Home school chemistry laboratory. How can a parent who is not a chemist cope with lab work?

Question

I have a degree in chemistry and years of chemistry lab teaching experience. I know how difficult it is to teach a chem lab. How is it possible for home schoolers to perform this without cheating their students (children)?

Let me get this straight. I am not putting down home schooling, but I do know that chemistry labs are very important in preparation for college level chemistry studies.

I have seen home school students who could take the college chemistry with no problems, but I also had students who were no where near prepared for the hands-on laboratory.

Chemistry, unlike some other subjects, cannot be taught correctly without the laboratory exercises. This would be like teaching auto mechanics without a shop experienced.

I do not want to hear about how poor your local public school might be. That is the fault of the voters in your locality. I want to know how home school teachers cope with teaching chemistry as a laboratory subject in preparation for jobs or higher education.

Is there a need for some home school specialists?

I am not against home schooling. I am trying to learn some details. I know from personal experience that my parents were not capable of teaching me chemistry at home.

I know that at the college level, many of my students who required the most help (especially in the laboratory) were home schooled. But most were capable of putting in the effort that was needed to catch up.

As to who other than chemists might need chemistry, many. Doctor and nurses and other health care professionals are one group (some of which have less than adequate chemistry education).

One cannot argue logically with a scientist and win if one does not know science.

A parent who has never taken a chemistry course would be brave or foolish to believe that lab lessons are not needed. Chemists know the importance of labs in teaching.

If you are not an artist, you might have a difficult time teaching a student to oil paint. Saying the labs are not needed is not coping, it is avoiding the issue.

heartintennessee --

Most have no problems with the theory. It is the physical use of the equipment and instruments where problems arise. Some were taught to pipet by mouth! Most did not know the proper use of a balance (even a digital one). Little things, like knowing to hold a coin shaped stopper between the fingers instead of laying it down. Many could not use a spatula or rubber policeman correctly. Most had no idea how to assemble pieces with ground glass connectors or how to properly adjust a burner flame.

Only a couple had ever seen or used a cylinder of compressed gas. Most could not read the liquid level (meniscus) in a graduated cylinder.

Other problems had to do with recording in ink and never scratching out any mistakes (a line should be drawn through the incorrect recording).

Many did not even know to tie their hair back and not wear sandals in the lab. Some all but refused to wear goggles.

There must be hundreds more, but these were the most common,

Answer 1

Yes, a home school specialist program taught by a professional is a valuable service.

We enrolled our homeschoolers in the Discovery Museum classes as much as possible. It was worthwhile training. We also had them attend the Art Museum classes, and many other opportunities that we found at various public facilities.

Answer 2

1) Cooperative education classes
2) Community Colleges
3) We have a large pharma company in our area that provides some science / chemical educational opportunities to students
4) One of my best friends is a chemist at a fortune 100 company and we get assistance that way (one of the things that we got "turned on to" is a concept called unit cancellation that is not typically taught until college - look into it).

I thought once upon a time about starting a company - I was going to call it LabRats - to provide hands-on science laboratories to homeschool (and other) kids. The labs would be professionally equipped (so parents did not have to invest in bunches of equipment) and lessons, experiments, supplies and such provided. I still think it is a good idea but never and probably will never get it off the ground.

Answer 3

Richard, I home schooled my daughter, and not my son.
I can only speak for the two high schools in my area. One had an alcoholic Chem teacher, that passed anyone who was there most of the days. The other taught so far above the student's heads, that they learned very little that was useful. Thankfully, our Junior College filled in the gaps.
Our school district offered any supplies that home schoolers needed. I was able to get the same curriculum as was taught in the public schools. I only used them for math, chem and American History. I developed the rest of the curriculum.
Admittedly, my daughter didn't get good lab experience, but a had a general knowledge of chemistry, and the hands-on that could be learned from a quality home chemistry set.
Her education, as a whole, was far superior to what she would have received in public school.
For instance our goat was having problems delivering her kids. My daughter lubed her arms, reached in between the contractions, discovered that the first baby was presented wrong, pushed it back further in, turned it, and delivered it!
And helped the tired and stressed goat deliver two more kids.

This was when she was 13, when most other girls were giggling and primping in front of the mirrors.
I think she had a much better biology education than would have been learned in public school.
I think the pros far outweighed the cons.

Our district had a group of home-schoolers, meeting every Tuesday for accountability. We had a school principal that offered guidance, looked over the week's work and approved lesson plans. The kids met for social events, and field trips.

Answer 4

Many homeschoolers pool their resources, especially at the high school level, and use a co-op for lab-type classes (bio, chem). Also, there are many excellent programs available that include some type of lab work.

I am not quite to the high school level yet, so I'm not exactly sure what we'll do, but could you tell me please what labwork is really necessary in high school that can't or won't be covered in college? Since I wasn't studying a hands-on science curriculum in college, I never took another "lab" course after high school.

Answer 5

I was recently talking to the mom of a child who just started high school and is taking chemistry. She says that her daughter is finding extremely dull as there is no lab work at all. I was shocked to hear this as I'd always thought that there was loads of lab work in high school.
Before she went to highschool this girl was taking chemistry lessons with a tutor. There is no reason why homeschoolers couldn't take lessons with a tutor and do lab work there. And even if they didn't if all high schools do such minimal lab work homeschoolers aren't missing anything.

Answer 6

First of all, there are a LOT of chemistry kits and experiment books out there for things that can be done at home.

Second, there are various programs out there that can be used that include video demonstrations.

Third, I don't know about where you live, but where I live, the students often only get to do one or two chem labs a year, IF they're lucky. They will get a few demos. There is simply too much in the provincial curriculum to do, not to mention that a lot of the classes simply have too many students--and we don't hire lab assistants here. I've actually attended a session where a high school chem teacher told a homeschooling mom, who had asked if she should send her son to school for chem, that she can do the necessary lab work at home and that the students often don't get lab work where we live so homeschooled students aren't really missing out. She also said that as long as they do any sort of simple lab work, with learning how to follow procedures, make observations and write up reports, they will be totally fine for college-level chem courses.

Answer 7

Our homeschool group co-ops the chemistry labs once each two weeks and we have the chemistry course itself as a live, online classroom 3 days a week. We do have some students participating in the online course from beyond our local support group (Canada, Hawaii, and various states across the US) who make other lab arrangements.

The advantages of co-oping is that all the local families can pool their funds for some good equipment. For chemistry we have all the basic gear (burner, digital scale, glassware, chemicals, etc.) plus a molecule kit. We have a few CD-ROM and video lab resources for the more dangerous or expensive demonstrations. We also have good gear for biology. We have a high quality microscope, disection sets, specimen tanks, insect collection and display kits, an oversized invisible man model (skeleton and removeable organs), DNA model kit, etc. We also have an onsite stream which is chemically monitored and has weekly organism samplings during biology courses.

My daughter tried public school for a few months for her senior year this year because she was curious about public school - this week she is back home BECAUSE she has found she has had better academic instruction at home and with our co-op classes. She took public school chemistry and they never did a single lab. At the 9 week parent-teacher conference, the first thing the teacher did was appologize for the kids not having any labs yet. He said the lab was a mess. This is his second year there and the lab was too much of a mess last year as well. My daughter's Spanish II course was taught by an office worker that doesn't speak a word of Spanish because they couldn't find a Spanish teacher (in addition to that there is not a textbook for the course). My daughter says they are given dominoes to pass the time. She asked if she could bring some software from home that teaches Spanish but the office worker (babysitter) said that she wasn't allowed to install software on the classroom computer. The yearbook class got into trouble because they hadn't gotten started on the yearbook layouts. The only thing they have done so far is sell ads and take pictures (guess who has been the doer in that much getting done - my daughter). No one would take the time to teach her the class software which she had never worked with before, so she had taken the initiative of photo-editing the photos at home with her own software. I could continue, but I think you get the gist of the local school. You can see why my daughter came to the conculsion that she was wasting her time at the public school and decided to return to homeschooling - curiosity now quite satisfied.

Answer 8

Homeschool High School Chemistry

Answer 9

As I've said before, when I was a nurse, I taught patient's families to care for extremely ill people in their homes. People with little high school experience were able to successfully care for ventilator patients with a variety of medical needs and procedures and assessments in their care plans. It is amazing what people can do when they are doing it one on one and for someone they love. Motivation went a long way in determining outcome. They provided care that would rival some of the most highly trained, and yes degreed, professionals I had ever met.

Most homeschooling parents would not be able to, nor try to run a large lab for hundreds of students. And some brilliant scientists have absolutely no ability to relate to other human beings on a personal level and so their knowledge.....impressive though it may be......is not successfully communicated to others. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. It is when we are able to take advantage of the strengths and learn to work around the weaknesses that we truly succeed.

Sometimes professionals, myself included, think our skills are much more unique and without rival than they truly are.

Just an aside, this summer we actually had public school children (up to 4 yrs older than ours) from the neighborhood join in with us for our biology labs because their in-school experience was so lacking. Let's just call that "enrichment."

Answer 10

I have home schooled three children but none has ever needed chemistry. I wounder if there are books which teach the techniques you mentioned. These seem like valid points. I took chemistry in high school and college and know how valuable a teacher who knows what he or she is doing can be.

It should be possible for a chemist who cares about home schooling to help plan the kinds of laboratory experiments that are needed and include the special tricks or tips which should be learned. I don't know how special equipment might be purchased but I an talkingto parents in my local home schooling organization to see what we can do.

Answer 11

It's not that hard. Any parent who is involved enough to homeschool will be able to figure out chemistry, and the supplies can be found here
http://www.hometrainingtools.com/catalog/chemistry/cat_lab-equipment.html

I have a personal story that might work here. In high school, I had a lot of trouble with chemistry. One month in, I didn't understand anything the teacher was saying. She even told my mom on parent night in front of the class that I had the lowest grade in the entire school ( I think it was 38%) . Nice. After that, I asked to be transfered to another teacher. Within two weeks, my grade was up to a 'C'. The difference? The teacher taught in a manner that worked to my learning style. She didn't tell me it was too hard. She didn't assume (as did the first teacher) that I just couldn't understand it. Unfortunately, I never got above a 'C' in high school chemistry (granted, it was a math and science magnet school), because I already engrained the idea that it was too hard.

Got to college, went in with the same feeling. Got a 'C' in basic chemistry. Went to Organic Chemistry, got an 'A'. Best teacher I ever had. After that class, all the rest made more sense. Maybe, when I was struggling with basic chemistry, if I had been able to look at organic chem, it would have all made sense twenty years ago. But schools can't do that. They have to go in order, and teach what they are told to teach.

Now, I love chemistry. It all makes sense, and once the book work makes sense, the lab is easy. I'm sorry that you find it difficult, but teaching a large number of kids is much different than teaching one or two. We can focus on that child, instead of mass instruction. We can figure out experiments in our own time, without the struggle of putting it into a school schedule and two hour time slots. I think my son actually benefits from this, because he can take the time to figure it out, rather than just have a teacher tell us what's going on. He can set everything up himself, and clean everything himself. At 12, he's already balancing equations and can figure out in his head what the reactions will be.