Teaching Like Jesus Did, Part 1
Thirty years ago, I set up a classroom in the basement of our little house in Illinois. I hung a bulletin board and an American flag for the Pledge of Allegiance. I gathered a big stack of textbooks that I had borrowed from a friend. As I tried to recreate a public school in our basement, homeschooling quickly came to feel like a heavy sack of rocks I carried around on my back.
Why did I feel as if I had to recreate a public school? I didn’t have the historical perspective I needed. Throughout the centuries, loving parents have taught their children what they needed to know to thrive as adults. Why was I afraid that I couldn’t do that, too?
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. One day during His ministry, 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.
And He appointed twelve so they could be with Him.
Mark 3:14
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 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 were meeting our state’s education requirements, but our schooling didn’t look like public school anymore.
I love it when I call one of our children and a grandchild answers the phone. I try not to call during school time, but sometimes I need to. Recently, I chatted with our seven-year-old grandson during one of those school time calls.
“Are you doing school?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied. His mama might have winced if she heard him say that to somebody else, but I loved it.
I’m thankful for every moment that a child is learning and doesn’t realize that he is “doing school.” 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. God told those parents 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