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From my own experiences working with children and watching other people teach, I’ve noticed that good educators share many common attributes. (Aside: when I say “educators”, I really mean parents, schoolteachers, and indeed anyone who needs to impart knowledge to another person.)

What’s interesting is that almost anyone can acquire these attributes if they put their mind to it — teaching doesn’t really require any “special skills” that are beyond the reach of the average person. Of course, if you want to teach a subject at the highest levels, it helps if you’re a specialist in the area, but in general a simple willingness to learn on the teacher’s part is surprisingly effective.

Anyway, here are ten things — not in any particular order — that I think all good educators ought to aim for:

1. KNOW THE CHILD: You can only teach well if you have a good understanding of the person you’re teaching. At the very least, you should know about the child’s interests and his personality traits. Try to relate to and empathise with the child as best you can.

   Of course, a lot of this knowledge can and will be obtained while you’re teaching. Once you have a good understanding of the child, you can adjust your teaching style to “perfectly match” the child’s style of learning.

2. GOOD COMMUNICATION: You should know how to communicate with the child “at the right level” so he can understand you easily. Try to sound like you’re interested in and excited by whatever you’re teaching, and don’t speak in a monotone!

   Effective communication is two-way: encourage the child to express his own thoughts and ideas, and try to adjust/improve your teaching based on the feedback he gives you. Don’t forget the importance of nonverbal communication — it’s usually easy to tell from a child’s body language whether or not he’s interested in what you’re teaching him.

3. MUTUAL RESPECT: It’s impossible to teach someone who doesn’t take you seriously! You should try to earn the respect of the child, while at the same time being considerate of his needs and wants. Aim to strike a good rapport with the person you’re teaching.
4. PATIENCE: At times, teaching can feel like an immensely frustrating experience, and there will often be occasions when the child doesn’t seem to be learning anything or is even moving backwards.

   This is where patience comes in handy; you just have to keep trying until things start moving in the right direction again. However, this doesn’t mean you should persist with a style of teaching that clearly isn’t working; it’s important to be flexible!

5. A SENSE OF FUN: Lots of people think that learning has to be a chore and a bore, but children tend to learn (and retain what they have learnt) much better if they actually enjoy what they are doing. With a bit of imagination, it’s possible to make even the most mundane learning tasks seem interesting to a child.

   As children grow older, they gradually start to understand the importance of their studies more, and so you don’t have to put quite as much effort into making their work fun for them. Still, it’s always good to have a sense of humour when teaching older children, and you should try to make things interesting whenever possible, especially if it seems like the person you’re teaching is growing bored.

6. ENJOY LEARNING YOURSELF: There’s nothing worse than a teacher teaching a subject that he doesn’t actually like. More generally, we can’t expect children to enjoy learning if we ourselves have no interest in learning!

   If you do enjoy learning, you can set a good example for the child by, for example, showing him that you’re curious about the world, always trying to learn new things, figuring out how to solve interesting problems, and so on. Most importantly, try to make it clear that learning is a way of life, and doesn’t begin and end in the classroom.

7. JUST DO IT: It’s fairly commonplace for people to think that they are incapable of teaching, or that the child is incapable of learning a subject. Frankly, this is a terrible attitude to have! Avoid making assumptions about what you can and can’t teach, or what the child can and can’t learn.

   Instead, just tell yourself “Okay, this is what I’d like to teach, and now let’s see if I can find a way to help the kid learn this stuff.” It might take time, but you probably will find a way eventually, and you certainly have a better chance than if you don’t even try to teach him!

8. BE RESOURCEFUL: Teaching is a whole lot easier when you don’t have to come up with everything yourself. Knowing how to extract useful information from books, the Internet, and other knowledgeable people is an incredibly useful skill to have, and if you look in the right places it doesn’t even have to cost much money.

   Try to be on the lookout for things that might help you with your teaching; for instance, you could put common household items to good use, or try to learn from another teacher if you see him using a teaching technique that seems like it might be handy.

9. KNOW THE SUBJECT: Obviously, it helps if you have a good understanding of the subject you want to teach, but you can still do a reasonable job even if you’re not an expert. You just have to be willing to learn a few new things yourself.

   There are two ways you can do this: you can either spend a bit of your own time learning about the subject, or you can learn with the child. I prefer the latter, and not just because it takes less time! Learning with the child lets him see the process of learning (which is often messy and unrefined) as well as the end result, and it’s usually more interesting for a child to learn collaboratively with another person instead of just being told what to do.

10. FLEXIBILITY: Sticking rigidly to a single method of teaching is usually a bad idea. Be flexible in the way that you teach; every child learns in a different way, and their learning habits also evolve over time. What works with one child won’t necessarily work with another, and you should be willing to change the way you teach if it isn’t working as well as you’d like.

    Personally, I like to have an array of techniques at my disposal, and I use different methods based on my knowledge of the child and what he’s learning. It’s also important to be open to new ways of teaching, because even if you’re already doing a very good job, you can always improve even further!

Answer: a lot.

In fact, there’s so much you can do that I couldn’t possibly cover the whole topic in a single blog post; instead, I’m going to talk today about just a few aspects of how you can benefit your child’s education. This article is aimed primarily at parents of kids who are already at school, especially those who have very little time on their hands.

Today I’ll mainly be talking about what you can do in the home environment to help your child do better at school. Your child’s home environment can contribute an enormous amount to his success in education, regardless of the actual quality of teaching at his school. As a teacher, I often encounter situations where a student vastly improves his results simply because his parents have become willing to reinforce or supplement the work he’s doing at school.

Spending time with your child

One of the best things you can do at home for your child is to have a Learning Time with him on a daily basis. The Learning Time is just an uninterrupted period with your child that is dedicated to supplementing and/or reinforcing the education he receives from school.

During this time, you can do anything from helping him organise his schedule to having an informal chat with him about what he’s done at school for the day. I’ll talk more about what you can do during the Learning Time in the next section.

Don’t worry if you think you are too busy to be able to spend much time with your kids, because the Learning Time need not take up much of your day. In fact, your child will benefit greatly even if you can only spare half an hour or fifteen minutes per day. Consistency is much more important than long hours, so a daily 20-minute Learning Time is preferable to a weekly 2-hour session.

What the Learning Time is all about

Before I talk about what you can do during the Learning Time, a quick word about preparation. Try to ensure that the learning environment is pleasant and relatively free of distractions. If lots of people are chatting noisily in the background or somebody is watching TV a short distance away, don’t be surprised if your child can’t concentrate!

As mentioned in the previous article, keep everything you do during the Learning Times relaxed and informal, so that your child associates his learning times with positive emotions. This is especially true if he is not used to discussing his schoolwork with you.

If you’re just starting out, all you need to do in the first few Learning Times is familiarise yourself with your child’s work and how he likes to do things. This is all part of getting to know your child. Here are a few obvious ways in which you can do this:

1. Ask him if you can look through his books/notes. This will give you the clearest idea of what topics he’s studying, the quality of his work, and his strong and weak points.
2. Have an informal chat about what he’s been doing at school. Many children prefer to answer more specific questions than “what have you been doing at school?”, in which case you should just ask him exactly what subjects he’s been studying. Ask him what he likes and dislikes about school, and what he would change if he could.
3. Some children prefer writing to talking; if your child is like this, then ask him to write about what he’s studying at school, his favourite and least-liked subjects, what he’d like to improve on, and so on.

Once you’ve familiarised yourself with what your child is doing at school, you can start thinking about how you can use the Learning Times to help him. Exactly what you do during the Learning Time will vary depending on how old your child is, what he’s studying, his interests, and how he likes to learn. I give some examples of things you can try below — notice that you can provide a lot of help to a child even if you don’t fully understand the subjects he’s studying.

1. Use the Learning Time to talk about your child’s homework. You can ask him if any homework needs to be handed in soon, and provide him with encouragement if necessary (but don’t do his homework for him!).
2. If he has little motivation for his studies, it’s up to you to be the motivator! Provide incentives, give him praise for each small effort, look for ways to make his studies fun, and so on. See the last article for more details on how to do this.
3. Help him improve his understanding of his work by asking him to explain some aspects of a topic he’s studying to you. Tell him that you don’t know much about the subject and would like to learn; many children enjoy being the “teacher” for a change!

   Initially, keep your questions simple to make things easy for him, and don’t worry if his explanations aren’t perfect. Try to guide him towards the right way of thinking (e.g. by asking good questions) instead of just telling him that he’s wrong.

4. Similarly to item 3, you could ask him to write an essay about any aspect of a subject he’s studying. In his essays, he could write about what he knows about a certain topic, what he likes or dislikes about it, why he thinks the subject is worth (or not worth!) studying, etc. Again, remember to keep things simple at first, especially if he’s not used to writing.



5. Study skills 1: Help your child organise his work. Exactly how you do this depends on your child’s preferences: for example, he could write summary sheets for each subject, structure his books/notes on each subject in a consistent manner, or learn how to make use of colour-coded folders, sticky notes, etc. You could also help him improve the presentation (i.e. the general layout) of his work; even good students often have problems presenting their work, and it can affect the way they think about problems.
6. Study skills 2: Suggest or help him gather resources to aid him in his studies. This can involve anything from acquiring information from books and the Internet to encouraging him to ask questions of his teachers and other people. Knowing how to make the most of one’s available resources is a skill many children lack, and hunting for useful materials can be a fun little excursion in its own right.
7. Study skills 3: Help your child plan his work. He could make a timetable showing what he plans to do in each day (and you can both see whether he actually followed the plan!); alternately, he could keep a “school journal” so he can keep track of work that needs to be done, write down important deadlines and key dates, identify his strong and weak points, and so on.
8. Study skills 4: If your child is revising for exams, you can discuss strategies and come up with a good revision plan. For instance, he should aim to cover all the relevant material well before the exam date, so that he has ample time to practice on past papers. You can also ask him to explain topics to you (this improves the depth of his understanding — see item 3) or try some quizzes (see item 10 below).



9. If he’s stuck on a question you don’t understand, there are several things you can try: ask him to show you what he has done to try to solve the problem, make sure he’s read through the question carefully, ask him to look through his books/notes for material relevant to the question, etc. This kind of guidance will often enable him to solve the problem himself. As a last resort, he can look to other resources to help him with his problem (see item 6).

   Alternately, you can try to learn more about the subject with him (which also sets a good example for him and shows him how you learn), or you can read about it in your own time so that you are better able to help him. I often do this!

10. Make a little quiz out of the contents of his books; ask him about definitions and terminology, methods, or whatever else is relevant. This is something you can try even if you don’t fully understand the material, because you can easily compare his answers with the information in his books. It’s also a good way of ensuring he has a comprehensive understanding of the material.
11. If your child is already a very good student, use the Learning Time to supplement his learning. Challenge him a little more by giving him harder problems and increasing the breadth or depth of his understanding. Look for resources (see item 6) and find things for him to work on independently.
12. Just have a chat with your child about something constructive, and not necessarily directly related to his schoolwork. For instance, you could talk about his plans for the future, or something casual such as what he would do if he had a million pounds and didn’t have to work. Constructive conversations like this are particularly handy when your child doesn’t feel like doing any work!

Don’t forget that when discussing your child’s schoolwork, it’s important not to make the mistake of thinking that grades are all that matter! The goal shouldn’t always be to get “the right answer”, but to improve your child’s thinking skills and the way he looks at learning and his schoolwork in general.

Finally, the atmosphere of your household also has a considerable effect on your child’s willingness to learn. If everyone else in the house — especially older siblings — spends a lot of time reading or doing constructive activities, it will be very natural for your child to behave similarly. The simplest thing you can do is to behave the way you would like your child to behave.

Learning should be enjoyable.

Many people have asked us how it’s possible to get children to achieve so early. There’s been a lot of guessing and very few facts, simply because in the past I never liked to talk publicly about the way I brought up my children. I’ve always preferred doing practical things instead of talking, but in any case, I think it’s better if people know the facts, so from time to time I’ll write about various aspects of my teaching philosophy on this blog.

Since there is so much to write about, it would be impossible for me to cover everything here, but I hope and believe that people — especially fellow parents and teachers — will find this information useful. I’ll be writing and talking about my teaching style in more detail elsewhere; this first post just covers one small (albeit very important) aspect of my general approach to teaching.

Let’s now go back to what I said in the opening paragraph: learning should be enjoyable. I started teaching my children from birth, and if you spend time with babies it’s easy to see that they are incredibly curious and receptive to new information. In other words, they want to learn!

If you are able to spend some time with a baby (preferably one who likes you!), here’s something simple you can do to see this for yourself. Hold up a toy in front of him — almost any simple and colourful toy will do — at a distance of about 20cm from his face.

Pay close attention to the way he reacts: depending on his age, he will do anything from focusing on the toy and tracking it with his eyes and head to reaching out and grabbing it.

In fact, if he’s able to, he almost certainly will try to take the toy from you, after which he might manipulate it and study it from all angles, or shake it, or put the toy in his mouth, or drop it, and so on.

What’s the baby trying to do? He’s trying to learn about the toy, of course! He wants to know what it looks like, how it feels, how it tastes, and what happens when he shakes or drops it. The baby is also learning about himself; among other things, he’s figuring out how to coordinate his movements and he’s also developing his motor skills.

Clearly, then, babies are very curious about the world around them. This innate love of learning makes them easy to teach, not to mention extremely rapid learners! Because of this, I consider the first five years of a child’s life to be the most important as far as their education is concerned.

Aside from developing fundamental skills such as speaking, reading, and writing, the first five years are a great time for a child to acquire good learning habits such as a high attention span, a strong bond with their parents/teachers, and a simple enjoyment of learning (whether it be from books, things he’s playing with, conversations with other people, TV, the garden, or anywhere else).

This blog isn’t the right place to go into all these areas in detail (unless anyone wants to read 20,000-word posts!), but I do hope to at least be able to give people some of the general ideas.

Making learning fun for babies and toddlers

“Making” learning enjoyable for a child is easiest if you simply get him to maintain his natural love of learning from his earliest days as a baby. All you have to do is spot the times when he wants to learn (e.g. when he’s showing interest in a toy or person) and then come up with some fun learning activities for him.

Don’t forget that you’re trying to get him to retain his existing enjoyment of learning, so it’s important that he associates learning with positive experiences. Have a sense of fun/humour, and don’t worry about setting goals or targets for your baby; just enjoy the time you spend with your child and seeing him learn for what it is.

Try to keep your learning activities exciting or at least interesting; to do this, you might have to be a little creative in the way you introduce new things to your baby. For instance, simply speaking to him in a sing-song voice will help keep him amused and interested.

Patience is essential. Only teach your baby as long as he is interested in the learning activity, and if he seems to have completely lost interest (e.g. he is looking somewhere else) or is no longer alert, just stop! There’s always another day.

Let’s now talk about what not to do: it’s crucial that you don’t make learning dull, tedious, or overly repetitive for your child, as this will cause him to start associating learning with negative experiences from an early age. These negative associations tend to stick with children for a long time.

Essentially, all you have to do here is not suck all the fun out of learning. One simple thing you can do is to make sure that the learning activity is interesting and pleasant for you, as your child will very often feel the same way. In fact, you’ll often find that you naturally communicate your interest and excitement in the activity to your child.

Making learning fun for older children

Let’s now talk about the case of older children; in particular, children who, for one reason or another, seem to dislike their studies or learning in general. The trick here is to get to know your child well and figure out what will make learning fun for your child.

So what does make learning enjoyable for a child? It depends on the child’s personality, of course, but here are some of the more common possibilities:

1. The child likes the challenge and resulting sense of accomplishment that comes from learning new things
2. He enjoys spending time with and/or receiving attention from his parent/teacher/carer
3. He enjoys learning informally through hands-on activities (e.g. cake baking or upgrading a computer) and/or educational-but-informal discussions (e.g. “why do some people have curly or straight hair?” or “where does the picture on the TV come from?”)
4. Positive peer pressure: he likes to compete with other children and tries to outperform his peers
5. His studies are integrated with something he already enjoys (e.g. he can write essays about computer games or see how maths is used in football)
6. A parent/teacher/carer has made learning fun for him at an early age, and hence he’s come to associate learning with good feelings
7. He likes to show off!

Which of the above applies to your child? If you’re not sure, it’s a good idea to find out! Here are two examples to illustrate how you might use this knowledge to make learning enjoyable for your child.

Example: Focusing

Suppose your child has difficulty focusing on his schoolwork for very long, but is happy to play computer games for many hours every day. What you have to do here is figure out why he is willing to focus on computer games but not his studies.

If you’ve realised that the challenge-and-frequent-reward system in games keeps him interested for a long time, you could divide his work up into a series of small challenges and give him a reward after he overcomes each challenge. You could give him a sweet for each question he answers, or if he doesn’t even want to get started, reward or congratulate him for just writing his name down!

Alternately — or at the same time — you could offer to let him play games for as long as he likes provided that he finishes his work for the day. This will have the side benefit of helping him understand that doing his work now leads to rewards in the long term.

Depending on the kind of work he is doing, you could try to integrate his gaming hobby into his work. If he needs to write an essay, for instance, you can ask him to write about what he likes about his favourite games or to describe his favourite gaming characters.

If he doesn’t know why maths or physics are useful, you can help him find out how computer games are made so that he can see how these subjects are used by people who program games. Or he might just prefer to use computers in general, in which case you should let him do as much work as he can on his computer.

Example: Reading

If your child doesn’t like to read, there are many things you can do to encourage him. As always, your task is to use your understanding of your child to figure out what it is that might get him to like reading.

The easiest thing to do is to simply let him read about things that interest him. Since there is written material covering virtually every subject known to mankind, this should not be difficult!

Get him used to the idea of reading to find out more about the things he likes or is interested in. If he likes fast cars, ask him if he can find (via books or the Internet) the top speeds of the fastest cars, how cars are built for speed, and so on. You should also try to integrate reading into his daily life — if he’s going to the dentist for the first time, borrow a book on the subject so that he can find out what will happen during his visit!

Some children dislike reading because they can’t see how the text might be interesting or entertaining, especially if they’re reading a book that isn’t illustrated. If this is the case for your child, liven up his reading by acting out the book’s content with him. Be imaginative and read the book with a great deal of expressiveness; if he’s reading a story, make it seem like the story is actually happening in front of him. Over time, he’ll gradually start associating books with the excitement he gets from reading with you.

You might notice that your child likes to do the same things as his peers or the people around him in order to fit in. In this case, you could take him regularly to the children’s section of your local library — initially, he might not read anything, but if he sees that everyone around him is happily reading, he’ll be much more inclined to pick up a book for himself. Encourage him by showing him how to navigate the library to find books about things that interest him; at this stage, it doesn’t really matter what he reads, as long as he makes a start.

Bear in mind the fact that I haven’t covered everything in this example! There are lots of other possible reasons why a child might not like to read, such as being restless or having a low attention span; I’ve only discussed a few of the problems here. Likewise, there are many other potential remedies for reading problems that I haven’t been able to cover in this post.