their ability to express a concept.

 

Think about it. The higher quality reading you do – and do what you want at first. Do fiction, do whatever. As you raise the bar or raise the quality that you do, the higher quality of reading that you do, the higher quality of explanations of engagement, of questions that you’re going to have with your child. Read. It’s fun, it’s interesting, but read something. Go to the library. Pick up a book that you haven’t finished. Find a recommendation from a friend or online, but read something. I like paper, but Kindle works. Whatever does, start reading.

 

The second thing that you can do – have to look at my notes again. I get so lost in passion about these things, but the second thing you could do is you could look at your delivery. Right? I don’t know how you’re doing the homeschool experience in your world, but is it working? That’s the real question that only you can answer. Look at how you’re delivering that. I’m not suggesting you stand around with a white board and teach and lecture to your children. We have a homeschool style quiz on our site at Homeschool-curriculum.org. You may have already taken it.

 

I constructed it based on a lot of research and interviews, and hopefully there are resources in there for you, there are advice, there are pros, cons, strengths, weaknesses, areas to watch out for. Take the style guide or the style quiz, read the results you get, and that should give you some ideas about what might be working, what may not be working in your style. With just a little bit of introspection, a little bit of reflection, I’m confident that you’ll be able to improve your teaching, your homeschooling experience by a pretty good amount.

 

That brings me to the third area. This homeschooling experience, while you have responsibility for it, you don’t have to deliver the whole thing. In fact, I was listening to a talk just a while ago where the people were saying homeschooling is dead. His point was that schooling at home is probably dead because we have such a great amount of resources from the Internet, from our libraries, our museums, our parks. There are plenty of people you can engage, in an area where you may not feel as confident, to help with the homeschool experience or the education experience that you want your child to have. Figure out your weaknesses and then get them off of your shoulders and on to somebody else’s. Yes, you own it. Yes, you’re responsible for it, but have someone help you.

 

Now for the motivational part. This is probably the best part of this video. If you think about it – if you are not confident about your ability to teach your child, think about to whom it is most important. No one cares about the quality of education your child gets more than you do. Maybe your child – now I’ve put you in a number two spot, but you care the most. That’s why you’re doing this. You are on the lookout. You’re watching for opportunities to provide the highest quality and most individualized experience. Something that really is focused on what your child needs and you’ve really thought about it. No one else is going to do that at any school situation, at any setup.

 

Feel confident that you really have the best interest at heart. You’re working on it. You’re just trying to find a couple ways to improve, a couple ways to tweak what you’re doing, and get the help that you need. Now, other people are coming to our site, they’re looking at this video. They’re saying, man that’s exactly what I need. I need help in this area. Could you do me a favor? Anticipate those people to come and writing down the areas you really feel you could use help in improving your ability to homeschool, your ability to teach. You’re going to help the next person that comes along.