Teaching What You Don't Know Yet (But Want to Learn)

Something I experienced often as a home educator was the desire to help my kids learn about a subject that wasn't exactly my area of expertise. In general, I had three choices:

1. Connect with an expert. Find someone who was proficient and ask if they would be willing to offer guidance and respond to questions as my child learned. This was an easy and obvious method, but it was also expensive, especially if the expert was a professional educator.
2. Encourage autodidactic exploration. Provide books, software, study groups—whatever was needed to enable my child to be self-taught, to figure things out independently through a process of trial and error. This method worked quite well when my kids felt passionate about a subject or were intrinsically motivated to develop a skill.
3. Become proficient enough to be the teacher.  

Admittedly, the third option requires a bit of ingenuity. How could I teach something that I had yet to learn myself? The most sensible thing would have been for me to teach subjects in which I had received formal instruction in the past. To some extent, I did exactly that when I helped my kids with math, science, and writing.

At other times, there were subjects or skills I was happy to learn along with my kids. My geeky self reveled in the whole process of sifting through books, researching subjects, exploring, asking questions and (eventually) finding answers. I loved discovering things together. I savored the moments when my kids surpassed me and became the ones doing the teaching.

How Does It Work, Exactly?

When I agreed to teach classes to groups of homeschooled kids who weren't my own, I took the job very seriously. Essentially, I did what I had been doing all along with my own kids, but I approached the task in a more focused, organized way. I assigned myself the following responsibilities:

1. Choosing resources carefully. I researched books and related materials to find gems that would be worth using. This was probably the most time-consuming step in the process but well worth it to avoid the mind-numbing drivel that's marketed as "educational" but can only be described as tedious. 
2. Preparing a tentative reading list (supplemented by a movie list, project list, field trip list, etc.). These proposed lists would always be significantly more extensive than what I would ever end up using during the year, but they weren't wasted effort. Having a readily available list of alternatives made it easier to improvise and come up with substitutions when something that looked good initially was disappointing. 
3. Planning and preparing well enough to stay one step ahead of my kids. Before I could teach, my understanding of a subject had to be at least a few grade levels ahead of what my children were learning. This was easy when they were very young but got progressively harder as they got older. By the time we were homeschooling high school, I had to be consulting college and graduate-level texts. 
4. Studying in advance, then studying again. Prior to the start of the school year or semester, I would typically read the books (and watch the movies) I intended to recommend to my children plus one or more advanced texts. Then, during the year, I would re-read all the books in parallel, as my kids read them. So, for example, as they read about the American Civil War, I read about the American Civil War—in their books and mine.  
5. Continuing to learn alongside my kids. By re-reading, or at least skimming, all the books as my kids read them, I was able to keep certain subjects in the forefront of my mind so I'd be prepared to respond to questions and recognize opportunities for related projects or activities. So, while I might not have been an expert on the American Civil War all the time, I was at the time they needed me to be. I also used the internet and connected with experts to get answers to questions that we couldn't answer on our own. 

Did I do this for every subject, every year? Of course not. I picked the subjects I would "teach" from one year to the next, and then I worked with my kids to cobble together a reasonably well-rounded course of study that included autodidactic, experiential and teacher-led learning (for the subjects that I wasn't as interested in studying along with them).

The Challenge

Were there any drawbacks to this approach? The short answer is yes. I recognized all along that my relative lack of expertise could be considered a disadvantage—for example, a more knowledgeable teacher could have provided with confidence more immediate, accurate answers to students' questions. When I was asked, "Is this right?" I always wanted to respond with a simple yes or no. There were times when it would have been so much easier if only I could have known the answers instead of having to grapple and search and say "I'm not sure." What made me think I could teach history or psychology or political science without a degree in those subjects? Was I overconfident, unable to see this approach as a case of the blind leading the blind?

I think all home educators—likely all teachers—know what it feels like to be asked questions we can't answer because we lack the expertise in a particular subject. I can't shrug the feeling off as inconsequential; it can be painfully frustrating and discouraging to feel useless in that moment. However, I'd argue the experience makes us even more conscientious about checking answers to be sure the ones we do give are either accurate or clearly identified as in need of verification.

The Optimistic Model of Error

In her fascinating book, Being Wrong, Kathryn Schulz describes an "optimistic model of error." According to this model, there is value in making mistakes. Not getting things right the first time or all the time leads to all sorts of benefits. As Shultz writes in Chapter 14 ("The Paradox of Error"): 

"Awareness of one's own qualms, attention to contradiction, acceptance of the possibility of error: these strike me as signs of sophisticated thinking, far preferable in many contexts to the confident bulldozer of unmodified assertions." 

"When we are aware that we could be wrong, we are far more inclined to hear other people out. [...] In love, as in medicine, as in life more generally, listening is an act of humility. It says that other people's ideas are interesting and important; that our own could be in error; that there is still plenty left for us to learn." 

Being an effective guide alongside means being willing to admit you have "plenty left to learn." It doesn't mean there's no such thing as a correct answer. It just means you haven't cornered the market on them.

The Most Useful Lesson

I believe "I don't know" is a beginning, not an admittance of defeat. Maybe that's why I've always felt there was something beneficial about my not having all the answers as a home educator, because it allowed me to show my kids by my example that we all start out by not knowing. Instead of being an encyclopedia filled with answers, I was a role model for a work in progress. I showed them that solving problems, conducting research, and developing new skills is a process of trial and error, not something that gets handed to you in a neat little curriculum package. Of all the things my kids learned, I think that lesson has been the most useful to them.

Reflections on the Learning Creative Learning Online Course

The final session of the Learning Creative Learning (LCL) online course, hosted by MIT Media Lab, was presented on Monday, May 13. I'm grateful I had the opportunity to participate in the course. It helped me to reflect on my beliefs about education: the power of interest-based learning, the "guide alongside" model for teachers and mentors, the advantages of open educational resources, and the importance of tinkering and self-discovery. 

I was glad to be reminded that learning is a two-way conversation, not only between teachers and students, but also as a process of peer-to-peer (student-to-student and teacher-to-teacher) collaboration. It's not enough to take in or "consume" information by reading, watching, and experimenting; we also have a responsibility to reflect on the process and share what we learn with others as we go along. Although many of us have a tendency to keep to ourselves (myself included), I know the LCL course would not have been nearly as good if everyone had chosen to "lurk" instead of posting their questions, reflections,  and experiences. I learned as much from the participants as I did from the course itself. For example, from one of my classmates (Shane Freeman), I learned about Problem-Based Learning at Sammamish High School: 



Shane also freely shared his creative presentation on "The Authentic Classroom." 

Like me, some people ended the course by writing their own blog posts on what worked well, what didn't, and what they learned (for example, see these excellent posts by Suzi Wells and Peter Taylor). Others added brief comments to the LCL Google+ Community, which in response to popular request will continue to be available for past and future participants.

Other classmates offered pointers to helpful resources, such as: the Rise Out blog ("High School Without High School," for Boston-area teens); the School of Open (free online courses); and Code.org (for learning how to program). TED Talks were popular for sharing, too: for example, Nima Zahedi directed us to the TED Talk, "Teachers Need Real Feedback," by Bill Gates:



This talk, along with the SurveyMonkey questionnaire I was asked to complete at the end of the LCL course, encouraged me to create a survey for my own course (The Real Wealth of Nations). By asking my students to give me meaningful feedback now, I am learning how to improve the way I design and teach future courses.

Although the LCL course has ended, I feel my studies are far from over. I plan to continue reading and writing about creative, innovative ways to teach and learn.