Growing as a Teacher

How are you planning to grow as a teacher this year? Or are you planning to? One would hope so, but it’s so easy for a busy overwhelmed homeschooling mom to shuffle the cultivation of her own teaching skills off the priority list.

I should know.

I’ve lived the sense of “I’m too busy teaching to take time to get better at teaching!” for all of my homeschooling years.

Here’s the thing- isn’t teaching and mothering your children your primary vocation? Isn’t it your more-than-full-time job?

If you were teaching in a school, your administration would send you to in-service events, workshops, and conferences to help you build up your skills and get better at what you do.

Those who work for pay are given the time and tools they need to be trained and get better at their job- it’s not what happens when there is an overflow of time, it’s just built into the ordinary job description.

Why is homeschooling any different?

There are gads of resources out there to help us grow as the teachers and mothers that we so long to be in our homeschools.

I tend to collect a lot of books on education and let them collect dust, as if having them on my shelf will somehow cause them to leap into my mind and transform my teaching by some wonky form of osmosis.

It doesn’t work, that. Turns out I actually have to build the time and energy into my day to read books and be intentional about getting better at teaching.

This year, I’m creating a syllabus for my own personal reading. I’ve put enough reading on the schedule to keep me moving forward, but not so many that I can’t choose to read some serendipitous finds (as I love to do) as the year plays out.

Some are books on education, others aren’t- but all of them are there because I hope they will cultivate my intellect and help me grow as a person.