How to Homeschool?
Where to Begin?
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WONDER
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Strategic Tools ... for Initial Big Questions
Tools for Helping Define My WHY:
Pedagogy:
Defining My Overarching
Beliefs About Education
A Perfect Cup of Coffee
(The Ability to Discern
the Outcome I Want)
Extending the Good Cup of Coffee Metaphor
to the Classroom
Reflections on
Deuteronomy 6:7-9
Tools for Helping With Questions of HOW:
Initial
Fears
Learning Styles
and Differences
Ways to Organize
Your Year
Curriculum
Conversations
By
Grade
Ways to Organize
Your Day
Record
Keeping
By
State
Time and
Money
How do I Homeschool?
Initial Anxieties or Not
That is such an important question. How to Homeschool? How to Homeschool Pre-School? How to Homeschool Elementary School? How to Homeschool Middle School? How to Homeschool High School?
The questions can feel endless depending upon your personality. There are the 'go-for-it!' folk who jump in quite easily and expectantly. And seem to not be afraid of the process at all.
Then there are others of us to whom it sounds completely strange, terrifying and nearly dangerous. Who am I to homeschool my child? How will we survive? What if I damage their future possibilities? Their emotional well-being? My own dreams and hopes? Such questions and fears can present themselves endlessly.
Some of us strongly feel the weight and responsibility of being so intimately connected to our child's future. Some of us feel deeply inadequate.
I am here to tell you: you are NOT inadequate.
First Things First
Before you ask "How?"
Know your "Why?"
Build your Pedagogy
(ped-uh-gah-jhee)
Pedagogy - is a very fancy word for how a teacher teaches - their opinions on what should be taught and how it should be taught.
Thoughts to think about
as you build ....
Dallas Willard writing regarding education ...
(information transfer) vs
intentional engagement that awakens us to wisdom
We must recognize, first of all, that the aim of the popular teacher in Jesus’ time was not to impart information, but to make a significant change in the lives of the hearers. Of course that may require an information transfer, but it is a peculiarly modern notion that the aim of teaching is to bring people to know things that may have no effect at all on their lives. In our day learners usually think of themselves as containers of some sort, with a purely passive space to be filled by the information the teacher possesses and wishes to transfer— ... to fill in empty parts of (a child) with “truth” that may or may not later make some difference to the life of the one who has it. ...
The situation of teacher/learner was really so different in Jesus’ day that we can hardly picture it ... it is simply a fact that no value was placed on mere “information” as we know it today. Of course information relevant to a real need has always been prized. But to want merely to “know stuff” such as we usually get today out of a high school and college education would have been thought laughable—if it could have been thought of at all.
The teacher in Jesus’ time ...taught in such a way that he would impact the life flow of the hearer, leaving a lasting impression (in terms of who they became.) -Divine Conspiracy (1998), 112 - 113
A cautionary tale ...Teaching minds to listen
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Hopefully, they will learn the depths
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Therefore ... Build your pedagogy well.
Base it upon wisdom.
a.k.a. The Fear of the Lord ...
There is a defiance against thinking as it relates to wisdom
that is no friend of humanity.
Wisdom requires listening. But to whom do we listen?
The Fear of the Lord is the concept that the voice we choose to heed is the voice of the Living God and no other.
With today’s abundance of information,
it has become easier than ever to find ourselves pursuing the trivial
- the less than important, as if it were consequential.
We all live with a false sense of expertise,
believing that authoritative answers are merely a click away.
The answers, however, are not the problem.
Our problems have much more to do with our having quit asking important questions.
Questions that the world has been asking throughout the ages.
Questions that cause the soul to grow.
But which our culture no longer wants to ask. (Peter Kreeft)
Peter Kreeft further writes ...
The modern person seemingly no longer wonders:
does my existence have any meaning at all?
Therefore, skirting around our lives,
unspoken through denial and happy images,
stands a greatest fear;
the fear of meaninglessness,
the fear of Nothingness.
The question of the summum bonum -
(The Greatest Good) the final end, or ultimate meaning of life
The contemporary answer to the question of the summum bonum, ...is
there is no answer.
...the modern West is the first great civilization that does not have or teach
its citizens any answer to the question
why I exist.
... our society has nothing but its own ignorance to give us regarding the worth of personhood
-- which is the most important of all questions.
As society grows, it knows more and more about less and less.
It knows more about the little things and less about the big things.
It knows more about every thing and less about Everything.
...the practical result of this vacuum in values is hedonism.
When yo do not know why you do anything else, you can still "seize the day."
(but it is a shallow, not worthwhile, seizing - falling short of the consequential)
When ultimate ends disappear, toys remain.
...And yet this too is vanity. A vanity that always ends in death.
-- Peter Kreeft, from Ecclesiastes - Life as Vanity
...Our society has nothing but its own IGNORANCE to give us regarding
THE WORTH of our personhood
Deuteronomy 6:7
In that the greater culture rarely witnesses to scripture's bold vision of love and justice regarding HUMAN WORTH, it is deeply important that parents and friends take seriously the directions of Deuteronomy 6:7
"Repeat them again and again to your children.
Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road,
when you are going to bed and when you are getting up."
In this scripture,
God is compelling the people to live life in such a manner that they not become lost in the land. That they not be ...
Reduced to being a people no longer with a vision.
A people merely reflecting the chaos about them.
No longer unique in their righteous obedience as followers of Yahweh.
Instead, they are to remember they are A People who were, from their inception, sought out to reflect the wanting-to-know-and-be-known God who is willing to be named love.
That should they lose the distinctive fingerprints of His love in their lives,
(that which is meant to be undeniably visible in its seen-ness),
they become violators of the First Commandment.
People who nonchalantly claim association with the Lord
(taking His name in vain)
Becoming a people he knows not - people he has never seen before.
Looking nothing like the one they are called to reflect,
they become Goats,
unrecognizable in image to the one whose image they bear.
Full of suffering and misery,
Living lives unworthy of the one whose name they erroneously proclaim in worship.
And so, wanting relationship and recognition,
God calls the chosen People of promise to these daily, intentional reminders via recollection
[recalling all that God has done, the goodness of God's person, the intimacy of God's kindness].
The mind is to renew itself in the fear of the Lord
- a heeding of the Father's voice -
right orienting of who they are in light of who God is to them personally.
The continual reminder that they are called to be a distinct people
in an all too familiar world of selfishness, violence and heart break
as is witnessed to in Genesis Six.
Relational distinctives as a loved people in a world that is, otherwise,
quite fraught with heart break for God himself - again, per Genesis Six.
Through the act of recollection and recall,
the continually-determined-to-love Creator of the universe
seeks to be able to be at home
in the midst of the very complicated, in-His-image, beloved creation.
"...you and your children and grand children must fear the Lord your God as long as you live. If you obey all his decrees and commands, you will enjoy a long life. Listen carefully, Israel, and be careful to obey. Then all will go well with you, and you will have many children in the land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors promised you. -Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy, here, is not making a threat to the people but, rather, a plea.
It is only in looking like God that we and those around us truly flourish.
One does not casually look like God in a sea of humanity that follows their own desires and plans. The recognizable Looking-Like-God-ness
of which Matthew Seven speaks is found in diligence, and purposeful pursuit.
Wanting to know God and the things that matter most to God.
Thus, this very famous admonition. Families pursuing the things of God continually and conscientiously. Not casually. Not an afterthought.
This is good news. We as light-bearing families have a vibrant role in being (and thereby building) a culture of free and flourishing people who proactively pursue and profess the commands and decrees of loving the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.
From sun up to sun down.
Such that everything around us becomes different: fruitful and vigorous.
A tangible blessing to all the families of the earth ...
Some Great How Tools ...
So much beauty will come to life from your homeschooling journey. Beauty of Family. Beauty of Parents. And Beauty of Children.
Thus, My Top Ten Favorite Reasons for Homeschooling.
These Reasons are a part of where we start when we ask HOW?.
Because an important part of your HOW?, will be a very clear WHY ?.
Knowing what is important to you and why it matters in terms of
- how you want to educate
- the vision that guides you
- what you expect the process to look like
all help you find fulfillment as you move forward in your home schooling endeavor.
Do You Have a Blue Print? Think About What You Want.
Here are some thoughts on starting with big picture building.
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