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Do you have educational wisdom to share? If so, read this.


Susan Wise Bauer
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If you're an experienced home educator with hard-learned wisdom to share, a scientist or mathematician with a passion for teaching your subject, a historian who can help out parents with resources, or any other parent/teacher with valuable knowledge and skills: please post here!

 

A post on the Well-Trained Mind Blog (you can see it at http://www.welltrainedmind.com/conferences/because-we-need-alternatives/) highlighted a need that many home educators feel: for small, focused, local meetings that TEACH parents how to teach (as opposed to huge inspirational workshops like those found at many conventions, or vendor workshops bent on demonstrating a single product).

 

We hope that some of you will pick up this torch and organize those small local workshops. To help you out, we've established this networking board to help locate those experts.

 

So if you have expertise in a certain area and would be willing to share it, please post to this board and invite other members to contact you through your member page. (Remember that it's not a good idea to post your real email address in a message--you'll get spammed.) When you post, please indicate the area of expertise and (if you feel comfortable doing so) your state of residence. Or at least your region of the country. And then give us a few more details inside.

 

This is an experiment; jump in!

 

SWB

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Hi - I am new to these boards but very excited about the whole idea of sharing what I've learned from teaching my daughter and learning from others. I have a PhD in 18th-century British literature, have taught my daughter at home for nine years, would be willing to talk/advise/brainstorm about the teaching of literary analysis, literary history, the history of women's writing (before the modern period), teaching kids about the history of print, the emergence of the professional author, etc.

 

Note that my approach is not going to be a conventionally classical one. My daughter has Asperger's Syndrome; with it has come many problems in following a traditional curriculum, everything from handwriting trouble to literal thinking, which made (and still make) it almost impossible for her to understand symbolism, metaphorical writing, or the nuances of character development and conflict between characters. But she loves reading classic literature, so I've had to develop a different way of talking about books with her, a more historical, concrete approach that draws on my own academic work with print culture. This is what I'd be happy to share.

 

My daughter was diagnosed with dysgraphia early on and had terrible, terrible trouble learning to spell. She seemed to be not either a visual or a phonetic speller; on top of this she has fine motor and hand-strength issues. As a result our early years of homeschooling were largely non-textual and I spent long, long hours researching ways to teach that were not pencil-based. I am willing to share information on alternative spelling strategies, non-conventional writing tasks, or just general ways to homeschool a child who is late in writing or who struggles with handwriting physically or developmentally. This seems as though it would be a great topic for a panel discussion of some kind.

 

I live in San Diego.

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Susan, I'm sorry that I have absolutely no idea in the world how to go about starting a new thread. This is actually the very first message board I've ever even commented on. I'm pretty limited technologically! Could you either give me brief instructions or point me to a place where I could learn how to do this and I will return, more technological than before????

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My areas of strength are literary analysis and Bible analysis.

 

I have taught a seminar on analyzing poetry--in this seminar we discussed how-to in general, including scanning poetry for rhyme and meter, and how to apply the principles to various ages from small children to teens.

 

I teach literature to a group of high schoolers. I would enjoy teaching a simple seminar on analyzing literature.

 

I teach seminars on inductive Bible study--as it applies to small children, junior-high-aged children, high schoolers, or the method in general for adults or teens. I have posted about this quite a bit on this board. I also teach teachers how to apply inductive method to church curriculum.

 

I also like teaching people how to write their own Bible studies or formulate their own Bible lessons.

 

For junior high or high school teaching, I would dearly love to show more people how to lead their children to make a notebook similar to one my daughter made in a group class I taught. We took one semester to analyze a short book of the Bible (so two books of the Bible in the course of the year). This included marking the text similarly to what Precepts teaches and generating notes from the text, as well as writing Bible study questions, character descriptions, outlines, application ideas for group teaching, key verse, commentary reports, maps, key word studies, and timelines. This is one of the very best Bible study classes I have given my daughter--she loved interacting with the text this way and learned wonderful Bible study methods that will last her the rest of her life, and come in particularly handy for high school work.

 

One further thought--I have found many parents bewildered about how to analyze their child's writing quality. I separate the process to four levels: layout mechanics (appearance of the paper and technical points), writing mechanics (grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.), thesis (whether or not the information provided fulfills the assignment, and how thoroughly), and writing (quality of the writing itself--smooth, stilted, descriptive, appropriate tone, etc.). I think a seminar explaining this would be helpful.

 

I am not a "professional" by any stretch but do enjoy teaching a great deal. There have been many more experienced homeschoolers who have helped me along the way--I enjoy giving back to the homeschool and/or church community as I am able.

Edited by strider
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  • 2 weeks later...

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