Welcome to my blogspace! My name is Mollie Shaw and I would love to share my experiences and materials with you. I have taught public, private and home school since 1984 and have particularly experimented on my own six children using a variety of classical and christian materials. My passion is curriculum: How does it work and why? What kinds of students respond best to different kinds of curriculum? How can I change the curriculum to get the greatest benefit for my student(s)?
My daughter, Elizabeth, has spina bifida and learning disabilities. Wow, did I learn a huge amount about how kids learn, and don't learn, from my first few years working with her in K, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade! I graduated with a degree in Education, but nothing I learned in college addressed the challenges this precious child, who worked so hard and made so little progress, faced. After teaching her at home through eighth grade, we decided to place her in the public high school. On her first day of class, she sat in the Social Studies classroom in her wheelchair, accompanied by her aid. The teacher asked, "Who can recite the presidents?" Elizabeth slowly raised the only hand in the room. We celebrated that evening that God had shown her that she knew as much as the other kids and that she could feel confident that she would do well in this new school.
The best trick for Elizabeth was lots of talking and singing. She could remember anything that we talked and laughed about together. She was an interactive learner. If she heard it, she could remember it, but if she mentally processed it by explaining it back to me and asking lots of questions, then she truly comprehended it. Some days we had to talk about it all over again, because little pieces of the concept would just seem to drop out of the complete picture during the night, but eventually she would connect the synapses to the point where she could build the next lesson on top of it.
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