Homeschooling pro and cons

Lately I have been thinking to organise an after school activity for those children with Italian as a mother tongue.
I involved couple friends who could help me in this adventure. We find a location in Oulu centre and it´s actually time to meet to organise what we are going to do.
These kids - between first and sixth grade - speak fluently Italian but their writing skills and their knowledge of specific and technical vocabulary is still missing. All of them are in Finnish school system.
My aim is to fill the gap between the Italian language skills and the knowledge provided by the Finnish school. In other words I want to try to teach these kids to write, read and use a specific vocabulary also in Italian.
Looking and surfing on internet, now that I am at home unemployed - has been my mainly activity. I found a lot of inspiration from web-pages that share activity and experiences in home schooling. The amount of material is massive! 

Home schooling was a regularly used system in the past when only kids from a certain social classes received an education. The difference is that - back then - rich families provided their children a tutor for their education of. Nowadays families choose a parent who will be the teacher. Families choose to use home schooling system mostly for religious reasons (35%) and in this picture you might have an idea what are other reasons::

Mikael Häggström - 

Motivations regarded most important for homeschooling among parents in 2007. Source: 1.5 Million Homeschooled Students in the United States in 2007 Issue Brief from Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. December 2008. NCES 2009–030

The material´s amount material for resources and activities on line, as I said, is huge. The home-schooling follow different paradigms and philosophy.
In Finland about 250 students are studying with the home-schooling system between 7 and 16 years of age. We can read from the HSLDA page that

Homeschooling is legal and protected by both the Constitution and Finnish law. Education is governed by the Basic Education Act (628/1998). According to the Ministry of Education, there is no obligation to attend school in Finland, only the obligation to receive basic education. Compulsory education may be completed by studying at home. Authorities accept a parent’s right to homeschool but often deflate this right and in some cases misinterpret the law. The law gives a supervisory role to the local authorities.

(from: https://hslda.org/hs/international/Finland/default.asp)

However, very few principals and municipalities know in details how the home schooling works and what is the burocracy behind them.
(The homeschooling Finnish Association give advices and asnwers of regular questions which I advice you to get a look if you understand finnish. See link at the end of this post).

However, very few principals and municipalities know in details how home-schooling works and what is the bureaucracy behind it.

(The home-schooling Finnish Association, at which I advise you to take a look if you understand Finnish, provides support and answers to regular questions. See link at the end of this post).

Can every parent become a teacher? How can they separate the parenting and the teacher role? Is there any difference? Does it have to be a separation?

For a parent, is the motivation enough or should they require a special training and permission to do home-schooling?

How to keep home-schooling effecting when the interaction and collaborative learning is still one of the best way to learn?

How the progress can be monitored?

Home-schooling students might not shine for social skills and interaction and might suffer from the lack of resources such as labs and materials which are limited at home. When thinking about home schooling disadvantages related to the lack of socialisation as well as the workload and commitment for the tutor/teacher/parent should be considered. The parent should be properly prepared to answer to the child’s questions on a specific matter. In addition to that, how big of a role the child’s own will, taste and personal inclinations in learning during the whole time play in the general picture of home-schooling?

I think the importance of school as a social factor cannot be underestimated, but on the other hand home-schooling and informal learning has potential. Home-schooling can be a tailor-made system that doesn´t stress the most sensitive children. There are many people who didn´t received any official training in what they do best and they did received home-schooling education. The results of home-schooling can be significantly better but so the schools system ones.

Summa summarum: both systems have positives elements and it should occur to each and every parent that "parenting" is also a kind of home-schooling. I personally don´t believe that I could do better that the academic system could do (in matter of resources, possibilities, interactions) but my son will have the support from us - from me - when he will need also in the informal learning.

I truly believe that formal and informal learning can be used to support children in growing up: together, the two aspects of learning could provide a wide range of possibilities in exploring different themes/subjects.

The material available on home-schooling is extremely valid and will be used by me for teaching Italian to my son. In his own time and skills I will try my best to succeed without taking over the role of the teacher. It´s going to be difficult but I am ready for the challenge.

If you want to know more about homeschooling(English)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_international_status_and_statistics
http://www.parents.com/kids/education/home-schooling/what-is-homeschooling/
http://infed.org/mobi/informal-learning-home-education-and-homeschooling-home-schooling/
https://www.nheri.org/research/research-facts-on-homeschooling.html
In Finnish:
http://suomenkotiopettajat.fi/aloitan-kotiopetuksen/
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/oppiomaantahtiin/info
http://www.feeniks-koulu.fi/index.php?main=5&sub=2slang=fi
http://www.kotikoulu.net/
In Italian:
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istruzione_domiciliare
http://www.flcgil.it/rassegna-stampa/nazionale/repubblica-istruzione-in-proprio-all-estero-e-boom-e-l-italia-segue-l-esempio.flc

Long time no see

I am in the middle of 8 months journey that started in front of a glass of red wine with my dear friend Antonio, who believed with me that we can bring together a little bit more of Italian Culture here in Oulu area.
Today we will have - God bless internet and adobe connect! - an evening called "Serate Culturali" where a researcher in History of Science from Univeristy of Milano Bicocca will speak about Galileo Galilei and his revolution.

During the arrangements of the event I could refresh my memory and I found myself again passioned about the history, the science and the philosophy. Again I found the same enthusiasm what I had when I started university.

Why Galileo?  and why Galileo was convicted and Copernico wasn´t?
During the years when Copernico started his work, probably the Church had so many other things to think about it. Martin Luther started already speak about his theories and Copernico used the math - the exact science by definition. The Church had bigger problem (Lutheranism) than Copernico...
Copernico was in one way lucky but he brought up so many ethical problems than even Michelangelo in his masterpiece of the Last Judgement could present.

Galileo instead was using the methods of Platone - the dialogue. This way to present the things were so vulnerable and could easily be destroyed from those who didn´t want to understand. To admit that the Earth wasn´t in the middle of everything couldn´t justify anymore what was written in the Bible.

Galileo was a man from the future and this evening I cannot wait to hear more about it!

My will to bring to kansalaisopisto more...

Lately I have been thinking to use Skype to practice Italian with my intermediate group of students.
I found 3 hours ago through Pinterest this address https://education.skype.com/projects  and I contacted one Italian teacher in Honduras University. I hope we can arrange a lesson when the students can break the ice and introducing themselves in Italian. In fact the Italian will be the only language that they are going to use. It will be a big step for them in order to win the shyness. I have been thinking also to (re)motivate myself using more technology in my job. I think in kansalaisopisto the language learning is still too much in old fashion way. We have talented and devoted teachers. They are smart, they master their subjects (like languages) but they are not using enough other learning methods than book and games. In my opinion, to use platform as skype as a learning resource is one  of the most useful way to learn a language, a culture and built a net.
I have heard comments from my colleagues like this "The students in kansalaisopisto are there just for the company and fun not for real learning, especially languages. They want to learn how to order a beer or buy a postcards". Maybe for most of them this is true. But I know that there are others (maybe a minority) that they want to learn more than that. I know that I need to give them always something new and different. I can propose them stories, games, videos and much more learning exercises. However - to be a teacher means for me to give my students the best opportunities at the moment available. Why? because they deserve that. They choose to take part to my course and I want to give them the best service that they can have it. This includes all learning methods and resources that can be used to improve their language skills and build their self confident to use the language.
I think that - as a kansalaisopisto teacher -I should honor my students just for fact that they choose me as their facilitator. That´s the reason why I want to give them the best service as possible, 360 degrees way of learning Italian language, culture,food, people.Using all the material out there, having always in mind 2 things:
1) what is the best for their learning
2) having fun during the learning
Amen.