Ivan Said:

Are America's schools teaching kids to "get good grades" instead of "understand the material"?

We Answered:

You have a good point and I have been thinking about the same thing. I know people who really work hard and get A's but don't really care about the material they are taught in class. If students were immersed and interested in what teachers taught them, they wouldn't have had to work as hard to raise their grade.

But seriously, I really wish students would appreciate what teachers are teaching us since our teachers have really worked hard to instill and pass on knowledge on to us. If I enjoyed what I learned in Spanish class instead of only being paranoid whether my grade is a B+ of A-, then I would of had an A. I think this idea applies to any student.

But yeah, sometimes I think its really sad that we are missing the purpose of education

Katrina Said:

How many home-school parents have teaching credentials?

We Answered:

I have teaching credentials. I honestly don't feel that they help me teach my kids in ANY way. Truly. My training was all about setting up unit studies for the prescribed curriculum, breaking textbooks down into school months, tying in different subjects together to be better able to cover everything, learning how to plan and give a lesson with a captivating intro to catch the entire class' attention, I had an entire course on classroom management, another on teaching phys.ed., designed entirely for a group setting, obviously, another course on assessment and what the difference was between assessment, evaluation, what should be counted in final grades given the course objectives, how to design proper tests in different formats... Things only applicable to teaching a group of kids.

Not that it was all a waste of time in terms of becoming a homeschooling parent. There were some great ideas on activities to do with kids, but just about all of that can be easily found in books or on the internet today. I had one fabulous professor who told us that we didn't need any textbooks to teach anything and to remember to treat them as tools. I may have been the only one in the class who really caught that idea because I kept in touch with a few after that and they all religiously followed the school textbooks for their programs. And it's probably the biggest help in terms of homeschooling. We did a bunch of courses on human development, psychology related to learning but most of the technical stuff you learn in those things, while interesting, aren't super helpful as a teacher.

I mentioned in other answers that here we don't study the specific subject matters we are going to be teaching in elementary and that it is also very common for a junior high teacher to be teaching a subject he or she doesn't even have a major or minor in. The expectation is that the teacher will learn what he or she needs to learn to implement the current curriculum, which may change in 5-10 years. It is expected that the teacher is a life-long learner and will participate in all the in-services and conventions and other things to keep improving their ability to teach in the classroom.

Teachers I went to university with as well as my husband and his family full of teachers do not think they are the only ones qualified to help a child learn. They know they've learned special skills to work in a classroom setting, but they've never presumed to think that those classroom skills made them superior to the average parent who wants to teach their child something.

Parents are capable of teaching their children how to count and identify colours and letters and even learn to read. Parents are capable of teaching their kids how to add, subtract, multiply, divide, identify geometric shapes, measure angles with a protractor... Parents are perfectly capable of reading a passage in a history book and explaining it to their child and if there's missing information, they know how to do research to find what they're looking for. Parents are capable of following directions for science experiments. Any parent not capable of that or unwilling to do or relearn what they may have forgotten is not a parent who is going to even be interested in homeschooling.

Added:
I was thinking about this last night. People have misunderstood the point of the credentials. The government set up a requirement for schooling and increased the amount of free (public) schools and had to have teachers hired. The teachers are in essence employees of the government, not the schools. With that mass responsibility, it's only natural that the government would want some minimum standard for those the schools are hiring. The credentials are about being allowed to teach in public schools. Of course it's a good degree that can be used elsewhere, but the main purpose of it is to be able to teach in a public school.

Eleanor Said:

What are the best learning materials for teaching a toddler tagalog?

We Answered:

Repetition

William Said:

Is a special Ed teacher required to rotate learning material for muli age classes?

We Answered:

I teach special education preschool in AZ and I have some of my children for up to three years. This is my second year teaching and I have a lot of the same children as last year. It is not required for us to change our lesson plans every year but I do for the kids and parents. I don't want my children to have to sit through the same thing more than once so what I did last year will not be in my plans this year.

Try talking to your child's teacher about the material that your child is getting and ask her if it is a possibility for them to get something different. If not, talk to the principal and alert him or her to what is going on and maybe you can get a different teacher. The child's placement should be APPROPRIATE (as stated in the IEP) and if they are not learning new things every year I think you could attest that.

Tom Said:

effects of instructional material in teaching learning process?

We Answered:

A variety of materials are beneficial in the classroom because of the different learning styles. Visual learners will benefit from charts and pictures, and also the written words on the board. Auditory learners will learn from just the spoken word, such as stories on CD as many literature books now have. Kinesthetic learners need to move around, so some activities with some controlled movements are good. Also remember that most people are a mix of learning styles, so incorporating a mix of things is best. These were just a few examples that make the learning process more impactful for students.

Mitchell Said:

Does anyone know where to get study material for the PLT k-6 test or principals of learning and teaching test?

We Answered:

I got a book at Books a Million when I took mine. Good luck! Don't stress too much!