Are You Qualified to Teach High School English?

Are You Qualified to Teach High School English?

You are totally, completely, and 100% qualified to teach high school English! It's not because you know everything there is to know about literature, or even because you know how to grade perfectly, but because you are your child's parent - the one who knows them and loves them best. Remember that some public school English teachers don't have an English degree. They may not even have the English background that you do!

Teaching English in high school is not about grading criteria or percentages, it's about getting plenty of writing practice - having your child write a LOT. It's also about helping your child edit their papers. That just means read them and circle things that are obvious spelling or grammatical errors (OBVIOUS errors, that's all). You can also discuss their ideas, asking them such questions as, "What did you mean when you said this" or "please rewrite this part, it doesn't make sense to me." You're not doing anything magical, you're just reading the paper over and giving your child feedback. It's just like when a friend asks, "would you please read over this?" That's all!

The only reason they use rubrics and other grading criteria in school is because they have to grade so MANY students and the marking has to be consistent between them. Not so for homeschoolers! We want to encourage each child to do THEIR very best and that means we don't want to treat all our students the same - we want each to excel in their own way.

We have a one-on-one student-teacher ratio in our homeschool English class. In public school, kids are lucky if they get one paper a semester assigned and carefully edited. With 20-30 kids in the class, teachers aren't necessarily expected to read everything. I bet you'll read and give more feedback on your kid's papers than they would ever get in public school! We can have our kids write across the curriculum and scrutinize their history or science papers for quality writing as well, because we evaluate them in all their subjects. Husbands and wives can often share the burden of grading English papers. That happened to be a HUGE chunk of homeschooling with which my husband helped.

I want you to know that even though I didn't grade English papers in our homeschool, my boys still got full tuition scholarships to college. They both got into the Honors program and earned As and Bs on their college papers!

Are you worried about teaching high school English? How do you handle English papers in your homeschool? Let me know in the comments!

Blessings,

Lee

Please note: This post was originally published in January 2008 and has been revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

For more help with high school English, check out my Coffee Break Book for Kindle/Kindle app, Easy English for Simple Homeschooling: How to Teach, Assess, and Document High School English.