Understanding the Difference Between Teaching and Learning
By Mimi Rothschild
Setting up a home school for your child gives you a great deal of flexibility. You not only get the opportunity to choose what to include in your home school curriculum and when to schedule any particular lesson, you also get to maximize your child’s learning. In order to maximize your child’s learning experience in your home school, it is important to recognize the difference between teaching and learning and how you can teach your child to learn.
Teaching conjures up images of a parent, teacher, professor, pastor, or other learned person dispensing specific information to a group of learners. The group of learners is generally young, but not always. The teacher is speaking and the group is theoretically listening, understanding, and learning. However, in real life, this is not how people learn, especially children. Your home school gives you the power to break this mold and allow your child to learn in a way in which he will absorb the most knowledge that you, your home school curriculum, and the world has to offer.
Of course, common sense should tell you that the traditional teacher/student model that is employed in most traditional schools doesn’t pass muster. If you take a moment to recall your own experiences as a student in a traditional school, you will remember a fair amount of note passing, doodling, and daydreaming. If you were like most students, whatever the teacher was saying didn’t much interest you, and you learned by cramming for tests to get good grades to keep your own parents off your case. By setting up a home school for your child, you have the opportunity to rectify this situation, to teach your kids in the way that you wish you were taught. Home school gives your child the chance to expand her mind through the process of discovery and experimentation and not just through dry book learning.
When your kids are in home school, you don’t need to make them read dry history books. You can take them to local museums, show them interesting films and movies, and have them create projects so that they will really absorb the lesson. Your home school curriculum can include trips to the nature center, zoos, and aquariums. Instead of reading about fish and plants and animals, you can teach your child about the natural world through experiencing nature. Home school allows your child the chance to discover and absorb, so that she remembers what she is taught and can build on that knowledge through the years, instead of having to relearn the same set of boring facts every single year, as is the norm in traditional school.