Teaching Tips - General

Love It Into Them

Learning is quite different than discipline. You really can't "make" someone learn something. They have to have some motivation. All motivation is partly internal, however, you can supply the external component.

Fear motivation can work for some small concepts, like not getting burned by the stove, but for most things, if you really want to see efficient and high quality learning, you have to use positive motivation.

The best way to do that is to "love it into them."

This means doing what's best for them. It means explaining why they should learn something. It means being gentle, and not rushing them.

It means recognizing when they are bored (and teaching them to tell you when they are bored), and stopping what you are doing, or changing what you are doing, or taking a break.

It means teaching one concept until they get it, and not moving on until they get it. Fortunately, this one is fairly obvious to us parents (as long as we don't copy classroom methods too closely), and when you are teaching one-on-one, it is very easy to keep teaching until they get it.

Sometimes when we are focused on teaching, we lose site for a moment of "why" we are there. Just remember when you are focused on "teaching," to love them first, and and teach them second. Keep doing what is most loving first.

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