Are You Learning?

What really qualifies someone as a teacher?  In my recent post on Do Facts = Education, I talked about how just knowing the information doesn’t make you wise in a subject.  So…

This is the sign for "teach" - shake your hands forward twice and you are teaching - yay!

• Do you have to have a college degree to teach?
• Is there a certain age that qualifies you as a “teacher?”
• What makes you an “expert”?

I’ve got all kinds of questions, and, as you’ll get to know more about me in these posts, you’ll find out that I always, always, have an opinion. (Actually, if you have your own question for us, you can ask us here.)

Anyway, the point of even asking what makes a teacher essentially boils down to our crazy fear of actually having to “teach” our children.  Why do we have to define “teacher?”  Because we’re ridiculous.  Because we need the black and white answer that yes, we can teach because we’re “qualified.”

Being a teacher doesn’t mean you have to know all of the curriculum on the market, how to find E=MC2, or that are are up to date on licensing requirements with your education degree.  Quite honestly, everyone is a teacher in their own right.  Unfortunately, that means that even when you aren’t meaning to teach something, (ie the dreaded swear word your child overhears you saying), you’re still making an impression.

I could go round and round here.  We’re always teaching, all the time.  Our kids are looking at us on how to cope with life in general.  How do they react when they’re angry?  Big hint will be however I act when I blow my steam.  How do they comfort, how do they handle obstacles, how do they treat others?  They are looking at the examples we set–we are parents; we are role models.  Like it or not, we are teachers.

To take it to the educational level, where not only are we teachers in the parenting realm, but people expect us to actually “play” teacher with our kids, I think there are a few great qualities for being an effective one – both in life in general and in learning things like ABCs and 123s.

Make it fun:  To many times I see people who dread work – homework, classwork, work as in a J-O-B…it’s the “have to do” versus the “want to do.” My father’s favorite quote by James Michener says “The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion.  He hardly knows which is which.  He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing.  To him, he’s always doing both.”  Don’t make it drudgery – learning is fun – figure out how to make it that way for both of you!

Let them make their own lines sometimes:  My oldest is notorious for this.  When I gave her this project, the goal was to go from the letter A to the letter Z.  She did it, but she had fun with it.  Sometimes you need to let it go.  We tend to get stuck on expectations for how things should be (that’s a whole blog post in and of itself) and sometimes just because we think you need to do it one way doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways to get the same result.  When you are teaching a child, you want them to learn so it sticks.  If your child start going in a direction you don’t see, but they are having fun and they are picking up the ultimate goal, let them to it!

Go with the flow: Take cues from the kids.  Going along the same lines as the point above, make sure they are receptive to learning the task at that moment.  If they are tired, cranky, hungry, sick, stressed, etc., it may become a battle you don’t want to fight because you both end up losing.  Sometimes, letting the lesson flow at the time/pace they are most receptive to works best.

Let them lead: I’m definitely leaning toward more child-led teaching – if they are interested enough to ask, they are more open to learning about it.  Tonight at dinner, the question was “why is it called an ‘ear’ of corn?” She was curious and it became a perfect time for a lesson on corn – how it grows, what is good about it, etc.  We had fun and she learned something new.

So being a teacher ultimately, to me, means being in tune with the fact that you always have the opportunity to teach something.  We are all teachers, so be aware of it and know that either way, they are picking up on what you do, so look for ways to intentionally make it something you want them to learn!