Tag Archives: schools
BOOSTING OPPORTUNITIES BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
This may also be available to Home Educators who would like to get some qualifications:
BOOSTING OPPORTUNITIES BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
The Government is providing the first 2000 places for our Youth Guarantee in 2010. The Youth Guarantee will allow 16- and 17-year-olds to study for school-level qualifications at polytechs, institutes of technology, wananga, or private training establishments. It will give students who are disengaged at school the chance to continue learning in a non-school setting and get the skills they need.
The pros and cons of homeschooling
We are not happy to have our photo associated with this somewhat negative article. The Canvas Magazine, the weekend magazine of the NZHerald, took this photo about 18 months ago and didn’t use it then.
We would like to see some positive comments about Home Education on this NZHerald blog.
Original article at:
I have to say that the day my fairly conservative husband came home and wondered out loud if homeschooling was a good idea made me stop dead in my tracks.
It’s one of those options that I have always thought of as extreme. An extreme lifestyle choice, and a total career 180 degree turn for a woman in her most competitive years.
Heck, putting your foot on the pedal for 3-5 years while the kids are little is hard enough. But devoting potentially 12 years to their education at home, having them underfoot 24-7? I couldn’t imagine it for my own part – and I swiftly told my dearly beloved this – and wondered aloud back to him if it was in some way detrimental to have the kids cooped up with me for longer than strictly necessary.
Ali had cottoned onto the benefits of homeschooling when he’d done this story about a group of local home-schooled kids who had made an award winning robot and were about to go to America to compete in an extremely prestigious robotics competition.
These guys’ families were part of a well established, tight-knit group of home schoolers currently operating outside the New Zealand school system. Then I came across this article from Salon.com written recently by a husband whose unconventional-sounding wife has made the decision to homeschool the couple’s twins because they felt it unnecessary for the children to come into line with the regular school day (week and year) at their relatively tender age of 5.
The family in this article are teaching two of some 1.5 million US home-schooled kids, and interestingly, statistics on the matter – such as they are – suggest only a third embark on homeschooling for religious grounds (there are some religious groups that consider state schooling morally bankrupt).
The rest just do it because they think it’s better. This is the reason given in the Salon case:
“We’re not ready to surrender our kids, and ourselves, to a 10-month-a-year, all-day institution whose primary goal, at least at this age, seems to be teaching kids how to function within a 10-month-a-year, all-day institution. Our kids are learning plenty – not exactly the same things other kindergarteners learn, I suppose, but plenty. They’re making friends and having fun. They can go to the beach on gorgeous fall afternoons, or hit zoos and museums on crisp winter mornings, when other kids are sitting at desks doing worksheets about the letter B.”
“Hell , I wish I could do it”,” writes the father.
The subject always attracts lots of debate where ever it pops up. Hell, this article in Salon got a whopping 538 letters in response. And you can certainly point to many successes of the home schooled, in various competitions that see them pitted against conventionally-schooled pupils (see not just Ali’s piece but also this admittedly older piece, also from Salon)
I still can’t see myself doing it, although like most people I think the benefits of good home schooling are pretty convincing.
For one, I am not a teacher, certainly not one with much patience. I am the daughter of a teacher who spent many years honing her craft and I find it difficult to see how this skill might simply be aped by the untrained (an ex-teacher would be a different story, of course).
And then there is the issue of socialisation… My children don’t have cousins nearby, and are unlikely to be part of a huge family. Already their options for playdates during the day are ever-decreasing as more and more children get sent off to daycare and kindy. I would worry that they would become insular, and not come into contact with the various types of people they need to – I believe – to develop empathy and understanding.
If you could somehow fill your children’s minds with wonder, teach them everything they need to know to both pass exams and live informed lives, arrange for them to have lots of stimulation from both friends and other “teachers”, then I can see home schooling might work.
But boy it seems like a lot of work – and work that not many of us would really be that well cut out for.
Pictured above: To home school, or not to home school? Photo / Mark Mitchell
Dita De Boni
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Teacher axed for wanting sex with student
Pull your children out of school and home educate them
Teacher axed for wanting sex with student
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/2887924/Teacher-axed-for-wanting-sex-with-student
By JOHN HARTEVELT – The Press
Last updated 05:00 22/09/2009
A teacher with 15 years experience asked a pupil for sex, telling her she was “a sexy beast”.
The teacher has been deregistered and has left the country.
The pupil says she was snubbed by the teacher’s colleagues, who refused to shake her hand at a school prizegiving.
The case was revealed in a decision by the Teachers Council, which does not reveal the names and location of the people involved.
The decision said the teacher had developed a relationship with a Year 13 pupil while they were on an overseas sports trip in 2007.
“Her evidence was that for a time, at least, she had been with him alone in his room, talking until early in the morning, and that there had been some discussion about her remaining there for the night, though there was no suggestion of a physical relationship on this occasion,” the decision said.
When they got back to New Zealand, the two carried on a relationship through text messages and lunch-time meetings.
“Hey babe in all our rambling today I forgot to say how amazing it was yesterday and talking to you was an uplifting experience … I want us to do so much more … Love you XX,” one text message said.
The pupil told the council that she had felt confused about the relationship. The teacher had talked to her about his partner and his former girlfriends.
“I said I had to choose either him or God because what I was doing would end up not being in God’s will for me, if it had not already gone there,” she said.
She visited him at his home during school hours and he gave her a massage on one occasion.
“As we were driving back from his house that day, at around 3pm, he said to me that he wanted to make love to me. I kept saying ‘What?’ He kept repeating it,” she said.
The pupil said the teacher, who was a head of department, suggested that at the forthcoming school social they could get a room together.
“[She] told us that by this time she was upset and, when she was approached by another member of the school’s staff, disclosed the relationship, which led to the matter being referred to the principal,” the council decision said.
The pupil said the investigation that followed caused her stress, which may have led to a physical illness.
“And she was, to one extent or another, affected by some of the other teachers refusing to shake her hand at the end-of-year prizegiving, apparently because of what had taken place during the course of the year,” the decision said.
The teacher told the council that the relationship developed when he tried to help the pupil with issues in her home life while he was also facing problems at home.
The council said the teacher seemed to “more or less” accept the details of the pupil’s evidence.
“The [disciplinary] tribunal was inclined to the view that the relationship only fell short of a full sexual one because of the reluctance on the part of the student to allow that to happen,” the decision said.
The council censured the teacher for serious misconduct, deregistered him and ordered him to pay costs of $4000.
The man now lived overseas with his partner and their baby.
Violence blamed on removal of corporal punishment
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/2814572/Violence-blamed-on-removal-of-corporal-punishment
NZPA
Last updated 11:18 29/08/2009
A big increase in the number of primary school children suspended for violent acts is being blamed on the removal of corporal punishment in schools.
Figures from the Ministry of Education show a 88 per cent increase in suspensions of eight-year-olds from 2000 to 2008 for assaults on classmates, a 73 per cent rise for seven-year-olds, a 70 per cent increase for six–year-olds while the suspensions over the same period had increased by 33 per cent for five-year-olds.
“It is significant that as schools have removed corporal punishment, schools have become more violent,” Family First national director Bob McCoskrie said today.
“School yard bullying by pupils on other pupils and staff is now the new form of ‘corporal punishment’ in schools.
“We have a generation of children who have been victims of a social experiment of how best to raise our kids and the role of correction.
“And it continues with the smacking debate – another example of undermining parental authority and `state knows best how to raise your kids’.”
Mr McCroskie said student behaviour would continue to deteriorate “for as long as we tell them that their rights are more important than their responsibilities”.
Auckland Primary Principals Association president Marilyn Gwilliam said schools were struggling to handle the children because by law, they were not allowed to touch children to calm them down, even when they “kick and they bite and they hit.”
In many cases, schools had no choice but to stand children down, she told The Weekend Herald.
The Post Primary Teachers Association is set to discuss solutions to combating the schoolyard violence at its annual meeting next month.
Because of schools limited number of in-school counsellors and teacher aides, the association’s advisory group on conduct problems will suggest that schools need access to trained psychologists and social workers.