Take
it from a teacher – thoughts about daycare
by Beverley Smith
I
am a teacher, at levels K-12 in my city. I currently
am a supply/ substitute teacher but before that
I taught full time at various schools. When
I had my own child however, I chose to proof
him against some oddities of public schooling
because I had seen where it might have gaps.
Most teachers do.
The rates of teachers who home school kids is
quite high as are rates of public school teachers
who send their own kids to private school. How
odd.
I
chose a compromise. I wanted my own four kids
to get the social benefit of a large public
school, and the great equipment benefit of chemistry
and physics rooms that my own budget could not
provide- so I was not tempted to homeschool
them in high school. But I certainly wanted
to ensure some basic skills were taught to them,
even if in its large group settings the public
schools did this imperfectly. I decided to provide
home preschool. Daily. From birth to age 5-6.
I
also did supplementary home-schooling with the
kids till they were in grade 9. I created courses
in the history of science experiment, the history
of the world, math – (7 volumes), medicine,
French, creative writing, law. My goal was to
help my kids go deeper than the schools did,
and to learn in a more chronologically logical
style than the schools did, and to make sure
there were no gaps.
Homes have a terrific advantage. The first is
of course the small group, the one-on-one attention
of the adult to the child’s needs, interests,
skills. But the second, very close to that is
the flexibility. We could ‘do books’
at 7 AM or 4PM, in a hotel room or in the car,
at home or on holidays. When the child was sick
we could skip a lesson and when the child was
keen we could do two at once.
Parents
know their kids. They are the first teachers
and all along the road, even if not great at
teaching a specific skill, are deeply cared
about by the child, all their lives. It stuns
me sometimes to realize how little children’s
world really is based on what we show them .
There is an odd expression lately that putting
a child in daycare will help develop his ‘readiness
to learn’. It is an illogical expression.
Children are born ready to learn and you can’t
keep them from learning. They soak in what we
say and what we did not think they heard. They
are always ‘on’. That is why all
parents are teachers, like it or not.
Contrary
to many arguments lately that children need
daycare to provide ‘early childhood education’
I would simply suggest that we think again.
All children already are in ‘early childhood
education’ just by being alive. They are
learning to walk, to talk, to hold a cup, to
use a spoon, to use a toilet. Yes it is true
they by playing with others learn social skills
like sharing, taking turns, being quiet when
others are speaking, speaking softly to not
disrupt others. But it is not accurate that
those ‘social’ skills can only be
learned in large groups. They can learned in
social situations – even with just one
other person – say mom, or dad. They can
be learned with siblings and one of the great
virtues of siblings is that they are nature’s
built-in cotravellers through life. Learning
how to get along with each other is a vital
skill siblings teach each other, with careful
parental guidance. So let us not assume that
‘socialization’, the new buzzword,
is the domain only of daycares.
My
four kids learned how to get along with others
when neighbor children came over. I also took
them to library story hours, to swim classes,
art class, pottery class, dance class, as their
interests suggested so they learned many things
about group dynamics. What I have found though
is that long long exposure to large groups is
hard on little kids. It is OK to have to be
one of many for an hour or two a day but for
8 hours, having to never be the ‘special’
one, the cuddled one, is hard on the fragile
sense of self. Little kids need in this big
world to each feel they are unique, worthwhile,
loved for what they are right now – and
large groups settings cannot do that. There
is no time. There is no staff. And mostly ,
there is no bond of love. Caregivers however
warm and wonderful they may about children in
general, do not have the same vested interest
in a given child that the parents do. They do
not know the background, the health concerns,
the little fears, the shy interests. They can
do their best but it is only the parent who
really does understand. I think parents have
been tricked if they have been led to believe
they are not as competent as some ‘trained
professional’ early childhood educator.
What a lot of fancy labels for basically someone
who took courses and has a piece of paper.
There
are some fields that develop expertise by book
learning. I would imagine history and logic
are two. But other fields are hands-on. You
can’t win the Olympics only by reading
about skiing. Airlines don’t hire pilots
based just on written exams. Mountain guides
are hired not from their c.v. of diplomas but
also from their years of experience. The same
holds true for parenting. The experience teaches
you how to do it.
We
all realized when we had our first child, how
incompetent we were and yet within a few weeks
that baby had taught us a lot about babies,
how to hold them, how to feed them. It is true
that books help and that having courses, role
models and mentors helps but in parenting, expertise
also vitally comes from doing. The same is true
with many things, like medicine and law. When
you need a heart surgeon you want someone who
has done the surgery many times before. Experience.
Sadly
society does not seem to value experience at
all in regards to parenting. A mother of six
children is considered to not be an early childhood
expert, oddly enough, while a fresh-faced 18
year old just out of college is. There is something
wrong with that. We need to value both types
of learning, but never undervalue the hands-on.
Parents
are great teachers. Because they are with the
child long hours the kids see us in all moods
and we as adults have the opportunity to not
only clean up our act and be calmer, as good
mature adults now, but also we admit to ourselves
and the kids when we make little mistakes. This
admission, this honesty, helps the kids accept
themselves when they too are less than perfect
and gives them the will to carry on and try
again. Parents can do this way better than teachers
can because teachers come into and out of a
child’s life too briefly for any deep
friendship to grow.
As a teacher I feel that two basic skills must
be taught by parents if at all possible –
literacy and numeracy- and if you had to choose,
pick literacy. All kids need to learn to read
if they are to have a chance at school success
and to increase their odds of career success
exponentially. I have been teaching kids for
30 years now and there are many many styles
of teaching kids to read that make me feel sad
and even revulsed. It is not fair to make little
kids memorize words. That is not reading. That
is parroting, memorizing and guessing. Yes it
works for a while but then the child, told he
is reading, proceeds to assume any new material
is therefore open to him, and quickly discovers
he was misinformed. He has no skills to figure
out what words not on the memorized list said.
No skills. He guesses only. That is nearly criminal.
We need a method of teaching kids to read that
helps them identify the letters, sound out the
word and actually figure our for themselves
what it says. That is step one.
But many schools do not have the time for instruction
that intense. They want the quick fix, the list
of words to chant, the coloring books and early
readers that make kids just overlearn that set
of words. It makes me so sad to see kids in
grade 3, taught that way, who still can’t
really read. We needed to teach them one on
one, better.
Parents can do this. Parents can take 5 minutes
a day, introducing an alphabet letter every
week, from age 3. Parents have the time, and
what is even better parents have the environment.
On the day the child studies m, they can spend
parts of the rest of that day pointing out bumpy
m’s on embossed park signs, can eat food
starting with m like marshmallows, muffins,
can sing songs starting with M – like
Mary Mary quite contrary. Parents have the time
to immerse the child in each letter so it becomes
as natural to them as breathing. And parents
can do it casually as they play in the park,
as they make supper, as they look at pictures
together at naptime. Schools don’t have
the time or enough laps to sit on for 30 kids
to each get this level of attention.
But
I guess what always made me feel convinced I
should stay home with my kids instead of going
back to paid teaching while they were young
was this – I was not sure what happened
to questions that did not get answered. If my
child was puzzled about anything, and I was
not there to answer, who would they ask? And
if there was no one there to hear, would there
become in the child’s mind a bigger and
bigger vault of ‘things you are not supposed
to know’ or ‘things you are not
smart enough to know’? I was concerned
as a teacher that the inquisitiveness of youth,
its first foray into knowledge, would be roadblocked
dozens, hundreds of times a day if my child
was in a large group setting. And over time
my child would dull his mind, would stop asking,
would give up and settle back into not knowing.
I love kids’ minds. Isn’t it electrifying
to hear their questions, the innocence of their
‘why’ questions and the oddity of
their responses? It knocked me out. “How
many spots can you see on this page?”
“All of them mommy”
And
I figured I had not quit teaching at all- I
just now had a class of one, and when the others
were born, of 2, then 3 then 4. Parents who
home-school understand this. We are at work.
We are embarked on developing the human mind.
My
four kids are the joy of my life . They are
now ages 24-29, and have between them 9 post-secondary
degrees. Some are anthropology, philosophy,
engineering, journalism, medicine, and law.
My son at 29 has two doctorates. And I just
love him because he is so humble that when he
introduces himself to anyone he is ‘Jason’,
no title. One of my daughters is a family and
immigration lawyer and has actually saved lives
of people trying to escape persecution by moving
to our country. I am so proud of them all, the
journalist who interviews for a national magazine,
the razor-sharp mind of the girl trained in
Latin and philosophy who can help me fine-tune
any logical argument. I love talking with my
kids. I raised them for one thing to value sharing
opinions. When they were ages 5-10 we were holding
formal debates at home giving them impromptu
topics to discuss pros and cons of as a contest.
It was hilarious and good training. I love the
exchange of ideas.
When I returned to full-time teaching about
5 years ago I had the pleasure of welcoming
into two of my big high school classes, a boy
and girl who had been home-schooled. The girl
was entering grade 10 and the boy was entering
grade 9 – and neither had been in public
school before, at all. How would they manage?
They
were amazing. Did they have trouble making friends?
Not at all. They were attractive, friendly and
they had been on lots of sports teams all along.
Were they hard to teach, spoiled, needy, behind
in skills? In fact they were not the top of
the class but they were well-rounded in knowledge,
very conscientious to get the work done and
they passed with good grades. But what struck
me was that in a rowdy classroom, they were
not rowdy. They were very mature, as if adult
even. They were aware of me as a human and kind
to me and when you have about 120 students,
having a few who are mature enough to know you
are human is very pleasant.
So I can honestly say that home-schooling has
definite educational merits. I have only seen
a few instances where it was less than ideal.
One stands out – a mother who herself
could barely read or spell. I feel that there
should be some standards and so I endorse having
to follow a standard curriculum and to pass
official exams to get official qualifications
when needed.
But
I just wanted to say to homeschoolers –
carry on! You are doing something that is a
great gift to your kids.
Right
now in most industrialized nations government
policy lags about 20 years behind. It has moved
to funding more and more daycare for kids but
has not yet recognized the growing trend of
at-home care, and home-schooling. That then
is the next hurdle. All kids are equal and deserve
equal funding from the state wherever they are.
Austria’s voucher system and Norway’s
funding for home-based care as well as daycare
are steps in that direction. We in the west
should do the same.
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