Parents who are also teachers have been assumed to naturally have an advantage when it comes to home-schooling.
However, that is not necessarily the case. Parent-teachers are also trying to work. And, of course, getting 30 teenagers to write an essay on Macbeth is very different from trying to get one 5-year-old to write a sentence.
It’s been a steep learning curve to adapt from my secondary style of teaching and to instead focus on getting a five-year-old motivated to learn. However, I do believe that the lessons I’ve learned are valuable not just in my own home - they will be useful when I get back to teaching my secondary students, too (I am currently on maternity leave).
So, here are the things I will be bringing with me on my return to school.
1. You don’t have to write everything down
Many schools have found themselves in an evidence-driven, Ofsted-obsessed culture where lessons are judged by what’s written in books. Home-schooling has reminded me that this isn’t true.
Some of the most valuable learning my son has done has been when we’ve been chatting. We talk about mathematical concepts, ideas in the natural world and, of course, we plan our stories verbally before we write them down.
2. Cross-curricular links
As an English teacher, I’m perhaps guilty of staying in my lane. Some departments in some schools can become very insular and teaching my son a range of subjects has taught me to appreciate the links between them.
When we’re drawing our diagrams for science, we’re practising our art skills. When we’re labelling them, we’re using our literacy skills to ensure they’re clear. When we’re working with quarters in maths, we’re looking at the etymology of the word and linking it to the French and Spanish words for four.
3. Less is more
My son’s teacher sets two pieces of work a day: English and maths. We get a lot of mileage out of these two pieces. We’ve written stories, planned menus, read books, discussed stories and been creative. We’ve written our own maths problems looking at the concepts and my son has developed a really sound understanding of them.
4. Feedback, not marking
This isn’t a new thing. The idea of feedback being more effective than marking has been around for a while, but many schools still expect written marking in addition to whole-class feedback. Working with my son, live feedback is having a huge effect on his work. We discuss, we stop when necessary and we correct assumptions. I don’t write in his books, but I do give a lot of stickers.
5. Children are people, too
Now, I definitely already knew this one, but working with my own child has reminded me of something I always say to my team at the start of the academic year: every child in front of us is loved by someone and we should teach them as if that person were at the back of the room.
Every interaction I have with my son comes first and foremost from a place of love. I’m not saying we need to love our students like we do our own children, but we need to remember that they are children - even the grumpy year 11s who tower over some of us - and children need kindness and support more than anything in order to flourish and become adults of whom we can be proud.
Katherine Childs is head of English at Wey Valley Academy in Weymouth, Dorset
