My Interview with a Public School Teacher

My husband is a public school teacher! In this episode, I interview him on his professional perspective on homeschooling. 

Transcript

Yvette: Welcome to Homeschool Horizons! Episode 5! I’m your host, Yvette. Today I bring to you a guest who is not only my husband, but a public-school teacher! Hello, my husband, would you please introduce yourself to my homeschool audience.

Husband: Hello everyone. My name is Lee, and, YES, I am indeed a public-school teacher, of 27+ years. I teach in a TK-6 grade elementary school, primarily teaching 4th, 5th, and 6th grades over my career. This year I am teaching 5th grade.

Yvette: Yes, you have been teaching for a LONG time. That makes you a very credible guest!  I have invited you to join me on this podcast because I want to give my listeners an opportunity to hear from a public-school teacher that actually supports homeschooling, because there are so many teachers that don’t support it at all. I would like to start off by asking you to go back 7 years and talk about what you thought when I first told you that I wanted to go to a homeschool conference?

Husband: How did I feel when you first told me we were going to attend a homeschool conference??? Wow…that really takes me back.  It feels like a million years ago.  Ok. Surprisingly, being a public-school teacher, I wasn’t against the idea.  Probably because your sister had been homeschooling our niece for years, so it didn’t seem completely foreign to me.

Yvette: Oh yes, that’s right. That’s true!

I’d also like to talk about our experience at the conference itself, because it was something I’ll never forget. It was a wonderful beginning to our homeschool adventure. There were so many booths everywhere, I didn’t even know what I was looking at.  We walked from booth to booth not even knowing what we should ask for or about.  It was a LOT.  Fortunately, we came across this amazing person that represented one of the many charters that were out there at the time.  She was the most patient, kind, understanding person.  She answered all of our questions and left us feeling overjoyed and secure with our decision to move forward with homeschooling.  We had definitely found exactly where we wanted our son to be homeschooled through. Thank God for Karen

Yvette: Yes! I completely agree with you! Thank God for Karen! She was my first HST. She used to work as a public-school teacher and then left in order to stay home with her kids that she began to homeschool herself.  She was a huge wealth of information and support to me. So, what would you say are some of the benefits of homeschooling as compared to traditional public school?

Husband: Being a public-school teacher, I have found that many people I come across are a little surprised that I am pro-homeschooling. I don’t think that the two are mutually exclusive though. Allow me to explain. I am a hard-working teacher and do my darndest to reach each and every one of my students. And I think I do an excellent job in teaching them. However, I am also fully aware that there are some limitations that exist in a public-school setting, as compared to a home school setting.  

Now, there are many benefits that exist in a home school setting. And we could probably spend an hour or two discussing them. But I am going to simply focus on two benefits from a strict educational perspective:  the two areas are with regard to teacher-student ratio and curriculum pacing.

I’ll start with teacher-student ratio because, in my opinion, this is an objectively clear issue. In my teaching career I’ve had class sizes as big as 36 students! Typically, though, my classes are in the 32-34 student range. Although this year, I have a once in a career anomaly of 22 students. I’ve never had so few students in a class. EVER!  There is simply no way I can give the attention to 30+ students that you are able to give to our two sons.  Even though, I do provide time in a teaching day for small group instruction, where I pull a group of students to the back table and help that group catch up, while the rest of my class is working on independent work.  This occurs for 20-25 minutes a day for 3-4 days in a week.  Whereas you provide one-on-one instruction to our sons one at a time for as much time as they need.  There’s no way I could do that in a classroom of 30+ students. No way.

Yvette: That is crazy. Even though I know you usually have 30+ students, as most teachers do, it still crazy to hear you say it out loud.

Husband: Yup, it’s definitely a LOT of students. And to help with this, this year I am even teaching an after-school reading intervention class to 7 of my students for an hour, three days a week.  But this still pales in comparison to you providing one-on-one instruction to our sons. 

The second area I would like to shed some light on to your audience, where home schooling is superior, is with regard to the pacing of curriculum. Now this is simply my experience with the districts that I have taught in.  Other districts might be different though. In my current district teachers are given very specific pacing guidelines on WHAT to teach and HOW MANY days to spend on a particular lesson. 

So let me give your audience an example from Math:  In a Decimals unit, I might be allotted 1 day for teaching addition of decimals, 1-2 days for teaching subtraction of decimals, and perhaps 2-3 days for teaching multiplication of decimals, etc. These are guidelines and there is some wiggle room but not much.  Because there are so many Math lessons to get to and teach, I have to keep moving through the pacing, whether mastery of a Math concept by all of my students is achieved or not.  

And the opposite is true to some extent as well.  Let me explain. There are students who don’t need all the days allotted for a concept.  Some students grasp a concept in 20 minutes and are ready to move on to the next one.  I, unfortunately, can’t move on though because the rest of the class still needs more time. I MUST adhere to the district pacing.

But…this is NOT the case whatsoever for homeschooling. A parent can speed up or slow down and cater specifically to the needs of their child.  It’s so beautiful to see.  I am definitely envious of you as a homeschool teacher.  I would love to be able to slow down and spend extra time for some students until they grasp the concept…and THEN move on.

Yvette: You are exactly right about that! Just this past week our son was working on his math lessons and normally there are 6 worksheets given as well as a video lesson at the beginning and then he takes a test after he completes all 6 worksheets.  He told me that he didn’t need to do all 6 of the worksheets this week because he felt ready to take the test after having done only 3. So, I went ahead and gave him the test and he passed. There wasn’t any need to linger there and so we moved on. But on the flip side of that, there have been many times where he does have to complete all 6 worksheets because he is struggling. And like you said, because I only have 2 students, I can focus on helping him when he is struggling or move him along once he has mastered the skill. That is one of the benefits of homeschooling.  

Well, today you’ve given my listeners so much valuable information.  Thank you so much!

I have really enjoyed having you share your professional observations and I want to thank you again for coming on my show as my first guest!    

Husband: You are welcome.  It has been an absolute pleasure and privilege to have been your first guest. And even though I have said this to you before, I want to say it again. Thank you for teaching our sons. 

Yvette: Awww, you’re welcome. And I want to thank you as well, for being so supportive about my doing this podcast.  I am super grateful for that.  

I also want to thank all of you for listening today! I hope this interview was very informative for you!  Remember to tune in next week for episode 6 where I will be talking about all of the different reasons why a family might choose a PSA over a charter and vice versa. Have a great week everyone! Talk you soon!