Waiting For Perfect
It’s the week before.
The week before we enter another year of school. We’ve been homeschooling since our oldest was a little Five in A Row pre-schooler and she’s now entering her 4th year of grade school. Her little sister enters 3rd, younger brother kindergarten, and littlest sister begins a year of playing with blocks along side our lessons. Five years on this homeschool journey, which sometimes feels like Mr Toad’s Wild Ride.
For some of you this conjures sweet pictures, the really good days of learning at home-everyone gathered on the couch casting everything else off for another chapter, sharing in a great prayer time or singing verses of the Bible, or the big wow moments when letters come into focus and character falls into place.
For some of the you the idea of the whole family at home each day conjures the harder moments of homeschooling-the loneliness, the guilt when you feel like you’re not doing enough, the routine which can feel like a trap after endless winter months.
This summer, for the first time, an ever teasing truth(usually spoken to me by non-homeschooling moms) landed on me with a vengeance: what I’m doing is hard. When my olders went off to art camp and the bickering lightened and the youngers and I swept about each day fancy free without the guilt that I should be doing something more, a thought found it’s way through that I’d always kept at bay, “This is what’s it’s like to have kids go to school.”
But let me add in some context. I had already girded myself for last year, knowing that our young babe would add an extra challenge to the days. What I failed to armor up for was a 4 month hospital stay for my father and all the other details that go into that story. I came out of this year reeling. Weighted down by relentless responsibility and my vision cloudier as each day of guilt and effort continued.
Heading into the next year, none of the extra weight has lifted. I walk through my house and climb into my car with a whirlwind of thoughts that must be a visible blur of movement.
How will I keep 18 month old baby sparkles satisfied while we truly dive into the Word, great books, and stories from history?
How will I also set the olders off and running to independent learning so that I can sit and enjoy every shaky step and misspoken word of Sparkles?
How can I keep up the myriad of chores, lessons, character teaching required each day without making myself sick from my own voice and it’s constant call to work, move, produce?
Will we find time to be in the here and now, to laugh loudly, to celebrate moments that have nothing to do with what’s on a list?
How will I recharge in the evenings when I’m off checking on my Dad, how will detailed school planning happen, when will I stop, breathe, and be responsible for nothing and no one but myself for just a few short minutes.
The thought “Why are you choosing this path if it’s so hard for you right now?” is a growing whisper in your head. Stick with me, I’m getting there.
Tonight my schoolroom sits in shambles, shelves half rearranged, old curriculum thrown to the side, clay projects from two years ago with no place to call home. For the last few weeks I’ve fed that hungry whirlwind with lesson plans, strategies for Baby Sparkles, new chore charts to smooth out the care of our home. I see the countdown to monday is bearing down and I keep thinking that a good year for us all hinges on my ability to get everything just right. If the schoolroom is perfectly organized, if the lessons are perfectly written down, if I have a chart that breaks down the day’s duties, if I can just calm the whirlwind into perfect control, we’ll be alright.
Does anything seem faulty, this idea luring me toward skewed priorities and a dependence on the wrong thing(my control) to keep us afloat this year? So I left the schoolroom dangling and sat down to give myself a kick in the pants.
A few weeks ago, in a moment of calm weather(outward and inward), the Lord held back my good intentions of planning and helped me write a mission statement for our school instead. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for years, hoping it will be a compass this year, when inevitably(the first day most likely) things will slip right out of my hands. By looking at it right now, and sharing it with you, I hope that it will remind me that the reason our family has chosen this path has little to do with a schoolroom organized by the dewey decimal system or whether we finish our first year of american history in exactly 36 weeks, or whether my 18 month old acts like a perfectly normal 18 month old!
I haven’t spent too much time editing this or adding in verses to guide each letter of the acronym, this feels like enough to steady us this year.
GUEST FAMILY HOMESCHOOL MISSION STATEMENT
“-that you may shine like the stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life-”
PHILLIPIANS 2:15
Learn for a life time: about God’s world through history, science, and art in order to see His beauty and creativity, power, and love, that we might praise Him and trust Him more.
Identify: journeying with each child as he/she discovers the talents, gifts, passions the Lord has uniquely given them, making a path for those passions to grow. Also helping them to embrace their unique personalities, celebrate their character strengths, and encourage their weaknesses.
Give generously to each other as we honor others above ourselves, building a family who loves, encourages and enjoys one another. As a family we will give generously to others, instilling a purpose that is outward and sacrificial in God’s love.
Honor the Lord with our bodies and minds, learning lifetime habits of prayer, study, healthy eating, and exercise.
Teach God’s word, instructing our hearts through the Word of life, learn His ways above the ways of the world, knowing that His Word gives light to our path, gives joy to our soul, gives wisdom to our heart. This will be unique with each person in our household-each will have a unique relationship with Lord, focusing not on perfect outward behavior, but hearts that yield to the Lord.
I hope the above answers the “why” I’m doing this even though it’s hard. We’ve been called to run this particular race, and run it with perseverance and endurance, hopefully shining a little more as we go. A homeschooling mom of five shared with me just the other day that she’s been praying for God to give her a strategy for this next year. I loved the prayer immediately and thought surely He would give me great specific ideas to quell all of my worries. Though I’m sure He does care about those details, I think the Mission statement He’s given me is my strategy. It’s a strategy of a greater purpose and of an even greater God.
Making Peace with History
Like most homeschool moms at the end of the year I find myself itching to jump into the Land of Possibility for next fall, rather than wringing out the last official school days of this year. I’d rather imagine the potential for great learning moments and Google the books we’ve yet to purchase than attend to the task of keeping everyone’s spirits up for the home stretch. As I race to used curriculum sales and imagine the perfect planning weekend away with friends, I’m surprised to find that the subject I’m most excited about is History.
Let me give you my own history with History. I remember thick textbooks with timelines and pictures that seemed completely unrelated to me. Late night sweat sessions as I tried to absorb enough facts to pass the multiple choice test the next day. It didn’t bother me that I didn’t care about the subject and by college I fully committed to naptime during my summer class on the Middle East. I secretly prided myself on being a “here and now” kind of girl, a time that was obviously more relevant than anything previous. Even learning the background of my major, theater, fell flat against the passion of being onstage in the moment.
Who knew I would marry a man who, if he had been a history teacher, would have regularly donned a revolutionary war costume and staged mock battles on the playground? Did we discuss the compatibility of a husband who watches documentaries as a way to relax after a long day and a wife who thought their only use might be post-traumatic therapy from high school history class? Don’t even get me started on how we both felt about museums full of artifacts. I remember one particular conversation (one sided, that is) as I read my novel and he read his non-fiction, when I realized he’d been silent and staring at me expectantly for several moments, and I hastily responded, “All I heard was pirates, pirates, pirates.”
Fast forward to the realization that instructing our children at home would mean, that’s right, teaching the darned subject. Yawn, boring, why not pass it over to my husband? And that’s what we did some years when we weren’t squeezing it into a unit study which made it a bit more palatable.
Why then as I think about next year, do I find my heart beating a bit quicker as I look through my great finds for our coming year of American History? I think it started with the excitement of my children who have caught their father’s enthusiasm. No one told them that loving other time periods is nerdy or boring, so instead they travel (with playmobiles or costumes) regularly to 17 and 1800’s. Secondly, those documentaries have started to woo me in the same way that my husband has absorbed my love of brownie batter (granted, his obsession is probably healthier than what I gave to him). I sat late into the night with him catching the final discs of John Adams with Paul Giamatti. (yes, I know it’s not a documentary, but close).
All of the above, combined with some great books over our 5 years of home learning, has finally lifted the veil on history, allowed it to shed it’s bad reputation, and showed it’s true nature: stories. Story after story with characters made even more intriguing by the fact that their feet tread this earth at one time.
Story is something I already love, passionately. You mean I get to share stories, go on adventures, and even discover the existence of a woman flier during the time of Amelia Earhart with my exact same name?
That’s what I want to be, a teacher of stories already told and a conjurer of stories yet to be written.
(Please don’t tell my husband because this is a slippery slope I walk. There was the documentary last week on a frozen baby mammoth that made me want to reconsider my tender feelings toward history, and I’d still rather make art than walk through floor after floor of of african masks and fertile god statues.)
A Quick “Why I do it” Glance
When people find out I homeschool a look of alarm often passes over their face, and inevitably,
“I could never be with my kids all day.”
When this happens about ten conflicting emotions and possible responses begin scrapping it out inside of me. Usually the least offensive, “We all need to make our own choices” statement is the one that finally surfaces. It’s the safe one, anyhow.
But I think I should make up little wallet size cards with a list of reasons why I choose to be at home with my four children everyday. They wouldn’t be the same reasons I’d list in a nicely organized family mission statement. It would start like this:
1.The thousand moments in a day I would miss if my kids were in school or in the car, traveling to and from school and activities, not to mention the hurried morning and the time spent nagging about homework. I get out of breath,grumpy, and less available to snuggle and read just thinking about it.
2. For example, the moments AFTER the morning fight between my girls, when they confess their frustration during our prayer time and their praise for a heart change.
3. The light in Drummer Boy’s eyes as he sits with the girls and does BIG school. He admires them so much even if they don’t recognize it as he follows them around the house and erases any of their personal space.
4. The constant sound of giggles emanating from Sparkles as one, two, and then three siblings vie for her attention.
5. Really getting into a book together.
6. All of the “I get it” moments.
7. Being present when a new passion is discovered.
8. Realizing that one of the kids new passion is something we both love and then realizing we get to share the whole process together.
I have a budding writer in the house. Does she like grammar, proper sentence and paragraph structure, have a passion for good hand-writing? No! But I’ve been there for the aha moments.
“Mommy, even though this stuff is hard, once I learn it, it’s going to make me better at writing stories.”
Mookie: “Sometimes I think about being a writer, but it seems like it’s really hard to get a book published.”
Me: “Just keep writing down your ideas, Mookie.”
“Wow, you mean by reading all the time I’m actually learning how to write, too? I’ve been learning and I didn’t even know it!”
One night as I edited a friend’s piece of writing and explained to Mookie what I was doing, her eyes lit up, “Mommy, can I write something and you can edit it and tell me how to make it better?”
Over the past few weeks we’ve been hard at work on her story for the PBS Story contest. She encountered the same problem she’s had the last few years, not what to write about but how to stay within the word limit. Her ideas just keep flowing. We had to omit several wonderful details to make the cut.
When she read her rough draft aloud, her sister asked some questions about the story. I mention casually,”You know Mookie, when I’m working on something and a friend shares some feedback, I’ll write it down so I can remember it later.” She grabbed a pencil and started taking notes from her 7 year old sister, “What happened to the cornbread after he stuffed it in his pocket? Did it get crumbly in his pocket or did he eat it on the way back?”
I confess I watched her write notes and my heart gave a little leap of praise that I get to share a passion with my daughter. I might also have to bare her disappointment if she doesn’t win a prize(she really, really wants to win a prize), but getting to be with her in the process is somewhere high on that invisible list.
I’m not trying to give a rose-colored view of our homeschooling life. I’ve tried to be honest on this blog and on my other blog about the challenges of mothering and homeschooling multiple children. Do I ALWAYS want to be home with them? No. Are there some days that seem to pass by without even one moment that would make that why-I-do-it list. It feels like it. But to be available for the the 1000(and growing) worth-it-all moments, I have to be available for the rest of the moments, too.
Read On
If only a copy of this article could be placed in the inbox of every teacher, administrator, school board member, and person I meet who’s main concern is whether our homeschool is identical to the typical public school classroom. Note to self and others: we’re not trying mirror the schools, if we were, we wouldn’t be homeschooling. But if educators could see through the lenses of this article maybe we would be trying to emulate the school system.
A few favorite quotes:
“Imagine, for instance, a third-grade classroom that was free of the laundry list of goals currently harnessing our teachers and students, and that was devoted instead to just a few narrowly defined and deeply focused goals.”
“In this classroom, children would spend two hours each day hearing stories read aloud, reading aloud themselves, telling stories to one another and reading on their own. After all, the first step to literacy is simply being immersed, through conversation and storytelling, in a reading environment; the second is to read a lot and often.”
“What they shouldn’t do is spend tedious hours learning isolated mathematical formulas or memorizing sheets of science facts that are unlikely to matter much in the long run. Scientists know that children learn best by putting experiences together in new ways. They construct knowledge; they don’t swallow it.”
“During the school day, there should be extended time for play. Research has shown unequivocally that children learn best when they are interested in the material or activity they are learning.”
Read the article in it’s entirety here.
Homeschooling Multiple Children
Each season of homeschooling over the past 4 years has brought it’s own challenges(which means things that make me cry or growl or question my sanity).
In the beginning it was wiping out the only idea of school that I brought from my own childhood, and drawing in a new sketch where learning happened all the time and related to every day life. It was growing in confidence in a decision that was singularly different that anyone in our church or community. Then it was believing that I cared more than any school teacher could care about my child’s heart, education and spiritual life, and I could know her better than anyone as well. Even those triumphs over doubt didn’t show me which curriculum would work best, so we keep going by trial and error. Knowing we were choosing the right path didn’t show me how to homeschool with toddlers and babies and dishes and my own desires.
As we head into the second half of our school year, baby Sparkles is now mobile and responsibilities even more divided, I don’t wonder if I should be homeschooling. I’m only seeking a few tips to keep us open and fresh, excited and flexible, and to keep the growling and crying to a minimal.
Last night in preparation for a day of planning and prayer, I googled “homeschooling multiple children”. The first post I found was this one. Instead of being a how-to list of ideas that sound good in a blog post but aren’t actually helpful, it’s a portrait of a morning when nothing went as planned. I was cracking up! And I think I needed that, because I really need the gift of being able to laugh every day, more than I need ideas that worked for one family but won’t fit mine.
However, if I come up with any good tips I’ll surely pass them along for what they’re worth. Tip #1: Laugh instead of cry, start with this link.