I am creating writing courses at www.teachable.com. Teachable is one of several online course websites. In fact, I have just discovered that teachers will often have the same course through Teachable, Udemy, and other similar websites. Since online teaching and learning is the primary purpose of these websites, I will share with you what I am learning as I create these courses.

I am beginning with…

This Blog Category is titled "Teaching & Learning." This post is simply some thoughts on what I hope to share under this heading. 

I love to teach, and I love to learn. I have taken more than 70 full courses at the college and graduate levels; nonetheless, the majority of what I know and can do was learned by doing rather than by being taught. Practical hands-on learning is a must for me and is the rule of everything I have created in the writing course.…

A young man wants a computer. To buy him a computer is not in the family budget. But there is money for his homeschooling needs. You have two choices. Buy the workbooks and unit studies and make him do what he has always done, or try something real.

Put in front of your son the chance to build his own computer instead of the workbooks and unit studies. Make a deal with him. Building his own computer…

I am a teacher. I am supposed to teach English and how to write. I do succeed somewhat in my goal; at least I see improvement in my students' work. But I do not kid myself, because I teach inside the assembly-line factory model of education developed by the Prussians a hundred and fifty years ago and still used for what is called "school" today.

Writing, or any of the other subjects we teach, is…

Business-based learning is especially suited to the home school family with high school-aged children. But business-based learning is useful to any teenager in public school, private school, or home school.

In the past, a teenager would often apprentice with a workman or shopkeeper to learn a trade. A son might even apprentice with his father to learn the family business. Certainly, the world we…

Every one of us quickly learns to cope with the reality of the world we find ourselves in as it presents itself to us. Every single child sitting inside the 'world' of the modern classroom very quickly learns the 'rules' and how to survive inside those 'rules.'

The largest element in a child's mind and heart in that environment is being surrounded by and growing up with a large number of kids all…

Part of the disconnect in modern education is this incredible belief that a child who is actively engaged in doing interesting things cannot be "getting an education." At the same time, people think that a child sitting at a desk, answering questions out of a text book, on topics that have no present relationship to the child's life or needs, is being educated.

Do not be fooled by this self-serving…

S_____, you ask what I recommend for your infant daughter and her education. I take that as an invitation to share my thoughts that come from both understanding and experience. You intend to homeschool, which tells me you do not buy the hype of modern education, that is good.

The best way to prepare any child for learning and for life is to read to her. Read regularly, read with expression and…

Can I really be in charge of my own learning?

It is your life.

What determines your success in life is not what you learn in your head, but what you learn in your heart. When education is "free," the deepest truth learned is that life is already paid for - the world owes it to you.

Only, that "truth" is not true at all.

You could choose a different path.

You are well able to take charge of…