Parents’ role in education at home
Many a parent complained since mid-March about home schooling their children. Now there is the fear that they will have to continue to home-school this coming school year. It is important to set the record straight on their role. The end of the recent school year saw parents overseeing their children’s education at home. There is a difference between home schooling and education at home.
Home schooling — I have friends and neighbors who do this — involves developing a curriculum, preparing lessons, establishing guidelines and time frames for subjects, creating assessments, ensuring accountability of their children, plus more. This is extremely timecomplex consuming and involves a great deal of preparation time to ensure their children are being academically successful and have the skills, knowledge and concepts for future success.
Education at home involves parents being parents. This means enforcing and ensuring that what the classroom teacher sends home, whether digitally or in the mail, is completed. That their children are attending and participating in classes. Helping with the completion of assignments. Education at home does not involve preparation of lessons and assessments or other responsibilities home-schooling parents must fulfill.
Education at home is tough. As a principal, my preference was to have children in school. When schools reopen, there will likely be learning gaps educators will have to address at the start. On top of this, educators will have to address the emotional toll education at home has taken because so many children have been isolated. Educators will also have to adjust their teaching and methodologies. Teaching in an environment where all are wearing masks, social distancing has to occur, frequently cleaning and sterilizing classrooms and items, learning circles and collaborative groups no longer can occur, will be tough, stressful, and complicated.
Maybe education at home should continue. Then educators just might receive the respect they have long deserved in our society. — Jim Burns, Rockford