How do we educate for the development of students as human beings where the emphasis is based on laughter, joy, heart based interest, and active participation as a key to unlocking all learning? Academics plays a role but there is so much more and academics is based in life force not dead conceptual thinking. Teaching is a creative act. Behind teacher or homeschooling parental presentation is the desire to engage and engender curiosity about a given subject. How do we manifest student participation in the learning process itself? Student inquiry delves deeper and deeper into the questions themselves and teaching then becomes an ‘unfinished lesson’ The goal is to enhance student participation in the learning process itself. I am inspired by the reflections of the extraordinary educator Parker Palmer:
I am a teacher at heart and there are moments in the classroom when I can hardly hold the joy. When my students and I discover uncharted territory to explore, when the pathway out of a thicket opens up before us, when our experience is illuminated by the lightening-life of our mind-then teaching is the finest work I know (Palmer, P., 1998, p. 1).
I suspect that an educational methodology centered on Inquiry is paramount to teaching into the future, whether it be in the classroom or in a home based learning environment.