As teachers of our children, we expect our scholars to learn new concepts and build upon them to further their knowledge. My goal was to raise our sons (and now my precious grandchildren) to be life-learners. In order for them to have a desire to do so, I need to be a role model.  Here are my thoughts on how this can be beneficial to us and them.

The struggle is real. When my family sees me try and fail they are watching me continue to try repeatedly until I am successful or I fail (example- rock hard breadsticks). They see they are not alone in learning something new. I feel like I have a renewed sense of what it is like for each of my students when they are learning something new.

We are role models. By observing you and me, our children see how we problem-solve; we don’t quit; we go over the directions again (and again), and we make corrections. Our children see that we don’t just sit down once and be successful every time. It takes time and practice, practice, practice in order to achieve success.

We are willing. We are willing to continue through the frustration of failure to see the project through to completion. When things are h-a-r-d and I feel like quitting, it makes me try harder when little eyes are watching me.

Our attitude is everything. I have certainly had my shares of getting upset and walking away. However, I do try to maintain a positive attitude throughout a new skill being learned and talk about what I learned. If (and when) we fail, it’s a good teaching moment to discuss how we are going to do it differently the next time.

You have permission to fail. Not everything comes easily and sometimes we just aren’t very good at certain things.  My sons would get frustrated when I would hand back an assignment because they hadn’t done it correctly. I had to evaluate whether it was my lack of explanation or their failure to understand. We learn from our mistakes and try again. Sometimes you just have to put it aside and come back to it later.

What is something new you would like (or have) to learn? Can you share your experience with your son/ daughter? By trying something new we continue to model that we are all life-long learners. ( I am learning about technology :(, morphology for teaching language skills, and what staples to stock in my pantry.)

Have a great week! ~Lisa~