How do you deal with subjects that you never learned in school or just don't understand?

[Based on Faith Academy]

My dh and I were talking the other day about pre-calculus and physics. Neither of us took them in school. Since my ds is going on to college for computer engineeering, I am giving him these pre-courses in 12th grade. My dh asked me how I knew how to do the problems in physics and pre-calculus. I told him I am basically teaching myself at the same time as I am teaching my ds. It then turned into a discussion on how people who just aren't "math people" are able to teach or help their dc. I decided to come to the Hive and ask you dear people what is it that you do to get over these hurdles.

[Soror]

I will learn alongside the kids as long as I can and then I will outsource when I can't or when it comes to the point that they'd be better served learning from someone who knows more than I do. I foresee that both online (paid and open source) courses along with dual enrollment in the local CC will be in the future of my kiddos.

[regentrude]

In subjects for which I did not posses, or was unable to acquire, the necessary expertise, I used outside resources for help, in different forms:

 A foreign language I was not fluent in I had to outsource completely after the beginning level, because me co-learning did not let us achieve adequate progress; DD started taking college classes in 10th grade.

For history and literature, I brought experts into our home via Great Courses lectures and let them teach.

Other methods could be online classes, video courses, materials designed for self study.

In other subjects, I was able to brush up/relearn/newly learn the material well enough to facilitate learning, and yet in others I trusted my student's ability to self educate without my involvement.

I consider myself able to actively teach (as opposed to facilitating learning) only those subjects in which I possess actual expertise beyond high school level.

 

I find it extremely important as a homeschooling parent to recognize my own limitations. I would do my student a disservice if I insisted on home teaching everything instead of giving them access to qualified instructors.

[RootAnn]

There are subjects I wasn't that good in (geography), wasn't interested in (history), or crammed-and-dumped ('social studies', again). I've learned more, relearned more, and become way more interested in all of these subjects learning ahead of or alongside my kids than ever I did in school.

 

Two examples that I have:

I wanted my kids to learn Latin. I never learned Latin. So, I started learning Latin alongside my two oldest kids. Up until two years ago, I kept up with the eldest. Last year, I didn't think I could keep up or have the time to help my oldest with vocab & grammar chants. I outsourced Latin. It didn't work out for us because I still ended up doing all the grammar chants & vocab study time with her plus the class went so quickly that she didn't truly learn the material. (It was cram-and-dump all year.) We're back to doing it at home, at her own pace so she masters the material. When I'm confused, we puzzle it out together or she teaches me.

 

My oldest is studying Spanish. I never took Spanish. I studied French through middle school & high school up through French V and hardly ever used it again (other than one high school trip to Portugal & an adult trip to Spain/France). I was able to introduce her to vocab & grammar in a couple of introductory programs, but outsourced for high school. Simply, I pronounce the Spanish words with a French accent. Much better for her to learn the correct pronunciation!

 

Lewelma has some really great posts on how sometimes being a co-learner with your dc is more helpful to them than if you are the expert. I can't find any of them right now, but here is a link to one where she is forced to ponder the transition between co-learning math with her oldest & turning him over to being completely self-taught.

 

Halcyon started a fascinating thread about kids performing better for outside teachers than for you. Some of the parents talk about being co-learners for subjects and how the dynamic in those classes is different.

 

Here's a post talking about how one parent went through a physics book alongside her kids.

[abba12]

When I was a child homeschooling, by the time we hit high school my mum was more of a supervisor than a teacher. She found books directed to the student and expected me to use the textbooks as my teacher. She would sit and go through them with me to try figure out the answer if I got stuck, but I was expected to learn from the resources available. With 4 kids, she couldn't be learning all our new coursework alongside us, and I was too independent to want her there anyway. 

[Shellydon]

Some things I've learned alongside my kids.  Latin, Geography come to mind.  For high school level classes, I outsource them.  All math Alg1 and up, science labs, Spanish 1,2,3 are outsourced at our co-op.  I am utilizing Potter's School for a couple of classes so that they have someone else to review and comment on their writing. 

[Based on Faith Academy]

Great responses. What about using an online curriculum to teach your kids a foreign language? Who then interprets that they are doing it corrrectly? I use an online course to teach my son pre-calculus. If you don't learn along with your kid how do you help them when they struggle just as a teacher would have to help in ps?

[EmilyGF]

While I think you can totally learn along side a student in certain subjects, I would strongly suggest that a student who plans to major in engineering start taking a community college or online pre-calculus course now (and, ideally, calculus in the summer - not having any calculus under one's belt, even if one needs to repeat it in college can make it very hard to be successful in engineering).

 

If your student were taking pre-calculus out of delight but planned to be a French major, I would feel differently - a shallow understanding might suffice in that case. Or, if your student were doing pre-calculus in 10th grade and had a few more years to go deeper, that would be OK, too. But I think this could cause long term problems. 

 

Calculus involves learning to think differently about math (at least given how I was taught math and how math is traditionally taught in the USA)... but pre-calculus is much easier.

 

Emily

[Based on Faith Academy]

While I agree with you, Emily, I am probably one of the best teachers he will have. This is a student that works better with the extra help that I give him by walking him through what he doesn't understand. I have yet to come to a concept in pre-calculus that I can not understand even if it takes research. I was an A+ student in math and would have been a teacher if I didn't get married at an early age. I chose to give him this last year of homeschool to help cement what he needs to make it in college. Who knows. Maybe college won't be his cup of tea. He is a hands on child and book learning never came extremely easy for him. While he desires to go this route ,I will support him.

[lllll]

nm

[MerryAtHope]

I never took physics, and my daughter (who's much better at science than I ever was) is doing it now. For a number of years, she has entered and done very well at our regional science fair. What we do in this process is akin to switching roles--I become the student and she becomes the teacher. As "student," I see my job is to ask questions until she can thoroughly explain things. If she can't, she needs to go learn it, or I look for the answer and help her learn it. (The year she did a project on cells was interesting, because eventually one question would spawn 5 more, and I had to let her know that scientists have spent years studying cells and still don't know everything--and it's okay to decide how much you want to learn and at what point you want to stop. Then we talked through how to handle that in the judging process).

 

So...one of my jobs in this role of educator is to be able to ask good questions.

 

There are subjects I have learned alongside my kids, but Physics isn't one of them. At least not totally. If my daughter struggles to find an answer, sometimes I will go read a section and we work through it together. Most of the time, though, she understands the concepts, and it's something in the math problem that might cause an issue. If an error comes up, I mark it and see if she can figure out what she did wrong. If not, and I can see, then I'll explain it. If the book has something that isn't easy for me to understand, I'll have her read through the book's working of the problem to see if she understands how they arrived at different answers. Most of the time I can easily see if she's using the correct formula etc...

 

I have a deal with my kids--if you don't understand, you need to ask, and we'll look at it together. If we still don't get it, then I'll come online and ask or talk to a friend who is good at this, or call the company etc... Most of the time, I find we can figure it out.

 

Great responses. What about using an online curriculum to teach your kids a foreign language? Who then interprets that they are doing it corrrectly? I use an online course to teach my son pre-calculus. If you don't learn along with your kid how do you help them when they struggle just as a teacher would have to help in ps?

 

Yeah...I thought I'd learn Japanese alongside my son. That lasted about 10 lessons! He did a video course that had a textbook, workbook, and quizzes. I found that I could easily correct his quizzes, but at some point in the first workbook, I turned corrections over to him. I told him to make sure his answer matched, and that if it didn't, he needed to understand and agree with the answer key. If he didn't understand or agree (because sometimes answer keys can be wrong), he was to tell me, and we'd figure it out or find a resource that could tell us. One time he thought an answer key was wrong and later learned that there were two ways to write one of the figures (in Haragana I think...been awhile!)

 

It was actually fun because he became the expert and enjoyed knowing something I didn't know, teaching me ways to say things or telling me about the culture and other things he learned--the same way my daughter is with science.

[Based on Faith Academy]

I never took physics, and my daughter (who's much better at science than I ever was) is doing it now. For a number of years, she has entered and done very well at our regional science fair. What we do in this process is akin to switching roles--I become the student and she becomes the teacher. As "student," I see my job is to ask questions until she can thoroughly explain things. If she can't, she needs to go learn it, or I look for the answer and help her learn it..

I love the idea of letting them be the teacher. It gives them a better understanding of the subject plus there could be questions asked that they'd never think of themselves or that a book might ask.

[Soror]

While I agree with you, Emily, I am probably one of the best teachers he will have. This is a student that works better with the extra help that I give him by walking him through what he doesn't understand. I have yet to come to a concept in pre-calculus that I can not understand even if it takes research. I was an A+ student in math and would have been a teacher if I didn't get married at an early age. I chose to give him this last year of homeschool to help cement what he needs to make it in college. Who knows. Maybe college won't be his cup of tea. He is a hands on child and book learning never came extremely easy for him. While he desires to go this route ,I will support him.

My son works very well with me too and I think that the time and attention I'm able to devote has helped him immeasurably. BUT I also have a son that has leaned(always leaned) towards engineering and I do plan to have him take some outside courses. My current plan, subject to change as always, is to start with a course that we've went through at home but perhaps at an easier level, to set him up for success. So, maybe we do Arbor School Algebra on our own and he does an on-line Algebra class using a harder text. Or maybe we do Calculus at home and then he does it at the CC, repetition is a good thing for ds and going over things in multiple ways only helps to cement his learning. He will have to be able to transfer on to learning without me at some point, we'll just do it in ways to help him succeed as much as possible, giving him the support he needs until he can do it independently. I'd rather do it slowly then it just be him enrolling in college without any outsourcing of any kind, with his strengths and weaknesses it would not likely lead to his success to just jump into it.

[texasmama]

I will learn alongside the kids as long as I can and then I will outsource when I can't or when it comes to the point that they'd be better served learning from someone who knows more than I do. I foresee that both online (paid and open source) courses along with dual enrollment in the local CC will be in the future of my kiddos.

Exactly this. 

[Garga]

I learned I'll have to outsource.  I took chemistry in high school and flailed my way through it, earning a C. 

 

I thought that as an adult I'd be able to use my perseverence to learn it ahead of my son.  I thought we'd start easy with a gentle curriculum and I tried teaching it to him last year when he was in 7th grade.

 

It was pretty terrible.  I was able to keep ahead a little bit, but if there was anything, and I mean ANYthing not in the book that wasn't explained, I couldn't even figure out how to find the answer.  Typing various words into google didn't get what I wanted.  It was a bust.  We had to stop 3 months in. I used a free month-long video class to round out "chemistry" for the semester, and then we moved to something entirely different. (The Story of Science.)

 

The lesson I learned is that I will NOT be able to learn ahead on the complex classes.  I'll have to outsource. 

[laughing lioness]

Learn it or outsource it. A few of my kids have taught themselves things but it was in areas they lean towards. None of my kids have taken up higher level math or academic science on their own and felt successful at it, though admittedly we are more linguistically, versus symbolically oriented. 

Oldest dd learned several languages "on her own." (meaning she traveled extensively, lived abroad, studied grammar, hired a tutor). 

[texasmama]

[shawthorne44]

Back when I was teaching, I had an official mentor teacher that was amazing.   I was teaching Physics.  She said it was helpful for me to demonstrate working out a problem in front of the class that I'd never seen before.  Thinking out loud the entire time, of course.    

Someone that is learning alongside would naturally do that.  

[Based on Faith Academy]

My son works very well with me too and I think that the time and attention I'm able to devote has helped him immeasurably. BUT I also have a son that has leaned(always leaned) towards engineering and I do plan to have him take some outside courses. My current plan, subject to change as always, is to start with a course that we've went through at home but perhaps at an easier level, to set him up for success. So, maybe we do Arbor School Algebra on our own and he does an on-line Algebra class using a harder text. Or maybe we do Calculus at home and then he does it at the CC, repetition is a good thing for ds and going over things in multiple ways only helps to cement his learning. He will have to be able to transfer on to learning without me at some point, we'll just do it in ways to help him succeed as much as possible, giving him the support he needs until he can do it independently. I'd rather do it slowly then it just be him enrolling in college without any outsourcing of any kind, with his strengths and weaknesses it would not likely lead to his success to just jump into it.

Right!! This is why I'm working with my ds instead of just sending him out to CC to do it on his own. I want the basics to truly be cemented in his thinking. His father and I have already talked to him about starting slow and giving himself time to get used to the work load.

[Dmmetler]

Learn alongside (like, say, Singapore Bar models, which is definitely something I'd never learned in school) or outsource. For DD's herpetology work, it's a combination often of my learning alongside AND outsourcing at the same time, because my biology instruction stopped with AP biology, and is way out of date in many ways. Because we do the outside mentors, video classes with e-mail to the instructor, and so on, we've also been able to successfully work through books and journals on our own-but at this point, she's as likely to teach me as I am to teach her! One reason why I haven't signed her up for PA Homeschoolers AP bio or something like that is that, frankly, I'm having too much fun learning with her.

 

 

 

[frogger]

Love your post texasmama.

 

I think it is very individual based on your own ability and time constraints.

 

Knowledge is easy of course. Understanding facts is simple but it is those skills that I worry about like writing a good lab report, higher mathematics, foreign languages, learning an instrument. These are things where it's nice to have feedback.

 

I outsourced composition because editing is not my strong point. I said I would work through one and only one subject with my son because I have to work hard to do well being a co-student and I'm very honest with him that I'm learning with him and am not an authority on the subject and he is allowed to correct me and question me. I also, like Merry, ask him to teach me at times. I say only one subject because I have to do more subjects with 3 younger siblings and run a household. In other words, I know my limitations.

[Carrie12345]

I was an honors math student until I dropped pre-calc in high school because my low D average terrified me.  Then my college refused to let me take a math below calculus because of my SAT scores, and I flunked out of that.

 

My kids can take their higher maths at the community college and I will smile as I drop them off and pick them up!

 

[Mergath]

I'm planning WAY ahead. ;) I had a horrible math education when I was a kid, so I'm in the process of fixing that now. I went through Khan Academy's math videos once already, starting at counting (seriously, I was afraid I'd miss something important, lol) and going up into Algebra 2. It amazed me how much more I understood with a good teacher, and how much I enjoyed it. I'm going to go back and redo it again starting with Algebra 1 this time and trying to work my way up to Calculus if I can. I have no problem outsourcing stuff when dd gets beyond my level of understanding, but just because I'm willing to let someone else teach doesn't mean I'm going to be able to find a good teacher for her, and in that case I want to be able to teach her myself. There are a lot of really crappy math teachers out there. 

[wintermom]

I outsource foreign languages that I never learned (i.e., Latin and Spanish). I outsource music lessons (instrument and music theory), and support the practicing and homework at home. I sit in on all the dc's music lessons, which makes home support more effective.

 

For math I've been teaching and facilitating the lessons along with my dc, and bringing in my dh for support more and more (Dh is a math/stats/physics specialist). It's really nice to have advice from an expert in the field, as he can explain future uses of concepts, and why doing things certain ways is useful now and down the road.  This is the greatest benefit of having access to an expert, as this information is not typically found in high school text books. Laying a strong and secure foundation in math is going to be a huge benefit for my dc, who all seem to be heading in the maths and sciences fields. 

 

 

[UCF612]

I'm certain I'll be outsourcing higher level math. My son's mental math abilities far exceed mine. I've been honest with him that my math education/knowledge are not where they should be so we'll seek outside help when he passes what I can handle.

[crazyforlatin]

Sometimes competent, knowledgable teachers bring out the best in your child. Thanks, Mr. and Mrs. Barr of Lukeion.

 

I could have taught DD Greek and Latin, which I did for a while, but nothing like some stringent deadlines, humorous teachers, grades, and medals to motivate a child like DD. On my own, I could never have done a chapter of Wheelock each week, and if I could assign it, DD would have complained. She never complains about the Barrs.

[Bluegoat]

I'm the same as everyone else I think.  Some things I've outsourced (music) some I've learned (geography.)  I'm fairly confident with a lot of the things my kids will do - reading, literature, writing, history, logic.  I expect in time my dh will take over math and science as that is his area of expertise, I am a good natural history teacher, but not so much physics or chemistry, or electronics type things.

 

French is one I have wondered how to approach - we could probably manage this through a combination of working together and self-study.  However, at least for dd10, I am thinking of actually sending her to public school for middle school as there is an immersion program available. 

 

We also have a community college within walking distance, so we may make use of it depending on the kids interests.

[FO4UR]

I self-educate.

 

That said, I did take Calculus and Physics and Latin in high school.  I plan on outsourcing math after Algebra & Geometry.  I plan on outsourcing high school level languages and AP level science.

 

 

[Mimm]

Outsourcing. My daughter is taking French online, and next year will be doing math, and probably science.

[MomOfABunch]

I will learn alongside the kids as long as I can and then I will outsource when I can't or when it comes to the point that they'd be better served learning from someone who knows more than I do. I foresee that both online (paid and open source) courses along with dual enrollment in the local CC will be in the future of my kiddos.

This. And this year I hired a math tutor.

[cintinative]

I might be a bit of an anomaly on this thread with this opinion, but I hope others will agree. 

 

Presently (subject to change!) my plan for high school is to supplement through online courses, local cc, co-op, etc. for the classes I either don't feel confident teaching OR possess no passion for.  The reason I say both is because I really think when you get to the high school level it is so good to have your kids taught by someone who has a passion for that subject.  For me, that would perhaps be literary analysis or physics. Could I teach them? Yes. Will they pick up a love for that subject from me? Probably not.  On the other hand, there are subjects I am passionate about that I would gladly teach my children (and perhaps others). I think Andrew Pudewa mentions doing this--if you have other homeschool moms that you trust and have different backgrounds and you swap teaching (for example, someone who was a nurse might enjoy teaching Anatomy, meanwhile you teach literature or writing).  Anyway, one of the teachers I had in B&M school really influenced my career path because of his passion for field biology. It has remained a passion of mine and now I teach a similar class at co-op.  =)

 

I hope that makes sense!

[OvercomingSchool]

I think every time you read a book, you are "outsourcing" to someone else; so using another teacher or class than yourself is just a higher magnitude of "outsourcing." I'm sure I'll move my 9th grader into college classes as soon as he gets into higher level math and science, but I'll be very selective about the teacher and setting. I think in the older ages, it isn't so much about your teaching every subject as about getting to choose who, where, and when.

[Reefgazer]

I learn them ahead of time, learn them concurrently, or outsource the subject.  I have no background in Latin, so DD and I are learning that concurrently and I see huge benefits to this method.  Namely, we struggle together and she gets to see that some things are tough and a struggle and you just need to plug on.  I can also model study techniques for her to use later.  There will come a time (after we learn the Latin grammar and DD moves to heavier translation) that this method won't be sufficient and I'll need to outsource.  So I suggest concurrent learning, unless the topic is so far above your head that you can't cope or your child isn't being well-served, in which case, I would outsource.

[redsquirrel]

I handle it two ways depending on the topic:

 

If it is a subject that I never studied but I know I can wrap my brain around it easily, then I do some independent work the year before and over the summer.  I don't require myself to be an expert by any means, but I don't feel comfortable if I can't answer the most basic questions.  I need to have a picture of what the subject looks like and where we are going.  I also go out of my way to find a curriculum geared to homeschoolers.

 

It is something that I know gives me trouble, or that I can't master easily, with more depth, then I outsource with an online class or class on DVD etc.  I am also lucky that DH isn't just good at advanced math, but he is a good teacher of math, so I count him among the resources at my disposal.