Well, as I have taught night courses at a technical institution on topics like “Advanced Excel”, and have taught in many other settings (and have since I was 13), I feel that I am quite capable of teaching. I feel that the “Instructional Technique” course I took when I was 13 through Cadets taught a lot more on the specifics on how to teach something than is taught at a University Education program. (That said, it was one specific type of teaching, not necessarily what I use.) But even without my teaching experience, Parents know a lot about teaching. We don’t (yet!) have our children enrolled in classes on how to walk (unless there are special needs….) or how to talk, or how to eat with a spoon and fork – yet we generally do quite well at teaching it, or the child does quite well at learning it in spite of us!
As for the advance topics, well again, most people are worried about math and science – and that is the areas that are my strengths, so I’m sure I can do it. Even if it wasn’t my strengths, I expect to teach my children how to learn from various sources – and so either they will work out the areas I am not as strong with myself, or we will muddle through it together. If necessary, we will find outside help. In discussing that with some people tonight, they suggested that I might have problems with things like Canadian History. Well, I admit that that is a very weak area – and I admitted that I am having fun finding resources I like….. but that as I could remember almost nothing about Canadian History from my 12 years of schooling, that if my kids manage to remember something about it, they will have done better than me, and will probably be just fine.
I haven’t had to deal with any special needs at this point, so don’t have a direct answer to that…. and if there were special needs I would research it, and listen to what the professionals advised – but that I would do what felt the best for my child. Having the amount of time with my child makes me sure that I would be able to make the right decisions. I know of some special needs children that have not done well in the regular system – but it would be something I would need to consider individually.