A Healer’s Geste

School Year 2010-2011: Goals & Inspiration

When putting together my ideas for this year, I relied upon a handful of posts by wise women to help me identify and keep straight my priorities:

Homeschooling the Freeborn

Cindy lists out nineteen essentials in educating our children well, which sounds like a daunting number, until you consider that 6 on the list come down to “read,” three involve conversing with your children, and two are admonitions to keep things simple and not stressful.

“Resist the temptation to think that more is better. Less is almost always better in education. What you need is more time to read and think. Do whatever it takes to make more time.”

Seven Daily Rungs

Ann identifies seven components she tries to incorporate daily: labor, loveliness, literature, language, logic, laughter. In another more recent post, she elaborates on the four cornerstones of simple homeschooling: Make it a continuum of your real life, keep it joyously contagious, emphasize curiosity, and make it consistent.

“Our choices add up. Habits into hours, decisions into days, lists into a life. The way in which we live our moments, our choices for the gift of the next 24 hours, are rungs on a ladder. The rungs take us somewhere. These moments are rungs scaling each and everyday… making a life. How do we know everyday what is a worthwhile investment of our time and what will burn up, straw at the end of time? How do we cultivate not simply well-trained minds, but nurture holistic, well-lived lives? How do we work everyday towards raising up children, who are not merely academic automatons, but exuberant, soul-healthy, worshipers of God, committed to meaningful, eternal Kingdom work?”

Advice: Take it. Leave it.

MMV’s motto is Read. Think. Learn. To accomplish these goals, she has three pieces of advice: 1) Find a daily dance set to your own rhythm and pace; 2) Focus on the moment you are in; and 3) Don’t neglect yourself. However, the best MMV post ever has to be her comparison of homeschooling and sausage-making.

“Simply put, then, I have ensured that my students can read widely and deeply, write clearly, and think well. [...] While I appreciate the child-like, the childish leaves me cold, so I discarded conventional ideas about grades and age-level appropriateness and what every child needs to know, ignored most of the educational and homeschooling “experts,” and simply gave my students the books, conversations, challenges, opportunities, time, resources, and all required to meet my ideal as quickly and effectively as possible.”

If you read only one of the above links, make it the last one: Homeschool Expert? Nah. (or, Homeschooling & Sausage-Making).

None of these are admonitions to do a particular program, instead they are primarily ideas and principles that will be embodied differently in different families. As I read, think, talk to others, and observe, I am coming to the conclusion that the specifics of what one does isn’t as important as the manner in which one does it. It is the atmosphere of the home and the relationship between parents and siblings that gets into a child’s bones and shapes who he is. So the particulars are important in that one has to do something, and unequal efforts will produce unequal results, but children are people, not products. They need discipleship, tutoring, mentoring, and attention. Running them through a particular book or process or program will not achieve standardized results. There is no perfect program that once discovered, will guarantee “success.” The goal is to shape and guide a person to maturity and wisdom, not run them through a 12-year gauntlet of facts, drills, and tests so they can get a job.

So my goal this year is to remember that each of my children are individuals, are persons, who need attention, love, and respect, who learn best through tutoring and discipline and conversation, and who must mature towards self-governance, thoughtful word & deed, responsibility, and wisdom.

One verse continually comes to mind to scare and inspire: “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40). In that vein, my other goal this year is to not hold up my weaknesses as virtues and not pass them on. Just because I’m not good at something or interested in something does not mean I should or may teach those same prejudices to my children. This means I’m going to allow and suggest more independent crafting & creative work. This means I’m going to take my children outdoors to various types of habitats in the area and let them revel in it. This means I’m going to work more at birthdays and holidays special, memory-making times. This means we’ll be studying science this year. This means I’m going to spend the time I need to alongside my children — reading, cooking, talking, working, playing — instead of treating my pet projects, my computer time, or my own thought-world as more important than them. This means I’m allowing myself to be stretched and reshaped as necessary, acknowledging I’m not complete and not the person I need to be and that I am willing to become whoever God makes me in this process.

Still, the posts I linked above confirmed to me that I can run with my strengths and my curriculum-planning preferences. I stuck to books and resources and tools. I prefer non-consumable materials and non-graded materials. I want to keep instructional time tight, concentrated, and short, and so I steered clear of anything that smacked of busy-work. What I need to remember is not to skimp and keep short our reading times. It is, every one says and I know, the most important element, and I will admit it, it is one of the things I am quick to shorten or skip. So, here’s to a year of doing what I know I should be doing.

However, keep in mind as I post about what I bought and plan to do this year, my choosing something does not mean I think it’s THE way to go. And there are lots of things that I like and that I would recommend and that I considered, but I decided that adding them would be clutter for us; I tried to keep a minimalist approach, but someone else’s minimalist approach could easily omit things I chose and include things I omitted. There’s no one way and there’s no perfect way. Do your own thing if you want to and if you have good support who will tell you if you’re totally off base or missing something. Or, just go with a program that sounds good. And feel free to tweak it to make it your own thing. There are lots of programs that are good. Lots of them are basically the same thing. My Father’s World, Sonlight, Ambleside Online, Tapestry of Grace, Veritas — who cares, really? They all boil down to reading lists. Or Abeka, Bob Jones, Rod and Staff, even, if reading lists are too scary or intimidating. They’re all graded worksheets systematized, just with their own flavor. Choose the one you’re most comfortable with, the one you’ll be most comfortable implementing and just go for it.

It’s the implementation that makes more difference than the program or books chosen.

And that is both freeing and terrifying.