It Shall Come in Waves

"You need to get up."

It was just before 6:25 a.m. and still dark.  Geoff was standing in the doorway to our bedroom, iPhone in hand.  My dad had died around 4 a.m., and family members in Florida had been calling incessantly for two hours.  My phone was, as it often is at night, on vibrate.

I sat on the couch and called my mom, a conversation filled with teary silences in which we both knew there was nothing more to say than that Dad was gone.  "Are you okay?" is a pretty stupid question under such circumstances, and asking for details...  Well, when death is this fresh, details either don't matter or haven't developed.

The initial numbness is wearing off, and waves of grief are rolling in.  And waves they are.  Sometimes gut-wrenching, sometimes silently, invisibly present - and sometimes, because diapers still have to be changed and mouths fed, grief must be laid aside.  Life retains its tender, humorous moments in the midst of anguish, so smiles must now and then shine through tears.  Like the waves of the ocean - ranging in intensity from a massive force threatening to drag one down beneath its roaring fury and out to sea forever, to a warm and gentle presence lulling one to secure, peaceful rest in the faithfulness of waves to guide one to shores of sandy earth - so rolls grief.

It shall come in waves, and by the grace of Him who made the wild ocean, we shall learn to surf.

Educational Option or Lifestyle Choice?

We just completed the sixth week of our fifth year of homeschooling, and a rather funky one it was.  (It wasn't bad, but I am so glad it's over!)  Circumstances of this week brought to the forefront of my mind a question I've been pondering for some time.  Is homeschooling just another educational option or is it a distinct lifestyle choice?  I'm curious to hear what my fellow homeschool parents think on this matter.  For myself, I think the two - educational option and lifestyle choice - are so intricately intertwined as to make a clear answer very difficult to find.

Our homeschooling experience started innocently enough with two young parents searching for the best school for their children.  Our baby boy had learned his letters and their sounds and proceeded to full-fledged reading.  I'm not being overly sentimental here.  Andrew recognized the "M" of the golden arches before he'd savored a happy meal; when he was no older than eighteen months, a passerby, observing me asking Andrew to find the "e"s on a park sign, scolded me with, "A little young for that, don't you think?"  He was a little young to know his letters, but, well... he wasn't.  Andrew's preschool years were filled with letters, words, and books, but we were not the pushy parents the passerby (who happened to be a homeschool father) must have thought us.  Our home had its share of ABC blocks and foam letters to play with in the tub, and we read a lot.  We followed his lead, and his lead involved such a fascination with written language that he recognized letters and knew their sounds before the age of two and was reading at three.  He was "a bit young for that", but neither Geoff nor I, and certainly not Andrew, really understood that.  We were just having a blast exploring the world of letters and words and books and language.

Around Andrew's fourth birthday, when we began to research our schooling options in order to get him on school waiting lists in time, we had this kid who was reading competently, whom we expected to progress in reading skills, and whom we couldn't imagine sitting in a kindergarten classroom learning his letter sounds.  I had a folder on homeschooling as a back up plan as I began to gather information from local schools.  We didn't get far before we realized we might want to keep Andrew home for a couple years.  We kind of figured we'd put him in school once the initial "learning to read" phase passed.  We weren't particularly committed to homeschooling.  We just thought it might be the best option for our family for the time being.

It was just another educational option.  The public and private schools had their appeal, but homeschooling rose to the top of our preferences.  After all - laying aside the small fact that the homeschooling parent actually becomes parent, teacher, administrator, janitor, nurse, bus driver, and lunch lady all rolled into one exhausted body - what parent wouldn't want a school that offers a low student-teacher ratio, individually tailored lessons, frequent field trips, and a literature rich environment - all designed so the child can progress at his own unique pace? ;)

In the meantime, I checked out Dr. Susan Wise Bauer's The Well-Trained Mind:  A Guide to Classical Education at Home.  Several aspects of this educational model appealed to me, but the main attractions were whole books instead of textbooks, chronological history, and a connection between history and science and literature.  I felt, after reading The Well-Trained Mind, that I would forever regret not attempting homeschooling if we went the traditional school route.  I was also a little scared that we'd start homeschooling and like it so much we'd never quit.

So here we are, four years later, with a brand new fourth grader, a second grader who has added his own special touch to my list of homeschooling's joys, and two preschoolers who keep our home busy and whom I look forward to teaching more formally in years to come.  I still hold the view that homeschooling is just another educational option, as viable and as neutral as any other option.  Viable, in that we (and most people who want to do it) can do it and do it well.  Neutral, in that it's not a moral decision, making us "better" or "worse" than anyone else.  It's just what we do.  Sometimes when the subject of homeschooling arises, I want to roll my eyes and say, "It's not a big deal.  It's just education."

It's just education, but it's not.  Just as Andrew's interest in letters sprang from an indecipherable combination of his own inclinations and a letter-rich environment, and just as that interest determined the path we took in educating him, so homeschooling sprang from a combination of Geoff's and my personalities and philosophies and our established lifestyle and has shaped and continues to shape our lifestyle.  What I mean is that pre-existing conditions made homeschooling appealing.   Geoff and I, beneath our ultra-cool veneer (Go ahead, laugh.  You know you want to!), are pretty hard-core nerds.  We've also been known to forego marching altogether, to our own drums or to anyone else's.  To top it off, we both remember being bored to death in school, and I had this crazy desire not only to instill in my children a love of learning, but to be with them and actively involved in their education.  The ideas of letting our children learn outside the traditional school system and of exploring the world with them made homeschooling seem like an act of mercy, to them and to me.  To clinch the deal, classical homeschooling was, to quote the friend who first mentioned The Well-Trained Mind to me before I'd even conceived Andrew, "how I wish I'd been educated."

Then we started homeschooling, and it has shaped our lifestyle undeniably.  Sure, a lot of what makes us who we are existed prior to this adventure, but not all of it.  I can honestly say I never imagined the quantities of books and masses of papers that sometimes accumulate in our home.  We're on a first name basis with the librarians and have almost memorized the location of every book in the library.  Well, not quite, but sometimes it does feel like the library is our second home.  ;)

There are other subtler and more personal ways in which homeschooling directs the life of our family, areas in which we are more or less disciplined, according to our family's needs.  Our schedule is a perfect example.  Because we don't have to be anywhere by any particular time, we aren't morning people.  We get up and get going a little later than a lot of people.  On the other hand, we try to guard our evenings carefully.  We try not to schedule too much in the evenings - and when we find our evening schedules full, we long for things to return to their normal, unhurried decent-hour-to-bed pace.  I don't want to deal with cranks in the morning.  I want my students well rested - and know all too well the hazards of attempting to educate exhausted students, especially if I'm exhausted as well.  (Such days, combined with the "Emergency Home Recovery Days" that I spend rediscovering and cleaning the floor, probably account for at least 50% of our yearly days off).

I've talked with other homeschooling moms about how homeschooling affects our parenting, too.  This subject could get dicey, especially if you think we're doing a horrible job raising our kids...  (I also think a lot of our parenting techniques are pretty universal, regardless of school choice).  The thing about homeschooling is that I'm with my children all day long, every day.  It's a great thing, but it also throws an interesting screw into the battle-picking machine.  The sheer amount of time we spend together means that we have a few more potential battles than we might encounter if the kids were at school seven or eight hours a day.  Sometimes things slide that shouldn't slide - or that someone on the outside thinks shouldn't slide - sometimes because we are horrible parents, but sometimes because we are pouring our energy and theirs into growing and shaping them in some more basic or in some unseen area.  Persevering through Saxon Math may be today's lesson, and cheerful perseverance tomorrow's lesson...  or we may have decided that we're just going to hold on till bedtime and start afresh tomorrow because there's just no hope for today - except that our cranky kid might catch a glimpse of the depths and gentleness of true patience.  Again, I'm sure a lot of this is common to parents in every situation.  But as a home schooling parent, I feel like I'm always on duty and sometimes have to pace myself, which means some battles will go un-fought, some will be long-drawn out campaigns, and, because I also believe that discipline is a private matter between God, our children, and Geoff and myself, some battles will be secret missions that no one knows are even being carried out.

Of course, we have no way to measure exactly how much homeschooling has affected our parenting or any other aspect of our life, but I'm sure it has, even if it has only taken to a new degree pre-existing philosophies, practices, or what have you.  As I think about how homeschooling has shaped our lifestyle, the urge to roll my eyes returns.  It's the old chicken versus egg argument, with no way to determine how much of our lifestyle is us and how much is homeschooling.

So, homeschooling is a little bit lifestyle... a little bit just like every other educational option out there...  and a lot us. We have chosen a path different from what we expected and different from what the majority follow, but it is a path in which we naturally walk.  It does not feel foreign.  It feels like us.  And because it feels like us, it feels like just another choice for educating our kids... and nothing more noteworthy than that.  It's as normal as we are...

(And that, if ever I saw one, is a statement which could spawn its own debate!)  ;)

Lessons of Motherhood

My morning began with lovely video on the lessons of motherhood from my friend April and a blog post from my friend Sarah on the frustrations of motherhood on trial.  Both made me think of what I might say to a new or soon-to-be mother, things I wish I had known from the beginning.  So here's my list.  Please add to it!

1.  It doesn't matter how many children someone else has raised, they haven't raised yours.  You might feel like a complete idiot, but you know and love these kids better than anyone else.  Those might be your only credentials.  I know it's scary, but you're the expert now.

2.  Your body is a miracle.  In it, new life is conceived and sustained, and it continues to sustain that life even after the separation of childbirth.  It supplies nourishment and offers comfort no other body can offer.  Your body - every curve of it -  is Mommy.  So forgive it if it doesn't ever look quite like it did before baby.  It's been busy with matters far more important than living up to your unrealistic expectations.

3.  Sleep will come again.  (At least they tell me it will!)  In the meantime, you'll learn to cope.  One of the greatest miracles of motherhood is how well we can function on so little sleep.

4.  It's okay to nurse them to sleep.  It's okay to carry them all the time.  It's okay not to let them cry in the nursery.  You aren't fostering an unhealthy attachment.  Eventually, they'll go to sleep without you and run - on their own two feet - into new situations without so much as a look back to see if you are following - because they'll know you're always there for them.

5.  Don't feel guilty if you need a break...  or if you don't.  It's okay to take some time for yourself, and might do you a world of good.  But it's also okay to be with them all the time.  Before you know it, they'll think they're too old for hugs and kisses.  You'll have to sneak into their rooms at night after they've fallen asleep just to kiss their foreheads.  (When that time comes, make sure they know what you're up to.  They probably won't admit it, but they need to know you still can't get enough of them.)

6.  All those things you said your kids would never do...  They will do them, and it won't appall you nearly as much as it did when you were twenty and someone else's kid did it, because you'll know the whole story.  You'll also know that some battles aren't worth fighting, at least not right here, right now.

7.  You will make mistakes.  They will forgive you.  Forgive yourself.

8.  No matter how many babies you have, the last one has as much power as the first had to make you feel helpless and keep you up all night just to make sure he's still breathing.

9.  She might have your curls, daddy's eyes, and your spunk, but she has a whole lot more that is exclusively hers - and that will amaze you more than anything else.

10.  You will never be the same again.  You won't want to be, either.

Mary Had a Little Flock

Mary had a little flock.

They bickered at the stile, 

But when they frolicked in the field,

She counted all worthwhile.

Recently, a fellow mother of four and I compared notes on the struggles and joys, but mostly the struggles, of raising four children.  We agreed that sometimes it's just plain hard.  Sometimes we aren't the mothers we'd like to be.  Sometimes our children get a little lost among the many sheep in the fold.  Sometimes herding our little lambs through daily activities and duties is a little like herding sheep over a wall...  or squirrels through... through... well, just like herding squirrels.  You'd be insane even to attempt to herd a group of squirrels.  (Incidentally, according to A Squirrel Place,  "Squirrels are solitary animals. They do not have a hierarchical structure, and therefore, no group name was established."  This might be why one would not attempt to herd them).  Anyhow, getting four children through a day can be difficult, with bumps and nips (hopefully not literal nips, but sometimes...) and a whole host of exasperating moments.  Even when all goes smoothly, a simple day can be such an intricate dance of getting every detail just so that when you finally sit down to talk face to face with one of your children, it's almost like reconnecting with a long lost friend.  "Hey, I remember you...  How are you, old friend?"  Eyes light up as the child basks in the glory of having a solo in the spotlight of Mom's attention.  


It sounded pretty grim, really, talking about how much we love those sometimes rare, but always wonderful moments when we are fully devoted to one child and able to connect with that child individually rather than as part of a group.  But the siblings remain, and neither my friend nor I would have it any other way.  Despite the challenge of finding one-on-one time with our children, a challenge that seems to be diminishing as my youngest gets  older, we would have no smaller flocks than we have.  And the longer I tend this flock of four, the more thankful I am to do it.

From time to time, I stand in awe of my children.  In a post I wrote yesterday, I wrote about my children enjoying one another at the playground.  It was an impromptu trip to the park, and one I will cherish always.  Andrew and John began by exploring the woods, while I supervised Elisabeth and Luke on the playground.  I listened to the sweetest little girl voice urge, "Come here, Little Brother.  I'll help you," as she lifted him up onto the equipment over and over again.  Later, John and Andrew helped Luke climb ladders.  It was a perfect hour of blissful sibling cooperation.  (I almost wondered if they were really mine...)


They inflict their bumps and nips with the best of them, but they also have moments like those at the park in which I want to fade into the background, recording, but never interfering with their sacred expressions of brotherly and sisterly love.  No one can know how much they love each other, but sometimes the secret of which they themselves are unaware slips out.  That is when this mom counts it all worthwhile.

Confessions of An Insufferable Know-It-All International Bible Quizzer

A recent discussion, begun around our dinner table and finished on Facebook, failed to exonerate International Bible Quizzers of the crime of insufferable know-it-all-ism.  So maybe it is at least partly true... maybe even mostly true...  that some of us might possess a tendency toward behaving like insufferable know-it-alls.  Okay, I lost the argument before it ever started.  But there's more to the story of Bible Quizzing than a bunch of insufferable know-it-alls roaming the US and Canada and beyond, preying on the under-privileged majority of non-quizzers.

For the completely uninitiated, Bible Quizzing is a sport in which youth in grades 7-12 spend massive amounts of time memorizing entire books of the Bible and meeting together monthly to compete against their peers.  For some questions, the difference between right and wrong is be the difference between "a" and "the," and at the higher levels, a quizzer may hear only one syllable of one word before he or someone else jumps to answer the question.

So if we are insufferable know-it-alls from time to time, please forgive us.  We spent innumerable hours memorizing books of the Bible word perfect and were trained to be quick, bold, and... RIGHT.  We were even taught to challenge judges' rulings with which we didn't agree.  Being an insufferable know-it-all is certainly not a noble thing, but it can be a hard habit to break, especially when you put a bunch of us together... because let's face it, talking smack with old rivals and friends can be a lot of fun.

But really, on the whole, we're not so bad.  We gained much more from Bible Quizzing than an overactive attention to detail (especially when it comes to words and especially when those words are in argument form) and a tendency to let our competitive side overtake our more tender natures.  In fact, for some of us, Bible Quizzing served to tame our cockiness.  I freely admit that I am competitive, that I like to be right, and that I can argue with the most animated of debaters, though perhaps not with the most logical of debaters.  Well, I can argue with the logical, but I'm sure I just exasperate them.  (Ask Geoff about that sometime...  or a certain Doug who has cringed at more than one of my arguments).

I'm guilty of much, but I also remember one day when my coach called a time out to scold me for being cocky, threatening to pull me out of the quiz if I kept up the attitude, and I have tried not to forget that lesson in the living of real life.  I enjoy a smack talk discussion every now and then, but when it comes to serious, real life matters, I try to remember that being right and being smart are nothing compared with being considerate, forgiving, and compassionate.  Anytime I begin to forget that, which is more often than I care to admit, I remember Carolyn looking me in the eye and telling me in no uncertain terms, "No one likes cockiness."

Attention to detail and competitive drive aside, both of which might be innate and completely unrelated to quizzing, we learned a lot through Bible quizzing, from quizzing with our church teams to quizzing with our District teams at Internationals.  At least I did.  Thinking of all I gained through Bible Quizzing, I'm willing to accept the lighthearted title of insufferable know-it-all, especially since I'm married to a self proclaimed insufferable know-it-all.  Birds of a feather and all that... ;)

But seriously, I'm making a list of what I really got out of quizzing, and it looks pretty amazing so far.

1.  A treasure trove of Scripture, some passages more firmly rooted in my mind and heart than others. Plenty of verses have slipped through the cracks or been squeezed out as more information has crowded my mind, but large portions of what I memorized in my youth remain.  The sort of intricate memorization one engages in through Bible quizzing is the sort that sticks.  An interesting side effect is that the mind trained to pick up and preserve every detail in memory also picks up and preserves verses one never intended to memorize, so I remember verses not only from the books on which I quizzed, but from non-quizzing passages I read during that time.  I don't say that to boast...  It is a wonder to me sometimes that I haven't forgotten everything, and it convinces me that Bible Quizzing is something I desperately want for my children.  (And if you attend my church and want it for your children, please let me know!) A great treasure this is, as verses memorized long ago come to mind to correct, encourage, comfort, and inspire as needed.  As an adult, I've attempted to memorize portions of Scripture, and frankly, it's not as easy as it used to be.  Responsibilities and distractions are greater and harder to dismiss than they were when I was sixteen.  I am thankful for the opportunity Bible quizzing gave me to commit so much Scripture to memory in my younger, simpler years - and thankful to God for causing so much of it to remain to enrich my older (but not too much older), fuller life.

2.  A precious network of friends, some sprung in the most unlikely of soils, is another gift of Bible quizzing.  I spent a lot of time with my church team, and my coach, the marvelous Ms. Carolyn a.k.a. My Second Mom, made sure everyone on the team understood that each of us was an integral part of our team.  I might quiz out without error in the first four questions of every quiz, but at the end of the day (literally, on the three hour drive home), nobody could massage half the team's feet like Allen.  We were required to work together, encourage one another, and appreciate each other, regardless of personal score averages.  Because a team rolls like that.

The District Team took this concept a step further.  After competing against each other all year long, five of us were thrust together, put on equal footing, and required to work together to prepare for and compete at Internationals.  Some of us were instant friends, but some of us... Well, we didn't exactly like each other.  I think of two friends - I call them friends now - in particular.  The first gave me more dirty looks than I could count, and I thought more unkind things of her than I would tell; when I think of her now, I remember more vividly her laughter, her honesty, her vulnerability,  and the night she, I and the other girl on our team shared our souls and tears.  The second irritated me like nobody's business the first year I quizzed with him.  The next year was considerably better, and at this point in our friendship, I am so proud of the husband, father, and pastor he has become.  Somewhere along the way, I realized that underneath the insufferable know-it-all attitude (I use that term lightheartedly now, understanding I was as guilty, if not more so, of being an IKIA.), he is a long-suffering, compassionate, intelligent child of the God who loves us both.  More importantly, I realized that he's watched me grow up (I hope!) as much as I've watched him grow up.  (See italicized comment above.  I was a twerp).  I'm sorry I didn't give him more credit from the start, and thankful to have known him then and now.

And then there's the friend who was a rival on many levels, and I'm sure she knows who she is.  We often joke about the beginnings of our friendship - which looked nothing like friendship at the time.  Over the years our opinions of each other have progressed from thinking each other exasperatingly weird and perfectly snobbish to knowing without a doubt that the other will understand our stranger, more convoluted musings on a wide range of topics, if not on the subject of orange couches.

Another friend has sprung from unlikely, though not at all rocky, soil.  This friend cheered me as I was saying goodbye to friends at the end of Internationals in 1993 and has been a pen pal off and on ever since.  I haven't seen her since that one week in New York eighteen years ago, but she encourages me in ways she'll never know, and I cannot think of her without remembering her cheerfully reminding me to smile as I said my teary goodbyes.

There are many more friends from quizzing whom I ought to mention, but find no good nor succinct descriptions of our friendships.  Carolyn, Liz, Matt, Melanie, Stacy, Melissa, Michele, Susanne, Myssi, Andrew, Karen, Connie...  too many to name, and I fear excluding some deeply treasured friend who has slipped my distracted mind!  There are so many who were there from the start, whose paths crossed mine for a year or two, who somehow shared in the whole quizzing experience.  To some I remain close, while others have faded to memories.  For all, I am thankful.

I have always had a special place in my heart for my quizzing friends, and as I age, I appreciate them still.  I thought little of it at the time, but memorizing entire books of the Bible is not exactly "normal."  I love that there are people out there to whom memorizing books of the Bible was just another teenage day.  They aren't impressed, nor do they think I'm weird (at least not for this).  They get it.  They've been there.  They've done that.  And many of them cherish the memories of Bible Quizzing as much as I do.

Quizzing was intense.  It required time, energy, and a single-mindedness hard to come by these days, and gave back extreme highs and lows of emotion, a lifelong treasure of cherished Scriptures and precious friends, and so much more.  Looking back, I can't believe I put so much into it.  Looking back, it was the best way to have spent my youth.

Sticking to Something Better Than the Plan

Sometimes, even the best laid plans don't stick.  Sunday night I sat down at the computer and planned a week full of stimulating educational activities for my dear students.  We stuck to the schedule pretty well Monday, completing all of our school work and sneaking in an unplanned evening outside kicking around the soccer ball.

Then came Tuesday.

So far today, our day has looked kind of like this:

8:00 - Wake to Andrew drilling me with random history trivia.  Whisper a prayer of thanksgiving for Susan Wise Bauer, without whose four years worth of aid I would have humiliated myself completely and irredeemably.

9:00 -  Receive call from Wise and Wonderful Sister.  Take the call because the boys who were told to get dressed seem to have disappeared into Legoland and I'm still nursing my first cup of coffee.

Somewhere around 10 - Grammar with John while Andrew kicks soccer ball outside.  Play with fraction towers with Elisabeth.  Realize it's 75 degrees outside.  Decide to let boys enjoy the gorgeous weather.  Realize the little ones ought to be outside, too.

10:30 - Bike, scooter, walk, run to the park.  Enjoy - thoroughly enjoy - playing with Elisabeth and Luke while Andrew and John play in the woods.  Keep Luke from tumbling over the top of the climbing wall while congratulating Elisabeth on learning to pump her legs on the swing.  Marvel at the tenderness between various pairings of sibling (more on this in a future post).

11:30 - Bike, scooter, walk, run home.

12:00 - Grammar and Memory Work ("Oh, Captain!  My Captain!) with Andrew while John reads a chapter of The Secret Garden while watching a friend's son mow our front lawn.

12:30  Lunch with a brief biography of Walt Whitman, writer of "Oh, Captain!  My Captain!"

1:00  Failed attempt to get Luke to nap while Andrew and John play Legos and Elisabeth plays with her kitchen set.

1:15  Bible lesson with Elisabeth about obeying her mother with a cheerful attitude.

1:30  Post about the joys of flexibility while Bigs continue to play with Legos and Littles plan a tea party.


TBA - Making sugar cookies and homemade pizza.
            Bible lesson with all children
            Math
            Spelling
            Writing assignments
            Continue reading The Secret Garden.
            Whatever else I decide we really ought to do today

I'm actually relatively confident that despite our change in plans, we will accomplish most of what I set out to accomplish on this day.  If, however, the activities recounted above constitute our entire day, I cannot call it a loss.  Today, we had some very special learning to do that my plans just couldn't keep up with.  Those important lessons might be described:

Take time to enjoy the beauty of God's creation and the sweet companionship of siblings.  Stretch your physical limits.  Puzzle over and solve architectural and engineering questions through the construction of Lego cities and robots.  Study proper etiquette and home economics through sugar cookie tea parties and pizza making.  Realize that sometimes rest and recreation are more valuable than intense academic studies, and that life won't come to a screeching halt if you veer from the prescribed path - and that veering from that path doesn't necessarily mean that you won't complete all that you need to accomplish.  In all of this, enjoy one another immensely.

So I didn't stick to the plan, or maybe the plan didn't stick to us.  At the end of the day, whether or not we tackle the rest of our subjects, I'd much rather have taught my children to enjoy sticking to one another than to have taught them to demand sticking to even the best laid plan.

The "S" Word :0

It's a word that makes homeschooling mothers shudder.  Socialization.  Hearing it, our hearts swell with fear.  We are afraid, very afraid...

...  that we might lose our fragile hold on civility and inform the individual who has just asked, voice dripping with dismay, "But aren't you worried about socialization?" that there are more than a few "social skills" we don't consider all that important and more than a couple that we are quite content for our children not to acquire at all.

Still, socialization is an issue we must consider.  Though we might debate which social skills are admirable and which are not, and how to go about encouraging the more admirable skills and discouraging the less admirable skills; and though we might debate a thousand different aspects of this thing called "socialization," including what portion of a child's social skills can be attributed to his schooling, rather than his personality and the personalities of the people around him (i.e. his family), the fact remains that as human beings, we and our children are social creatures in need of... drum roll, please...  socialization.




Recently, I relaxed in a pool with my children.  A young girl ventured from the steps to swim the length of the pool, upheld by a life jacket.  She spent several minutes determinedly swimming from one end to the other and back again. Then she exited the pool, pranced over to a lady lounging with a book on a poolside chair.

"I swam all the way across the pool!" she exclaimed.  "I swam all the way across four times!  Watch me!"

She ran back to the pool and resumed her laps.

The uninformed observer might easily assume the little girl in question was inviting her mother to revel in her new accomplishment.  This was not the case.  The girl's mother was, in fact, relaxing in the pool with her children, marveling first at her daughter's courage to abandon the steps she had just minutes before trembled to leave; then marveling at her daughter's determination to conquer the task of swimming all the way across the pool; and finally marveling at her daughter's enthusiasm to invite a complete stranger to share with her in her triumph.

Since my wise and wonderful sister, who knew me in my childhood, has been known to read this blog, I won't pretend that I don't know where she came by this glimmer of precociousness.  I am far more reserved than I was as a child, but not so much so that I do not recognize and delight in my daughter's openness, in her desire to connect with others.  She is a social little thing, always looking forward to - and even dreaming about - playing with her friends and often sneaking her hand into her friends' mothers' hands, if not up to their ears.  (Those of you who know her will either smile or cringe :)).  In many photos of her with her friends, her eyes are fixed on a friend, a smile illuminating her entire face.

Without a doubt, this girl loves people.  Watching her interact with others, I've realized that I cannot afford to ignore this issue of socialization.  Not in the sense that I have to make sure my children are "well-socialized," whatever that means...  but in the sense that I must provide ample opportunities for them to build their own social networks, their own groups of friends who will allow them to explore their identities as individuals apart from parents and siblings and who will provide for them an extra layer of love - voluntary, unconditional, not-just-because-we're-family love - to strengthen them against the trials that are sure to come as they grow into adulthood.

And my daughter, though on the surface the most sociable and charismatic of my children, is not the only one who needs this type of socialization.  My sons, not always as people-conscious as their sister, also need their own people.  We all do.

In previous posts I have written about reading and art, two areas dear to my older sons, but important to all of my children.  Soon, I hope to write about athletics, a field (pun totally intended) of emerging interest to my youngest son.  As I consider each child's special love, the universal importance of each of those loves presses upon my heart and mind and I desire to incorporate more of those loves into each of their lives.  Tonight, I thank God for my girl, for her love of people, and for the lessons I am learning through her - lessons I hope will benefit her and her brothers as much as they benefit me.

And I hope that as we move forward and build networks of friends for each of them, I will be able to look with love at the groups of children in whom my children find shelter -whatever those friends look like and however "socially adept" those friends may be - and answer with confidence, "Nope, I'm not worried one iota about socialization!"

The Great Teacher Debate

Judging by recent Facebook posts, Matt Damon said something about teachers and incentives and some people agreed and others did not.  It's the same old debate, a tangled mess of test scores, job security, teacher performance, and teacher pay.  I'm sure we've heard it all a million times.  One one side, teachers aren't paid enough for the hours they work and the crap they endure from test-score obsessed administrations, unmotivated students and unconcerned parents.  On the other side, teachers are paid amply for the hours they work and should be held accountable for the jobs they perform - or fail to perform.

As a homeschooling parent, I may not be qualified to comment on this subject, but then again, as an educator and a parent, maybe I am.  I've watched from the sidelines, at some times less attentively than at other times, but I've watched.  Or rather, I've listened, and there are some things I haven't heard, most importantly, that both sides make some good points.

On Teacher Responsibility

Yes, teachers should be held responsible for how well they teach.  Teaching is their job, and they ought to do it well.  In any profession, if you aren't making the cut, you get cut.  Teachers should not be excluded from the common sense practice of ensuring that important jobs are done well.  They are, after all, educating our darling children and the future leaders of our world.  The problem is that teacher performance can be very difficult to measure, and particularly difficult given large classrooms of children of varying abilities and contrasting learning styles, not to mention differing levels of parental support and other outside factors that might adversely affect a student's academic or behavioral performance.  Someone had the bright idea of standardized testing...  We see how that has worked out.  (Epic Fail) Standardized tests can no more measure a teacher's ability than a scale can accurately measure a person's health.  Multiple factors determine both a person's physical health and a teacher's proficiency in her job.  To hang the funding of a school or the security of a job on the single factor of test scores is ludicrous and detrimental to the overall intellectual well-being of our nation's children.  I don't want my children or my neighbor's children or, when you get right down to it, any children learning how to take a test.  I want them learning how to think, and how to do it well.  (I also want them learning the differences between "there" and "their" and "they're," so we can put an end to the homonym abuse that so plagues our world, but that's a different soap box).  I do believe teachers should be held accountable, but not by the test scores of their students.  Their job performance should be assessed by those most qualified to assess it, their peers and superiors, perhaps with a little input from parents.  Someone else has to have thought of this, but perhaps it isn't as simple as it sounds because we still have this debate raging over how teachers are assessed.  I don't have an answer, but there has to be a way to reward good teachers and get rid of rotten ones, and neither test scores nor lifelong job security is the answer.

On Teacher Pay - Oh, whatever...  If we could figure out Point A, Point A being "How to Structure the System So Good Teachers Are Free to Teach Well and Bad Teachers Can Find Another Profession," then maybe we'd be thrilled to pay teachers $100,000 per year or more.  (As an added bonus, maybe we'd have more good teachers because they won't flee a stiflingly discouraging system or stick around only to become jaded).  The good ones work hard all day long and are still working hard in the evening.  The good ones look at your "creative" kid who can't sit still and find ingenuis ways of accommodating, even celebrating, his "uniqueness."  The good ones know that a child's education is a partnership they share with you, the parent, and expect you to keep up your end of the deal, as you should.  The good ones have earned a summer break, and the good ones spend a good portion of that break planning for the year to come.  None of these things is measured by a standardized test.  The good ones know this, but continue to work, to imagine, to demand excellence, simply because they are not willing to sacrifice the title of Good Teacher for the accomplishment of good test scores or any other treat for which they must jump through ridiculous hoops to the detriment of their students.  If you believe such a teacher is worth her weight in gold, click here for an reasonable teacher's salary.  That might put an end to the debate over teachers' salaries.  :)

Seriously, though, teachers perform a very important job, and we ought to pay gladly for their services, provided their services are up to par.  If we could settle on a reasonable, reliable method of evaluation, maybe they could give up the business of fighting for and about their jobs and get back to the joy of teaching our children.

Well, not my children... but you know what I mean!  :)