Home Teacher Credentials
Do You Have the Credentials to Home School?
When it comes to teaching children, the most important credential to have comes naturally to most parents. It is that deep love and care mothers and fathers feel for their own children. But can love alone teach a child to read and write and to do math?
Well, in a way, yes. When a teacher loves a student she will have a strong interest in the child’s welfare; when the student loves his teacher back, he is likely to do his very best. An atmosphere permeated by affinity makes for an ideal learning environment.
This is far better than the one-size-fits-all learning environment of public education. Such a method, even when most teachers do care deeply about their students, is often unworkable because it overlooks that students are unique and learn at different rates in different fields and at different times. And no one is more qualified than a parent to know the uniqueness of his or her own child. Designing a school program around a child’s individualized interests, activities and attributes is probably easier for a parent to do than anyone else.
One powerful teacher requisite that is often missing from a child’s schooling is a “reason why” he should study a particular subject. Since parents know their child better than any assigned teacher, it is easier for them to help their child find a good reason for learning something. When a child has a strong purpose for a subject, he will be willing to study it; he will want to study it. Very little actual accomplishment, if any, occurs without willingness; but with it, anything can be achieved.
The third teacher requisite, children should be taught how to figure things out for themselves and how to evaluate data as to importance. They should be able to use math or history lessons, for example, to reach satisfactory conclusions or solve the practical problems of living. And parents are especially interested in helping their children develop such reasoning skills.
No one can fulfill the “love your child” requisite better than a parent. If, however, help is needed with the second and third requisites, it can be easily be acquired with teacher-guidance organizations such as Applied Scholastics International or HomeGrad of America.
Therefore, it is my contention that parents have the best credentials in the world for being teachers. After all, they recognize and rejoice in the individuality of their own children!
