John Holt

I've read through Learning All the Time twice this week, and I think I harvested as much "magnesium" from his "seawater" the second time as the first.  There were many things I disagreed with, of course, but many more that struck a chord and have hopefully become enough a part of me to show up in my actions every day. 

Even my disagreements, as I've contemplated them more deeply, aren't as confidently felt as at first.  I have become aware that I've been unwittingly constructing "experiments" to test them.  My lab rats are, of course, my children, my husband, and myself.  My thoughts in this vein center around the acquisition of reading skills.  My children are learning to read, but am I aiding or impeding this process?  How much of a role does my phonics instruction play in their learning, and, more importantly, in their feelings about reading?  I obviously need to fine-tune all my instruction for my family, but can I really eliminate all instruction and replace it with co-exploration?  DeMille would say yes.  When it really comes down to it, my phonics work with the children is just that:  I'm not teaching them something I already know well, because most of the material we're learning I've never seen before.  I'm learning it as we go, and the children know this.  It's exciting and new information for me, and the children know this.  Sometimes I don't understand it, so I get frustrated, and the children know this as well.

All readings present me with challenges.  John Holt jolted me to the core when he discussed uninvited teaching and the inadvisability of correcting mistakes unasked.  This phrase, especially, described me so well, ". . . I don't like being around people who act and talk as if their mission in life were to educate me, whose relation to me is always that of a teacher to pupil."  That Jimminy Cricket part of me shouted out, "There are people in your life who feel that way about you!"  It was an exciting revelation for me, because it holds the solution to some prickly feelings I've had as late, not just with my children, and I see in it's remedy the improvement of many relationships.  I've already completely changed the way I process Daniel's daily read-alouds, and we had the most pleasant bedtime routine to date last night.  Ahhhh!  Relational and emotional progress.  (There was reading skill progress as well, but that was just icing on the cake.)

I'm so eager to internalize and act on this information.  All of it.  Even the parts I'm questioning.  I'm excited as well for our discussion tonight.  I wonder if you were stretched as much as I.  I wonder if you still feel the stretching going on.  How elastic do you think we all can be?  Are we ready for another mind-blowing book, or will we simply snap?  Maybe we need to introduce more gelatin, bubble gum, and taffy to our diets.  Caramel, anyone?  (Liz, that wasn't a hint.  Honestly.)