The Homeschool View
Does Daddy Teach?
By Hunter Fell

December 16, 2010

An interesting question was posed to me a few weeks back asking if my dad (father, daddy, papa) ever taught me any of my subjects; and if so, how that differed from my mom’s lessons? Now, the “yes/no” answer to this question is simply, yes, my dad has and does teach certain subjects at various times in my education, but if I dig deeper …

First of all, dad’s work limits his involvement; so like most homeschools, mom does, and has done, the majority of the teaching. However, as high school subjects have been introduced, dad has been more involved. Parents have different teaching styles just as students have different learning styles (as explained by my last article). For example, my parents are the perfect example of the age-old adage, “there are two ways to teach someone how to swim” - you can get in and show them and help them through it, or you can toss them in the water and tell them they have two choices, sink or swim. My mom is the first person - reading aloud, making sure we understand concepts before moving on. My dad, on the other hand, is the second - while doing geometry, we will get to a particularly hard problem and he will turn to me and say, “You have 30 second to complete the problem, or I start poking you”, then he races me to see which of us gets the answer first. Crude? Maybe, but it seems to motivate me.

In addition, having various co-op teachers gives me added experience with different teaching styles. Interestingly, none of them use the poking method. So, this year, not only is my dad taking over more of my math and business classes, but I am taking chemistry, art, computer, and Spanish at co-op (after all, mom can only say, “no hablo Español”), which leaves mom with only teaching English, history, and Bible courses this year. I bet she misses me.

The next point is that my parents each have different strengths and abilities and although either “could” teach me almost any subject, one or the other will do a better job in a particular subject. For example, my mom CAN teach me geometry, but she tends to make it more complicated than it needs to be; whereas my dad gets right to the point and tends to be easier for me to follow. My dad, on the other hand, would not do well teaching me spelling as he never learned the phonics rules growing up. Vocabulary is a completely different story: BOTH of my parents over-explain that as they launch into the Latin roots and all of that rubbish (hee-hee).

So, that’s a view of my family’s school distribution, but homeschooling gives the freedom to adapt to each family’s needs and abilities, so every home divides teaching in their own way. Thanks for reading; send questions or ideas for upcoming articles to dillsburgbanner@dillsburgbanner.com.