ADULT EDUCATION

April 2004

As home school parents we focus heavily on educating our children, but it is equally as important for we parents to continue our learning as well. Some time during the month of May, I will enter the field of real estate sales. This will not be until I finish some fairly rigorous study and pass a standardized exam -- the kind designed to "weed out" weaker students. This whole experience has got me focused on adult education. Most of us did not have the benefit of being home educated ourselves. While my children have a natural zest for learning, I did not develop that until after college. Besides the practical aspects of feeding your family or being able to teach a subject to your kids, an invaluable by-product of continuing education is to continue to learn how to learn.

There are three methods of education that I have employed over the years: Classroom, Self-Paced and Teaching.

Classroom

The first is fairly self-explanatory -- find a class and take it! This could be a free seminar at the library, an investment seminar, a class at ACC or even a class offered at church. For me, it often helps to have externally-imposed deadlines for reading material and the audio-visual advantage of having an instructor lecture on the topic. While my children often work in a self-paced learning environment, we routinely bring them back to a "classroom" setting to introduce new concepts or to work on remedial training. It is perhaps the most versatile way to learn, because teaching styles can be easily adjusted to individual learning styles. As an adult, however, it may not be all that practical -- you have to keep the instructor's schedule and sometimes, you must crawl through material that you already have a handle on.

Self-paced

Self-paced is probably the best fit for an adult's schedule, and can take several forms. For the past few years, I have been an avid reader of real estate investment, management and business books and tapes. There is no set curriculum, no final exams, no diploma or certification to hang on the wall, and no end to the learning! Several of you have asked me how I select books, I simply read the author's suggested readings at the end of a good book, and go from there. Or, you can often look at a book on Amazon.com that you have read and see what "people who have bought this book have also purchased" for ideas on what to read next. This doesn't have to be technical. If you liked "To Kill a Mockingbird", you would also like "Cold Sassy Tree."

Another self-paced option is correspondence. One of the real estate classes I needed did not have enough students to "make", so I am taking it via correspondence course. For this, I get the textbook and no set schedule to finish. I have a new appreciation for what we are asking our children to do when we give them these types of assignments. You need to work much harder to learn in a correspondence course, and there isn't anyone around to ask questions of, but I am learning something new about that: questions are a crutch! It is often times too easy to ask a question without digging for the answer yourself. And while I am digging, I often learn other things that I would not have if an instructor had answered my isolated question. There are many bible studies that are self paced, certification courses required for an individual field and there is an increasing amount of college course work that can be completed via correspondence.

Teaching

But the hidden gem for learning will be no surprise to you home school Moms. Teach it! If you REALLY want to learn a subject, teach it! I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but there is real magic that happens in the teaching process that only the teacher will understand. As you try to find a way to explain new material -- even material that you do not understand that well -- things start to make more sense! This happened countless times during my years as a professor at ACC. For new classes, I was often only one lecture ahead of my students. After the first month or so, I began to relax about that, as I saw that I studied differently when I knew I had to teach it, and I truly mastered each topic in a manner that could only happen through teaching. Moms, you already know this! Dads, I would encourage you to find a way to teach a subject you are interested in learning more about. It really works!

Who knows what is at stake? As a real estate salesperson, I hope to add an additional income stream to my family's income. I also envision this providing mentoring opportunities to my children as they get older. Continuing to learn can give you options for employment that will give you peace should your job be downsized, outsourced or off-shored. Continued learning will help us give our children a better education than we received, and perhaps most importantly, we will continue to hone our learning skills, so we will be able to learn when we need to.

Yours,
Brett

top

Home | About Homeschooling | About CHEACT | Join | News and Events | Contact Us |

Copyright © 2000 - 2008 Christian Home Educators Association of Central Texas