When it comes to homeschooling, many families are left with a difficult choice: do the parents teach their children or do they hire a tutor who is qualified in multiple subjects? Take a look at the picture above: the two characters featured, Mark and Rebecca Cotswold from “South Park,” are two children that have been homeschooled by their parents. If you closely at them, you will see that they clearly have a better chance at success in life.
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So, that is clearly the best fit in terms of being taught by their own parents. Nowadays, most special education students would much rather be homeschooled than be in a traditional school setting for a variety of reasons such as being taught life lessons that they would otherwise not be taught in a traditional school setting and also allows them to learn at their own pace. Another factor is that schools do tend to be overstimulating for a lot of sensory friendly students and they do tend to struggle mightily.
But one question that is typically asked among special education families is do we, the parents, teach our children or do we hire a tutor and pay them to educate our children? It really depends on the situation and what is best for the child. As we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic, many parents were left with no choice but to teach their own children at home or online. A lot of these parents were not possessive of an educational background, yet they tried to rise to the occasion. Still, both the parents and their children suffered because both sides were forced into a situation that was beyond their control.
However, when it comes to hiring a tutor for the child, there is an advantage that a lot of families don’t really see closely. When a tutor is hired to homeschool a student, the student is given the opportunity to bond with the tutor on a level that is not in a traditional classroom setting.
When it comes to tutors, they can bring the child out into a community that holds more lessons than a classroom. I mean, lets take it from me. When I was in elementary school, I was tutored during the summer by my former kindergarten teacher and it not only allowed me to be prepared for the impending school year, but also allowed me to be myself and learn through watching Disney movies at my teacher’s house, for example or learning reading skills at Capron Park and Zoo in Attleboro, Massachusetts.
The other benefit to bringing on a tutor for homeschooling is that the tutor could possibly be a teacher that is retired and who is looking to go into teaching for himself or herself. Another personal example is my 4th grade teacher who after retiring, decided to stay in the educational field by freelance tutoring.
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Since June, I have been a freelance guest speaker for the Infinite Learning Academy and my first time presenting to their families was a learning experience in terms that these families take it upon themselves to teach their children. What makes this unique is that you don’t find a traditional classroom setting, but a creative one. While most schools are more traditional than creative, being in a creative classroom has more advantages and you can only find that in a homeschool setting.
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Furthermore, a homeschool setting allows tutors to possibly bring in material that other schools wouldn’t dare to teach. For example, if you are a homeschool teacher, you might be trying to teach the student about life after the Civil War and the only way you can do that is by showing “Song of the South” (1946).
In fact, at my first team building activity with Infinite Learning Academy this past June on Hutchinson Island, FL, I brought up the idea that “Song of the South” should be shown and then there should be a discussion of not only what life was like after the Civil War, but also why the film should be shown to today’s generation of students.
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Now for the final part of this blog, I want to give you a visualization of what goes through the mind of a neurodivergent student during a homeschooling activity. Let’s take the chalk drawing scene from “Mary Poppins” (1964) and put it in a perspective that the student is allowed to visualize being a world when they can learn and interact with the inhabitants of the drawing. By visually interacting, the students are being allowed to visualize the lesson that is being taught to them.
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After viewing this sequence, you might think that “Mary Poppins” is the ultimate homeschooling movie. Mary Poppins isn’t just a nanny, but a teacher, teaching the Banks children not just life lessons through their adventures, but also teaching their father, George, the importance of what is more important: a job position or his family.
Now, it’s not as if to say that parents are more than willing to homeschool their children themselves, but the key here is that there needs to be a homeschool connection within the family such as a family member having been homeschooled in the past. But if parents are more than willing to step up, then they need to consider the importance of a good work life/balance. A good idea would be to find a good work from home job that allows you to teach their children for a decent amount of hours. A good freelance job also helps as well.
But in the end, the key here is to ensure that the homeschooled child learns and grows throughout their journey outside the classroom. In order to do that, the pieces have to first fall into place.
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Catch you all later!!
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