Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Mike Farris:
Cathy, homeschoolers talk a lot about finding their children’s learning style, and that’s a good thing. But you recommend that parents also take into account their teaching style when choosing curriculum. What is teaching style, and why is it so important?

Cathy Duffy:
If I decided that I wanted to take a trip somewhere I’d never been, my first inclination would be to search out a good travel guide and read it. Others might want to watch a travel show to learn about the place, and some people might want to skip reading or watching and only want to talk to people who’d already been there. We each have our own preferences as to how we like to obtain information, and that’s our learning style. And our own learning style, by default, becomes our teaching style.

And our tendency is to teach the way we learn best. So my default teaching style is to have students read real books then have discussions. And people with a teaching style like mine are likely to choose a real books or classical type curriculum. Other parents might prefer the organization and structure of traditional curriculum, so they’d lean toward one of the many traditional curriculum options available to homeschoolers.

Now none of those teaching style preferences is better or worse, but it’s something we need to take into account when we choose curriculum.

Mike:
Cathy, I tell moms when they’re thinking about curriculum, they need to be sane at the end of the day, and you’ve just given them reasons for why that’s true. I’m Mike Farris.