This week I was reminded of “the best math curriculum.” In fact, there were three reminders, and when the third one came it finally made me pause and take notice.
We take on a pretty big project when we set out to home school our children. What is your guiding philosophy? What risks will you take? What habits will you break? Of course we can’t progress much if we are addicted to the mediocre, the [...]
Taken together, The 5 Environments of Mentoring empower a teacher to do his/her job, which is to inspire self-education and help students follow through. Tutorial Tutorials consist of a teacher and 1-6 students discussing something they have all read. Tutoring is not, as conveyor-belt education [...]
Start Thinking About Being a Superb Grandparent An excerpt from Leadership Education: The Phases of Learning... The true test of leadership is grandparenting. Everything else falls short. And it is not enough to grand-parent just your posterity. Grandchildren get married; superb grandparents know that they [...]
Some of the greatest researchers in childhood behavior (Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, and Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore) agree that children pushed academically at an early age tend to burn out early in adulthood, or long before. Young children do soak up learning like a [...]
The following is an excerpt from The Phases of Learning by Oliver and Rachel DeMille “... a mentor insisted that the most important lessons of Western Civilization were to be found in its stories, literature, poetry and art. "At first Oliver resisted, even to such [...]
I recently wrote an article entitled “Eight Words for Education.” A few days later, I came across a similar list outlined by the sixteenth century scholar Roger Ascham (best known for tutoring the children of Henry VIII and navigating that turbulent court without losing his [...]
Transition to Scholar is a sub-phase of Love of Learning that deserves special treatment. Pre-adolescents kind of have their foot in both Love and Learning and Scholar worlds, and need to be free to be either/both/neither as the day may be. Age: Transition to Scholar [...]
by Heather Burton [Note from Rachel: This stream-of-consciousness brilliance from my dear friend Heather was too good to pass up. With her permission, I've adapted a simple email message to her friends for us to enjoy.] I'm up late working, and I'm tempted by the [...]
Age: (Commonly) 7, 8 or 9ish to 12-13ish—boys often just a little later on both ends. The emphasis here is on Love above Learning. This distinction is only necessary because so many of us have a conveyor belt hangover, and we tend toward duplicating our [...]
