AboutJennie O'Bryan Expertise I am able to answer a wide range of questions regarding curriculum, educational styles, publicly funded homeschool resources centers, some general questions regarding policy and legality issues, unskooling and freeskool models, and more.
Experience I am an instructor with years of experience teaching in a variety of non-traditional settings (i.e. homeschool or unschool groups, community college programs for the under 18 crowd, libraries, museums, etc). I write curriculum for a variety of subjects, I recently ended employment with a children's museum as an education and curriculum director so that I could start a freeskool for kids ages 5-12. I also have two children (7 and 14) and have participated in a wide range of homeschool/unskool models as a parent.
Education/Credentials High School, Some college, and a general thirst for knowledge and personal enrichment.
My friend has recently decided to homeschool her daughter.
She has decided to let me and my mother help her to teach some of the courses because my mother is very experienced with English and Writing and I'm a big history buff.
I have been charged with teaching her history, as you may have guessed.
I don't know if you have any specific tips or advice for teaching history itself, but any advice would be helpful.
Thanks!
ANSWER: Hi-
It would be helpful to know the student's age, but I'll just offer some advice/info for a wide variety.
First.... In terms of prepared homeschool curriculum, I'm impressed with Oak Meadow. I haven't seen much of the high school history offerings, but my daughter used the Civics course in middle school and it was pretty good. The elementary curriculum is also really neat although you cannot order the history/social studies segment separately. Look for this on craiglist and Ebay to save yourself some money.
One of my favorite ways to approach social studies is through thematic curriculum. The first thing that I would do is to sit down with the student and brainstorm different areas of interest. Start by just chatting about interests and hobbies and see where that leads you. If she's an elementary student into American Girl dolls...you've got the Overland Trail, Colonial Times, Civil War...tons to choose from. But all types of interests can lead to a social studies theme. If you google "homeschool themes" you'll probably find all sorts of ideas that can be tailored specifically to history. Perhaps you could do this before meeting with her and use it to get things rolling. One idea would be to incorporate Language Arts and get your mother to work together with you. Again, Oak Meadow has pretty good Language Arts curriculum as well.
If you decide to use a theme, all you'll really need is the internet. Personally, I'm a wanna-be Luddite and eschew as much technology as I can--but really, the internet is a homeschooler's best friend. If you don't have a top-notch library nearby (we don't in a community of under 1000) it's really the only way to find/create curriculum without spending a fortune. You'll probably have to tailor many lesson plans and ideas as much of what is available online is geared toward the 25+ student classroom but it's usually not difficult at all.
I'd also suggest a few books:
The Teenage Liberation Handbook by Grace Llewellyn
Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto
Real Lives also by Grace Llewellyn (I think)
Overall, I'd suggest a theme inspired and selected by the student.
Hope this helps--please feel free to write back with more specific questions (after you select a theme, I may have some more info for you) if you'd like.
Thanks
Jennie
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: Hello,
Thank you very much for your reply!
The girl in question is 12 years old and in 6th grade.
One more question I have is does the school district tell us, for example, by the end of the year she has to learn about Egypt, Rome, and Medieval England for example? Or is what she learns in each specific subject up to us?
That is one of the things I don't understand.
Answer Great, glad it helped a bit.
Onto your next question... First, requirements can vary greatly between states and even districts, so I'll just have to answer in generalizations.
You can teach her whatever you like! That's the best bit about unskool/homeschool. It's so exciting to both student and teacher(s). Some parents don't check in at all with state or local requirements and just do what they're inspired to do. For some, this works super well and with others...not so much. Certainly someone starting out as a homeschooler often prefers to have some basic guidelines, helpful to know that you can choose to cover what would be considered age appropriate benchmarks even if you don't ultimately decide they are important for your particular student.
So...age appropriate benchmarks. Some homeschoolers enjoy the series "What your ___ Grader Needs to Know" but they aren't always helpful for everyone. Basically, that series was created by looking at national educational benchmarks and creating an overview of curriculum based on those benchmarks. Something that most homeschoolers can handle on their own because what they're covering in the those books aren't necessarily what is covered at your local elementary school. Still, it is probably worth checking out from your local library.
Basically, you can take a look at them and get an idea of what the public school system uses to design curriculum for each grade. You'll quickly realize that you can make education way fun and still meet age appropriate goals as the state goals are pretty darn vague.
One other thing you might want to check out... I don't know where you're located, but some states have charter or alternative programs for homeschoolers. I've been involved with a few of these and some are definitely better than others. Both of my daughters are currently involved with a program in a neighboring school district--we have to create a student learning plan at the beginning of the year, send a weekly email update, complete an online form once a month, and visit a couple of times a year. In exchange for this, we get $1500.00 for each student every year to spend on curriculum related to our student learning plan. My girls have taken private art lessons, attended a punk rock show (music performance related to learning the bass guitar), went to hip hop/acrobatics classes, bought tons of books and materials..... all paid for by this program. Some of these programs have much heavier requirements-another we tried required standardized testing, 6 hours of parent/student mandatory attendance each week (not aunt, or friend, had to be the parent or guardian along with the student), tons of journaling and paperwork, countless meetings and conferences...all for a mere $200 per year that could only be spent on certain books which had to be returned at the end of the school year. So--you might want check out some of these programs but if you're interested, select very carefully.
Basically, the district doesn't dictate what you're studying but the state has some guidelines which are wide open to interpretation. If you want more direction, you can always arrange to meet with a few sixth grade teachers. I'd recommend at least one private school teacher and some from different public school districts--meet with them and take notes on what they're covering for the year....
Hope this helps. Enjoy your unskooling!!! Feel free to write back if you have any more questions...
