Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Teaching as learning

I couldn't help but think of the tendency I've heard about for some teachers to provide "opportunities" for gifted kids to teach and act as mentors to other students, when DS9 told me that his teacher said that "the best way to learn something is to teach it." She even used gesticulation to show that listening accounts for a small part of learning, reading another part, I can't remember the third (maybe discussing/explaining), but teaching was the biggest. We talked about what she probably meant, how teaching can solidify what you have learned. It's just one of those things that annoyed me, and I needed some sympathy, ha.

If teaching was such a facilitator to learning, my DD's 4th grade teacher would have known the difference between condensation and evaporation.

Teaching IS a facilitator to deeper understanding, but the problem is that there's little material in the elementary school level that's complex enough to make it pay.

I think this is basically what schools offer when they have nothing real to offer. It is an effort largely to create the illusion that your child is getting some real support.

I'm not sure the context of the statement, but I don't think it had to do with her having him teach other kids, it was more like a red flag. He hasn't indicated that he's encouraged to teach (it's likely challenging enough just to get him to work with a team -- introvert easily irritated by kids who don't get it!). I think it was more about her expressing how much she's learned in working with the kids (it's her second year).