No, I am not responsible for all kids -- I am responsible for my kids. I want them to have the best education possible and, sadly, that is not the public schools, save a few exceptions. I don't believe the answer is more funding. Teachers are highly paid in most areas, especially considering they work for 9 months and get almost every holiday off no matter how minor. If this teacher wants me to sympathize with him, I'm sorry. He won't get it here. I have to work full-time from home just to be able to stay home and do what's best for my children. He is paid to teach those children, and deal with the stresses that come with the job. I'm not -- mine is strictly a volunteer effort. Well, that's not entirely true. I am paid every time I see the light of learning in my children's eyes; something that was not seen in the years of public school. I get love, hugs and respect from my children. I want them to see the sacrifices that we make to be able to educate them at home, so they can know how important and special they are. Not to be herded like cattle and weeded out according to whether or not a teacher likes them.

Not that it is this teacher's business, I took my daughter out of public school because she was being harassed and the teachers, administration, everybody did nothing. NOTHING. She was being picked on about her father's death and the school didn't care. They didn't even tell me. The teacher had so little control over the class that she told my daughter to go and read in the corner during the day so they wouldn't have anyone to pick on. Where was the dedication and respect for my child? What was my child learning then?

My children will never go back to public school. They love learning, and love the support and attention they get from me...even when I am stressed out. It's a temporary thing. The condition of the public school system is not.

Good luck with your school...I do wish you and the children that you teach all the best. But don't attack me and the right to educate and love my children the way that I see fit. This is my choice and my right. No matter what happens, I will continue to fight for MY children and their right to something better.

Dear Unsympathetic:

My reasons for homeschooling do not have to do with overcrowding problems or stressed-out teachers. My reasons for homeschooling have everything to do with my child and his needs--which cannot be adequately addressed in an institutional school setting. I also am concerned by various factors in the institutional school setting which include (but are not limited to) the following: lack of discipline, time wasted on videos, time lost to juvenile delinquents calling in false bomb threats, and a failure to teach my son resulting in the necessity of teaching at home. Under such circumstances, there seems to be no valid reason to waste six hours of his day for five days a week--I have had to teach him everything that he has learned thus far anyway, and it progresses much better when I don't have to deal with an over stimulated and tired child with only a few hours in the evening once we have completed the busywork with which he was sent home.

When I am sick, I have to carry on--there is no one to take the burden for me. When a teacher in an institutional school is sick, s/he can rely on a substitute to take over for that day (or days). Under such circumstances--knowing that the dishes and laundry must still get done, cleaning throughout the house must still get done, and the teaching (which I did even when my son was attending institutional school)--who can truly blame me for getting a tiny bit stressed? Yes, I knew that it would not necessarily be an easy task--but I will say that it is much easier when I don't have to deal with the negatives of involvement in institutional school on top of everything else.

My own experience as a student in institutional schools was resoundingly negative. Yes, I was a straight-A student, but I coasted all the way through college without ever learning the skills of studying. I simply didn't have to--it was all too easy for me, and my "teachers" were simply happy that I was so bright, making them look good. However, I have long considered myself to be an autodidact--I taught myself everything that I have learned, read every book in my hometown's public library by the age of 17, and merely endured being warehoused for the years of my public education. Yes, of course I want better than that for my children, and they will get it.

You might think that it is a matter of funding, but that same song was being sung when I was a prisoner of the institutional school system, and hundreds of thousands of dollars have been thrown at the problem, and it only seems to be getting worse. I had one dedicated teacher who was willing to go the extra mile for me--and she was removed from the classroom. Of course, years later I discovered that it was not because she was willing to actually teach me--even though it meant giving me lessons that were different from the work done by the class--but because she was an alcoholic. For years, I lived with the burden of thinking it was my fault that she was removed. More funding would not have helped her; and unless the institutional school setting was willing to provide me with a private tutor, more funding would not have helped me, either.

I do not consider it to be my obligation to be an advocate for the education of all the children in the community. I am an advocate for my own children because that is part of the responsibility that I signed on for when I became a mother. Other parents may shirk their duties, but I will not fail my children.

Sadly, I don't think that institutional school is about education, anyway. For all those years that I was held prisoner in the institutional school, I begged for harder work, I begged to be advanced grade levels until I hit a challenge. The reason I was denied an education by the institutional system was that I was considered "socially immature" because I did not make friends among my age-peers. If the system cared about educating the students within the system, I would not have been denied for such petty reason.
****************
MJ

6 hours/day divided by 20 students=18 minutes per student

subtract:

Recess
Lunch
Fire drills
Art, PE, Music, unplanned interruptions, etc.

My kids deserve more time than that.

First of all, I pulled my children out of public school, a few
months before our school district closed the school. We live in a small, rural area, and the administrators closed it down due to "lack of funding." Now all of the children are bused to a more over crowded school and they spend about two hours a day on a bus. 

Second, I had my son's third grade teacher read a book to his class, about "gay people and how they aren't that different from the rest of us."

I have many reasons for pulling my kids out of school, many of them personal choice reasons, but many I guess you'd call "political" reasons for pulling them out of school. As far as his frustrations as a public school teacher, maybe he should find a different line of work. At least he gets paid to put up with it. I don't get "paid" for any of the things I do every day, but I have one of the best "paying" jobs around, even if it is
frustrating from time to time.

If the answer to your problem is more money, then why now, when schools get so much more money per child than in previous years (all time high, I forget how much, something like $3000 or something per child), and teachers get paid more now than at any time in the past, are our children doing so much worse than previous years? Test scores have fallen and violence has increased, just to mention a few increasing problems.

I don't doubt for a moment that teachers have it bad. I truly believe teachers have it worse now than before mostly because of "mainstreaming". Don't get me wrong, I am not an advocate of institutions, but these teachers are expected to do it all: special ed, therapist, normal ed... with 25+ kids in a classroom, usually with no help! This is ridiculous. I agree that we need to go to our legislators with the problem. The way the schools are run needs to be changed. I have a friend who teaches third grade. In her class of 25, she has four special ed kids, 2 gifted kids, 2 that are "ADD", one that is a diabetic for whom she is expected to monitor his behavior in relation to his blood sugar. Give me a break!! How is she supposed to do a good job giving all of these kids a good education?

If you ask me, the problem has not so much to do with increased funding as it does with increasing the teacher/child ratio ( I think I said that right....more teachers, less kids). I think we should go back to some semblance of the one room school house, where kids are in a particular room because of their ability, not because of their age. I personally don't think there should be any more than 10 kids in a classroom. I know I live in a dream world, but this is what I think. I would not send my kids back into that holding tank unless I absolutely had to, and I hope it never comes to that. I do not fault the teachers at all. They have a tough job. It's next to impossible to do all that is required of them, if they do it the right way. The problem is the system, to be sure. We need to work on that. The answer is not to send more money (band aids), fix the problem.

(If this sounds a bit rambling or disconnected, I'm sorry.....kids mom's a bit pooped tonight!!!)

Susan in PA

We do need to change the system, and many of us are working in that direction. But we have ALSO chosen not to sacrifice our own children in the process. Even if everybody agreed to make all the changes you wanted, they would take YEARS to be implemented. By then we would have wasted some of the only childhood years our kids have.

We do appreciate you.