Otey's Educational Tutoring Service

11/10/2021

Know what curriculum your school is using to teach reading and history. Check out the materials yourself. Read them. From what I've heard, this is where the new ideas of gender issues and history changes are being taught to your children of all ages. Check and see.

12/30/2019

Please watch this as it can help you help your child during the school year, especially if they are having difficulty with their classes now.

Jordan Peterson ~ The Reason We Have So Many People With ADHD/ADD Full talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zji6xMkOgo Jordan Peterson Channel: https://www...

10/13/2019

I've retired from public school teaching but am still involved with homeschool. If anyone's children need help with any subject in school, I am still able and available to tutor. I have a lot of writings on my educational tutoring site. None of it is outdated in importance nor in content. It's a battle for many children and their families to get through the amount of content taught in the amount of time it is expected to be learned. My tutoring sessions happen either at the student's home or in a library, and I involve one or both parents for them to be able to support their children more effectively.

02/16/2019

I have come to understand that the power or battery for most of our capabilities for learning comes from the subconscious part of our brains. This is why we as children pick up on the elements and structure and more of our world at a fast rate. Constantly relating to the environments of our family, friends, trips to here and there, feeling and sensing time and weather and moods and emotions and more. That child walking into a public school of cold structured education already has a vast understanding of how things work in relationships. That level of understanding IS related to the nature/nurture of the child, and for some children that school will be much better at nurturing than the home was. But each child is already educated in understanding how to survive or to give up. Teachers, as I was in a public school, are mostly overrated as guiding lights. I don't mean that to be offensive. I just noticed in my 22 years how much autonomy a teacher has. The "curriculum" is the boss. The teacher is the means of transferring the book stuff to the kids' minds. College spends two years longer than necessary to teach young teachers methods, concepts and techniques. The degree is made much harder than it needs to be. A good teacher who understands how important the subconscious mind is for learning will go beyond the book transfer game by attending and nurturing the personality, spirit and talent of each child, noticing their best way of learning and allowing that to happen over and above rigid, scripted book lesson styles. A good teacher will make sure every day is filled with laughter and emotional care and listening and sharing thoughts with the students. Individuality will be praised and encouraged. My experience has taught me that the system is not designed that way and that most teachers get stressed by forcing the knowledge, fighting for kid's attention, spouting more warnings and threats and expressions of disappointment and creating an overall environment of varying degrees of hell in a class. If your child has the teacher who uses their autonomy to override the callous and cold black and white model of learning to make their room warm and happy and fun for learning, please praise that teacher somehow and often. This is my educated opinion. :)

08/23/2018

My 22 years in teaching public school, at all grade levels, has given me this lesson from the students. The "thing" that drives most, not all, teachers crazy is the student's insistence to relate to the natural human instinct to learn something interesting "spontaneously" rather than by "assigned" day and time of the day. It is not an argument of spontaneity versus formalized structured learning. Instead, it is an argument of the forced timing and forced time limits of learning anything. The student's frustration comes more from being tired, uninterested or thinking about something else rather than from lack of intelligence, rudeness or not caring at all. Students are driven like cattle in and through the system of social educational conformity patterns for the sake of community survival. Individual imagination and natural talents are not considered as a high mark of the learning process. Of course, students will be able to show those talents and imagination, if it happens to be sparked in the specific class it fits at the specific time of the day for the duration it is allowed. That is a main fault and failure of the public education system where your eighteen years of public education make you qualified only for work as a cashier, stocker or fast food cooker. Unless you come from a family business or have the money for the outrageous college expenses. Trade school is available and a good way to go. But it would be far better to have that installed in the public education system at Junior High school level at the least. So, again, parents. You hold the key to helping your child become the best "whoever" they are. Depend upon your awareness of your child's skills and capabilities and provide opportunities and possibilities for them to survive successfully as both students and within their gifts/talents. Do not leave it up totally to the public school system.

05/29/2018

When I taught school from 1995 till the end of the 2016-17 school year every school I taught at was like the ones I went to as a kid. Parents could walk in through the front door and go to the office and sign in. Parents could pick up their kids inside the school at the end of the day. That doesn't happen anymore. I spent the last 17 years of my teaching at a grade school. I remember parents bringing their children in in the morning and being able to visit with some teachers who had time. And I remember the many parents coming into the school at the end of the day to pick up their kids. Those parents would wait in the cafeteria. And teachers would lead the kids down to see their parents and again parents and teachers could mingle for a while. There was always about 20% tension in the school during those times but that was normal tension between people of different beliefs in different groups all gathered in the same place. The fact that they all came for one same purpose which was to pick up their loved ones made everything calm and balanced. I remember when we could leave the front door and back door open for a really nice air flow to help offset the horrendous heat at the beginning and sometime the ending of the school year. I remember when I could go out for lunch and freely open the front door when I came back to work after lunch. Well now none of that is possible. If I forget my key then I have to push the buzzer to be let in. And I would always let in right away. Like my last three to five years of teaching was a lot different once that Veil of community faith and trust was replaced by the veil of fear. I was watching teachers having to become bodyguards at the front doors at the day's end. They were to keep the parents out and to be certain the kids left only when they open the door. I have seen parents standing in rain and Ice Cold Winter Winds and blistering hot weather to wait for their child to come out the door. I know the reasons 4 the permanent shutdown and safety buzzers. But I have to look back historically to the ways schools operated when I went to school and all the way up through the 90s and early 2000. There is a vast difference in how Society is now from then and the question is how was it all reshaped. Many answers of course but the bottom line is what a shame that we have become this today. So sad and such a loss of trust and joy and confidence in schools.

05/24/2018

I went to college for five years to become a special ed teacher. I took an extra year because I was helping to raise a family at the time. I worked 22 years as a special ed teacher. Two different years with the special ed Co-op WCISEC, 3 years at Northwestern High School in sSciota before their consolidation, and the last 17 years at Bushnell grade school. I give that background because of the next statements. It does not need to take for years for anyone to get a teaching degree. I told that to block students who worked with me. I told them the main purpose of a university is to teach you to work under pressure and to research. The problem with the universities definition of working under pressure is that it regards paperwork and not working with groups of real people. Block work was designed to fill in the gap. A two-year paperwork course followed by one year at student teaching would be plenty of education for a degree. I also see a very big problem in separating regular education from Special Education in Training. A child is a child regardless of their emotional and intellectual challenges. Although I do agree that some children who have strong emotional problems and are violent in nature should not be in the classroom with the rest of the other kids until they have a degree of healing. Because of the increased government control of how classes are taught and and because of the crippling effect that has had upon teacher autonomy for those teachers who are gifted to teach, I informed my block students-- if they expressed a background of another Talent that they currently practiced on their own-- to stay away from teaching in a school. I told them instead to be involved with professional tutoring and to find work in their other talent so they could combine both gifts and be happier and feel more effective in the long-run. I am involved with homeschooling now with a large group of family's that support each other. I believe all options should be available. Public school and homeschool and any variation of the homeschool option. Changing the format of a public school system will not happen anytime within the next 20 years to recognize children's individual talents and to fully prepare them for more opportunities upon graduation other than working at fast food and large stores or hoping they can afford expensive colleges to finally be trained for work matching their gift or Talent. The purpose of writing this is to help parents realize the need of being deeply involved in their children's development for a future in the real world rather than leaving them to the repetitive routine of grade after grade General stuff that leads to graduation day into fast food and big stores. In my opinion.

03/09/2018

Public schools are increasingly unhealthy for kids’ emotional stability. Let us count the ways.

02/13/2018

I am sharing in this space an Anti-Bully Booklet I made a few years back. I want to keep it on this site. I had bought and passed out a few hundred of these. I still have some in a box in my van. Not sure where to place them now. But this placement here will help spread it around, hopefully. If you like it please share it from your fb. Feel free to print it out also, if you wish. This was all made as a contribution to our communities.

01/30/2018

Education was not invented by some group long ago. Education is a natural result of curiosity, exploration, experimenting, figuring out the resulting rules and laws of whatever subject your experiences come from and being able to use, apply, construct, build and share with a bunch of other interested people. Everyone does it and has been doing it since the first people who existed. The range of education depended upon the number and ability of people in any given area, as they were led by curiosity or force or fear or any other guiding feeling, thought or observation. It all works together and parents need to realize this. What is known today is the highest layer of added information from however long this process has been going on. The level of information these days about everything and the processes involved is far greater than when the parents were kids. Just know that your 1,2,3-year-old has a working brain. Some people think little kids are etch a sketch pads or blank slates that only copy what they see and hear. Not true. Of course they DO copy like that but they also THINK about what they see and hear, and their own curiosity about things, searching and trying out things in the house and outside, this is their normal process of education in humanity at work. Pay attention to and spend a lot of time with them outside, at the store, at the park. Talk to them a lot. Read to them, play with them, be with them as much as you can. Talk to them about anything. Take them for strolls or walks and name things and climb with them and slide with them. Give them paper and a pencil and draw with them, just each of you doing your own thing. Let them help you clean and cook according to whatever level of safety is available for their well being. Let them "play wash" already cleaned bowls and plates and forks and spoons and cups. Just do anything that strikes curiosity. Plan things with only one expectation; presenting interesting things in the world to do beyond watching television and video games. Relate personally a lot at every age level and you will be amazed at what you see in a little human being at the ages as young as two, maybe even one.

12/30/2017

“We need to be raising our children for LIFE. Life is not a small system within 4 walls. Life is vast and wild. And once our children are out of school, that's where life really begins. Too many people are raising their children to conform to systems. And when they start life they will continue to simply conform to whatever system they find themselves inside of. And those are exactly the kinds of people who will never change the world. The only types of people who change this world, are the ones who think on their own, design their own lives, and create their own systems. Everybody else is just there for the train ride. Very few people are designing their own train tracks. Raise railway designers, stop raising commuters.”
― C. JoyBell C. This quote is something to consider for the difference between public school and homeschool. This is a main reason I support homeschool as the number one choice for education. YET the parents must also be individualistic enough to make homeschool work for their children

12/24/2017

This short 8-minute speech has a very important message to parents about "real education".

Eddy Zhong, successful technology entrepreneur, dives into the truth behind our K-12 education system. Eddy strongly believes that the education system dimin...