A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY by Suzie Acree

I grew up with a Grammie who was fascinated by life-long learning.  In fact, she wanted to live to be 100 just so she could see what the next century looked like! 

She collected rocks and coins and many other things, inspiring her grandchildren and great-grandchildren to do the same because one day they might be valuable.  She marveled at how things had changed in her lifetime often telling us how different things were for her growing up.  She believed in the artist in us all, encouraging each poem, craft or painting by reminding us of the rich heritage we came from.  “You know we had a famous artist in our family,” she’d say, and we’d try to count up how many greats back he was in our lineage of grandfathers.  I grew up on the same 10-acre plot as my grandparents and learned first hand that not all learning happens in the classroom.

I am now a volunteer literacy tutor for an adult learner.  When my student showed up for lessons with her two young boys, I was encouraged by the center staff to look at our tutoring sessions as family learning opportunities.

A little research on family learning validated the importance of this approach with the following statistics from the campaign-for-learning (UK):

~ The stage in life in which we learn the fastest is the first ten years.

~ The percentage of waking hours children spend in school is 15%.

~ The number of questions a four-year-old can ask in a single day is 400.

~ The amount of individual attention most students get in their twelve years 

   of formal education adds up to between 3 and 6 days. 

What I had here was a golden opportunity!

 

These two boys are hungry for learning, one asking questions faster than anyone could possibly answer, and the other completely silent because he is too shy to speak.  One of Mom’s goals is to be more involved in her children’s learning and school experience, so we set out to do just that.  

We started out with Mom agreeing to save the last 10 minutes of each tutoring session for the boys.  Next, we connected the four-year-old to preschool.  Then, during their time at the tutoring sessions, Mom and I ask each of them how school is going.  Now, Mom and I act out songs the kids are learning in school, solve math problems together on the whiteboard, practice with flash cards and apps on tablets, and learn the names of many animals in English and their native Creole. We end most sessions by reading a children’s book together. We laugh, dance, cry, and love learning to learn together as a family.  The sense of wonder and delight in discovering new things through the children’s eyes has introduced a different way to learn, and the children help teach their Mom through the process. 

Some of the most powerful learning is through shared family learning experiences and will stay with us through our whole lives, many times outlasting the influence of peers and the outside world during the teen and college years.   I know this to be true in my own life as I reflect on how my Grammie’s contagious love of learning has impacted me.  In a book written by Mihaly Csiksentmihalyi called Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, the author writes about the influence of the family in a child’s ability to have an optimal learning experience and lists five characteristics that impact this outcome: 

CLARITY

 ~ Goals, and feedback are unambiguous. ~

CENTERING 

~ Parents are genuinely interested in what children are doing. ~

CHOICE   

~ Children have a variety of possibilities from which to choose. ~

COMMITMENT

~ The support that makes a child feel comfortable enough to set aside his shield of defenses and unselfconsciously become involved in what he is doing. ~

CHALLENGE

 ~ Children are provided increasingly complex opportunities or actions 
that enable them to grow. ~

These very same principles apply to the process for adults learning at Literacy Connections and are not difficult to incorporate into the family model; but, staying out ahead of the lesson planning for two impressionable boys and their Mom has been an extra fun challenge.  My satisfaction comes from knowing that by shifting my thinking to the family learning model, I am creating the golden opportunity they deserve and it has made all the difference.   What a rewarding experience it is to see the benefits of the family learning bond deepening and the cycle of learning flowing from child to parent to child in a never-ending cycle of curiosity. I hope that these learning experiences create lasting memories the way that my Grammie did for me.  The enhanced confidence and self-esteem they gain will serve this family well as they outrun the single greatest indicator of a child’s future success that historically has been so limiting on children of parents with low literacy.