World Explorer Community

World-renowned master violin teacher Sinichi Suzuki said, "Many people in America have said that children like me so much because I love them. I answered "Everyone loves children. I respect children as my teachers...it's possible children come to me because I radiate respect for them.""

​

I believe this. I radiate respect for children not only through trust and kindness, but by asking for their input and actively listening with genuine interest. As they teach me and their peers, they learn. I want them to feel confident, loved and valued when they're with me. This type of mentor-student relationship is the foundation of lasting, meaningful learning.

​

I believe all children are born with the desire, ability and motivation to learn. My job is to nurture that natural love of learning and facilitate the development of thinking skills, so they learn how to observe, think and articulate their thoughts; not what to think (spoon-feeding information, formulae and observations). 

​

How do I do that? Nurturing a love of learning, and learning how to think, is best done through beautiful and well-crafted literature, art, nature and experiences*. I engage them with these works using the Socratic method--a line of questioning that helps the child ask their own questions; make their own observations, discoveries and experiences; and come to see and understand for themselves at their own developmental level. We research answers to factual questions together when appropriate (e.g.--"What is the tallest mountain in the world?"). This usually leads to unexpected tangents and powerful learning moments! I take notes of everything we discuss.

 

For example, here's an actual conversation I had with my fourth child at age 5, using the Socratic Method:

​
 

 

 

Instead of dividing the day into subject-specific classes with different teachers, you have one mentor over a group of fourteen children the whole day, getting to know your child well while guiding explorations that span subject matter.

​

Our day is pretty flexible and free-flowing, but here are three main ingredients to each day: 

​

1. Studying great works. This almost always includes reading great stories and poetry aloud to the children and discussing as we go; often exploring tangents if that's where their energy leads. This includes great stories of history and scientific discoveries, focused on individual experiences. We also regularly study great works of art throughout history from around the world. Images of all these stories and art are printed and put on our class picture timeline, if they have a place in history (which typically they do.)

​

2. Collaborative Group Projects. These projects are typically not planned by me in advance, but arise spontaneously, inspired by the stories we are reading and the children's interests. Long-term collaborative group projects of the past have included mock election and debate, which included an ongoing study of logical fallacies; a one-hour film adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream in the original Shakespeare, performed with various animal figurines, fairy dolls and the children themselves; planning, creating and maintaining a garden; performing a play of a classic Russian fairy tale we studied; yearbook design; building a playhouse in the backyard with my son who is studying carpentry.

​

3. Nature Play. We spend two hours a day outside except in inclement weather. Most of this time is spent in the woods, marsh, creek and fields. Some of this time is spent at the playground, sport courts and fields across the street. During this time, the children become immersed in make-believe games which often include their own collaborative projects, such as a business "mining" ice from the creek; building many bridges across that creek of various materials; survival games in which they invent a bartering economy; building forts using a real hand-saw (cutting only dead trees).

​

*This universal principle of learning is supported by research and taught in A Thomas Jefferson Education, by Oliver DeMille; the writings of Charlotte Mason; Sparks of Genius, by Robert and Michelle Root-Bernstein; Free To Learn, by Peter Gray; A Mathematician's Lament, by Paul Lockhart; and How Children Learn, by John Holt.