How do parents who are not teachers home school their kids?

Think about it: How do parents who are not teachers home school their kids?
Especially in high school when 2 year of a foreign language are required, computer classes, driver’s ed, PE, trig or higher level math the parent might not be a pro at or chemistry, geology, etc. In high school each teacher has years of experience in each subject area they specialize in. How do parents pull off teaching all the different topics themselves?
Well I am referring to high school age per my question details, so ages 14-18 (or 12-18 roughly if I include junior high).
For example my favorite class in high school (public) was English where we studied the Greek plays, reinacted them and the teacher who was very well educated in the field was just so amazing, I could never in a million years imagine getting what I got out of that class from my parents, or my typing class or computer class or French and on and on. I’m just curious – do the parents hire other teachers to come teach in their home? I don’t even have children but I’m just curious.
What’s the point in enrolling in a public community college if they’re supposed to be “home schooled”?

Answers and Views:

Answer by Zuzka S
Depends how old the kid is

Answer by BraxOwl
1. Most of the courses to obtain a teaching degree have to do with topics such as classroom control, not actual methods of teaching. A lack of a teaching degree does not mean a lack of an ability to teach, no more than possessing a teaching degree means that you possess the ability to actually teach.

2. Even credentialed teachers use curriculum that, quite often, has the steps printed out, some down to the exact WORDS TO SAY.

3. Did you know that many private schools do not hire teachers with degrees? Yet noone disputes the fact that they tend to yield better results, even with that “lack” of credentials.

4. Did you know that in many cases in the public schools, there are NOT teachers with years of experience in each subject? Some public schools hire people with a bachelor’s degree, no teaching degree. Some schools have somone who majored in music teaching math (for instance). And, with many experienced teachers leaving the profession because they are not able to actually TEACH and are instead being forced to teach to the test, classrooms are filled with new, inexperienced teachers who chose the profession because they can get their student loans forgiven.

5. Homeschool parents are NOT the only ones teaching their children. Some use DVD/internet programs where there IS a teacher presenting the lessons and available for help. Some utilize community and co-op classes. For instance, our museum has classes for homeschoolers, taught by HIGHLY EXPERIENCED PROFESSIONALS, on different topics in history. Even without a teaching degree, I would say that person is much more qualified than most history teachers in school. Most homeschoolers are members of groups, that either form co-op classes and/or get together and hire professionals to teach children privately. Most of the high-school aged homeschoolers I know attend community college as dual enroll students. That is my oldest child’s plan- she will attend the local community college her junior and senior years of high school, earning credit for homeschool/high school and college simultaneously. She should be able to enter college as a sophomore or junior, saving time and money (which is important, since she wants to be a veterinarian and that involves a lot of schooling).

Homeschoolers have a lot of resources available to them- more than the public schools, even (for instance, the local high school only offers french and spanish. My children- even though they are not high school age yet- are already learning Mandarin Chinese (as well as basic French and Spanish). They also know American Sign Language. There are community classes that offer these, and/or we could hire someone ourselves or with our homeschool group.

As of yet, I have been the primary teacher for most of my children’s lessons. I simply review ahead of them, and make my lesson plans. If I do not know something, we learn together- the most important thing to teach your children is HOW to learn, not necessarily the material. They need to see that you do not know everything and that you want to find the answers.

Answer by sha_lyn68
“In high school each teacher has years of experience in each subject area they specialize in.” …That might be true where you live, but trust me that is not the case in many areas.

There are many ways to supplement homeschooling when/where there is a need. The first thing need to do to do is get rid of the idea that homeschooling happens in a bubble with no outside contact or resources.
Just some of the resources available are:
Computer programs
self guided courses
online courses
co-ops and other classroom opportunities.
Tutors
Partial enrollment in public school classes (not available in every state).
Enrollment in community college(many homeschoolers complete 11th and 12th grade by attending community college via dual enrollment.

ETA: The purpose of a homeschooler dual enrolling in a community college is the same purpose of dual enrolling a public school student in community college. Why should a homeschool be denied the equal opportunity to get ahead just because he/she isn’t a public school student?

Answer by Heart K
1. All parents are teachers. They were their children’s first teachers, and those who decide to continue to teach their children usually also decide to educate themselves. You probably can’t imagine getting the same benefit from your parents as you did from your teachers, because your parents chose to put you in school and have you educated by your teachers. Had they chosen to home educate, they would have worked to make *that* choice work for your family.

2. High School teachers do not necessarily have years of experience in their subjects. Teachers have to start somewhere, and some high school teachers are just starting out. There have to be inexperienced, first year teachers some where in order for there to be experienced teachers.

Teachers often have very few hours in their actual subject, too. Most education majors spend more of their time learning crowd control and how to manage a group of students. Home educating parents only have to now how to educate their own children. In my high school our Shakespeare teacher was the wrestling coach. He made Shakespeare so boring that it was a crime.

3. Parents do not have to be the primary teacher. They help put their children in touch with the resources needed to learn. This can be by hiring tutors, joining a co-op (where several home educating families work together to teach the group’s children, different parents taking different classes, paying for online courses, buying materials,

4. One of the most important things home educating parents do for their kids is to help them keep that high level of interest in learning that kids have from birth- a passion for knowledge.. Think about yourself now- when you want to learn something new, is the only way to do that to go enroll in a formal classroom, or can you educate yourself by going to the library and checking out books and other materials, looking it up on the internet, talking to those with experience in the field, and, in some cases, hiring or bartering for a tutor? High school students can be highly motivated self-learners.

5. Dual enrollment- quite a number of states allow older homeschooled students dual enrollment in community colleges- they can take college classes for both high school and college credit- often for free!

6. Companies like The Learning Company provide fabulous DVDs and CDs on a variety of rich subjects, from math to Greek plays to French to all sorts of material in science fields. They are amazing, and my library has most of them.
I added links to some of the other online opportunities available in the source section below.

iTunes University also has an overwhelming number of materials available to parents and students.

Answer by ozboz48
That’s a pretty common question, and the answer is this:

There’s more than one way to get an education. Most teens are perfectly capable of obtaining an outstanding education for themselves with the use of mentors. Homeschoolers aren’t boxed in by artificial requirements set up by a bureaucracy.

None of what you list as “requirements” are difficult to obtain. For example, my 14 year old is learning International Sign Language, which is accepted as a foreign language by every university she is interested in attending. For PE, she does Tae Kwon Do. She is in better condition than the other 16 black belt candidates she trains with BECAUSE she has the free time to do the running necessary for ultimate stamina in this sport. She takes biology with a biologist, not a bio teacher. High subjects will be covered by enrolling at our local community college. One year of high school math or science is covered in 12 weeks. Therefore, a homeschool student can cover THREE years of an advanced topic in the time you will take to cover ONE year.

Want to learn French? Homeschoolers can do an exchange program at 16, and live in France. I’m sure your Greek teacher is amazing, but you are limited to the subjects offered at your school. Homeschoolers don’t have that restriction. Anyone can learn typing. My daughter taught herself in 2 weeks using a free online program. The same for computer use.

If you’d like to learn more, you’ll want to read The Teenage Liberation Handbook.

All the best.

EDIT: “Homeschooled” does NOT mean that the student is taught at home by the parents. It means that the student and parents make educational decisions in the student’s best interests. That includes classes and community college courses, internships and jobs.

Answer by hsfromthestart
Varies with the person. I know many who have their children read lessons on their own and come to the parents (or a tutor or someone) only when they have questions. A high school student should be able to read well enough to figure out a lot of stuff on their own.

If they have homeschooled the children from the beginning, the parent will have gotten a second education along the way. Anyone who teaches learns the material at a deeper level from having to explain it and answer questions on it. If the parent taught the subjects in the early years, when the material was much easier, the parent will understand it much better than they did the first time through school and will be prepared to teach these subjects, even though they might not have been able to before starting to homeschool.

They don’t have to do all of the teaching on their own. Some homeschool parents hire tutors. Or have their children take classes with other homeschooled children, taught by a parent with expertise in the particular subject. Those who join homeschool support groups find lots of opportunities this way. For example, right now my children are participating in a drama group that will put on a play; the group is run by a former actress, who’s directed plays at a number of theaters and teaches music and voice lessons and is working on a master’s in music education, and has a choreographer who danced in films with internationally renowned musician/dancers. A lot of people with great skills homeschool their children and then share those skills with other homeschoolers.

Or they have the children take outside courses–not all homeschooling is done at home. Homeschooling really means that the parent is in charge of the education–not necessarily that the parent does it all. Many museums, zoos, and other institutions offer classes specifically designed for homeschoolers. And high school students who’ve been homeschooled are often ready for college at high school age–thus the reasons for taking community college courses.

As for the teachers you’ve mentioned, a lot of schools do *not* have such wonderful teachers. I’ve taught in many schools and seen many horrible teachers. I’ve seen teachers who do nothing more than write an assignment on the board for students to do and then spend the rest of the period with their feet on the desk and a newspaper in front of their face. Students have to figure things out on their own and hope they aren’t acted during class because the teacher won’t even notice. Parents can do much better than such teachers. And parents who use the resources available to them can put together a great education for their children, probably even better than the one you got at school because they have the freedom to design an educational program that meets the needs of their particular child rather than being designed for a factory-type assembly-line education, an education often restricted by bureaucrats making rules that don’t work well, an education that works for some but not for all.

Answer by Aya
Homeschooling is a flexible educational option that allows families to do what is right for THEM. That can mean a lot of different things depending on the family. Older kids can go to community college (and have the chance to finish HIGH SCHOOL with a COLLEGE degree) if they want, and may not have to fight school bureaucracy for the privilege. Kids of all ages can take lessons with people other than their parents. I sure didn’t learn to play the piano or violin or how to speak Japanese from my parents, I learned from my professional music teachers and from the Japanese college students who volunteered to teach me Japanese in exchange for home-cooked meals and a chance to learn more about American family life. Homeschoolers can and often do take trips to places that school groups might not go for whatever reason, and they may go at times when families with kids in school wouldn’t be able to travel. In many cases, if the parents are trying to teach the kids themselves and they don’t know the answer to something, they will go ahead and learn the answer along with the kids, which models good learning behaviors and shows kids that learning is something you can do and enjoy at all ages, not just something to be done in school that ends when you graduate.

Answer by elenewende
“For example my favorite class in high school (public) was English where we studied the Greek plays, reinacted them and the teacher who was very well educated in the field was just so amazing, I could never in a million years imagine getting what I got out of that class from my parents, or my typing class or computer class or French and on and on. I’m just curious – do the parents hire other teachers to come teach in their home? I don’t even have children but I’m just curious.”

The answer to most of these questions is Co-op classes. Homeschoolers often join organizations and pay annual fees in order to have extra-curricular activities, or take advantage of the collective strengths of the parents through co-op classes. My friends mom was a Public Speaking major and we would go to her house once a week for a Speech class where we worked on extemp and other forms and created presentations. For foreign language, another mom who grew up in Venezuela guided us through the Spanish curriculum and gave us an opportunity to practice conversational Spanish and added cultural activities such as cooking, manners, music etc. Lots of people, adults included, use software as opposed to taking a structured typing class. Computer class, again, can be taken ON the computer although we took it at the community college.
You’re favorite class was English because you had the opportunity to discover something you loved. When you are home schooling, those opportunities multiply; not only do you have the actual curriculum, you can venture outside the classroom to utilize any resource available. For British Lit one year we attended the fall season of “Shakespeare on the Rocks” which is a series of Shakespeare plays. They are performed at a theater built into the canyon, an event the city plans every year with a Rennaissance fair. It was awesome! We cross-utilized our Home Ec class to make costumes to wear and our homeschool organization’s newsletter let us publish a few reviews for credit in the Journalism class.

“What’s the point in enrolling in a public community college if they’re supposed to be “home schooled”?”

A common misconception about “homeschooling” is that we are always at home! We were rarely at home, we didn’t stay in the same place 8 hours a day. There was the freedom to go and do different things and benefit from socializing with different people every day. College classes are structured much more like homeschool curriculum than public high school curriculum. Much of the learning is self-directed and the responsibility is mainly on the student. Plus if you want to take the teacher argument then you are getting the de facto benefits of a qualified MA or Phd professor who can guide your learning experience. A lot of your actual education (the cold hard facts) in the humanities (english, history, etc.) will be recreated during your freshman and sophomore year,even the math gets re-taught.

To me, homeschooling is more of a reference to the fact that the child’s education is centered around the home. Not the building (that would be “house schooling” lol), but the unique values and interests that characterize that particular family unit.

Answer by momo8
First of all, just because a parent doesn’t have a teaching degree, doesn’t mean he/she isn’t well- educated. Many homeschooling parents, such as myself, have years of college under their belts. I have a BS in biochemistry, and medical lab technician certification. To get these, I had to do lots of chemistry, physics, calculus (including multi-variable), science, biology, art, English, and a foreign language, among others. Not to mention, I have a genius IQ. So what makes a teacher? I expect that they have to spend a few years learning how to handle kids in the public school system. They learn things like watching for signs of abuse, how to handle a violent kid, how to “lock-down” a classroom, how to protect themselves from false accusations by students, etc. Many of these lessons are totally unnecessary when you are teaching your own kids.

Second, public school teachers don’t necessarily know the material they are teaching. They have to read the books, and plan what to say. Why do you think they fight competency exams so much? Do you really think that a 65 year-old teacher knows all the new info about atoms, cells, and electronics? They sure didn’t learn that in “teacher’s school” back in 1950.

Most of us parents did go to school through high school. We took a variety of classes, and are fully capable of teaching what we learned. Remember the Laura Ingalls book where she quit school for a while to go teach in another school, then went back to her school again as a student? The teachers our grandparents had were just country school educated, just graduated, ordinary young people. I think most of our grandparents got all the education they needed. And they also got a lot of education at home, from their parents.

If after attending public school for 12 years, I’m not smart enough to teach that information to my kids, then there is a problem with public school.

Third, the homeschool curriculum available today is made for home teaching. It has all the info necessary for the child to be taught by a parent, or self-taught. For example, workbooks have the lesson, then the questions. Some math has built-in teachers. All the information needed is right there. The parent doesn’t have to know it all. Have you heard of the controversy about Rosetta Stone being used in public school classrooms? With that, you don’t need a live teacher, and the teachers are mad about it. Homeschooling has eliminated the need for trained teachers.