I understand this teachers frustrations but homeschoolers are the wrong people to be taking it out on.....in my opinion we are the rare parents that actually care about our children and their education. I have heard for years from teachers about how parents expect them to raise their children...parents these days expect teachers to handle discipline, morals and the education of their children. ????? There is something wrong with that picture..teachers are suppose to be there to teach not to raise America's children. How can anyone effectively teach a group of 25 to 30 students where a good percentage are disruptive? It is not necessarily the teachers fault but society's has a whole. (I do feel that this teacher needs to look at the issues..the article written in no way bashed ps teachers...it was a homeschooling mother presenting her views of how she felt....no one was trying to take anything away from anyone else)

I made the choice to take my children out of the above mentioned environment. I want my children to learn their morals from me...not from their peers. That is my number one reason for homeschooling. #2 is that it is a proven fact that children learn better in a one on one environment....I want to give my children that edge. #3 I wanted my family BACK....we had no family time whatsoever....our day when they went to school began at 6am and my children got home at 4:15pm did 2-3 hours worth of homework....ate dinner..bathed and went to bed. #4 fearful of increasing violence in the schools. oh and my list could go on.
Bottom line is this.. my reasons for homeschooling my child are my own. just has this teacher has his own reasons for teaching (but does he enjoy teaching those kids?????,,,,no matter how stressed I may get at times I get A LOT OF SATISFACTION from teaching my children). I pay taxes just like every other American does and a portion of that money goes to education.....I try and vote for people that are concerned about education reform. I do what I can for the population has a whole in that sense but I also choose to give my children the best education I can and at this moment in time I feel homeschooling is the best thing for them.

My name is Bret and I am the father of two. We are homeschooling our kinder and elementary aged children for the second year now.

I understand what the teacher (G.D.) is saying about taking our children out of the school. If we take the morally grounded children out of the public school, then the others will lose their influence and the schools will become worse.

Unfortunately, we don't see an answer. More money is not the answer to moral decline. The teachers would be better paid, but so would books like "Daddy's Roommate", amoral sex education and "sensitivity training" which is politically motivated and amounts to "moral desensitization training".

Our only recourse, we feel, is to remove our children from bad influences. Until the schools can either become moral bastions like they were at the turn of last century, or drop ALL aspects of morality including sex education and "sensitivity training" and politically motivated textbook choices, we decidedly abstain.

We are not going to make a loud noise to the school board to effect change. We are going to strike quietly, and keep our children safe in the process.

Sincerely,

Bret Barrier, M.D.
San Antonio, TX

I nanny two children part-time for nine years while holding down a full-time job and if it wasn't for the fact that I had to take over the tutoring of one of the children his teacher was going to recommend that he be held back. That's not that fault of the parent, that's the fault of the teacher.

Yes, public school teachers ARE underpaid. Someone suggested $40,000 as a typical salary, but that's not even close to typical. That's way more than typical. I taught 10 years and never got close to that much money a year. But homeschooling parents don't get paid at all for their teaching, remember.

Most of the homeschooling parents I know are still involved in improving public schools. After all, we don't want all our kids' peers to be poorly educated. These are the people who will be running the world when we're retired.

Homeschoolers and public school teachers aren't enemies. After all, both groups are doing the best for kids with the resources they have. Public school teachers are, for the most part, as dedicated to their FAR TOO MANY students as they can be with so little time and support and so many little souls demanding their attention. It's the public school system that doesn't work, not the teachers. The teachers work miracles with the situations they have. We, as homeschoolers, just don't choose to put our kids in those situations, not because we don't respect the efforts of the teachers, but for many personal reasons, from religious to philosophical, to physical distances, to kids' special needs, and on and on.

My guess is that what provoked that defensive response was a reaction like, "Oh, you think it's hard with your THREE kids? Try 150 of them, 30 every hour, half of them behavior problems!" Which is a legitimate reason to be stressed, but doesn't address what you were getting at. In other words, that teacher was venting because her job is nearly impossible. She's probably a good person who wants to be a good teacher, but being a good teacher in today's public schools is like being a good swimmer in a pool full of honey.

Juli

We sold our house and moved to another district to get a better education for my daughter, now age 10, who was diagnosed with autism at age 3.

The only thing that changed in the new district is that the people I deal with are more pleasant and civil. But year after year, they've gotten away with putting the most transparently inadequate goals in her IEP. This time I am determined not to sign unless they put some meaningful goals in. But I know only too well that there could be failure in proper implementation of those goals -- but my daughter's lack of achievement will definitely be blamed on HER.

I said at the beginning of the letter that I do not homeschool. I take that back, I meant, not FULL-TIME. If I had her at home all day I doubt I could function as effectively as I do. Teaching my daughter is a challenging job. What I do is treat the school like a convenient respite care center-- and compensate as much as I can at home. She is currently learning to play the piano and making wonderful progress. My daughter is an excellent reader, even though she cannot engage in sustained conversation. Two weeks ago, she made a short presentation to the regular ed kids at her school, talking about herself from a script I prepared for her which she read out. The other kids were simply riveted. Later, they wrote her wonderful letters.

This happened because I TOOK THE INITIATIVE, cultivated a friendly relationship with the regular ed teacher, and did it in spite of the people who looked skeptical that my daughter could pull it off. It certainly WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED if I had left it to the system. I have been trying for the last three years to get the social workers to see she would benefit from interacting with regular kids, provided the interaction was WELL MANAGED.

But please note, also, that nothing constructive would have happened if I had snarled at several people and hurled blunt heavy objects at them, much as I felt like doing.

In the preceding messages I have seen a lot of vitriol directed at the offending teacher. I DO think the teacher asked for by the smug and smirky tone of the post, but -- it is PRECISELY this sort of adversarial attitude between teachers and parents --an endless cycle of hostility, defensiveness and bitterness -- that causes our kids to lose out and creates inhuman pressures on the parents to overcompensate. WE MUST FIND WAYS TO WORK TOGETHER, to explain rather than attack, to make constructive suggestions rather than deride and humiliate each other. The original post was an appeal for HELP. To answer it with a gloat "Oh, so you parents think you're better than us.." completely misses the point, besides sounding disgusting.

This teacher is a human being and regardless of however well- or under-paid they may be, IS going to feel burned out and besieged. Haven't we all been there? However, if he/she has a problem with support or appreciation, this is hardly the forum to vent those views. Children cannot wait for the system to improve. If parents don't get involved, there are any number of negative distractions vying for their attention.

I suggest we begin improving the public education system by first completely scrapping the current TEACHER TRAINING COURSES and starting over. Treating parents as EQUAL PARTNERS should be one of the fundamental commandments given to a teacher. No one makes constructive improvements to the situation by being condescending and angry -- beyond hurting someone's feelings -- and that applies to parents' dealings with teachers as well.

My congratulations go out to all you determined parents and creative, hardworking teachers reading this. To do something because it is the right thing is often its own reward.