Mentoring vs. Teaching

We live in a society in which we've been raised on teaching: in schools, in churches, at home. My mother was a school teacher for a few years until she was able to become a SAHM, and I fully recognize that many teachers seriously deserve their halos--they do a lot of good in the world.  Jesus Christ was the ultimate example of a perfect teacher, and we can learn a lot from how he went about it.

But there's a really important point that is so often missed: teaching and learning are very different things which we too often equate.  I hear people talking about having high state standards of learning, and I just shake my head; that’s nice, but learning is out of your control.  You can teach and teach, but how much the children learn is up to them.

And it’s not just up to them voluntarily to decide to learn, and then they can.  Learning is a process in which brain cells make new connections, and there’s no way that can be forced—by the teacher or by the individual.  Learning happens when the neural groundwork has been laid—when the brain is sufficiently developed--AND when a desire has been created to own a new piece of information or skill.   Both have to be present for learning to be achieved.  If the learner is not ready or not interested, the teacher will be like the voice of the adults on the Peanuts comics: “Wah wah, wah wah, wahwah” (although it seems like Charlie Brown understands his parents….  ;-)

What is the job of a teacher?  To present some new information which the learners will then learn.  Typical lesson plans involve a “hook” to spike interest, some leading questions, some new information, a class discussion, and wrapping up with a challenge: a very good system for classroom teaching.  But you’re still painting with a very wide brush—you have no way of telling if the participants’ brains are ready, of assuring that they remember the background information needed for context, and you can only attempt to generate a sufficient interest level.  Having the Spirit present in your Primary class can and does certainly help with this.

How is mentoring different than teaching?

Mentoring happens when a learner seeks out help to learn something that he has felt a desire to learn.  The learning is thus unique, not mass-produced, and leads to permanence.  The learner’s interest is already there; it doesn’t have to be created.  It may have been created through something he overheard a peer or family member talking about, something he saw or read about.  He is coveting, but not breaking the 8^th commandment:  “Someone can do (or knows) this awesome thing and I can’t (don't), but I’m ready to try.”

In mentoring, the learner often does more talking than the mentor, as he explores his way through a topic and makes connections between things he already knows.  The mentor will answer questions with more questions, and make sure that the hard work of thinking is happening inside the learner's brain.   After all, it’s not the answers that are important, but the process that is going on inside the brain.

Mentors “lead, guide, walk-beside,” but don’t just tell.  As Hugh Nibley once said, “My only job as a teacher is to save my students time.”  In other words, by being a resource for them, he can save them from running down all the rabbit trails before they find the answers they seek—running a few empty trails is good exercise, but they don’t need to run them all and get discouraged.  That’s why it’s crucial for effective mentoring that the mentor have a decent grasp of the learner’s character: How will he respond to this?  What is his frustration level right now?   Should I step in or let him fail?

Mentors facilitate exploration, creation, and invention, encouraging the learner to challenge himself and helping the process along.  Much of this involves finding resources and providing the raw materials of learning, which, depending on age and interest, can be anything from brightly-colored stacking cups to a Greek dictionary and a copy of Homer.

So what does this look like in a real home?  It looks gentle, it looks earnest, it looks enjoyable.  You search the children’s faces, words, and actions for “interest sparks” and try to assure the sparks don’t get extinguished before they can be fanned to a flame.  You may find that giving occasional nudges can guide him to the outcome he's going for.  You ask for permission to give a suggestion.  You encourage a child to keep going on a process that he's chosen which is difficult.  You set an example of doing difficult things that expand your capacities, working through frustrations, and rejoicing in successes.

In the big picture, you trust that he has talents and gifts and help him develop them.  You enrich the environment, both inside and outside the home, so that he comes into contact with the best of the human and the natural worlds.  You respect his choices of how to use his time (within the parameters of a few commonsense requirements): HE owns his future, you do not.  Persuasion, not coercion.

Note: these are not my ideas--I've gleaned them from many smart people, mostly at LDSHE conferences over the years.  I do not implement them perfectly, but I've found them to be effective to raise children with their love-of-learning and, importantly, with our relationship intact, while having the smarts to deal with the world of adults.

Why is Nature Study ideal for early childhood learning?

Learning requires several skills that are well taught through studies of nature.  The first is observation, which comes naturally to a child, since he has already learned a language this way.  If a child is moved too quickly into direct instruction (teachers telling you stuff, which then you parrot back to them) as the primary learning modality, the child may begin to doubt his ability to figure things out by himself.  He'll believe the fallacy that things must be taught by an "expert" and in a specific order; otherwise there may be "learning gaps" (horrors!).  Well, it's mostly the parents who buy into that nonsense, but attitudes are contagious, and though he couldn't elucidate why he has become a passive rather than an active learner, there's a good chance it's because he's been "taught at."

Observation is central to nature study, and it's beautiful because each person may discover something different.  Children are encouraged to draw and write about what they see; if they're too young for that, telling about what they see is also valuable.  And quite often they will have noticed something about the object that the adult hasn't seen yet.  Natural objects have an "infinite complexity" aspect which means that there is always more to discover.

This leads to the second valuable learning skill, and that is patience--lengthening the attention span.  Many things in nature move quite slowly: plants growing, flowers blooming, caterpillars creeping.  Then there are those that move very quickly, so you have to develop the skill of patiently watching to get a glimpse: birds, falling stars, etc.

A third beautiful thing about nature study is that it is a short-cut to so many other fields of learning.  It provides mental "hooks" to hang other pieces of information on--information about history and math and human society, along with the more formal study of chemistry, physics, anatomy and physiology, etc.

Last, nature is a great thing to become passionate about--after all, it is how we see the hand of God around us.  At our house we're all big nature geeks, and we get excited by interesting rock formations or a strange bump on a tree or an unfamiliar insect.  My second son taught himself to read and learned the number system all by himself at an early age because he developed a passion for birds.  We have several bird field guides, and he would carry them around and look at the photographs in the front, try to read the name, look out the window trying to see that bird, then look at the page number by the picture and search the book until he found that page so that he could look at the map and see whether that bird lived in our area.  Simple.  Beautiful.  No work on my part ;-)