Skills That Make The Grade

For many of us, home and school have gone back to being one. Gone back? Yes.

From a baby’s first breath, parents become their teachers – eating, walking, talking, sharing, colors, ABCs, how to spread jelly on toast. Stuff you already know.

Without realizing it, what you’ve really been teaching are what Dorothy Rich called the skills that fuel “inner engines of learning” in her book MegaSkills - confidence, responsibility, effort, initiative, perseverance, caring, problem solving, teamwork, and common sense.

And you can continue. Add in some resources – textbooks, a whole curriculum maybe, and probably a computer of some sort.

Now you’ll be getting into some stuff you don’t know, or don’t remember at least. Fortunately, you don’t really have to. Whatever materials you are using have the information. Your role is to help your children master the work of learning. That’s where the megaskills come in.

Again, without even realizing it you’ve already been doing that. If your students come to subjects with confidence because you’ve given them opportunities for success in other endeavors, or with a problem solving attitude because you’ve encouraged them to take on new challenges in the past, or if they’ve figured out something because they knew they would if they kept at it, that’s why. 

If you want to boost your home teaching skills either because the role has been thrust upon you or because you’ve chosen the path, be more purposeful about the skills that cross all the subjects. MegaSkills has a lot of workable and creative ideas for you.

Personal stories time.

When I told my mother that my high school typing teacher said I shouldn’t even bother trying because I wasn’t going to be any good, she was upset. She went over to see him and basically asked him how he could dare discourage someone who was trying to learn.

I loved that she went to bat for me, but worried that the teacher would be mad at me. Instead he seemed nicer, in a genuine way, not begrudgingly. I learned to type and I think he learned a lesson of his own.

I hesitate to mention this part of the story because I don’t want to give the impression that buying things is any kind of answer, but my parents bought me a Smith Corona electric typewriter, which was really something in the 70’s. They wanted me to have a good tool and they wanted to show their confidence in me. They put their money where their values were.

In my early twenties I was working in employee benefits in a hospital– not the big decision kind of work, mostly the paperwork and employee liaison kind. When I was told that I was to start doing the orientation presentations for newly hired staff, something the department director had been doing, I had a freak out moment. A little intimidated, you might say.

But then it occurred to me that even though these new employees may have had more formal education in their fields than I did, I knew what I was talking about. I was the expert.

I’ve long since forgotten the material in those presentations, but I remember the lesson I learned.

I recently was given the opportunity to do a webinar for a homeschool enrichment program. The first thing that came to mind that I thought would be of encouragement to both new homeschoolers and veterans was MegaSkills.

I would encourage you to get a copy of it for yourself. In the meantime, if you’d like to hear my webinar, click here.

Maybe make yourself a piece of jelly toast while you’re listening.