Learning from Debra Bell {TTD notes}

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Deb Bell was a hilarious, down to earth and practical session teacher. I loved hearing her speak! And while her talks weren’t similar in nature to those of Mark Hamby or Norm Wakefield, her session was just as great and needed by me! Her talk was probably one of the most practical I heard all weekend, in terms of homeschooling.

I was excited about this session because my girls are getting older (starting 6th and 5th grades) and I feel like they need to be taking more responsibility and doing more independently but I’m unsure of the best ways to go about this. The title of Deb’s session was “Raising Independent Learners.” yay!

She shared right off the bat that kids are BORN CURIOUS. This is SO true, don’t you think?? Why do we assume we need to CREATE this for our kids? God created our kids with imaginations and curiosity. Most of the time, we as adults and teachers just tend to kill it. Ugh. Think about the toddler getting into anything and everything…he is curious!

Think about these qualities of a traditional setting for education:

teacher making all decisions
kids lose motivation & curiosity
kids may become sullen
main priority: crowd control

Then, when we try to bring those same ideas home, it usually isn’t successful in creating life long learners who enjoy learning.

How to encourage responsibility in our kids learning:

time management – give the kids assignments and let them figure out when to do it, give deadlines
subjects – let them choose subjects – ask them, what would you like to learn more about? make a list together!
teach your children to ASK questions – write the questions down, keep a running list, HELP them FIND answers – in books, online, library, etc.
allow children to initiate projects and writings of their own
learn to facilitate and not dictate
give them the tools they need – and teach them HOW they are used
do not assign projects until the kids are mature enough to do the majority of the work themselves
focus on developing these skills: research, library, internet, finding experts, papers, performances

One of my favorite quotes from her session:

Isn’t that good stuff? I immediately came home from the conference and gave my girls “homework.” HA! They’ve never actually had homework before! They were excited. (I know, it won’t last long.) But, I realized in Deb’s session that I need to start giving them assignments and deadlines and I had not been doing that!

**Side note: As I listened to Deb Bell speak, I happened to think that she might really enjoy and agree with the Project Based Homeschooling book that I raved about a few months ago!! I need to be more assertive about helping my girls to CONTINUE these projects also.

I was so blessed to be able to attend the Teach Them Diligently homeschool conference in Nashville last weekend. I shared about how God wanted me there and provided all the necessary items: room, ride, conference fee. And I’m so thankful. The sessions I attended were so fabulous, I wanted to share all my notes with you!!

Here are the speakers, I will go back after this series and link them all together:

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