Candice Pre-Service Teacher Toowoomba QLD, Aust

[Candice Marie Thompson]

 

Hi All,

I am a mother of 2 boys; JJ 3yo and BJ 1yo; My husband and I have a lot of healing to do and are loving the real connections US brings forth.

We have just moved to Toowoomba and are seeking as many new friends as possible; I am studying and am/will find it difficult changing from mainstream thinking to USing though am loving the challenge as I know US is so worth while and we need for those who choose to work/children choose to go to school a lot more alternative schools. I want to really be apart of this movement from the mainstream model to better learning strategies.

Don't worry it is happening yet 'Best Practice' that we are taught in Uni's through teacher training does raise a lot of questions about how to actually place it within the confines of all that 'Being a Teacher' entails. (P.S. My spelling isn't great and I am forgiving myself until I create it as a priority... as all learning I am US myself through this and apologise if I forget to spell check in the mean time.) This is just a practical example of what was to be my next point; for schools to incorporate what is taught in teacher training properly then these 'true-er understandings' of how learning needs to be supported to be effective learning we need to be allowing ourselves to slow down lo learn and not follow the alternative brainwashing that compensates for ineffective practices. 

Hope to speak to you soon about shared interests/joys and suferings;

Candice

[Joyce Fetteroll]

*** we need for those who choose to work/children choose to go to school a lot more alternative schools. ***

 

*** for schools to incorporate what is taught in teacher training properly then these 'true-er understandings' of how learning needs to be supported to be effective learning ***

 

If I'm getting what you're saying, there are -- or perhaps were -- a number of alternative schools in the United States. The aternative schools tend to drift more and more mainstream because parents don't trust natural learning. And if the parents turn the responsibility of their children's learning over to a teacher, they will want feed back (like test scores or *something*) that their kids are learning what they need.

 

Unschooling looks like playing. Unless a parent knows in her bones that playing and exploring interests is how people learn, she can't trust it.

 

Parents don't have years of seeing kids learn to read on their own. They don't have many many examples of kids not reading until they're 12 and then having reading suddenly click for them. They don't have examples of kids never cracking a math book and yet developing an understanding of how numbers work.

 

Natural learning provides little feedback that learning is happening. It provides even less if parents aren't there to see the process throughout the day.

 

It's taken 20 years for homeschooling to move from people reacting to it with "Is that legal??" to "Oh, my cousin does that with her kids." Homeschooling has the advantage of at least resembling school in many ways. It looks like science and math and reading.

 

Unschooling will take much much longer to work into people's acceptance. It will take grown unschooled kids who are doing cool things. It will take unschoolers who are articulate enough to explain it so it doesn't sound like parents who are clueless and are just letting their kids run wild. It will take many many examples of kids who are learning "what they need" through living before there's a large enough chunk of society that wants to see it in schools.

 

I don't mean to be a dream crusher! But if you have the idea of getting natural learning fostered in schools in a big way, you're going to fail like everyone else. Schools can't successfully offer a service when most parents don't believe in it and don't want it. It's the parents who need to change first, not the schools.