What did I learn as I taught?

 

I was filling out an application for a job and hit this question:

"In 200 words or less, please describe a job that was not on your resume and how it has impacted the way you approach your work."

Now the issue is the two jobs on my application cover a time-span of 33 years! I don't know about the rest of you but something from my late teens that affected how I do my job doesn't make a lot of sense let alone be remembered.  So what did I answer as this was a required question? (I'll admit this is cleaned up and expanded upon as I didn't catch my typos 😬)

"I would have to say the job in my employment gap.  Raising and homeschooling my granddaughter. During Covid I had the option to do her kindergarten schooling so she wouldn't fall behind.  I had to learn alternative ways to express even the simplest tasks like learning to count, learning to read, etc. It forced me to be more aware of how I train people and improved my ability to explain concepts briefly."  I had to wing it entirely, I couldn't find curriculum to guide me, there was nothing but me and her. I settled upon the old quote by Robert Fulghum:

"Everything I ever really needed to know, I learned in kindergarten."

So what did we learn in kindergarten?  How to count, to read, to write, so basically the three R's Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic.  I made the flash cards for letters and we practiced.  We sat at my work table and counted nuts and bolts, we added and subtracted those nuts and bolts so many times.  Once she had her letters down I switched gears and had her give me their sound as well, then I added the compound letters like ow, ou, oo, th, ch, and so on as she got them memorized.  I didn't have preschool books but I did have flash card stock and common things like bread, milk, eggs, things you find in the house that had a meaning to her and those became her first reading words.  She is now quickly coming up on eleven--where has time gone?--and she reads at a college level, so I guess I built the foundation right.  Math is a second language to her and she can still do basic algebra (like 10-x=7) as she still picks up stuff from me when she visits.  Like links in a chain one little bit of information at a time was added to her brain, and now she links things together so fast she amazes her teachers.

So yeah, the thing that taught me the most about how to do my job was teaching a small child how to learn, how to ask questions, to logic her way through things, how to dress, how to brush her teeth and her hair.  Those are things that when you are teaching them cause you to pay attention to how you are teaching while watching the learner for signs that what you are saying is understood.

Maura Out

P.S. I have three interviews over the next week!