#53 Challenges of the Teacher

In education, the role of the teacher in guiding children and helping them draw out ideas and connect them with other ideas is generally more important than the materials used. A good teacher can help her students learn the truth even from a messy or problematic book. My mom once taught a CCD class in which she was "required" to teach with some problematic materials. Apparently it didn't phase her at all. She simply explained the materials in that book and followed it up with what the Church actually teaches.

Teaching is always going to require a certain amount of creativity and making distinctions on the fly. After all, even with the most ideal curricula, children will ask difficult and challenging questions. While this challenge may seem intimidating, humility and faithfulness will get you through. Work on learning how to learn and developing the Christian attitudes necessary for leading your children to the truth. With God's grace, these little things will go a long way.

Docility (#50)

In his book Authenticity, Fr. Thomas Dubay explains the traditional intellectual virtue of docility: “We are to welcome instruction, yes. But this is not enough. We are to welcome correction as well, being told that we are wrong. This is living the virtue of docility.

As the word indicates, docility is the capacity to learn, a willingness to be taught. One is docile when he recognizes his own lack of information and expertise, on the one hand, and the superior knowledge and skills of his teacher, on the other. In this context a synonym more acceptable to modern ears is receptivity…

Like other moral virtues, docility lies in a mean between two extremes. One extreme is the more or less arrogant refusal to accept the thoughts of another. The other is an exaggerated credulity that has lost a sense of proper discrimination and healthy criticism.”

The Delight of Simplicity (#41)

One night, my six year old daughter was playing with a wooden tower toy that had a ramp for little cars to roll down. Though she couldn’t find the cars, she did find a handful of dice and discovered that they slid down the ramp in a satisfying way.

Trouble soon came in the form of her four year old brother, who wanted to play too. They were soon squabbling quite loudly over who had how many dice and who took whose dice from whom. The chaos was rather aggravating and I promptly took away all of the dice except one for each of them and braced myself for the protests that were sure to follow.

But they never came. The change was like a light switch – all they really needed was just one each and the room was suddenly filled with giggles and squeals of delight as they took turns with the toy.

Not all of our family squabbles end so easily, but it was a great illustration for me of the beauty and delight of simplicity.

Break the Conventions, Keep the Commandments (#39)

I find that in balancing my obligations as a homeschool mother, I need to make distinctions between what I can be flexible and open about and what is non-negotiable.

Not only do such distinctions relieve stress when things don't go as planned (and in a family this is a common occurrence!), but they also free me to give my children the chance to make some choices in their day and in their education - which can be a good thing for both of us!

G. K. Chesterton offers a helpful and humorous perspective:

"A man's minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that should be unchangeable are his principles, his ideals. But with us, the reverse is true; our views change constantly, but our lunch does not change. Now, I should like men to have strong and rooted conceptions, but as for their lunch, let them have it sometimes in the garden, sometimes in bed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes in the top of a tree. Let them argue from the same first principles, but let them do it in a bed, or a boat or a balloon."

Some Qualities of a Good Catholic School (#35)

Pope Pius XI speaks to us across the ages in his 1939 encyclical On Christian Education in which he describes some of the qualities of a good Catholic school:

In such a school... the study of the vernacular and of classical literature will do no damage to moral virtue. There the Christian teacher will imitate the bee, which takes the choicest part of the flower and leaves the rest, as St. Basil teaches in his discourse to youths on the study of the classics. Nor will this necessary caution... in any way hinder the Christian teacher from gathering and turning to profit, whatever there is of real worth in the systems and methods of our modern times, mindful of the Apostle's advice: "Prove all things: hold fast that which is good." Hence in accepting the new, he will not hastily abandon the old, which the experience of the centuries has found expedient and profitable.

Attitudes and Actions (#29)

We live in a society that tends to value people according to how much money they earn. Society tends to devalue people and vocations that fall outside their narrow formula. This can include... the disabled, stay-at-home moms, the poor, priests and religious, the sick, the elderly, and even ... children.

Because our attitudes tend to be shaped by society and our own attitudes in turn play a major role in the formation of our children, it's important to examine and consider how our words and actions reflect what we value most.

For example, being pro-Life includes not only opposing abortion, but also supporting the disabled and seeing Christ in them. Being pro-child and pro-family includes exercising patience with little ones we come across in church or in a restaurant.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says:

"Parents must regard their children as children of God and respect them as human persons."

Old Books (#26)

C.S. Lewis said: "Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books."

What does this mean for the education of our own children? Instead of just textbooks - written by modern writers, make room for some of the old greats - and these are great for parents too!

So make room for Shakespeare, for G.K. Chesterton and for Charles Dickens. Make it a priority to read C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien with your children. Hilda Van Stockum and J. Henri Fabre are terrific, and don't neglect the old fairy tales and the old myths.

C.S. Lewis also said: "Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction."

More Isn't Always Better (#22)

If a child finishes an entire school book on schedule, but remembers little or none of what is studied, he has accomplished very little. It's much better to study less and learn it well.

Here are a few possibilities for adjusting your studies accordingly:

Measure a day's or a week's progress according to effort and time expended upon a subject rather than the number of pages completed.

Don't latch onto formal work at the expense of the informal learning that fills in the cracks and makes formal learning easier and more delightful. For example, a child is read to and talked to and given an initial and very important grasp on the language before he learns formal reading skills.

For a subject like Science or History, split a textbook up into two or three years and study the material in greater depth. Supplement with excellent books and videos, visits to a museum and hands-on projects and experiments.

It's About the Family... (#21)

Success in homeschooling is intimately tied with a healthy family culture. This doesn't require financial success or parents who are highly educated. Success is truly in reach of everyone. It doesn't require perfection and when we despair over our imperfections we close the path to God. Instead, keep striving for the good even when you make mistakes. The grace of God is essential here!

Here are a few suggestions for parents and families:

Cultivate and model good attitudes, virtues, joy, diligence and enthusiasm.

Learn, pray, work and play together each day.

Help each other discover and develop each other's gifts and talents.

Avoid extremes.

Keep your priorities straight.

Work through challenges and problems together.

Keep on trying and loving even when you make mistakes.

Age Quod Agis (#20)

Age Quod Agis is an old Latin proverb that means "Do What You Are Doing". I think this concept is both helpful and encouraging to homeschool moms who are trying to move 15 different ways at once - often at the expense of being effective at accomplishing what truly needs to be done.

Fr. Thomas Dubay explained this concept quite beautifully:

Little children live intensely in the present moment, neither in the past nor in the future. As the French writer La Bruyre once put it, 'Children have neither past nor future, but they have something we seldom have - they rejoice in the present.'

This is the child-like trait which the New Testament would have us imitate. Age quod agis - literally, 'do what you are doing' ... The future does not yet exist and the past is gone forever. What we have is the present moment. By it we are fashioning our eternity.

The Importance of Joy (#19)

According to Cardinal Ratzinger, joy is an important thing in our lives and is often lacking in today's world. He said...

Something I constantly notice is that unembarrassed joy has become rarer. Joy today is increasingly saddled with moral and ideological burdens, so to speak. When someone rejoices, he is afraid of offending against solidarity with the many people who suffer. I don't have any right to rejoice, people think, in a world where there is so much misery, so much injustice...

There is a moral attitude at work here. But this attitude is nonetheless wrong. The loss of joy does not make the world better - and, conversely, refusing joy for the sake of suffering does not help those who suffer. The contrary is true. The world needs people who discover the good, who rejoice in it and thereby derive the impetus and courage to do good.

How Do You Do It All? (#18)

As an experienced homeschool mom, the question I hear most from people is "How Do you do it all?" The answer, quite simply, is "I don't!" I have taken as my own motto this quote from St. Francis of Assisi: "Start by doing what is necessary, then do what is possible and suddenly you are doing the impossible." There's a certain simplicity in this idea that keeps me from being completely overwhelmed with the demands of family life and home education.


It also connects with a helpful quote from Stephen Covey: "You [should] think effectiveness with people and efficiency with things... I see many parents...frustrated in their desire to accomplish a lot because all they seem to do is meet the needs of little children all day. Remember, frustration is a function of our expectations, and our expectations are often a reflection of the social mirror rather than our own values and priorities."

Service (#15)

Sometimes we're too busy with the nuts and bolts of formal education to remember that volunteer work can have a huge impact on education and is even considered in the college application process.

A wealth of opportunities are available and children can be introduced while they are quite young by first serving others in their own family.

Pope Benedict had this to say about works of service:

I wish here to offer a special word of gratitude and appreciation to all those who take part in these activities... For young people, this widespread involvement constitutes a school of life which offers them a formation in solidarity and in readiness to offer others not simply material aid but their very selves. The anti-culture of death...is thus countered by unselfish love which shows itself to be a culture of life by the very willingness to "lose itself" for others. (Deus Caritas Est)

"Know What You Know..." (#14)

According to Archbishop Fulton Sheen, "some of the great geniuses of the past never read half as much as the mediocre geniuses today, but what they read they understood and incorporated into a deeper dimension of knowledge."

Cardinal Newman provides the antidote...

...know what you say you know: know what you know and what you do not know; get one thing well before you go on to a second; try to ascertain what your words mean; when you read a sentence, picture it before your mind as a whole, take in the truth or information contained in it, express it in your own words, and, if it be important, commit it to the faithful memory... This is the way to make progress; this is the way to arrive at results; not to swallow knowledge, but to masticate and digest it. (from The Idea of a University)

Play Time is Essential (#11)

A recent American Academy of Pediatrics study tell us that children's development and important family time are being compromised by today's hectic lifestyle. Modern society tells us that we need to put more and more formal lessons and activities into our children's lives in order for them to succeed. Though it's hard to break from convention, reality tells us otherwise. Family time and unstructured, old-fashioned playtime shouldn't be replaced with the latest educational craze. Give yourself permission to slow down as a family and keep that desire for efficiency in check when it comes to your children. Playtime is essential. Important connections to nature, family and God are made through the informal and natural learning that comes from skipping rope, building sand castles, playing checkers, helping bake muffins, catching fireflies or voluntarily snuggling up with a good story.

Further Information:
"New AAP Report Stresses play for Healthy Development"

The Myth of Perfection (#9)

Insecurities stemming from the plague of perfectionism run rampant in modern society and homeschool parents tend to be hit particularly hard. They are trying to juggle so any things and life is a struggle, so when they hear something positive about another homeschool family, they can easily spin it into an idealistic image of perfection that is impossible to attain. The reality is that everyone struggles. Experienced homeschool families learn to accept that they can't "do it all." They know they can't control everything and willingly place their trust in God. They pray for patience and serenity and develop priorities and enough balance to bring a sense of peace.

Efficiency is a good thing in cars and for washing dishes and getting through a grocery shopping trip. There's no such thing as efficiently raising children. They require plenty of affection, patience and a lot of time.