A Peek into a PNEU Type Teacher Student Relationship

 Photo via Dawn Schoenherz-Rigoni's pinterest board: In love with Autumn 

"I can still see people in my cozy sitting room: Stephen ensconced in a small fireside chair utterly entranced with "Watership Down". I did most of the reading and he took up the final two paragraphs of each chapter, managing passably well. Sometimes the whole hour was spent like this; sometimes I sensed that one chapter was enough.  On one occasion, "what next ?" brought the answer, "game of scrabble with moonlight sonata on the record player." Once they had got to know my range I let them choose what to do. I can see Alex on the floor by the fire making up her mind which song to have, "Sur le Pont" or "Au Clair de la Lune," singing softly to herself as she puts on a record. And Jimmy streaking in at the front door, and by the time I've turned on the hall light he's got two chairs drawn up to the fire with a copy of "101 Dalmatians" on each. We read the statuary chapter in the usual way. He snapped the book shut and went to the bookcase saying, "Now poetry. Two each," handling out large anthologies. We rearrange ourselves at the table and get on with the choosing. He seems a bit stuck. "what's the matter? Can't you find one?"

"The trouble is I've got THREE."

"We could have an extra, you know." And we're off, sometimes a verse a week each, sometimes each reading the whole of our chosen poem.

Later on he took to "A Puffin Book of Verse."

"Page 273," he said, "It's really good."

And what did I find on page 273? Psalm 23. By the last few weeks he'd decided we must stop this haphazard choosing and go straight through."

 From Marion Berry's book I buy a School

Marion Berry was a retired PNEU teacher that finding herself now retired from the role of headmistress at one of the PNEU school decided to take children into her home to teach them from lower incomes backgrounds. Marion had wisely been told earlier that all children need nourishing, all "are hungry."

I read this many years ago and was stunned. How could she get those children to settle in to do lessons and chose to do their lessons and with eagerness, joy and delight? How could she let go of the control of her classroom and let the children choose what to do, how much to do and when to do it? I was stunned, but also hungry myself to understand how this could happen. I wanted it passionately. But I really did not think I would ever get there. It seemed miles and miles from my own reality and my own understanding of teaching.

Photo via tiny white daisies

Today I read it again with new eyes. And as I looked into her school I discovered a few things I had missed before.  First of all she leans entirely on the faith that children are hungry to learn. That they want to learn and that they can learn on their own. Without this faith she could not get out of the way and let them interact with the ideas, the beauty, the words aptly put in their own way at their own speed and in what order they desired.

"Stephen ensconced in a small fireside chair utterly entranced with "Watership Down". I did most of the reading and he took up the final two paragraphs of each chapter, managing passably well. Sometimes the whole hour was spent like this; sometimes I sensed that one chapter was enough."

Is it not delightful to hear how well she reads Stephen's appetite. She can sense when one chapter is enough. She does not force feed him when his appetite is gone. She doesn't do the same lesson every day. She is personal, winning him over to a new world of the joy of books, poetry, music,  French, and Latin too is says later in the book. 

"Once they had got to know my range I let them choose what to do."

This phrase was planted into the soil of my heart when I first read this and I have been pining away ever since to be able to do this myself. I just love the masterly inactivity of it. I can gather a few clues from the passage itself  which illuminates how she did this. She enjoyed the children, she trusted their hunger to learn, she had experienced sureness, and she gained their trust by reading their appetites and not force feeding them. She won them over to enjoy a new world. 

                                                           Photo via Tiny White Daisies

In our homeschool I have aimed at achieving this idea. I think of it more like a pasture with fences that i build. I create the range or fence, and within the fence I allow them freedom to choose. CM did this in many areas of her education, in the use of the nature notebook for instance. She set a time, she gave the tools, she showed them how to do it, she modeled it and then she got out of their way and let them chose what to draw, how long to draw, how much to draw, etc. In this model the teacher is the master who choses to be inactive so the children can make their own connects or relations with the ideas they are encountering.

"And Jimmy streaking in at the front door, and by the time I've turned on the hall light he's got two chairs drawn up to the fire with a copy of "101 Dalmatians" on each. We read the statuary chapter in the usual way. He snapped the book shut and went to the bookcase saying, "Now poetry. Two each," handling out large anthologies. We rearrange ourselves at the table and get on with the choosing. He seems a bit stuck. "what's the matter? Can't you find one?"

"The trouble is I've got THREE."

"We could have an extra, you know." And we're off, sometimes a verse a week each, sometimes each reading the whole of our chosen poem.

Later on he took to "A Puffin Book of Verse."

"Page 273," he said, "It's really good."

And what did I find on page 273? Psalm 23. By the last few weeks he'd decided we must stop this haphazard choosing and go straight through."

The whole last portion of the passage is a shinning example of the choices she has allowed the children to make within her range. In my own experience this did not come very quickly. I don't know how MB established her range so they knew it, but I felt it was important for my children to first establish a habit of obedience and an appetite for good "mind stuff" before I should let them decide on books and/or lessons of their choice. Once my young students understood, or rather followed my lead in the school I began to allow bits of liberty. Like selecting the read aloud books, then later the living books related to history that were not spines, or which living books about birds we would read first from a pre-selected list of books.

Photo via Tiny White Daisies

However, in gaining their allegiance before they had a choice I was a student myself learning about them and choosing books, lengths of lessons etc that would win them to the love of good literature and music and art etc. It is only this year that I have been widening the pasture so to speak, last year we were developing a habit of obedience and a taste for good literature. Perhaps widening the pasture each year is suitable depending on the students and their developing appetite for good mind stuff and their willingness and success in governing themselves.

"In a school like this, the children belonged to a sort of family. They were continually in relationship with each other and the teachers. This wonderful, simple, and yet precious. The relationships endured- there was real caring, and the atmosphere of a community that lives, plays, enjoys and learns together."-Susan Schaffer Macaulay from When Children Love to Learn pg. 48 

What a beautiful picture this is of what a homeschool can be when we trust in their hunger for good "mind stuff," train them to love good mind food, give them mind food that is healthy for eating and let them eat until they are filled.


BTW: Linda Faye wrote a brilliant post here sharing tips on how she encourages her children to enjoy hard books.
And Simply Charlotte wrote a fantastic post here on Too Much Twaddle.

UPDATE July 2013: Dr. Carroll Smith writes about the delicate balance of listening to the child if he/she pushes away from a book and having the wisdom to give them quality books that will feed their minds for narration HERE.