Before I was a Home Educator I knew there were things wrong with the education system in this country. My mother had been a teacher (mostly supply and/or music). I was also rather lucky at junior school (aged 7 to 11 years) to have not one but several really amazing teachers.
They were inventive, inspired and most often projected based. We did basic weaving. Made sweets. Read together. I learned to read music and sing in a choir. I even learned cursive script (though I hated it at the time).
I could see that being a good teacher (something I still believe) is about have a presence and control of a class, and yet inspire them, liberate their ideas and excitement. To create moments that change the way they think about something.
As I was leaving university a lot of my feckless peers who "wanted to be famous" decided to go into teaching to cover the bills. I knew I would be a great teacher but I refused to do it. I knew I would have to be one of those sparky teachers and after my degree I was exhausted. I didn't have it in me to do it at all. No if I was to do it, I would have had to have been amazing.
Then I had some life. Teaching craft to adults was different. Harder, easier. Having a family. Writing, readings.
My daughter went to school.
As a parent, to watch my daughter be damaged a little more everyday was soul destroying. Truly. I did everything right and it was still hell, hell for all of us. After the second year I began to research HE. The third year was a little better, she got a great teacher, who then promptly left after one year for a better school.
Sometimes you don't realise how ingrained the system is, how broken, how controlling until you really leave it. I had had some friends who were teachers (still have some too). Some teachers had never not been in the education system and it is really weird how...odd they are! School is their only frame of reference. They know nothing outside of the bubble. Tiny things become huge and huge things become hidden. Like colonies in space, anything outside is alien and dangerous.
The thing is we know more about children than we have ever known. Yet all this knowledge is not used in schools unless it can be bent, restructured or twisted to fit into the "school" shape.
This why schools don't work well for most students. It is not just that there is poor teaching (there is) or that there are poor teachers (there are), it is that system is more important than the children. Yet the system doesn't work.
There of course, there are still great teachers. Yet many leave, struggle, have health issues due to amazing amount of stress wanting to teach in a sparky innovative and inspired way, and not being allowed to do so.
Teaching craft is one of those things, (I have taught all kinds of people of all ages) that has shown me that people (and default) children don't learn the lessons you want them to learn. That if they don't want to do it, they won't and if they do, they will moved heaven and earth to do it.
A great teacher inspires. Shows the the hem of something. A hook. A good student will then want to follow it where ever it leads and will devour it. Once a student is shown how to learn, how to grow their knowledge they won't stop. They can't.
Until the system is not controlled by politics (big and small) and what we know about child development is put into an education system it is going to keep fail, letting down and destroying children.
Bright Blessings xxx
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