Teaching

A few days ago a family member asked me how my "teaching season" had gone. School holidays just started here so he meant how had the last term of homeschooling been for me. I didn't understand his question at first. Partly that was because I don't organise our homeschooling into terms ... it tends to constantly change and evolve throughout the year.

The other reason I didn't immediately understand my relative's question was that I don't always associate the word "teaching" with what I do; I forget that that is a word my extended family associate strongly with me. It's funny: when Tessa left preschool to begin homeschooling at age 4.5, she couldn't read. A couple of years later she could, yet I don't think of myself as having "taught" her to read. I think of the achievement as belonging to Tessa. Sometimes I even feel a little miffed that I can't claim the glory for such a wonderful thing, which did after all occur on my watch, but as time goes by I become more and more certain that Maria Montessori was right that if we want to help children's learning then, rather than "teach" children, we need to observe them, presenting activities in response to the individual child's interest - activities that are just easy enough for the child to explore independently and just challenging enough to engender the satisfaction of achievement, activities that entice the child. We need to hold back, allowing the child to work in their own way in their own time, while we continue observing so that we notice when the child is ready for us to demonstrate the next new activity.