Caught Not Taught

Teaching is overrated.

Oh, did that get your attention?

Good. Now let me tell you what I mean. As parents who homeschool, Kim and I have thought a lot about our role as teachers. And I’ve been fortunate to speak to thousands of educators over the years, encouraging them in a job that’s become more difficult with each passing year.

I don’t think that teachers are overrated, just one particular part of their job.

The teaching part.

I’ve made many observations over many years as a homeschooling parent. It’s clear to me that kids have no trouble learning. It’s a built-in feature. After all, you don’t have to teach a baby to crawl, talk, or walk.

And when they get older, they somehow figure out all on their own exactly what buttons to push to get what they want!

Look, I believe that a person who takes on the role of teacher in any child’s life is one of the best kinds of people. It’s just that the idea of imparting knowledge to someone else is not as useful as we might think.

Our schools may be helpful in imparting facts. But learning, in the final analysis, means a change in behavior.

Since so much of school feels boring and irrelevant, students put on a lid, closing themselves off from real learning. You can pour all the knowledge you’d like on a student, but if they’re going through life with a lid on, you’re not going to be very effective.

A teacher’s true, most important, (and most difficult!) job is getting the student to remove the lid. 

Part of the reason school feels boring is because the teacher is bored.

One of my favorite teachers ever was Mr. Newland. He was a balding, middle-aged middle school teacher with giant glasses and a bigger smile. He had a downright nerdy love of history and his passion for stamp collecting. Stamp collecting! His enthusiasm was contagious. It bordered on embarrassing, but it made history come alive and piqued my curiosity. Only then was I willing to remove my lid and take in the knowledge he was trying to impart.

Children need adults like this, people who do are doing what they love.

Fred Rogers agreed when he said, “If adults can show what they love in front of kids, there’ll be some child who says, ‘I’d like to be like that!’ or ‘I’d like to do that!’” He told a story about a sculptor in a nursery school he was working in when he was getting his master’s degree in child development:

“There was a man who would come every week to sculpt in front of the kids. The director said, “I don’t want you to teach sculpting, I want you to do what you do and love it in front of the children.” During that year, clay was never used more imaginatively, before or after…. A great gift of any adult to a child, it seems to me, is to love what you do in front of the child. I mean, if you love to bicycle, if you love to repair things, do that in front of the children. Let them catch the attitude that that’s fun. Because you know, attitudes are caught, not taught.”

Attitudes are caught, not taught.

My appreciation for history and geography was caught from Mr. Newland, not taught by him.

Think back to your favorite teachers or coaches. Is it not true that every single one of them loved what they were “teaching?”

How many people do you know who love what they do?

This rare quality can turn anyone into a teacher, whether you have an education degree or not.

Kim and I have shared a love for learning, reading, traveling, making, and building with our kids. Not on purpose, necessarily, but because we love these things ourselves.

Along the way, they have watched us build a business, a movement, and a community, because we did it right in front of them. Who knows how that will serve them? I don’t. But I do know they are learning from it.

We are on the same page as artist Kelly Rae Roberts, who said:

“Not only does living our dreams give our family and children permission to do the same, but it also creates an energy in the family – we’re happier, more inspired, more energized. By the same token, I think it’s important for our children to witness us taking risks and reaching toward our potential. How will they ever do the same if their mamas and papas haven’t shown them it’s possible by living that very possibility into reality with their own lives?”

Teaching is a tough gig. But the hard part has nothing to do with dispensing facts.

Dream big. Take risks. Do what you love in front of others.

May we ALL be teachers.