Inspire Your Children
Early last year as I read A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver DeMille, I was intrigued by the Seven Keys of Great Teaching. One of the keys is “Inspire, Not Require,” a phrase coined by Tiffany Earl. The premise of this idea is that forcing someone to learn is a bad way to teach.
There are many negative outcomes and attitudes associated with learning when you are forced to do something. For example, a student will learn to do the bare minimum. They will not find pleasure in learning something new. “Will this be on the test?” is a common question I heard when I was a public school teacher. It seemed that nobody wanted to learn anything for the sake of learning.
You might be asking yourself, “How do you inspire your children to want to learn?” “Is this even possible?” Believe me, I had those questions, too. Being an inspiration is one of the hardest parts of the Thomas Jefferson Education philosophy. It is what separates this educational philosophy from all the others.
Another key in the Thomas Jefferson Education is “You, Not Them.” For me, this key goes hand in hand with the former. As the teacher/parent of my five children, I need to set the example. I need to set time apart in my schedule to learn new things as well as explore my personal interests. Focusing on my continued education and my interests has in turn inspired my children.
I love to write so I started this blog. It is one of the first things that I did completely for myself since becoming a mother. My family rejoiced with me as my writing received good feedback and my readership grew. Soon Jake was begging for his own blog, which I helped him set up called Cross Creek Horsemanship. He shares his love for horses with others not to mention the computer skills he is learning and the writing he is doing. I realized that I had inspired Jake to start a website.
I published a cookbook, Texas Homesteader Wheat-Free Cookbook. I am not ready to retire just yet, but it is selling. My oldest son, Clayton, began writing a novel. He has such a talent for writing and such an imagination. He is actually working on two very different stories. Seeing my published cookbook has inspired him to work on publishing his own writing.
Both of these examples occurred without me making a conscious decision to inspire my children. I was simply doing something for myself. I was pursuing my own interests. After observing me and my work, they followed their own similar interests.
Nobody likes being nagged to do something. The deadline for the Art for Homeschool art show was sneaking up on us. It seemed like every time I mentioned to Jake or Kyla that they should finish their artwork, they would shut down and put up a fight. It was an odd reaction, I thought, since they both enjoy doing art.
So I consciously focused on myself and not them. I wanted to find a way to inspire them and not require them to do art. Silently I began working on a drawing. When I had sketched out the flowers, I began using colored pencils to create my art.
Soon I heard, “Whatcha doing?”
I answered matter-of-factly, “Oh, I’m just working on my entry for the show.”
“You are entering the art show?”
“Yes, and I am going to do a watercolor next.”
“You are? Do you know how to paint in watercolor?”
“Nope, I am going to try and the judge will critique my work so that I can get better.”
The next thing I know, Kyla has pulled out the piece that she has almost finished and begins working on it. The next morning with vigor she begins a colored pencil painting of a horse. The difference in her attitude, her work, and her demeanor was unbelievable.
I inspired Jake, too. He went outside to take pictures of our then baby ducks. He scrolled through all the photographs and chose one. Then he proceeded to sit down and start a colored pencil painting of a duck.
Instead of forcing them or nagging them to do an art assignment, I quietly worked on my own project. Instead of trying to please me, my children pleased themselves and felt a great sense of accomplishment in the process. I was now a believer. It works! You can inspire your children to learn and pursue their interests.
How does this apply to your life? Well, you might not care about art shows, novel writing, or websites, but “Inspire, Not Require” will work for most anything. If you want your child to study Chemistry, then begin studying it yourself. Show your children how much fun you are having, talk about what you have learned, and soon you will have a student volunteering to study it with you.
This is not the easy way out. Like I said before, it is one of the hardest parts of this educational philosophy. It requires time, study, and effort on the parent’s part. It requires biting your tongue and focusing on yourself for a change. Soon you will be more cognizant of what you are teaching your children. I encourage you to sit back today and reflect on this question. What are you inspiring your children to do?
Lara, and now you have inspired us to go and do the same!
Your words are so true. It’s like the best way to get your child to read is to let them see you reading yourself. My little boys always want to do what daddy’s doing. What an opportunity to teach them we have.
Blessings,
Carol
Thank you, Carol. As always you know just the right thing to say to make my day.
Lara
How exciting to see the results in your children’s lives! I never heard the principle of “Inspire, not require,” but I see that it was working for me when I was homeschooling my children. I was using the Konos curriculum and had been inspired myself by how it links history to everything else. We moved to Southern France where I knew there was visible history from the Greeks and Romans through the Medieval period. We got involved in many “hands-on” projects: writing a play about the Greek and Persian war and videotaping it on the site of old Greek ruins, building a Roman villa out of sugar cubes and dining on Roman food while we reclined, having “Monk Day” with a rule of silence and physical labor, making our own frescoes and mosaics, and many more things. My kids are long grown, but they all have vivid memories of those times, even the youngest who was 2-3 at the time! To this day she knows the difference between a Romanesque and a Gothic arch! And in the process, I learned that I actually love history, instead of hating it when I was in school–because the coaches I always ended up with as teachers would rather have been out on the field, and their attitude carried through to their students.
Susan,
I wish I had learned in your home! It is inspiring to me that your grown children still look fondly on those times. Thank you for sharing your experiences with us.
Lara