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Show HN: Great Books Homeschool beta program

greatbookshomeschool.com

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Re: Show HN: Great Books Homeschool beta program

#51

Post by syzarian »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #48
syzarian wrote: post #44

I have a question about home schooling in general. I'm a teacher with 20+ years of mathematics teaching experience at a community college. I don't know how to teach physics, chemistry, literature, reading, grammar, biology, etc. I especially don't know how to teach such topics to children. I don't know how to spot a learning disability except in an extreme case or to know if a student likely needs special education.…

First: If you need help, get help. If you can't do it, stop trying to do it. Second: There are communities (homeschool co-ops and such) that can help. Third, though: Do not underestimate yourself. You know a lot of physics for a third-grader. You can teach that, even if you have to read the textbook right beside the student. (You may not be able to by high school, though.) And you have a great advantage. One of the k…

Here’s an example that illustrates my position. Due to experience with teaching mathematics I know that it requires a lot of effort to convince a student that the reason 2x+3x is 5x is because of the distributive property. One could not possibly know this and why this is true without experience/knowledge. I haven’t the slightest idea of similar situations in other subjects. I know force is mass times acceleration but I have no idea how difficult a concept this is for new beginners because I have no experience with teaching this concept to beginners. I don’t know what examples to use when a student doesn’t grasp this concept.

Re: Show HN: Great Books Homeschool beta program

#52

Post by yucky »

syzarian wrote: post #44

I have a question about home schooling in general. I'm a teacher with 20+ years of mathematics teaching experience at a community college. I don't know how to teach physics, chemistry, literature, reading, grammar, biology, etc. I especially don't know how to teach such topics to children. I don't know how to spot a learning disability except in an extreme case or to know if a student likely needs special education.…

I suppose part of the consideration would be seeing how poorly so many public schools fare and how test scores continue to fall. And now, many schools don't even have textbooks because everything is digital. Even though we have studies showing how that has a negative impact on kids learning.

Is it the solution? I dunno, but public schools are getting worse by the year so I understand people trying something different.

Re: Show HN: Great Books Homeschool beta program

#53

Post by dabbledash »

syzarian wrote: post #44

I have a question about home schooling in general. I'm a teacher with 20+ years of mathematics teaching experience at a community college. I don't know how to teach physics, chemistry, literature, reading, grammar, biology, etc. I especially don't know how to teach such topics to children. I don't know how to spot a learning disability except in an extreme case or to know if a student likely needs special education.…

>> What is it about teaching that makes people with no training think they can do better than trained professionals?

Teaching one or two students whose home situation supports you 100% is a much much less daunting proposition than trying to teach a class of 30 kids (or several such classes).

The idea that teaching things to your own children (which all humans have done forever) requires specialized training and credentials seems silly. But again, that's a very different job than being a school teacher, I think.

Re: Show HN: Great Books Homeschool beta program

#54

Post by quacked »

all2 wrote: post #23
quacked wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find this strange. I have a lot of penmanship homework from my two years (!!) of kindergarten and first grade. I'll have to see if I can find the studies, but a lot of researchers have been finding that rushing to introduce kids to things doesn't make a great impact and in fact sometimes holds them back from lifetime achievement. (This does not apply to true prodigies.) Off the top of my head, some researchers ha…

I'm wary of any educational information coming out of the USSR. Good to know, though. It makes sense that trying to force development where the child isn't ready for it will cause them to struggle.

If it makes any difference, the information I got was from ex-USSR citizens who went through the process as kids and then raised their kids in the US system. It's been corroborated by both Russian professors (of the Russian language) and engineers in the aerospace industry.

Re: Show HN: Great Books Homeschool beta program

#55

Post by Ntrails »

syzarian wrote: post #51
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First: If you need help, get help. If you can't do it, stop trying to do it. Second: There are communities (homeschool co-ops and such) that can help. Third, though: Do not underestimate yourself. You know a lot of physics for a third-grader. You can teach that, even if you have to read the textbook right beside the student. (You may not be able to by high school, though.) And you have a great advantage. One of the k…

Here’s an example that illustrates my position. Due to experience with teaching mathematics I know that it requires a lot of effort to convince a student that the reason 2x+3x is 5x is because of the distributive property. One could not possibly know this and why this is true without experience/knowledge. I haven’t the slightest idea of similar situations in other subjects. I know force is mass times acceleration but…

> Due to experience with teaching mathematics I know that it requires a lot of effort to convince a student that the reason 2x+3x is 5x is because of the distributive property

pffft. Put two skittles next to three skittles and ask what the resulting summation is in terms of skittles.

I'm being a bit glib, but the reality seems to be that many smart people think teaching is trivial, a simple case of knowledge transfer. If you understand it, surely you can teach it to someone else.

My personal experience at uni suggests that truly brilliant people who understand topics perfectly can be Not Good at instilling understanding in others. It's a different skill imo.

Re: Show HN: Great Books Homeschool beta program

#56

Post by toomuchtodo »

syzarian wrote: post #44

I have a question about home schooling in general. I'm a teacher with 20+ years of mathematics teaching experience at a community college. I don't know how to teach physics, chemistry, literature, reading, grammar, biology, etc. I especially don't know how to teach such topics to children. I don't know how to spot a learning disability except in an extreme case or to know if a student likely needs special education.…

Because the experience public school provides is an exceptionally low bar considering class sizes/ratios, commuting to and from school, etc. Also, we can pour resources into our kids public schools can’t or won’t. The data also shows homeschool outcomes to be at parity or superior to public school outcomes. We only have two kids though, and my partner is a stay at home parent. We also rely on Modulo, among other resources, for structuring education delivery.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/522078

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33204988

https://www.modulo.app/homeschool

Re: Show HN: Great Books Homeschool beta program

#57

Post by lemming »

syzarian wrote: post #51
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First: If you need help, get help. If you can't do it, stop trying to do it. Second: There are communities (homeschool co-ops and such) that can help. Third, though: Do not underestimate yourself. You know a lot of physics for a third-grader. You can teach that, even if you have to read the textbook right beside the student. (You may not be able to by high school, though.) And you have a great advantage. One of the k…

Here’s an example that illustrates my position. Due to experience with teaching mathematics I know that it requires a lot of effort to convince a student that the reason 2x+3x is 5x is because of the distributive property. One could not possibly know this and why this is true without experience/knowledge. I haven’t the slightest idea of similar situations in other subjects. I know force is mass times acceleration but…

But it's not like I sit down and just invent the classes I do with my daughter. There are really good programs, which scaffold all this information and explain it to the kid (and often, coincidentally, to the parent too). For example, I know how to add, but would not know how to go systematically through all the cases and explain them to her. Fortunately the Singapore Math curriculum we use does all that and much much more, and I work through it with her.

Re: Show HN: Great Books Homeschool beta program

#59

Post by syzarian »

Ntrails wrote: post #55
syzarian wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s an example that illustrates my position. Due to experience with teaching mathematics I know that it requires a lot of effort to convince a student that the reason 2x+3x is 5x is because of the distributive property. One could not possibly know this and why this is true without experience/knowledge. I haven’t the slightest idea of similar situations in other subjects. I know force is mass times acceleration but…

> Due to experience with teaching mathematics I know that it requires a lot of effort to convince a student that the reason 2x+3x is 5x is because of the distributive property pffft. Put two skittles next to three skittles and ask what the resulting summation is in terms of skittles. I'm being a bit glib, but the reality seems to be that many smart people think teaching is trivial, a simple case of knowledge transfer…

Great example. It demonstrates you don’t know how to teach the subject. Your Skittles example won’t help with explaining how to add ax + bx. To generalize the concept of combining like terms we need to refer to the distributive property.
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