Here is what I have learned from my own experiences:
1. The teacher makes or breaks the class, and once you get past elementary school, from what I saw there are few teachers that honestly seem to care about teaching. I moved to Indiana in the middle of 4th grade, and I had amazing teachers up until that point. The teacher that I had for the second half of 4th grade was ridiculous. She was finishing up her last year before she retired, and you could tell. She was also in charge of the computer lab and any computer work for the rest of the school, and she spent most of her time working on that. We had a math lesson once a week, a science lesson whenever she felt like it, and a spelling lesson once a day, and that's pretty much it. She also handed out a multiplication tables quiz (which we mastered at least 2 years before that) about twice a day so it would look like we were doing something, but we never had to turn them in. We just had to keep them on our desks. In the 5 months that I was in her class, I always felt so out of place because I was used to learning all day, and that's what I wanted to do at the time. The other kids in my class had gotten used to the teacher, and they were fine with just hanging out and playing on their own for most of the day. We spent half of the week sitting in the computer lab playing games online while she worked with some computers and the other half hanging out with our friends in the classroom while she was on her own computer. By the end of the year, I remember saying by to her, and she had no idea what my name was. I had been there for more than 5 months. That's just ridiculous. I know that that's not normal for elementary teachers, but it still happens.
Middle school wasn't too bad; I feel like most of the teachers truly cared about teaching, but there were some who seemed to hate their job and just told us to read something and be quiet the whole time. There were also others like my music, band, and art teachers who were super annoyed of everyone except their 4 favorite kids in the class, and the only reason they liked them was because they were good at what the teacher was teaching.
High school just seemed like a disaster. There were maybe a fourth of the teachers at my high school who truly cared about teaching, and I loved those classes, even if I didn't do very well in them. Then there were also teachers who only cared about the kids on the football team, or track team, or whatever team they cared about. I had lots and lots of teachers that did nothing but tell everyone to sit and work on something and leave them alone while they sat in the corner and talked to all the kids on their favorite team about how their practices were coming or what they should do differently next game. I had a history teacher who was so caught up in his track team that the last month of school we had no tests or assignments because he "was too busy for teaching". I had a gym teacher that sat in his office with all of the football players to teach them new plays while the rest of us sat on the bleachers. We didn't even have to change into gym clothes the entire year. No wonder Evansville has the highest obesity rate in the country! haha just kidding...but for real. geez. Yeah, there were more that were just as ridiculous. Then I had teachers who planned the classes well, but by the end of the class they had yelled and lost their patience with us enough that they cancelled the plans and made us sit in silence. Or the teachers who had lost their patience years ago so every class period they handed out an assignment for us to finish by the end of the period and told us not to bother him. I had lots of those. I never had any homework that I couldn't finish in class, and I never had to study for tests. They were just so easy that it was almost a joke.
2. There is way too much time being wasted. I know this has a lot to do with the teacher, also, but some of it you just can't avoid. Even in elementary school there was a lot of sitting around while the teacher helped another student. Again, it was worse in high school. For those classes that we sat around and were told to "do something and don't bother me", which was pretty often, we just sat and talked. I swear half of my day was just sitting and talking. We also had a class period that was an hour and a half long every other day that was known as "homeroom". This period was basically for people to do homework and make up any work or tests that they missed. I'm sure it was great for people who missed school a lot or had to spend a lot of time on homework, but for someone like me who had perfect attendance in high school and always finished my homework in my actual class, it was an hour of free time where my friends and I sat around being bored. Plus, teachers always gave a crazy amount of time for people to finish tests or assignments, and we all just sat there for more than half the period because we were all finished, but the teacher didn't have any new plans for us.
3. Lunches. I always thought it was strange that they served kindergarteners the same amount of food as a senior in high school. What? That makes no sense. I never felt like we got enough food, especially since I had basketball practice every day after school. I was starving by the time school ended! It has now gotten worse since Michelle Obama has limited the amount of food in the schools. My younger brother says he needs what the school will allow him to eat plus bring his own lunch in order to have enough energy for sports after school. It just doesn't make sense. Plus what's all this about not serving them carbs or protein?? Aren't you supposed to have more servings of carbs than anything else? Hello, food pyramid! Plus, whats up with these...
Pretty sure they were impossible to drink out of. You either ended up with the straw poked through the back so if you pull it out it will spill everywhere or you got it in right, but if you moved the bag, the milk would shoot up through the straw and hit you in the face! Worst idea ever.
ok, I'm getting tired of complaining about the schools, so I'm going to stop. I hope this doesn't sound like I hated school and everything about it. I really did love school most of the time.
So Homeschooling: Yes/no?
I don't really know a lot about the benefits for it, but I do love that they can learn at their own pace and in their own way. They also have a one-on-one teacher, and you can learn more hands on since you don't have to worry about 30 kids making a mess. I think there wouldn't be near as much time wasted, and its pretty easy to feed them what you want and when you want to. You don't have to worry about teachers who don't care or won't listen to your kids, either. Let me know what you think. I know that I don't have to decide this any time soon, obviously, but it's nice to learn more about the options.
