Homeschooling and Modern Ideals

Since the beginning of recorded history, the idea of educating children has been firmly in place. Only in the past two hundred years or so the idea of sending a child to one person with many other children has become commonplace. In the past forty years the regulation of the materials students learn has come to the forefront. this idea that one person who has a certificate to say that they went through special training has overtaken the idea that mothers were the best teacher for their young children. this may have come with the migration of families from the Midwest to the west coast and the inability for the mothers to teach their children while traveling the long distance to the coast. this could also have come about when Horace Mann started the first school in Ohio. This change in ideals has often led to the ridicule of the children who are still being taught at home. The children in traditional schools call these children names and tease them about not being like everyone else. Do you think that the change from homeschooling to traditional schooling has led to the chastisement of children who are different? How would you deal with a child who was ridiculing another for the way they were home schooled and brought up different? Would you ever consider placing you child into mainstream schools after homeschooling them in earlier years?
~Emilie

Homeschooling and Social Behavior

From the time I was old enough to go to school, I thought that every child in our neighborhood was going to be in my school. I soon found out that many of the children on our block were taught by either one parent or another at home. This confused me because, at the time, I did not understand what homeschooling was. My sister explained it to me once and referred to the kids as socially awkward, she was a few years older than I was, but I still did not understand. When I got to Northern and took the EPFE 201 class I learned the differences between the use of homeschooling and the social interactions of the children being home schooled. Many of the students on my class had someone they knew that was home schooled and often would describe them like my sister did when I was little, socially awkward. I thought that this was presumptuous to classify all home schooled kids this way since I knew a few people in the Music Building who were not socially awkward and were home schooled. Since that class I have met more people who were home schooled and have normal social networking skills. This idea that to be "normal" you must be sent through a traditional school system has often irritated me and caused many of my friends to become irritated as well. How do you feel about homeschooling children? Would you ever willingly home school a child? If a child cannot adapt to the structure of a traditional school, would you home school them or send them to another school?
~Emilie

Learning again

When I started at Northern, I had moved to Illinois after having taken a year and a half after high school to figure life out. During that time I took car of my toddler nephew and marveled at the way he learned new information everyday. Now I am forced into that position as well. I am relearning things that I learned in my youth and had forgotten, things that I never knew why they were done the way they were taught. I have learned in classes why becoming a teacher is important to society as a whole. I have also learned to question what I am being told. In History 260 with Dr. Hagaman, we were told to look beneath the surface and question what historians were writing about and the period they are writing in. This advice has aided me in all the classes I have had since that first semester. Have you a had a particular teacher here at Northern who has told you to question what you are being told? Have you had any teachers who have asked you to look at everything in a different way to find the truth? When you decided to become a teacher did you ever want to be like any of the teachers you had growing up?
~Emile

Becoming a Education Major

I am trying to figure out what I can do to increase my chances of being accepted into the College of Education for the Fall of next year. I have gotten good grades since I have been at Northern only one 'C' and one 'D' but I still feel that it may be impossible to predict the outcome. My advisor has told me that with my grades I should be fine when it comes to the Spring when I need to apply but since this is the first time that I have had advising with her I don't know if I will be okay or not. What types of things are you doing to try to ensure your acceptance into the program? Is there anyway that having those two bad grades will cause them not to accept my application? I know they take the people with the top GPAs but I have talked to many people who have gotten in with slightly lower GPAs than mine is right now. If you have gotten into the program how were your grades when you were accepted?

Math, History, English Oh My!

Have you ever noticed that when teachers bring the subjects of math, history, and English students seem to shutdown a little. I do not believe that it is because they dislike these subjects more than any other, but perhaps it is the way in which these subjects are being taught. I remember in Elementary and Middle School my teachers would just teach us the facts in one set way without giving us room to discover another way to reach the same answer. Those years were often frustrating though at the time I did not fully understand why; the mixture of this is the right way attitudes from the teachers and the you can do anything attidtudes from home often confused me as a child. As I teacher I hope to provide my students with the knowledge that there are many ways to rationalize different ways of doing even the simplest math problem. I also hope that my students will learn to not only memorize the facts behind history and math, so that they may regurgitate it on a test, but that they will learn the reasons why these facts were listed in their textbooks in the first place. I learned at a young age that learning just the facts that the teachers think you should know often led to problems when I was taking a test and asked to place those facts into the context of that time. With English, my Middle School teachers would ask us to write stories about made up places and people. I found this effective because I loved to write stories and poems. In sixth grade, we were asked to write poems in several styles, like Hiku, I found this very rewarding since I strongly connected my poetry to my life. During High School, my teachers would tell me that my poetry had no focus but I knew that they did not understand the free-flowing style that I used on a daily basis. One night while watching a poetry slam I found a new style that I adapted to very easily and soon became the basis for one of my longest poems "Conformity" which asks the question "Why are people judged on apperance and not what's inside". This poem also became the reason I want to publish my own book of poetry, which would track my life from the young carefree years of Middle School and early High School to the more troubled years later in my life. How have the different styles of teaching math, history, and English effected your learning experiences from childhood on? What type of learnign works best for you, seeing the material, being able to touch the material, or hearing the material spoken? Personally I respond better to hearing the material as well as writing that information down to cement it in my memory. Did any of the ways your teachers taught English change your outlook on life and the influence that your experiences had over what you write for assignments?
~Emilie

Learning to teach while planning a wedding

During the next two semesters I will not only be working toward getting into the Elementary Education program while also juggling the planning of my wedding across three states. Working to get into the Education Program will be no easy feat and I often find myself worrying about whether or not I will make it into the program for next fall. On top of all of the school stresses I also find myself attempting to contact my bridesmaids who go to school as far away as Pittsburgh. This makes the stress of school seem all the greater because of the time constraints on both the schoolwork and the wedding contracts. Learning to teach the next generation is not only about what to teach them out of a book but also what to teach the children from real life. What would be a good lesson for young students to learn that can not necessarily be learned from a textbook? I know that the standard answer for this question for those under the age for kindergarten would be learning to share, but for older students the lesson that teachers use often become redundant. Students can learn little nuances from the adults in their lives but would a teacher offer that much influence in the life of younger students? Or would the little nuances just become a part of the student's personality because of the repetition of the said nuances on a daily basis. What are the changes potential teachers can make to the nuances they possess to minimize their impact on their impressionable students?
-Emilie

Learning to learn again

In many of my classes this semester I am being asked to take a step back and learn what is like to be a child learning these things. In my Teaching Math in Elementary School class, we are revisiting the reasoning of the elementary school child when asked to measure a distance. The explanation of this reasoning gives educators a look into the mind of someone who is learning the material for the first time. For most of the material it is simple reasoning for why the graph fits the story or vice versa. But for learning about counting in bases other than ten there was no clear reasoning for the change. Our class had problems conceptualizing the difference between the bases until we wrote out a list of the numbers used in the different bases. We also used the small blocks, which children use for counting, to help us conceptualize the new numbering systems. We are also learning how children are being taught to add and subtract, which is called the expanded algorithm. How can this use of multiple numbering systems help children to conceptualize numbers better? With the use of these multiple numeration systems, would young students get confused about which system they are counting in normally? How does the expanded algorithm help the students with adding and subtracting, besides taking away the need to carry?

Emilie

Teaching without teaching

I have noticed that while I am home I end up inadvertently teaching my five-year-old nephew, Jonathon, something new. I have not attempted to teach him anything new for at least a year, since my family lives in Ohio and I only get to go home a few times a year. When he was younger I would teach him his colors and how to count in multiple languages and now that he is getting older he has a hunger for learning. When we ask him if he wants to go to school, he always answers that he wants to go "Right now." I have also started to teach my one- year-old nephew,Clayton, how to start talking since he is just learning. Both of my nephews are bright for their ages and we are optimistic that they will learn quickly when they start going to school. Jonathon will be starting next fall in Kindergarten and he should excel in his class once he learns to share, he's an only child. Clayton has a few years yet before he can go to school but he will excel once he starts school as well. Have you ever taught a child something without meaning to? What experience have you had with teaching children of a younger age? Do any children in your lives have a hunger for learning without having ever been to school?
-Emilie

Teachers who touch students hearts.

There are teachers in everyone's life that have helped them through tough times. I had two teachers in high school which helped not only me but my whole family through one of the toughest times in our lives. During my sophomore year, my mother and brothers were hit head on by a drunk driver not a mile from our home. the two choir teachers at my high school helped my come to terms with the accident and also helped us through the long coma and recovery process. These two teachers touched my life through their kind words of encouragement and the way they took care of our family through that time. That is the type of teacher I want to be, I want the students I teach to feel that I am someone they can talk to. I want to be able to provide a home away from home feeling for the students, giving them a sense of security in our classroom. How can I provide this sense of security for students when there are so many unknowns in the world today? How, with the economic problems, can the student's parents afford to provide the students with the supplies they need for school? I know that being a teacher means being selfless when with the students and having a firm hand when it comes to the classroom discipline. What teachers have you had that have touched your lives? Have there been teachers who, you have felt, have gone passed the duties of a teacher and helped you after they have fulfilled their teaching duties? Most importantly, how have your teachers touched your lives not only in a school setting but also outside of the walls of the school?
Emilie

Learning to Educate Others

My name is Emilie and I am a sophomore at Northern Illinois University, studying to teach Elementary School students.  I am not sure what grade, precisely, I would like to teach when I get out of school, probably either second or third grade.  Since I graduated from high school I have had some experience with teaching younger children, I have a nephew I helped raise for almost a year, and have always loved working with the younger children.  How can I possibly live up to the standards set by not only the school system but also the parents and the children themselves?  I am not necessarily sure how the elementary education jobs will change over the next two years I am in school, hopefully there will be more jobs available after I graduate than there are now.  Just out of curiosity I have been looking at the school report cards which are available on line.  These report cards show the progress of the school based on the state's standards and the No Child Left Behind Act.  Hopefully I will find a niche in the education major and excel in the classes and clinical observations I must complete to become certified in Illinois.  

Emilie