Enjoy
People who aim at nothing hit it with spectacular
accuracy. We suggest the best way to start preparing an application is to identify
your goals. If you cannot articulate your goals for your children, how can you plan
your route? Even unschoolers have goals for their children - they just set about
achieving them without lots of artificial "learning".
Also, as you travel on your home education
journey, you will wonder if you are doing the right thing, if you are making progress,
etc. keeping your eye on your goals will help deal with these natural doubts.
So what do you want for your children at
the end of their school-level education? This is very important. If academic success
is your primary goal, then you will have a different emphasis from someone who is
more character-focussed.
Whatever the reason for considering home
education, it helps to know what you want to achieve at the end of your time as
"teacher". The "basics" or the "three R's" do not
require a lot of time in a child's life, and anything beyond that is largely optional.
Knowing what you want to achieve, and how much time you have greatly reduces the
pressure to push children - especially in the early years.
Of course as you learn more your goals will
change. As your children develop, their goals will emerge - and will conflict with
yours. When that happens you know you have at least been successful in developing
their independence.
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Schools were designed for a different environment.
Today everyone needs as much education and training as possible - the country simply
can't afford to have uneducated citizens. Sadly schools still focus on the traditional
approach which automatically dooms many to "failure".
To learn more, search on the Internet for
"Seven intelligences" and "Learning styles". The next step is
to apply these ideas to your children, and reflect them and your children's interests
and abilities in planning your approach, materials, etc.
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Yes, we know it's not always Mum who stays
at home - but still the vast majority of full time stay-at-home educators are mothers.
Obviously if your family has Dad at home, then this changes. While most of the issues
are common, stay-at-home Dads have their own issues.
The main point is that any adult looking
after children 24 hours a day, seven days a week, will soon go mad - or worse. If
you do not plan for time for yourself, you will not get it. (Children's needs expand
to fill the time available.) If the full-time home educator's personal needs are
not met, they will burn out, the whole family will suffer, and home education will
not work.
One of the great helps here is meeting with
other home educators - preferably in the flesh but e-mail lists and chats provide
an alternative which still provides a supportive, understanding safe-haven for home
educators to share their concerns, learn, and generally unwind.
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Familiarise yourself with these
rules
and procedures, and comply if necessary. Basically children aged between six
and 16 have to enroll in a school - unless they get an exemption from the
Ministry
of Education.
We cannot tell people what to put in their
applications - but note the advice about tailoring each application to your goals,
and keeping them as general as possible.
Also check the
practical
issues page for more advice on completing your exemption.
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Support groups around the country are a key
support structure for most home educators. "Structure" may create the
wrong impression. Each group is independent - and the styles range from an occasional
very informal get together of a few families to incorporated societies with newsletters,
e-mail lists / telephone trees, resource libraries and a raft of activities.
While these groups are independent, many
of them do network. Many swap newsletters.
There are also national groups (or individuals
who work nationally), but these are largely focussed on political, legal and associated
matters, leaving day to day support to the various groups.
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There are several
e-mail
lists and a chat for Kiwi home educators. The lists each have their own purpose
or flavour, so check them out. It's easy to unsubscribe if you find a particular
list does not suit you.
One benefit of these over local support
groups is you choose the time when you get involved. Another is that mixing with
a wider range of home educators than exist in most local groups helps the exchange
of ideas.
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Your goals will help you develop your educational
philosophy. This could range from highly structured to highly unstructured, from
using independent areas of learning as building blocks to integrated unit studies,
from starting very early to "better late than never", etc. You might use
ideas from educationalists like Charlotte Mason, Rudolph Steiner, Maria Montessori,
John Holt, Dr Raymond Moore, John Taylor Gatto, etc.
As part of this, you should document areas
of learning you think are important. For example, we would suggest literacy and
numeracy would be high on everyone's list. We don't just mean being able to read
and use numbers - we mean actually reading and using numbers, etc. We would also
add humour to those two areas (although some would point out that humour is part
of literacy).
What other areas are there? Well, we suggest
the rest of knowledge can be included as "the world which the child inhabits".
This can be broken down into physical (biological, chemical, physical, etc), social
(historic, geographic, political, economic, arts and culture, etc.) and spiritual.
Clearly each of these can be further broken down until you arrive at Etruscan architecture,
the nature of quasars, the politics of 21st century road funding in New Zealand,
or any other piece of knowledge. (That's generally what any curriculum does.)
Our view is that it does not really matter
what particular areas you choose to study. There is so much knowledge in the world,
being added to at such fantastic rates, that no-one can ever hope to know more than
a small percentage of the total sum of human knoweldge. As the child matures, they
will have more say, but for young children we recommend exposing them to as much
of life as possible (at appropriate levels) so they can start to understand how
specific areas of knowledge relate to other areas of knowledge.
If you could live with two different home educating families for a week, you would
probably think they couldn't possibly be part of the same movement. There are many
different styles and approaches, many of which can be used in combination with each
other. There are many resources available - most of which suit a traditional style
of education, but some of which offer hope to others.
Until now, none of this advice has entailed
spending money. In this area you could spend alot of money - or you could spend
very little, using local support group resources, libraries, museums and other community
resources.
You'll soon notice numerous second hand
resources for sale. While some of these have been used and are still suitable for
resale, others have never (or hardly) been used. Please take the hint - no matter
how good a resource looks, it may not suit your style. Don't spend a lot on materials
until you've had a bit of experience.
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This applies if you pull your children out
of school. (Remember if your child is between six and 16, you must get an exemption
before doing this.) Most of those who have been through this confirm that children
who have been in school take time to "detox". They need to get school
out of their systems, and there is even a generally accepted rule of thumb that
this takes about one month for every completed year of school.
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This is important. There is no lifestyle quite
like this. While not every day is necessarily a bundle of laughs, you should enjoy
it overall. If you don't, then you are unlikely to last. Talk to someone - don't
stay isolated.
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