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| Littles learning from bigger beans learning from bigger beans... |
But my life, in the past year, has become almost unbearable.
My husband is a firefighter. There are many things I, as the wife, love about the job. But one thing is sure-- we have a non-traditional family schedule, in which we are constantly moving between I'm-on-my-own mode and daddy-is-home-all-day mode. The way it works is basically that just as we start getting comfortable all being home together, he leaves us alone, and just as we start getting comfortable being alone, he comes home. Those of you who are military wives might relate-- you have the hard period at the beginning of deployment, and then it just happens and you get into a groove, and then you have the hard period at the end where you need to re-adjust to the new family dynamic. Fire families have that on constant replay, month after month after month. It's a bit exhausting, especially if you're homeschooling.
When my husband is home, we can't really "school" the way we want to. It's not always him-- a different set of circumstances always seems to rise against us. Sometimes we all have to head down to this or that place to take care of some kind of official business. Other times we deal with fire-family specific issues. Other times he just needs to UNWIND, or the kids want to spend time with him. It is pretty much a guarantee that if he's home, we won't be following the schedule I meticulously worked out, and not doing it every day means that the days he ISN'T home I'm working hard to implement it instead of actually successfully walking through it-- kind of like a perpetual Monday. Yikes.
We also had many other challenges this year. We caught a super crazy stomach flu bug that took us out for two weeks, and then another bug that took us out for almost a month! We had a new baby, and two new babies in my brother's family and my husband's brother's family. We had some family members who needed help, and watched a lot of kids during the week.
My father in law is dying. We have been living with him for four years now, helping him as he overcame the struggles of living with lung cancer, and at this point in his journey we have become his caretakers. I could write for days about everything that entails. It's hard.
It seems like every time I think about it, I get discouraged.
When I add all the issues that come with just trying to raise good kids in a counter cultural environment, the problems that come up in marriage on a regular basis, my mounting pile of laundry and dishes, and all the things that make up "life," I don't see how I can ever make it out on top, let alone accomplish the other things on my plate. (my midwifery studies, and work, and ministry in the community.)
It's just too much.
Enter Charlotte Mason, who daily reminds me that "education is a discipline, an atmosphere, and a life."
I really began to reflect on this when I was trying to integrate the Connecting with History program into my daily ordered little schedule boxes. It drove me nuts, because I couldn't just spread out everything into tidy little boxes. It required "a thinking love..." something which, again, Charlotte Mason really challenged me on.
I think for families with one or two children, a curriculum like Mater Amabilis or Ambleside Online would be really easy to implement and near perfect as written.
I think for larger families, even very large families, a curriculum like that would require a little bit of tweaking (combine religion, for example, and maybe literature), but would still be quite close to perfect as written.
But one thing is necessary-- that the families who attempt it live in the kind of environment conducive to more "traditional" schooling. By that I mean that the father and mother arrange some sort of set schedule or routine and both agree to it, that they set some hours for schooling to occur, and that they organize themselves accordingly. They need to be willing to say "no," more and "yes" less.
But we are a missionary family, we feel, and we just can't do that. We have to say "yes," sometimes, even outside of our own comfort zone.
No matter what we do (and we've tried it all!!!) none of these things seems to work with us.
We've had a schedule. But even my husband can't control some of the crazy interruptions that seem to come our way. We've had a general routine outline, but again.... sometimes it just gets away from us. The closest thing to success I have had involved checklists... but even those sometimes have been put off to other days and other weeks.
In a moment of pure frustration last week, I took a few hours to lay these questions before the Lord, and funnily enough, instead of showing me what we were doing WRONG, I felt strongly that He was showing me instead what we were doing right.... something that had escaped my notice. When I finally did notice, I realized that just focusing on those and letting all my panic melt away was truly the best possible answer for us.
So what were we doing that was working?
Our homeschool has a vision statement.
We call ourselves missional homeschoolers, and as such we say that we are "embracing a flexible, rigorous, living education, nourished by great ideas, that values people over things."
I'm discovering more deeply each day that we do that by heeding Charlotte's words about what education actually is.... a discipline, an atmosphere, and a life, and an INTEGRATED one at that.
So how does it look?
1. Education is a discipline.
It requires both personal discipline on the part of the parents and children, and family, or communal discipline. Ultimately, this IS discipleship in a family context. This is because children do what they "see." Want to raise readers? Be a reader. Want to raise kind children? Be kind to your children. Want modest girls? Dress modestly. Want kids who love math? You need to love math. Etc. More things in life are caught than taught. The Bible teaches us that. Charlotte Mason teaches us that. Any parenting book worth a darn teaches that. More on that in a minute.
But discipline must be taught, formed, and worked on as a habitual way of life. Discipline involves the whole person (body, mind and soul) and no one aspect can be ignored without pulling down the rest of it.
Have you ever been around a really disciplined person? They exude holiness. It's inspiring!
As a part of my own quest for discipline, I have been re-reading some of the classics that remind of who I am and what I am called to do, like Elisabeth Elliot's "Discipline, the Glad Surrender." It has been tremendously helpful for me to maintain a personal devotional time where I examine these questions of discipline, and I plan to continue doing so. I have taken more seriously lately my responsiblity to faithfully steward my body, my time, and my actions.
Our family, also, needs discipline. By placing special attention on habit formation and character, as well as the structural "skeleton" that holds our values in place (things like getting dressed when the day begins so we are ready for anything, or prioritizing our health by eating well and exercising, or keeping a clean house so we are always ready for random company.) Discipline means teaching the children to accomplish the things on their list with joy.
It helps in our house that my husband is extremely disciplined. He takes all of his responsibilities very seriously, which can be exasperating and the source of many of our struggles. At the same time, I admire this quality in him and am so grateful for it... with it he is helping the rest of us to take life seriously, because we only get one shot.
2. Education is an atmosphere.
Discipline naturally creates a certain atmosphere. When the house is messy, people are messy, relationships are messy. On the other hand, for example, when there is order in the home, there is order in our hearts, and we can think clearly and relate calmly. Surrendering to the idea that authority over our children isn't about having the right to tell them what to do but instead having the responsibility to gently model for them and guide them.... these are questions of atmosphere. If I tell my daughter to get dressed and brush her teeth from my computer desk where I am undressed and unwashed, it creates a friction. But when I do so with her, it creates complicity, and the interlocking segments of our relationship are cemented.
I used to despair over this portion of Miss Mason's philosophy, because I had so little control over the atmosphere in the home. I wanted peace, godliness, and education, and my family members and community seemed instead to bombard us with mess, chaos, and stupidity. I was stressed.
Over time I came to learn that it's not the kind of battle I win by arguing. I had no control over anything in the atmosphere... except myself. And things began to change.
Have you ever walked into a home where there were people living who actually practiced their religion? The house feels different.... the vibe is peaceful and surreal. It is like a slice of heaven, even if the people living in it are imperfect.
You see, education is absorbed. As naturally as my kids play crusades in the back yard, because we read about them together. When my husband and I model a certain type of way of living, an integrated life, so to speak, our children benefit regardless of our external situations... and that's when the magic happens. And even when it's been just me on my own, the value of personal discipline and not losing sight of my goal has been that much learning happens just by virtue of living well.
The secular world understands this, because books like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families have been bestsellers. Read it, and see why that is. Education is an atmosphere.
3. Education is a life.
Discipline produces an atmosphere. An atmosphere which, over time, produces a culture of life. When discipline is happening in the house (both individual and communal) the atmosphere changes. When the atmosphere changes, our lives change. And even if one or even more of us are "off" that day, things still seem to be life-giving instead of life-stealing.
This is what an integrated life presents--- the opportunity to work on our bodies, our minds, and our souls, by the Holy Spirit, for the good of the world.
In a Charlotte Mason education, subjects are integrated. There is a fine line between integration and what we call "unit studies." We want the child, and not the parent, to make the connections. But there IS a general sense of united-ness in the approach, in that we don't waste time blathering on and on and pushing and shoving aspects of knowledge, or facts, down children's throats. We seamlessly integrate learning and life, and most importantly, we allow children the privilege of learning from the very best available materials, and of exercising their own minds instead of the constant drudgery of pressing against the minds of others. We are a home AND a school. Not just a home. Not just a school.
The other day, after almost six or seven straight days of homeschool fails, my kids and I had what we all agreed was the PERFECT day.
We finished school before lunch, the work we did was fascinating, and we covered every subject and all of our goals..... seamlessly. It was also the only day that week I integrated our work. How?
During our morning time, which we call Consilium (Latin for "Council."), we had our family meeting. we studied the Bible and prayed and sang. We worked some math problems together. We did penmanship while listening to our composer, and I read aloud from a history biography. The children narrated, and drew in their journals. We did our memory work. Then we read from the Catechism, everybody practicing their reading with me. We did copywork from that lesson, and only because it went with the illustration they had drawn. We did grammar that way. Then we had nature study, played musical instruments together, and realized we were DONE with everything on the list, so we played to our hearts' content all afternoon. Yes, there were a couple of individual readings left. We knocked those out at naps and after dinner. That was it! It didn't "feel" like school. It felt like connecting. It felt like discipleship. It felt... amazing.
When I asked my kids about their day they all told me how much they loved it. "It was fun," they told me. And "I love it when you are WITH me."
Ever since that "perfect" day, I've been scouring Charlotte's works for notes about integrating subjects. I've been letting go of the idea of fitting my large-ish, missional family's work into little scheduling boxes. I've been planning with an end goal in mind: discipline, atmosphere, and life. And it's working! We're getting through it... and it. is. glorious.
Yes, I've had to let go of some ideas, like following any ready-made curriculum just so and individually. Yes, I've had to be flexible-- sometimes holding Consilium first thing in the morning, and other times holding it just after naps. Yes, I've had to stop trying to plan out a perfect week a year in advance. But... it's working. And it feels Spirit-breathed, and efficient, and discipleship-oriented and glorious. It feels integrated.
I can't yet put my finger on what that means. It isn't a unit study... But I do notice themes in my booklists each day. It isn't just shortening subjects and working faster through each of them, because I do notice that when I 'm doing it right the pile of books on my table to cover that day goes from enormous to quite small. It isn't about children leading, because if they do I feel a failure at the end of the day coming on. It isn't about relaxing more, because if I did we'd never get ANYTHING done.
On the other hand, it IS about variety. It IS about being willing to work hard in quick spurts. It IS about coming into relationship, both with the texts and with each other. It IS about discipline, because we must all be willing to give it our best effort. It IS about atmosphere, because we absorb most of it through the gentle process of taking part in the Great Conversation. It IS about living, because what we study rightfully directly relates to what we are living each day.
This is a living education. And we are feeling more alive each day.
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