At The Deep End: Learning To Teach Your Children Things You Know Nothing About

Pexels – CC0 Licence

 

For much of us right now, we are definitely learning to fly by the seat of our pants. And when it comes to making sure that our children are learning everything effectively we’ve got to make sure that we structure some sort of lessons. But whether you have a college degree or not you may find that being a teacher doesn’t suit you, especially right now in this pressure cooker situation we’re all going through. In fact, you may find that learning to teach your children things that you know nothing about to be one of the most complex things you’ll ever undergo. And while they say “those that can do, those that can’t, teach” if you find that you’ve got to guide your children to learn things that you know nothing about, what are the best tactics?

 

Find A Few Resources

If you are trying to get your children to find the slope of a tangent line when you have no clue what this is, it’s time to start finding the best resources to get a wider appreciation on the subject. The big problem most of the time we try to learn something is that we only do it through one method. When it comes to learning the subject it may very well be that you’ve got to find other approaches. This could be video tutorials as well as sample exercises and even textbooks. If you use one single resource it may halt your learning.

 

Search For The Answers Together

Sometimes if we don’t know how to teach something but we want our children to learn a subject we can go through it together. This is something that many people don’t like to do because they have to admit they know nothing about it. But this encourages independent learning but also discussion. Our children need to find answers by themselves on occasion rather than just having us teach them.

 

Take Your Time Planning The Lessons

If you want to teach something you know nothing about but you feel you can’t get a handle on the subject, perhaps you need more time. You may very well feel that you haven’t got the opportunity to do enough in-depth planning. But if you really want to get a handle on a subject, this is what you need to do. Over preparing means that you will have the opportunity to appreciate the subject. And while your children can learn it alongside you, this could encourage autonomy with your children but also make sure that when you prepare the lessons you do more than is necessary.

 

Learning to teach something you know nothing about is arguably one of the most difficult things you can ever do. But when our children need to learn specific subjects, especially right now, we can use this to our advantage. Encouraging them to learn things by themselves isn’t just about throwing them into the deep end but if you can both work together it gives you both the opportunity to learn things from a different perspective. In fact, you may find that your children will learn things better because of a wide variety of approaches.

 

Anne

I'm a mother of 2 who likes to get involved in too much! Besides writing here I started a non-profit, I'm on the PTO board, very active in my community and volunteer in the school. I enjoy music, reading, cooking, traveling and spending time with my family. We just adopted our 3rd cat and love them all!

More Posts