I know it has been a little quiet on the blog this past week. I’m still here, just working on other projects.
I love the internet. I really do. Because I have made some fantabulous friends in this space—one of whom I met in “real life” today. My friend Hannah from Here in the Lovely Woods is in the Pacific Northwest to visit family, and she made a big detour (flying into Portland rather than Seattle) just so we could meet up.
We gave her a rousing Oregon welcome with clouds, sunshine, sunshine with sprinkling rain, lovely blue sky and white cotton ball clouds, downpour, deluge (not kidding), and sunshine once more. All in the space of a few hours.
Oh, and we saw some of God’s most beautiful creation while we were at it! Green. Green. Wet. And green.
More pictures later (I have so many in the queue!), but I just wanted to give you a taste and say hello.
(Levi is in the kitchen as I am walking (or painfully limping, as it may be) through the front room with a hurt foot.)
Levi:Your gait is unmistakable. You're lurching.
(No sneaking up on him to see if he is on task…)
(He has been s-l-o-w-l-y working through tasks and begging to be released from servitude. As he finishes the dishes, he asks, in a somewhat exasperated manner…)
Levi:May I disperse myself with the seven winds?
(When this kid’s writing skills and maturity catch up with his verbal processing skills, watch out.)
I have Minecraft birthday party pictures to share. And beach pictures.
But I also have a time deficit. (More of a self-management issue than a time deficit issue, but, whatever.)
Between a beach trip on Saturday, a painful foot (going to the chiropractor today to see if he can help), serious practicum prep (hours and hours and hours yesterday and the rest of this week), and a lengthy debate in the comments of my Common Core post (so not my forte and very energy- and emotion-sapping for me), my house has taken a serious hit. I’m so thankful for my friend Cheris who had my kids for something like nine hours yesterday so that they weren’t totally devoid of care.
I’ve decided to close my eyes when I walk limp through my house today so that I can pretend it doesn’t look like a bomb exploded in here.
Not only has my house taken a serious hit, but the chocolate consumption is out of control.
As I’m preparing for practicum speaking, a truth has become manifest.
Leigh Bortins talks about her vision of “copiousness” for Classical Conversations practicum speakers. Ideally, we would fill ourselves full of skills, content, stories, and ideas, so that we will not be scraping the bottom of the barrel when we are speaking. We don’t merely study what we must to cover the information that we must, but we fill ourselves to overflowing.
And out of abundance, the best, the cream, rises to the top and pours out.
I hope, I pray, that will be the case in reality, as there are other contributing factors—such as the fact that I have never, ever spoken in front of a group like this [gulp!], and I’m not sure that I’ll be able to control anything coming out of my brain and mouth. Inspires confidence in y’all, right? [wry gin]
But there is truth here. What we fill our lives with will come pouring out. What we invest in will be what we are passionate and excited about. Copiousness. Out of abundance.
In our lives as teachers, we must first be learners.
And we must know God in order to make Him known.
[I’ve also personally discovered that when a brain’s capacity is small, overflowing happens very quickly. Ahem.]
I feel like I should note here, if only for my own recollection in the future, what this trip was like. Wildlife Safari is only about two hours from our home, but we thought we’d head that direction the day before, stay the night in a hotel with a pool, and be ready to sight-see the next morning.
Ha.
I have an acquaintance on a one-year around-the-world tour with her four young children, a friend planning her one-year around-the-world tour that she will be taking with her three kids, and another friend packing up to move to England for a year with her family. And we can’t even handle a one-night trip two hours away. [sigh] We just aren’t a traveling family.
Remind me next time I think something like this sounds fun that it takes forever to pack up a family for a one night stay. And hotels don’t like families of six. And GPS thingies don’t work. And hotel pools are murky. And two-year-olds do not take naps away from home. And little kids will. not. go. to. sleep. in hotel rooms. And that when kids need to go to sleep, the adults must also. And “free hot breakfast” is one waffle iron for 100 breakfast-eaters. And packing up a hotel room takes two hours.
But Wildlife Safari was nice (partly because we didn’t pay full price), and the pictures are lovely.
I’m not going to argue in favor of the Common Core. I realize there are concerns, the primary one being national vs. local government control. But, PLEASE, if you want to blog about how terrible the Common Core is, PLEASE (did I already say that?) do not blow the suggested reading list out of proportion—or your other arguments will lose some credibility with me.
Do not write:
Non-fiction manuals are now required to compose 70% of your child’s “literature” by the time they graduate.
And then list the following books:
Petroski, Henry. “The Evolution of the Grocery Bag.” California Invasive Plant Council. Invasive Plant Inventory Kurlansky, Mark. Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency/U.S. Department of Energy. Recommended Levels of Insulation FedViews by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Calishain, Tara, and Rael Dornfest. Google Hacks: Tips & Tools for Smarter Searching, 2nd Edition Fischetti, Mark. “Working Knowledge: Electronic Stability Control.” U.S. General Services Administration. Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management Gawande, Atul. “The Cost Conundrum: Health Care Costs in McAllen, Texas.”
Let’s pick apart the introductory statement, and let’s start with the choice of the word “manual.” According to that statement, the following books would be considered manuals:
Where should I stop? That reads like a curricula of “living” books for a rich, integrated classical education. A “Great Books” list for high school humane letters classes contains many such non-fiction selections.
But maybe I don’t get it.
Let’s pick apart the second half of the above introductory statement: 70% of your child’s “literature.” This phrase seems to imply that non-fiction will replace 70% of the literature being read in Lit class. The above titles represent fine arts, history, geography, social studies, math, and science. I, for one, think that reading excellent books should not be isolated as a “literature class activity.” Absolutely, these living books and documents should be integrated throughout the curriculum in all subjects. And if a school fails to do so, putting all the pressure and expectations on their literature teachers, that seems (to me) to be a failure at a local level.
“But where are the literature suggestions?” you may be asking. You can check out for yourself the suggested texts of the Common Core. But here is a sample of authors:
Arnold Lobel, Tomie dePaola, Esther Averill, Christina Rosetti, Langston Hughes, A.A. Milne, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Edward Lear, William Steig, Cynthia Rylant, Robert Frost, Rudyard Kipling, James Thurber, Allen Say, Antoine de Saint Exupery, William Blake, Carl Sandburg, Mark Twain, Madeleine L’Engle, Rosemary Sutcliff, Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Homer, Ovid, Voltaire, O’Henry, Bradbury, Harper Lee, Sophocles, Shakespeare, John Donne, Chaucer, Austen, Poe, Bronte, Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, Morrison, Melville, Chekhov…
Swoon.
Honestly, for all of you who enjoy my book lists and suggestions, just print off the suggested texts of the Common Core and go to the library. That’s what we do here at Mt. Hope. Read good books. About everything.
Rant over.
(No, I don’t want to debate Common Core. I just don’t want to see another blog post listing the three scientific manuals from a list of a few hundred reading selections.)
"If you sit kids down hour after hour doing low-grade clerical work, don't be surprised when they start to fidget." "The arts aren't just important because they raise math skills, they're important because they speak to parts of children's ...being which are otherwise untouched." "In place of curiosity, what we have is a culture of compliance." "Education is not a mechanical system, it's a human system." "Culture is an organic term."
:: The Scole Sisters Arrive @ Inside Classical Education (I am extraordinarily grateful for being surrounded by friends who value learning and growing in community! Not only have I had the privilege of being in a book club with a lovely group of women for more than nine years, but I also participate in a monthly book club with a few ladies from our local CC groups in which we discuss great books. The conversations have been wonderful, and I am blessed by a like-minded community that fosters a culture of learning.)
Could there be a Schole Sisters group in your future? Here is the recipe: Gather three or more like-minded souls and commit to meet together every two weeks for two and half hours. Select a great book (a classic, a book attested to be excellent). Read before gathering. Take notes and prepare questions (write in the book!). Prepare good food and drink. Choose a beautiful setting that is quiet, with no distractions. Discuss, converse, talk. Laugh. Go slow. Repeat.
The idea of Slow is to counter the rush and hurry in the modern world, and the emphasis on efficiency, by slowing things down, giving them more attention and love, and aiming at quality rather than merely quantity.
That is what an education, and particularly this educational journey you are about to embark on, is supposed to do for you: to help you to recover and refurbish your speech so that what you yourself say has its proper significance and the language others use comes alive with meaning for you. To put it succinctly: educated people know not only what they really mean but also what they are actually saying. Let me illustrate that effect with the word “odyssey”. When you have finished reading and talking about Homer’s epic, The Odyssey, the common noun “an odyssey” will have all sorts of fresh significance when you see it in a book. You might even use it yourself on some proper occasion. For you will have begun to be literate, and you will be entitled as well as be able to use all sorts of words to express what is in your well-stocked minds and full hearts…
You will be educated, which means that you will be interested where others are bored, that you will notice unities where others experience randomness, and that you will intend meanings where others are just spouting words. For exactly that is supposed to be the result of becoming literate: The world becomes a thick texture of significance that you know how to “access.”
:: What if classical school educators and classical homeschool educators could collaborate on a friendly, resource-rich website? Here it is: ClassicalEducator.com.
College is a privilege, no doubt about it. But privilege is slippery, messy; it is not something you do or do not have. It comes in degrees. That he is in college at all is a result of hard, hard work, a series of happy accidents, dedication, planning that was both haphazard and unwittingly brilliant, and, yes, privilege.
And children? Think of schools. Some do a good job getting kids moving. But at other schools, too many students spend most of their time sitting. At their desks, in front of computers, taking tests, sitting in schools where recess and gym class have been restricted or eliminated. Even in preschools, most children sit in the classroom for most of the day — and even when they go outside, more than half of their activities remain sedentary. Then they’re driven home (sitting) to sit some more. It’s killing them. It’s killing us.
But now, three years later, the school is almost unrecognizable. Brightly colored paintings, essays of achievement, and motivational posters line the halls. The dance studio has been resurrected, along with the band room, and an artists’ studio.
"If God created and we are His image, then creation and the creative mind is not something for a Christian or a classical educator to dismiss. It is something to build one's life on. It is the means to understanding."
People remember things better, longer, if they are given very challenging tests on the material, tests at which they are bound to fail. In a series of experiments, they showed that if students make an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve information before receiving an answer, they remember the information better than in a control condition in which they simply study the information. Trying and failing to retrieve the answer is actually helpful to learning.
The parent I used to be and the parent I am now both have the same goal: to raise self-reliant, self-assured, successful children. But 12 years of parenting, over five years of living on and off in Japan, two years of research, investigative trips to Europe and Asia and dozens of interviews with psychologists, child development experts, sociologists, educators, administrators and parents in Japan, Korea, China, Finland, Germany, Sweden, France, Spain, Brazil and elsewhere have taught me that though parents around the world have the same goals, American parents like me (despite our very best intentions) have gotten it all backwards.
“Homeschool" magic. Pure magic. That is what I love about homeschooling--the way community, creativity, and rigorous study can come together to make magic. Homeschooling just means that you as a parent create educational and relational opportunities and experiences for your kids! It doesn't have to be at home. Or isolated. Make it what you want it to be.
Behold the wholly sanitized childhood, without skinned knees or the occasional C in history. "Kids need to feel badly sometimes," says child psychologist David Elkind, professor at Tufts University. "We learn through experience and we learn through bad experiences. Through failure we learn how to cope."
Messing up, however, even in the playground, is wildly out of style. Although error and experimentation are the true mothers of success, parents are taking pains to remove failure from the equation.
:: Service Recovery @ Enjoying the Small Things (oh, I adore Kelle Hampton’s blog)
"There’s something about that recovery process that feels so good. If nothing ever broke, you’d never know the thrill of fixing it. If you never made mistakes, you’d never learn from them. And if you never experienced the pang of a little emptiness from time to time, you’d never know the satisfaction of being filled back up. Or maybe that’s just the silver linings talking."
My challenge to myself and to you is: FREE YOURSELF from over-complicated goals! And don't compare yourself or your family to another. Read literature with your children, and show them how to work diligently on math skills, and build their [your] long-term memory work skills. And have fun doing it! Let's work on narration and dictation and memory work so that when we launch our children into Challenge [or the Logic & Rhetoric stages], they will soar.
Here’s what I came up with: She isn’t supposed to be an example. Her friends don’t need an example, they need a friend. A real one. An honest one. A touchable one. They need a friend who doesn’t think she’s better than everyone, but one who knows she isn’t. They need a friend who knows she needs Jesus.
Plautus, a Roman poet c. 200 B.C. from : "The gods confound the man who first found out How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too, Who in this place set up a sundial, To cut and hack my days so wretchedly Into small portions."
If you’ve made it this far, you deserve a rolling-on-the-floor-hilarious link:
“Then Ben tells me Tuesday that he needs a Ben Franklin costume for the Living History Museum today, and I’m like what fresh hell is this?? I have no idea how I missed the correspondence on this (because I’m not checking backpacks is just a theory), but Brandon is the Costume and Project Parent and I am the Daily Grinder, which is a division of labor we agreed on to ensure our kids actually graduate one day and move out, but he is out of town on a mancation, so this is on me. I cannot even handle signing a folder in late May; a colonial costume is cause for full, unrestrained despair.”
Lists and Lessons
(A friend of mine wondered how many books we owned vs. borrowing from the library, so I’ve added a (library) notation to all the books we borrowed. The rest are from our shelves.)
P.E.: Swim team practices and meet (swim lessons for Leif)
Fine Arts:
“We turn to stories and pictures and music because they show us who and what and why we are.”
― Madeleine L'Engle
Language Arts: Writing With Ease Workbooks (Leif and Luke) Writing With Skill Workbook (Levi) (I’m loving this program!) All About Spelling (Levi and Luke: Level 4, lessons 5-7; Leif: Level 1-finished!, Level 2, lessons 1-2) Letters to new penpals! Prescripts (the new handwriting workbooks from Classical Conversations) MCT Language Arts, Voyage level
(historical fiction, New Testament times) 
(historical fiction, New Testament times) 
(historical fiction, New Testament times) 
(library) 
(library)