Should I home school this barely passing child?

In My Humble Opinion
21

How intellectual is your grandson? Is he capable of doing the work?

Personally, I was never a very good student. I found it mostly to be a chore and a pain. Many of the classes I took were painfully boring, not to mention the homework involved. I basically did what was necessary to get through the experience.

School to me was a chore and a pain in the ass as a kid. Having to wake up early in the morning, spend all morning and the afternoon sitting in one room after another, bein g told to be quiet, not being allowed to leave, having to ask permission for such and so. The other students and their personalities. Then having to do HOMEWORK, which took more time out of my day. Then having to deal with my parents if I did not do a good job, with me getting my ass beat for bringing home bad grades, or getting grounded, where there was NO TV, No friends, can’t leave the house bullshit. Learning bullshit like diagramming sentences or having to do book reports on boring ass fictional books.

For me, I was an avid reader of encyclopedias and books. This is what my primary school teachers couldn’t figure out, that I was doing the bare minimum while reading the World Book Encyclopedia or being able to tell you all the Presidents in order, or know the names of countries in the World, or knowing about religions.

I remember specifically once when I was in High School. It was a gorgeous day outside. School was over and I went to the city library for some reason after school, and in the library were one classmate of mine who was a straight A student and several others who I knew from experience were excellent students. Not much of a story but:

1.) It’s a beautiful day outside.

2.) You are 16 years old, in the flower of your youth and you will never be that again.

3.) You are sitting in a library after being in school all day. It’s 3:30 on a Friday! Play tennis, ride a bike, play a game of football, play video games, smoke a joint, watch TV, have sex with your girlfriend. Anything, anything, that having to be in the library just to make a high grade. Teens should be able to enjoy their youth, not merely having to do extraciriccular activities, sitting in libraries, having to study more and more and harder and harder to make that one extra point to go to a University, where again, students will have to endure this process again and again and again.

Why do you think there is so much drinking on colleges and always have been?

Here is a thought, let the kid have fun for the next month. Take a trip, see some museums, take him to the mountains, or a famous historical place.

Let him go to eighth grade. Tutor him at home. Beat him if he brings home bad grades. Lock him up in his room without his dinner unless he does. Wont work, but what can you do, shoot the teachers?

22

Don’t mean to hijack, but why? I wouldn’t go to work if I wasn’t paid; school is a child’s job, why shouldn’t they be paid for performance?

23

This is not a Great Debate, (a discussion of the value of home schooling), but a request for opinions regarding a specific life situation.

Moving to IMHO.

[ /Modding ]

24

Hmmm.

The point I got from the first post was to attempt to incentivize the ongoing process, not the somewhat delayed outcome. Money is an incentive. So is being allowed to play or watch TV.

As to which is an reward and which is a punishment, well that is only a matter of which is expected to occur. If some privilege is a default condition then removing it is a punishment; if it is earned then it is a reward.

Standard operating procedure among many tutors (example for working with ADD kids) is to establish a token economy to reward the process of completing various tasks with what had previously been baseline privileges. Each component of the process earns a certain amount of tokens which are able to be exchanged for different privileges. Money is really just a token accepted by society at large but at its heart no different. But as a parent I want the tokens to mean what I say they mean so I would personally stay away from using money as the token.

As this particular circumstance, others have already nailed the key features. Why is this kid failing, especially now? Is there an LD or ADD-I that he has been bright enough to compensate for until material or the environment got too complex? Are there social issues? IS he actually performing to his abilities and expecting more is unrealistic? Discussing the right potential prescriptions for success is premature until it is understood what the problem really is.

As to homeschooling, it has also been said: doing it well is difficult and requires much discipline and patience, and at these grade levels much education, on the part of the home caregiver. I wouldn’t have what it takes myself; some do. I would hazard a guess that most kids who are failing while in an overall average school system and being given extracurricular resource help (like Sylvan) would not be better served by most of us trying to educate them at home. But again, one size does not fit all.

25

I’m not an expert by any means, but if his grades slipped from Bs and Cs to all Ds in the span of a semester, I would be concerned about bullying and look into that first.

I think before you start investigating home schooling, you need to investigate why his grades are poor.

I think I would also tell mom to smarten up - if she can’t even put in the effort to make sure an 12 year old has done his homework, it’s no wonder he can’t be bothered to actually do it.

26

A few thoughts:

I homeschooled my daughter from sixth grade on. She wasn’t doing poorly in school in every subject, just math. She was just miserable and apathetic about it all. She was made to feel stupid because she couldn’t catch on, but when I requested testing I was told she’d catch up. If I’d known in the beginning I could demand testing I’d have pushed for it.

Homework was HELL. It’s not being a bad mother to find yourself exhausted trying to push a 12 year old to do homework. My daughter knew it was beyond what she was capable of and I thought she was just being lazy so it was a never-ending battle. Homeschooling was the last resort that I knew of at the time. I just couldn’t deal with the lack of concern at her school.

When I first brought her home it was still HELL, just another level! Fights and tears all day long. Then I heard about unschooling. After we started that everything changed. I allowed her to go all the way back to first grade level math, she learned the language; then she was able to apply that knowledge. I let her guide her own interests but I always exposed her to other interests. She blossomed. Learned Russian and Japanese. Read lots of great books, fell in love with Richard Feynman and all things science. It worked for us. But even with unschooling there was a TON of work for me. I had to make sure since I was doing unstructured homeschooling that she still kept her basic educational needs at the right level. I had a lot of paperwork and I had to be there every day to push her subtly because some kids will play WOW for 12 hours instead of working on something more educational.

You really have to know the child, know his or her interests, what they excel at and where their true deficiencies are. You have to forever be positive despite times that seem very dark. You have to believe in your grandson if you want to give him this gift, and he has to believe in you. You can’t just sit him down with some textbooks and expect him to behave for you any more than he behaves with his teachers and parents.

If this boy’s grades have dropped so sharply there’s a reason. Before you take him out of school you need to be absolutely sure what’s going on and he may not tell you himself. Seventh grade/age 12 is a very hard time. Many kids fall behind academically while they focus on social building skills. It’s great that you thought of Sylvan but that may not be what he needs. He could be bored out of his mind at school, finds no incentive for turning in busy work. He may be so confounded by it all he can’t even begin to work. He may be lazy. He may be rebelling. He might just want to look cool. It will be up to you guys to figure this out before you take the next step. I’d make that step testing, just to make sure. My daughter, when I finally had her tested myself, was found to have dyslexia, mostly related to numbers and spatial skills. She scored off the charts when it came to anything language related. I had to learn to work with her needs. You have to design a plan specifically for your grandson’s needs and interests if you really want him to succeed in teaching him at home. Keep him involved in social activities, get him to think outside the ordinary. Shock him occasionally. If you’re prepared to put forth this effort it’s worth it. I’ve never regretted bringing her home to teach her myself. But it is hard.

27

Why more people don’t understand this is a mystery to me…

28

I understand the assertion, but I don’t agree that it’s true. Homeschooling and conventional schooling are not the same. A great deal of what educators are taught are things like classroom management, dealing with groups of children and administrators, the latest fads in pedagogy, etc. Don’t get me wrong, it’s incredibly valuable stuff if you’re responsible for cramming information into the heads of 30 preeteens trying to kill each other socially and burn down the gym for shits and giggles. But most of it doesn’t apply to one or two students under your parental control. It’s just a different kind of relationship, and a different kind of teaching happens as a result.

As for “could you teach calculus”? The answer is right now, today, to a group of strange kids? Absolutely not. But give me a good guide and plenty of time one on one with my kid, and we can learn it together*. I don’t need to know how to do the problems at the end of the book before we start, I just need to keep one paragraph ahead of him! (Or, actually, let him get one paragraph ahead of me and teach me!)

*y’know, hypothetically. I already gave my pathetic reason for not homeschooling. But we’ve certainly learned other stuff together, I don’t see why calculus would be any different.

29

Agreed. IMHO, the single hardest thing about teaching is working with children who are at different levels of knowledge/ability. Do you teach to the best students, or to the worst? How do you keep the top students from being bored, and how do you get the lower performers to catch up?

All of this is moot when you’re only teaching one kid.

And as for being an expert in every topic, it’s probably impossible, so it’s silly to think that should be a requirement. When I was a teacher, I taught English as a Foreign Language at an elementary school level. Really, really basic stuff about my native freaking language. And I still screwed some stuff up/had to read the textbook for an explanation on occasion. There are grammar rules that I had to teach than I’d never even thought of because they’re habit to me.

Anyway, re: the OP. I don’t think we have enough information to be able to give a useful answer to the question.

30

I actually find that any method that does not use a ton of homework works a lot better. The advantage of homeschooling is the one on one attention, which means you have time to work with them until they get something, rather than assigning a ton of homework for people who need all that practice. (Not that I’m sure that practicing where you can’t get help is worthwhile.).

The disadvantages I’ve seen seems to be social skills, which are often lacking in homeschooled students (but this is greatly mediated by having spent at least elementary school with a bunch of people, and setting up social groups.) and the fact that every college assumes you must not have actually learned anything and makes you take remedial classes, despite the fact that many have already started college level work. IT’s like a GED (and, in at least some places, that’s exactly the test you have to pass to actually graduate.)

31

Former teachers who homeschool their own children consistently say that the teaching credential does not help with homeschooling–in fact it can hinder for a while as you have to un-learn a lot of things and let go of all those rules. The two things are not the same, and if I was going to design a prep course for parents about to homeschool, it would look completely, utterly different than a teaching credential program. My MLIS has come in quite handy, and so would any number of other educational qualifications, but the fact is, the whole point of homeschooling is learning independently, and there is no official program needed–just lots of motivation and willingness to study and do whatever you have to do.

I cannot offer advice to the OP; I would advise you to talk to the kid and try to figure out what the problem is.

32

I’m seeing one major problem with you home schooling the kid.

33

Especially seeing as it’s two days later, and still no response… that’s one hell of a work schedule!

34

I agree with this.

& the people I know who successfully homeschooled their kids had one stay at home parent & the kids were bright.

35

“Could you teach calculus?”

I’d just like to say that this question points out an area of general ignorance about homeschoolers. People usually assume that homeschooling = being home all the time. This is not true. What it boils down to is the family (parents and child together) being in charge of the child’s education. If you hire a tutor, sign up for a class, or use any of the many avenues available, you’re still a homeschooler.

High school students who are homeschoolers pretty much have to do at least half the coursework outside the home. For one thing, you need those recommendation letters for college! CC classes are the usual thing to do, as well as online study, tutoring, and so on. So although there are several excellent home-study calculus courses out there (which btw my husband would be fully able to teach, as would our charter school contact), most students take it at a community college, along with the lab sciences that are difficult to do properly at home.

36

Okay, I haven’t read the whole thread, I just have to comment on this.

How on earth is this showing that rewards are a bad idea? The first example demonstrates that the man was offering the wrong amount of reward. If the individual had offered the second amount and kept the price steady, he would have been successful in getting people to do what he wanted.

The second example is just silly. What teenagers are this dumb? What was their motivation for yelling insults in the first place?

37

Okay, so I’m back and I thought about the second scenario a little more. The only motivation I can think of for teenagers yelling insults at a man is that they are being reinforced by negative social attention. In other words, they like pissing him off. When the man starts offering them money, he is now giving them positive social attention, which is not what they want. They are no longer receiving reinforcement for yelling insults, and they leave. This scenario actually demonstrates that reinforcement is necessary for a behavior to continue, but that it’s important to really think about what factor in the situation is reinforcing to the individuals.

To relate my hijack to this thread: it’s important to determine why your grandson is failing. Learning disability, bad social situation, lack of motivation, can’t handle the work or the work is too easy…there could be any number of factors at play that removing him from school will not correct.

38

Re: The negative aspect of rewards
My main source for this isthis book.

By definition, a reward is given after a desirable action to encourage continuation of the action. Ideally, parents give a reward for say good grades hoping that the expectation of the reward forces the child to work as hard, or harder, than they used to. Does this happen? For some students, yes. For most students, however, the reward must increase to maintain the same level of effort. I’m sure many of us have had the experience of receiving a known reward, and then having the recipient say, “That’s all? That’s the same thing I got last time.” If the reward ceases, decreases, or even stays the same, the good action will be reduced or even eliminated.

Punishments are similar. By definition, punishments are given to discourage the continuation of a negative action. For example, bad grades followed by a spanking. For some students, this works. However, for many students (and criminals,) the punishment actually accomplishes one of two things: the student no longer cares about the punishment having experienced it and finding out it wasn’t as bad as they thought, or they become resentful and start increasing the negative action even though they were unlikely to do it in the first place.

Here’s an example from the above textbook. Three groups are given the task to fix radios. The first group must fix radios or pay a penalty for every radio they don’t fix in a given amount of time. The second group is given payment for each radio they fix. The third group is given a free choice whether they fix the radios or not.

In group 1, they started out fixing the radios. However, as time went by, they preferred to pay the fine rather than fix radios, thinking it was “too much effort.” The second group also began fixing the radios, but as time went by, stopped because they felt that their effort was worth more than what they were being paid. The third group…well, I’ll leave it for now, but let’s just say there’s a third option besides rewards and punishments.

Another interesting thing is that punishments actually result in an increase in the negative behavior when the punishment is eliminated. For example, if students are punished for staying up late, they will stay up extra late when their parents are out of town. In other words, the degree, amount and severity of the negative action is increased because of punishments. The same thing happens with rewards. If the reward stops, the action stops, even if the student did the action on their own accord previously.

Therefore, if we go back to the definition of punishments and rewards, the actual result tends to be the opposite: negative behaviors are increased because of punishments, and good behaviors are decreased or even eliminated by rewards.

Jobs, however, are a different story, although I do see many behaviors that would fit the above. For example, a person who feels they are getting paid less than they deserve would behave as above as though being punished. A person who goes through many jobs quickly at even the slightest hint of a raise may be displaying the reward behavior. However, I think that for most people, salary is secondary compared to the self-satisfaction in doing the job, and that most of us would prefer a job they are happy at rather than one with slightly higher pay but worse conditions.

39

Also check for ADD. Many bright children mask ADD symptoms in elemetary school but seventh grade ends up being a pivotal year in which compensating skills begin to fail. A psychiatrist or well trained therapist can help in diagnosis. We went through a similar situation with my son. PM me for more details, if you’d like.

40

I considered homeschooling for my son who was failing in high school, but I work so there was no way I could manage it. What we did instead was enrolled him in the local “alternative” school.

Most people have big fears about alternative schools since the assumption is that many of the students have behavioral issues or whatever.

What we found was amazing and surprising: small classrooms (maybe 10-15 students in each class) innovative and interesting assignments that translated the material into real world knowledge, no homework, and faculty and staff who knew and really liked my son.

The results were quite positive. He made and kept agreements with his teachers and principal about attendance and completing work, and his grades went from Fs to As.

And since it was part of the local district it was free.

For my daughter who was in a similar position in high school we found out that the local community college had a program where you could finish junior and senior year of high school at the same time that you did your first two years of college classes. It was a tough program, but she blossomed and after those two years she transferred to a great university (will graduate this year!)

Again, part of the public district, so it was free.

Unfortunately we got no information about these options from the high school itself, I had to search and find them myself and get my kids transferred into those programs. It was worth it though because I think my kids just didn’t do well in the local test focused public high school system, they needed something different and I’m glad we found it.

It’s possible your community has options like these as well, ask around and keep asking until you find a spot that works for him.