public school
Homeschooling High School
The last four years of school could prove to be the most challenging for both student and parent alike especially if you are planning on homeschooling high school. The course subjects will be getting much more difficult, teenagers are entering puberty, dating will commence and interpersonal relationships with other young adults will become more important to your student.
First, the curriculum. If you’ve been homeschooling prior to this time, algebra has probably already been introduced to your student. It will now get more technical and you will move onto geometry and perhaps calculus. Many people loathe these subjects or will not feel comfortable teaching them. Some homeschoolers hire tutors for these courses, send their kids to local colleges to take these courses there or use correspondence schools.
Tutors can be local college kids who are vouched for by their professors. Expect to pay $10-20 an hour for their help. And to protect both parties from any trouble, make the student and tutor work where you can see them just to be safe.
Correspondence courses are not inexpensive. Both the University of Nebraska and the University of Oklahoma have distance learning courses for high school students. They cost between $300-400 for each semester’s course by topic. A full year’s tuition cost for an average curriculum load would run from $3,000-$4,000.
Another correspondence school is called the Keystone High School. Their annual tuition is approximately $2000 for the online version and about $1500 for the written.
All three schools offer study materials, standardized tests and grading, transcripts and graduation diplomas. All are said to be accredited by the college rating agencies and allow easy access to institutions of higher learning according to their websites. These are almost set-and-forget high school learning systems. If you choose the whole course correspondence method you will have little involvement but to see that the work is carried out and sent in. Otherwise you can pick and choose the subjects you want your student to learn and teach the other topics yourself or with tutorial help.
Puberty, as you know, brings on a whole new set of problems. Moodiness, rebellious behavior, attraction to the opposite sex, dating and a whole host of other things are there to deal with. It may be difficult to keep your student attending to their work or your teaching. They may begin to argue with you over the curriculum or just about anything else. They are going to begin speaking their minds about everything and often. It can be very difficult at times to deal with. But perhaps if you’ve homeschooled for years up to that point, you may have a very strong bond between you. Perhaps you can reason better and talk things out. Good luck with that
Dating, driving and staying away from home are all coming up too. You’ll be worried for several reasons. Their safety will likely be your biggest concern, especially after they and their friends start driving. Drinking and drug use are right up there too especially combined with driving. Teen sex is another worry around this time. They’re really too young to have a caring, meaningful relationship, but they’re not to young to do the act. Teen pregnancy is of big concern.
But you know, there is one other solution to this whole dilemma. Consider enrolling your student in public high school. Unless it’s just too dangerous or has a bad curriculum, it would solve a lot of problems. It would also let your student socialize easier with other kids his age at a time when there’s a lot they want to talk about, but not with their parents. It would also be a cheaper solution if you thought you were going to have to use tutors or correspondence schools.
If you’ve done a good job homeschooling your kids up to this point, they’re probably more self-confident and well-grounded that any other kid in that public high school. They will probably be better prepared to face the challenges the last four years of school present. They will probably make the right choices too.
Unless you have a specific educational curriculum goal in mind for high school, maybe it’s time to let your student spread his wings and fly on his own. Maybe it’s time to sit back and see how all your hard work the last eight years will pay off. Maybe it’s time to realize that homeschooling high school isn’t such a great idea after all.
A J Adams has had a keen interest in home schooling for a number of years. With several public school teachers in his family, he has had many discussions regarding current school problems. He’s heard many suggestions, one of which was the growing number of children being home schooled.
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Teaching – Seven Uniquenesses of the Teaching Profession
No One Can Do What You Do?
Who can do what you do? The reason a shortage exists in the field of teaching is simply because few can do what you do. The teaching profession is profoundly unique. In some areas of the country, a shortage is impacted by economics; other places are effected by geography and weather. For the most part, metropolitan cities have fewer issues in recruiting teachers than smaller, less populous locations. Nonetheless, the field of teaching is unique and shortages prove that few have the calling and desire to do what more than 3.1 million public and private educators are already doing. Let’s look at some of the reasons teaching is unique and why shortages are common across the country, specifically in specialized subject areas such as science, math, and special education.
There are seven ways in which teachers/educators are unique professionals:
First, we’ve already established the fact that teachers embrace the field of education as a calling not as a job. Let’s face it, teaching is a very complex and demanding career that requires teachers to be managers of people, analyzers of data, and researchers of best practices and instructional methodologies-and these skills are utilized each day. In any other major profession that required the same unique qualifications, teachers would make significantly more money. Undoubtedly, the salaries for teachers must be reexamined and adjusted to reflect the uniqueness of the profession and provide balanced scales for all teachers, whether they work in a big city or a small town or country hamlet.
Second, teachers are also unique because the profession is now driven by so much data. Teachers must now be statisticians and researchers, fully accountable in some form or fashion for managing data in the areas of assessment, attendance, graduation rates, discipline percentages, and gifted and special education progress. The administrative responsibilities of the teacher have definitely increased, but the resources necessary to make the management of these duties efficient are minimal. The new demand for data is needed, and critical to enhancing results, but resources are likewise needed to help teachers be effective and efficient in collecting, examining, and utilizing the data.
Third, teachers are required to be learning and behavioral specialists and to be able to apply differentiated instruction. Differentiated instruction is a newly celebrated philosophy, and a mandate for all teachers, that requires teachers to find effective teaching strategies that will meet the needs of students with different learning styles, all in the same classroom at the same time. Teachers must, then, be competent and active in enlisting the unique resources and skills necessary to meet the needs of kinesthetic, visual, and auditory learning styles. Additionally, the special challenges of addressing emotional behavioral disorders, learning disabilities, and attention deficit problems-all in the same classroom-broaden the gap between teachers and managers. Today’s teachers are practitioners, researchers, and change agents; but, none of these unique skills are recognized or rewarded.
Fourth, continuing on the same theme, teachers must work with every child, despite the challenges of that child. In nearly every other profession, management is able to pick out the bad product or the poor employee so that productivity and quality can be increased. Educators do not have that same luxury. Instead, public education demands that every child be given the resources and opportunity to succeed. This includes those students who truly want to learn and will become good “products” and those students who get energized from wreaking havoc and chaos in school by fighting, dealing drugs, taking part in gang activity, or constantly disrupting classes.
” Instead of weeding out the bad students, educators are required to manage all situations, to provide alternatives to parents, and to somehow effectively guide troubled students through the educational process. And teachers realize that they must do so, regardless of social and economic situations and, in some cases, the lack of positive parental guidance that might influence the behavior of the student. What becomes most frustrating is recognizing that, if these challenging students refuse the positive alternatives, they may end up dead, in jail, or in a hospital or wallowing in a continuing cycle of poverty. No one gets into teaching to celebrate such a potential loss of lives and potential. Teachers get into the business to change and enhance lives-uniquely, and one by one, as needed.
Fifth, teachers are unique because the line of accountability in education has many levels and tangents. This accountability is not necessarily a bad thing, but it has added to the complexity of teaching. In one way or another, teachers are impacted by the federal government, a state department of education, the local school district, and administration at their school. What does this mean for teachers? It means that the results of classroom practices go far beyond the classroom, students, parents, and principals. I can’t name another career field that has as many accountability variables and levels as does the field of public education. As a teacher-educator, be aware that your individual results in the classroom are data and will be analyzed as data and that those results will be evaluated in ways that are unique to the field of education. Your successes or failures in the classroom, as reflected in the data, will impact your longevity in the field of education.
Sixth, educators are unique in that no other professional group manages so many people and is so responsible for individual progress. Teachers work with up to one hundred and eighty students or more each day and are required to ensure that each of those students succeeds academically. Young people, from the ages of four to twenty, are instructed, counseled, directed, nurtured, motivated, inspired, and coached by teachers-a cycle that continues until high school graduation, in best-case scenarios.
” You may be surprised to know that children spend more time at school than they do awake at home and that children are influenced by more adults in school than in any other social circle. That makes the public school system the single most influential force on children-more so even than church. Teaching, then, is a unique career that is faced with high liability and tremendous responsibility-because real lives are dependent on competent and professional adults. These demands are tremendous, and very few people can meet them successfully.
Lastly, teaching is unique because it is the only profession where the federal government has mandated absolute perfection. Specifically, the No Child Left Behind Act requires that all children-that’s 100 percent-reach proficiency on state level assessments. Between the lines, this legislation essentially requires teachers to provide effective and rigorous instruction, which will hopefully translate into providing the necessary skills and information sets so that students can be literate and competent. However, the mandate that all students be made to pass assessments is largely unrealistic because of unforeseen and calculable variables that prohibit the attainment of such a goal. Yes, the goal is lofty, but it is worthy. The expectation that teachers teach is warranted. At the end of the day, we all know that students must be able to think and apply their knowledge in real life. After all, primary and secondary schooling is a training ground with the ultimate goal of preparing young people to successfully navigate college, a profession, and the world of adults. But the attainment of such an idealistic goal as what is outlined in No Child Left Behind creates an all-consuming stress that has hurt and will continue to hurt the teaching profession if not taken in stride.
” As this federal policy stands, I expect it to cause numerous educators to leave the profession-not one scientist or researcher would ever purport to achieve 100 percent accuracy on any research or experiment due to variables. Even 99.9 percent acknowledges the influence of some variables, even if it is only 0.1 percent. Yet, in the world of education, teachers must live with and comply to that unrealistic federal mandate or find a new line of business, which could be extremely detrimental to hundreds of districts across the country.
So, yes, teaching is unique, and it requires educators to be multi-faceted and multi-talented. It is my strong belief that very few professions demand what is required of teachers in the public sector. The demands are not necessarily bad, but they are indications of the complex nature of the teaching profession. Those who are cut out for this unique profession are called, often naturally skilled or highly and thoroughly trained, and committed to success. And, no, not everyone is cut out for a career in the most challenging occupation on the planet. It also requires an awareness of self. And, it is not for the weary. No, not everyone can do what teachers do. Join the movement – The Teachers Movement and make a difference.
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Math Tutoring for Kids Who are Gifted and Learning Disabled
It is easy to misunderstand a child who is both learning disabled and gifted. Mentally retarded, or “slow,” are the labels often mistakenly given to persons with learning disabilities. Because of these misconceptions, a child who is gifted and who is also learning disabled often experiences a very challenging life. Academically, the child may perform poorly, but more important is the potentially damaging psychological impact of being perceived by others as “dumb” or mentally deficient, despite possessing the unlocked abilities and potential to excel. The self-confidence required for dealing with these issues and progressing past them can be achieved through success with a tutor.
Intellectual giftedness is exceptional in its own right–this is what many experts fail to realize. Social deprivation and poor classroom performance are just a couple of the problems that are experienced by both gifted children and those with mental retardation. Also, similar problems can be caused by a learning disability. There are particularly tricky challenges if a child is learning disabled but otherwise gifted.
A lot of times, gifted children who have learning difficulties have problems in school. Their learning disability can lead to a decrease in motivation as well as difficulty in completing classroom tasks which may, as a result, mask their true potential. But in other endeavors, such as music or dance, the child may be highly creative and intelligent. An undiagnosed learning problem may also lead to the opposite problem: an otherwise gifted child may struggle in school due to the presence of a learning disability not yet diagnosed.
Parents must become knowledgeable about the signs of various learning disabilities and of being gifted. There may be a huge gap between test results (measuring academic potential) and actual academic performance for a gifted child with a learning disability. It’s also possible for such children to display impressive creative intelligence, that manifests itself only at home and not in the grades they receive at school. Behavior problems, or “acting out,” is not uncommon among children with learning disabilities, especially when frustration builds. If your child is displaying these characteristic features, you may wish to have your child evaluated for the presence of a learning disability.
Learning disability tests can be administered by school officials with ease. Inevitably, smart children with learning disabilities fall through the cracks in public schools; there isn’t enough attention to help everyone. If a parent or the child himself feels that they need to be tested for a learning disability, the parent must become the child’s advocate. Any student has the right to take a learning disability test; this right to test for suspected learning disabilities is protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. First talk with your child’s teacher and if you find that you are not getting anywhere, it is essential to go to the school’s officials.
A number of options exist for children that are diagnosed as gifted and learning disabled. A gifted child might need extra resources; a really gifted child may need to skip a grade or more. Opportunities for cultural field trips and art classes, to aid in experiential (not just instructional) learning, should be regularly offered. Alternative information presentation, special classes, or technological aids each help with some learning disabilities.
Studies have concluded that the optimum environment for children who are gifted and have a learning disability is one that accepts differences and provides help with the learning disability; further, it is still extremely important that they be challenged regularly. A tutor who can work one-on-one can use this learning environment to attain more successful results. In addition, these children should be offered every chance to put forth their own preferences and desires. Their intelligence will help considerably; they can understand the implications of their learning disability and thus better cope with it. Children who are gifted and learning disabled, with the correct interventions in place, have a fantastic chance of becoming successful adults. After it is determined what the diagnosis is, the parents and child can then begin to learn how best to cope with it. The child needs not only support for the learning disability, but an environment that gives him or her challenges and stimulation.
Children who are gifted and learning disabled have an excellent chance to become successful adults. Once the learning disability is diagnosed, coping strategies can be integrated into the child’s life. It is important to provide the child with a stimulating, intellectually challenging environment that includes support for the learning disability.
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Why Online High School?
The number of online high schools is increasing at a steady rate as more and more schools offer quality, accredited programs online. With the presence of public, private and online high schools, individuals are faced with a greater choice when it comes to their education.
You know about regular private and public schools. They’re located in your neighborhood and city. You know what they’re all about and the types of programs and services they offer. What about online high school? It’s a relatively new concept.
Online high school enables students to get an accredited high school education from their homes. It is just like its classroom counterpart – there are assignments, quizzes and final exams. You simply access the class material through the use of your computer 24/7, 365 days a year. It provides you with an easy way to take summer school classes online, make up credits or get a jumpstart on the upcoming school year.
Benefits of Online High School
Choose where to learn – You can take high school classes from your home or office.
Set your own pace – You can work as fast or slow as you need. You are in the driver’s seat.
Study when you want – You can choose when you want to study and arrange your classes around work, sports and other responsibilities.
Avoid social pressure – You can work in an environment without the social issues that are present in a regular school.
Access class materials anytime – You can learn any time during the day or night.
There is typically an education support department to guide you with any questions or concerns you have along the way. They can be reached via e-mail, phone or fax.
Most importantly, it’s easy to get started. You don’t have to wait until September to begin. Simply log onto the website of an online high school and follow the steps to start. You will soon be on your way.
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Special Education Law – Overview
Many of us, who went to school not that long ago, remember that being a special needs student meant riding to school in a separate bus and attending one class with other children of varying disabilities. These classes resembled more of a day care than school, and even the most advanced students had little hope of receiving a high school diploma, let alone attend college. Since that time, the term disability, and special needs student, has expanded to encompass much more than a person with an IQ below a certain arbitrary standard. What I have attempted to do in my first article is to give a little history of the evolution of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
In 1954 the United States Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) which found that segregated schools were a violation of equal protection rights. It would be another twenty years before this concept was applied to children with handicaps, especially learning disabilities, trying to receive an education. In fact, shortly after Brown was decided the Illinois Supreme Court found that compulsory education did not apply to mentally impaired students, and as late as 1969, it was a crime to try to enroll a handicapped child in a public school if that child had ever been excluded.
Due to court challenges in Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia in the early 1970’s things started to change. In 1975 Congress enacted the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975. This was the first law that mandated that all handicapped students had a right to an education. Not only did it mandate that all handicapped students had a right to an education, it also mandated that local educational agencies could be held accountable for not doing so. Shortly thereafter, the term handicapped was replaced with “child with a disability”. Although revised in 1990 as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the most comprehensive changes came in 1997. This law required schools to identify children with disabilities to make sure that all children have available a “free appropriate public education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for employment and independent living” 20 U.S.C. § 1401 (d). Unfortunately, the most recent changes in 2004 made the law slightly more difficult to receive the benefits they deserve, which, depending upon the next administration and the make up of Congress may or may not be a trend that will be followed in the future.
Exactly what is a “free appropriate public education”? Under the law, it is defined as “special education and related services that (A) have been provided at public expense, under public supervision and direction, and without charge: (B) meet the standards of the State educational agency; (C) include an appropriate preschool, elementary or secondary school education in the State involved; and (D) are provided in conformity with the individualized education program required under [the law].” In other words, the school must provide services that meet the needs of a child with a disability that may affect their ability to learn. These “related services” can be services that are provided in the classroom, such as giving the child extra time to finish taking tests. They can also encompass services that can be provided outside of the classroom, such as tutoring, or having the child attend either a day or residential program outside of the school, along with transportation.
For the historical data, I relied on Wrightslaw: Special Education Law by Peter W. D. Wright and Pamela Darr Wright and Special Education Law in Massachusetts by Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education.
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