Home Schooling Children with Autism.

Home schooling is a really challenging exceptionally disciplined endeavor. The parent has to take on the role of the Teacher and they have to be the enforcer. Under normal circumstances when a child attends school the parent only assists the child with curriculum, home work and after school activities but when home school it becomes so much more. Home schooling is not for the relaxed or super busy parent but for the stay at home Mom with an educational background that has a really firm grasp on curriculum. So my advice to all parents that are working and that are really busy. Home school many not be your cup of Tea. It takes a tremendous amount of dedication and discipline. But is you still want to Home school I have some tips for you.

You can down load these off the internet now. Heck you can get curriculum form MIT if you wish. There is no really reason not to have a plan. You must weigh your ability to tech curriculum with the needs of your child. For instance a child with Autism has no scientifically valid curriculum. In other words there is no science behind curriculum for Autistic children. It is a huge gap in our educational system. Actually few curriculums have any scientific basis for their existence. Very limited research has been done on curriculum efficacy and even less on efficacy for children with Autism. Again it is a huge miss in our society.

This is also true when dealing with a child with medical complexities. In most instances schools will not allow children with significant medical complexities to attend school in anything but a segregated setting. It isn’t really fair to lump the Diabetic child with the Severely Emotionally Disabled child. I have taught he emotionally disabled and I know this doesn’t work. Nor is it a good idea to stick the child with CP with a child that is Severally Emotionally Disabled.

As a parent of a child with medical complexities the most the school board here would offer him would be an hour of week of instruction by a homebound school instructor. I do much more with him than that. I want my son to have more than the least amount of services. So knowing there is no curriculum that is scientifically valid also gives me license to teach him things I would want him to learn. It also doesn’t hurt I have an advanced degree in education and was a college professor.

Given there is no scientifically valid curriculum for children with Autism and very little scientifically valid curriculum in general that enables Parents whom Home School the ability to create.

I buy one every year. I teach to my child’s strengths but I also have plan books that teach to my son’s weaknesses. So there are always two lesson books going each and everyday. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t have a plan. And I stick to the plan book until I see that the plan hasn’t net the result I wanted and then I make new plans. In general I only write the plan a week or two in advance. I provide grades the day the tests have been complete and I give daily grades for performance. I find it incomprehensible that a child wouldn’t receive a daily grade. It is like asking an adult to work without pay. So I give day grades based on performance.

I believe you can even down load lesson plans off the internet with activities included so I you don’t wish to make a plan book just download plans off the internet. I find it hard to keep track that way. We follow books and make curriculum from there. While I would not dispute the validity of internet lesson plans I am reluctant to use them as we are in a format that is working. But having plans is where you start. And involving your children helps this process.

Home school takes less time than regular school but it also takes a great deal of preparation time. This is good time for you and your child to pick your curriculum. I take my son to the book store and we look at books and I merge curriculums. For Instance he was studying Euclidean Geometry and he also studied Frank Lloyd Wright in Art and he made many model building designs based on Euclidean Geometry. So the curriculums over lapped. The test was not actually in Geometry but in the application of Geometric principles when designing a building model. So I was out the cost of the books and the costs of the building supplies but my son had a wonderful Math lesson and he applied Mathematics to his building design and thus completed the learning unit. If only public school were that much fun we would all be aces. We usually work first thing in the morning and work until lunch. I work in block sessions and we go until we are exhausted or the lesson is done. But the curriculums always overlap. And this was a 5^th grade lesson so I knew his peers would be doing easier curriculum.

But the general rule is set a schedule forHomeSchooland schedule breaks inHomeSchool. Sometimes there will be an interruption like perhaps you get ill. It is normal for the teacher to miss school. Remember the substitute. On days you are ill. Make up for those days by extending the week or doubling up the next day. Home school does offer the ability to be flexible. Use it to your advantage.

I don’t believe in standardized test because it is a measure of a very small interval of a person’s life. It is not a consistent measure. I measure each and every day. And the goal is to get my son to demonstrate he has retained the knowledge I have taught him. He is required to prove to anyone else he has learned anything. I mark him down for not complying and I mark him high for performing well. After six years of home schooling I can tell you my son likes it . He enjoys the routine of it ad he wants to learn each and every day. He is excited to learn new things even we are working on his weaknesses. My child is a true child of the Global world wanting to explore and be apart of all of it. I would love to take him traveling on an adventure overseas but he is still a bit young for that. So grade daily. Weekly grades are good for testing but daily grades measure everything.

I can tell you that home schooling is a rewarding endeavor with lots of challenges. And it takes a lot of planning but you can involve your child with the planning and that helps with compliance. The main point is that there really is neither scientifically valid curriculum nor any scientifically proven method for teaching. Before there were teachers there were learners. You juts have to create a learning environment in your home and stick to it when everyone else wants to abandon it. It isn’t as easy as everyone might think and lesson has to be taught over many times so that the child gets it. Not every plan is successful. When I taught public school if the majority of the class did poorly on a test I created, I re-taugt the lesson and accepted I had failed them as a teacher the first time around. As a home school teacher you must regulate yourself in the same manner. If your child doesn’t learn the lesson than you must determine why?

As a special educator we are taught error analysis. When a student makes a poor grade we look at where they have error in their logic and then we them how to overcome their mistakes so they don’t make the same mistake twice. For instance if a child was given a problem 4 x6 and they answer 10. We know they have failed to identify this as a multiplication problem. We highlight the X and then have them resolve. We might provide a highlight pen for the child to use over the next several weeks so the child is use to identifying the symbol and overcoming this simple error of logic. Error Analysis becomes quite complex the further you go in school. There is a whole field of Science specifically designed to teach people to over come errors in logic. I wish error analysis was used in all educational settings as I believe it yields a higher achieving student but our educational system is not anywhere near the ability to teach to that level because it is so massive. Error Analysis is one of the benefits of HomeSchool, along with Flexible Schedules, Selection of Curriculum, One to One teaching ratio

HomeSchoolis very beneficial but requires a great deal of planning and dedication. It offers the student and parent to the ability tot design their own lessons, have flexible schedules, select the curriculum, have a one to one teaching ration and error analysis. For these reasons and much more I can recommend home schooling to al dedicated Moms and Dads. Quite literally, I could have written an entire hub on Error Analysis and I still might but I thought I would let everyone know that Error Analysis is where our educational system needs to be focused. This is especially true for Children with Autism and children with Medical Complexities who may not have the access to schools.