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Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Part-time teacher

Off and on throughout life, I've considered being a teacher. For awhile I wanted to teach kindergarten, and then that underwent a radical shift and I would only consider teaching college or maybe private high school. I don't think I'm cut out for the teaching profession, but, in part thanks to being homeschooled, I love working with people and helping them learn. I've been an algebra tutor, a paper editor, a class schedule planner, and, most recently, a multiplication teacher.

Jacob and Caroline are in third and first grades, respectively, and Caroline adores math. While I have to urge Jacob to complete his math homework (well, any homework), she does hers as soon as she gets it and begs for more. He is learning multiplication; she is learning subtraction. And, because she wants to, multiplication.

When I write math sheets for Caroline, she always wants a bonus or extra, harder, problems. Yesterday I wrote "3x1" as her bonus, and she stared at me. I explained to her that it was the number 3, one time. I wrote a 3, and she grasped quickly that the answer was three. We moved on to 3x2, and I explained that the answer was 3, two times, so I wrote two threes and told her the answer was adding them up. We've worked off and on yesterday and today. The last problem I gave her today was 2x0 (we haven't talked about zero yet); she looked up at me and said, "Two zero times? That's zero!"

I was so proud. I love the sense of accomplishment, and she wants to learn. Her class worksheets may be working on "take away two," but at home we're doing "times two" along with it. I really am so, so proud!

4 comments:

  1. You need kids. That is so evident.

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  2. Well, yes. And they will be smart! Or at least taught...

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  3. Oh, be so careful with Miss Caroline. She sounds like me and you don't want to ruin her. Soon she'll be reading during class and skipping high school and her mother will blame you when she comes home to an empty nest. All because you encouraged her desire to learn. Crazy...

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  4. Haha. So the moral of the story is, encouraging learning will lead to me getting fired?

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