all the time, what made you home school? How do you know your kids are at the level they are supposed to be at? Will you home school K-12? How do you find curriculum?
And I find that my answers are not always answers to their questions. The farther in this journey I go, the more my goals change. I'm not trying to stay within the grades. Grade levels are a guideline for me but not my goal. I'm not teaching to a test. I don't want them to "test well." Tests don't equal Learning. My main goal is not academic achievement. Smart people jack up their lives with bad choices. My goals are to help my children develop 1)a biblical worldview 2)faith and 3)godly character.
For example, my first grader was crying about her spelling. She just was so afraid to have mistakes on her end of the week test. (She doesn't know she's ahead of her "grade level"...but I didn't try to convince her that she was "smart"--academic achievement is not our goal.) We coached B on making mistakes. The lesson was on how to make mistakes in life. We all need to learn to make mistakes and learn from them. This is the real lesson of spelling. I explained how I made three mistakes while I was giving her her spelling test: I forgot to add an ingredient in dinner, I forgot to write down an appointment, and I spoke harshly. What do we do with our mistakes? That's what matters in real life. How do we see ourselves in the midst of our failures? This is what matters in real life. Am I loved when I fail? Yes. By God always. This is what matters in real life.
2 comments:
man, i could've used some of that wisdom as a young child! for me, mistakes equaled failure. and even though none of my teachers would have purposely promoted that idea, there certainly weren't any teachers who told me otherwise. i still wrestle with this, as i'm sure we all do.
Its so true, Mike. The system of school is designed to test kids so they can measure learning, set programs in place, and pay the right people....but the disadvantage of the system is the fact it teaches children not to fail or make mistakes rather than to except and learn from them.
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