Every homeschool parent worries about their teaching skills, just as every parent faces times when they doubt their parenting skills. The truth is, parenting and teaching go hand-in-hand …in fact, they’re interchangeable.

So if you find that you’re frequently asking yourself “How good a teacher am I?”, take a deep breath and relax. You’re doing fine! You probably never really thought about it but you’ve been teaching your kids since Day One. You are a teacher – it has always been a part of the parenting job!

A reader recently asked me how to handle acting as both mother and teacher.  How do you wear both hats?  How do you switch back and forth between both roles?

My answer: you don’t.

When to be a teacher and when to be a coach is sometimes a challenging decision.

Often we are sure we can speed up the learning process if we just impart our wisdom and academic expertise to our children through a “lesson.”  So, we set aside time to go over whatever it is we are sure they need to know next, we prepare what we want to say, and we conduct our “class.” Okay, okay, most of the time we don’t go through quite the formal process explained above, but you get the point.

I remember my favorite teacher.

Miss McCullough was my fifth grade teacher and she was amazing! She loved to pour herself into us. She was funny; she was loving; she was willing to steer away from the curriculum and delve into some rabbit trail we started down with our many questions; she would have us pile onto the classroom couch after lunch every day and listen as she read exciting books . . . She was everything I wanted to be as a first-time homeschool mom. In fact, you could say she was my inspiration.