Take Heart - Home Education Network

August 5, 2020

From Little Things

I’m a HEN volunteer, so I have the chance to speak to lots of new home educators, and see a variety of learning plans. So many parents doubt their abilities, worry that they will not ‘cover everything’, that they are ‘not doing enough’ or that they won’t pass a review. I’m a worrier too, so I know where they are coming from, but I’m […]

March 17, 2020

DIY Education

By Susan Wight You’ve made the decision not to send the children to school this year and the relatives are recovering from the shock…Now, where to start? Having made the decision to leave the school system, you now have the freedom to choose your own education. Spend some time thinking about what education is. What would the ideal education look like? What would you […]

August 3, 2018

The Greatest Gift

By Pavlina McMaster We came to home education like many others, carrying scars from a school system that was eroding my child’s self-esteem, and our sanity. School, though short-lived, had been a time fraught with stress, anxiety, and the regression of everyone’s skills, not least of which were mine. As an autistic adult, I had come to learn so many things that many neurotypical […]

July 3, 2018

Home Education Beyond Week Two

By Sue Wight Rachel Brady gave up on home education after two weeks and sent her children back to school. Her home education experience is not representational. Around 20,000 Australian kids are currently being home educated, thousands more already have been. For some families, home education provides a valuable short-term solution to an immediate problem, but many educate for a substantial time. The average […]

May 28, 2018

Home educating your teenager – you can do it!

Can it be done? Yes! Parents often feel pressure from those around them to put their children into school for the high school years. ‘What about university?’ is one of the most frequently asked questions of home educators. ‘What about VCE?’ is another. Home educating your teenager isn’t as big and scary an undertaking as some may have you believe. While it is understandable […]

May 6, 2018

Do Your Own Thing

By Sue Wight As you move into the home education world, you’ll have people ask what type of home educator you are. There will be those who make the question sound like some kind of test. Feel free to ignore any such pressure. There are many different ways to home educate but none is the ‘one true way’. You may not be familiar with […]

January 10, 2018

Dear New Home Educator

Dear New Home Educator, Congratulations on your decision to educate your children from home. You’ve borrowed a pile of books from the library and scoured the internet for advice; you may have bought some supplies already. Great…except that every ‘expert’ seems to recommend different things and now you feel overwhelmed by the choices. Right? Relax, you’ll be home educating YOUR children YOUR way and […]

November 13, 2017

Should you look at the Victorian Curriculum?

By Bekah Carman In Victoria we are required to provide “regular and efficient instruction that taken as a whole, substantially addresses the [8 key] learning areas”. These learning areas, which we call the KLAs, are English, Maths, Science, Technology, Languages (other than English), Arts, Health and PE, and Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS). The problem with the requirement to instruct in the 8 KLAs […]

November 6, 2017

Unschooling is not Unparenting

By Sue Wight Something odd is happening in the world of unschooling. Sarah has heard that if her children want chocolate biscuits for breakfast, they will eat a balanced diet over time without well-meaning interference from her. Meanwhile, she’s struggling to buy enough chocolate biscuits to keep up with them and is torn between her concerns about nutrition and a reluctance to impose restrictions […]

December 12, 2016

Missing the Milestones

By Susan Wight Towards the end of the year, I often catch up with old friends. Getting together always emphasises just how different our lives now are. They talk of meetings, workloads, changing policies, best-practice and so on. Their end-of-year display of cards and gifts from appreciative clients or students always takes me by surprise. Jealous? No, I’m happy with my life and don’t […]

July 14, 2016

Are you qualified?

By Susan Wight Somehow this question puts us on the back foot and we ﬁnd ourselves mumbling, “Umm, well no I’m not a teacher…” Why? Why do we give in to the assumption that we need some kind of certiﬁcate to ‘teach’ our own children? I don’t believe we should, but somehow many parents suddenly feel unable to defend home education when this question […]

May 10, 2016

Just Playing

By Susan Wight Play is children’s work and yet it is curiously undervalued in our society. Many adults fervently believe that there can be no ‘educational value’ in something that children choose to do. Their concern about home educating without a curriculum is that children might ‘just play’. Adults are sceptical that play, which looks to them like merely a pleasant pastime, can really […]