Have Your Best School Year Ever!
Twenty-seven years ago I set up a classroom in the basement of our little house in Illinois.
I hung a bulletin board, displayed an American flag for the Pledge of Allegiance, and assembled our big stack of textbooks to start homeschooling. As I tried to recreate a public school in our basement, homeschooling quickly came to feel like a big heavy sack of rocks I was carrying around on my back. But why did I feel as if I had to recreate a public school?
I didn’t have the historic perspective I needed. When the history of the world is considered, the educational systems of today are recent developments. By far the most common form of education throughout the centuries has been parents teaching their own children. But we human beings are often frightened and insecure. Many of us want others to tell us what to do.
Through the years professional educators have developed plans for how they think children ought to be educated. Most of us homeschooling parents were educated that way ourselves. The temptation simply to follow the educational system around us is powerful, but why do we think that is the best way to educate children?
If only I had looked to the greatest teacher Who ever lived – Jesus Christ. He is the best example of how to teach our children. During His ministry, one day Jesus went off to a mountain to pray. He spent the whole night in prayer to God. The next morning, He called His disciples to Him and chose twelve of them to do something very special. Mark 3:14 says:
And He appointed twelve so they could be with Him.
Simply be with Him. What a wonderful way for Jesus to teach these twelve men. By having them near Him, He could teach them in every teachable moment. One of the greatest blessings of homeschooling is the opportunity to have our children with us so we can use teachable moments, too.
Our own homeschooling experience was transformed when Ray and I laid down that big, heavy sack of rocks we were carrying around and made homeschooling who we were instead of a burden. We carefully chose some curriculum and we did a lot of lifestyle learning together. We took art lessons together. We went on lots of field trips. We volunteered. We read books aloud.
While we were still back in the bulletin board and Pledge of Allegiance stage, Ray had a business trip in another state. We packed up our textbooks and went with him. After we laid our sack of rocks down, when we went on a trip, we left the textbooks at home and the trip itself and its experiences became “school” for a few days. We worked toward meeting our state graduation requirements for each child; but our schooling did not look like public school anymore.
One special interest we had during our homeschooling days was drama – both attending and participating. Our younger daughter Mary Evelyn and I are still involved in drama with homeschoolers – she as the director of what we call the Homeschool Dramatic Society and I as the assistant director.
One summer during tryouts, an adorable, energetic, thoughtful boy came to Mary Evelyn after his audition to talk about the kind of part that he would like to have. He explained that two years before he had a part where he got to move around, but that in the previous year’s play, his character had been assigned to stay mainly in one spot. He wanted Mary Evelyn to know that he would much prefer a part where he could move. He finished his appeal with these words: “I don’t know what you call it, but I call it freedom.”
As you begin your next homeschooling year, I hope your children will have the opportunity to stay not “mainly in one spot,” but that they get the opportunity to move around. I encourage you to consider the way that Jesus taught His disciples. It was identical to the way God told the Israelites to train their children in Deuteronomy 6 and 11. This was His educational method for their children. He told them to teach:
. . . when you sit in your house
and when you walk along the road
and when you lie down and
when you rise up.
Deuteronomy 11:19
Take time to imagine how Jesus taught His disciples. Imagine one day during Jesus’ ministry on earth, a day He spent with the twelve disciples. Think about being with Jesus that day and day after day. Think about how His disciples learned and what they learned. Think of the freedom of learning all day long — all day long every day — with the greatest Teacher who ever lived on earth.
Now compare that experience with the typical educational experiences of most children who are the same ages as your children. How do they compare? How are they different?
The greatest Teacher who ever lived on earth taught with purpose. He was the most disciplined Person and Teacher the world has ever known. He had a plan.
Mary Evelyn’s young actor got what he asked for. He played a street beggar near George Muller’s orphanage. This is a little boy who like all children deserves freedom. What a creative little communicator. When Mary Evelyn and I ran into him at a festival a few weeks later, he was surprised and very excited to see her. He said, “If I was a cartoon character there would be like fifty exclamation points coming out of my head!”
May you and your children spend the next school year with lots of exclamation points above your heads because you are so excited about the freedom to homeschool and the way your homeschool allows your children to be free to grow in their faith, to succeed in the gifts God has given to them, and to flourish in the timetable that is a perfect fit for them.
It was for freedom that Christ set us free;
therefore keep standing firm
and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.
Galatians 5:1
Thank you so much for your encouragement! This is our first year homeschooling our 5th, 7th, and 8th grade daughters. We chose Notgrass so that we could study history together. Our girls are very excited to homeschool, but I’m beginning to get nervous–carrying that heavy load of all the rigorous studies we “have” to do. Your words have helped remind me again of the blessing of homeschooling and the reason we chose this route. Thank you for being an encourager!!!