For the homeschool parent, this question takes on a critical importance. Why? Because we are responsible for providing our children with the best possible teachers for our kid’s education. Doing that brings up the question of What makes a good teacher? Reflecting on our own education, past and present, and reflecting on who were our most influential teachers and why they were so influential becomes critical in providing such a teacher for our children.
So who was my most influential teacher?
Well, currently, my most influential teacher is me. Egotistical and missing the point? Not unless I stop there. I picked myself because somewhere along the way the value of continuing to learn was incubated in me and I am continually pursuing my own education. I am learning a new language, Japanese, and it is a massive struggle for me – but I persist. If you look at my Facebook page you will notice I post the books I have read in a separate category as a way to track my reading – a list that continually grows in new and sometimes surprising directions. I am happy with myself and the person I am today – someone who loves learning for learning’s sake – it is a major influence on why I chose to homeschool my kids.
But somebody must have guided me to this place, this attitude of continual learning. Who was that?
I was homeschooled myself until High School, but I spent my second-grade year in public school due to some home-life struggles. I remember Mrs. Gertrude, a tough old bird of a teacher. (It just occurs to me that Gertrude is a first name, I must have never known her last name!). She was a grandma (or should have been) of the old school, tough as nails with a heart of gold. One time, when the class had exchanged gifts for a ‘secret Santa’ gift exchange, my gift fell and broke – she took something out of her desk and gave it to me, quickly abating the flood of tears leaking out. An influential teacher, to be sure!
My old wrestling coach,
Gary Bowden, was an amazing teacher. Though politically quite extreme in his views, he had a way of asking questions that made you think about why you believed in the way you thought the world worked. He didn’t push his own beliefs but asked questions on why you thought what you thought. An amazing example of a teacher! And, now that I think about it, also a teacher from the old world – tough, uncompromising, and quite unmoved by whines of ‘it’s too hard’ whether talking about academic matters or whining about his insanely intense wrestling practice! Ron Finley, my old college wrestling coach, could be described in the exact same way.
So teachers who were tough, and uncompromising, but a thought-guide instead of a rule-giver were the norm in my upbringing.
Which brings me to my Dad. He was, and is, an Oregon West Coast timber faller. Old school, he cares deeply about most everything but keeps his emotions tightly controlled in an iron-clad shell that you only occasionally are allowed a peek into his inner workings. As a homeschooled child, I frequently went to work with him. We would get up at some ungodly hour, 3 am or so, climb into his truck, and drive up into the mountains. The drive would take an hour or three… one way. So when I went with him, 2 or 3 times a week, I would be sitting with him for sometimes 6 hours and we would just…talk. About everything. I remember once when it was raining exceptionally hard I asked him if he thought there were a million drops of rain that were falling per second. I am sure now he thought that was a ridiculous question – yet I remember a slow, musing answer that explained that ‘yes, there were certainly a million drops of rain falling and many times that’.
We talked
about events and raindrops, religion, politics, philosophy, and why people did what they did. Sometimes we listened to the radio – Paul Harvey, a bit of Rush Limbaugh, J. Vernon McGee, and sometimes just the news. All from that seat to the left, a little boy jabbering away at his Dad.
Who was my most influential Teacher? My Dad. A man in love with the intellectual process, a man who would discuss anything and everything, a man in control of his emotions even when his emotions were intense – and they were! A man who spent time talking to his young son…
How do you provide ‘the most influential teacher’ to your homeschool children?
Ensure you build time to let them talk, talk with them, for hours – about anything and everything. Let them ramble, and ramble with them. Let them ask “Why?”, and ask them “Why?” Walk with them intellectually down every path – soon, they will launch themselves, out of your orbit – but if you walk with them long enough they will have picked up your habits of learning. They will have learned to become their own best teacher!
