I know this is a commercial, but they make an awesome point about teamwork and the power of cooperation. According to Dr Leonard Sax, for boys especially, working as a team towards a common goal is a great motivating factor towards learning. You can find out more in his books, Why Gender Matters and Boys Adrift.
Sometimes I feel like giving up; and I’ve barely just started. Over the past two weeks, I’ve encountered some interesting comments about my desire to homeschool. The Jibbers and I have been visiting friends and relatives in Toronto, and it’s usually the relatives who can’t quite get their heads around the idea that the Jibbers deserves something better than sending him to a stranger to teach him. He needs the love and nurturing and attention that only his parents can give. While many of the comments are well-meaning and curious, sometimes they just fall painfully on my own doubts about my ability to do this.
“Homeschooling is easy when there is just one.”
“But what about friends?”
“He’s a boy; he needs more than just his mother.”
“So when is he going to learn his letters and numbers?”
“He’s too smart to be homeschooled.”
That last one really hit a little too close to home. Perhaps through this endeavour I may mess him up. Maybe he needs to be doing all things that all the other kids are doing at all the ‘right’ ages.
And then I was blessed with a chance meeting of not one, but two veteran homeschooling mums. And it was everything I needed to hear to reassure me that what I am doing is on the right track. The first mum has two children, both almost in their teens, both homeschooled for much of their educational life. The second mum is the mother of five children, the first who is about to apply to university at sixteen years of age and the last a recent graduate of potty-training academy. All five of her children have been homeschooled, unschooled and everything in between. Their attitude and advice was just awesome and so timely.
“Unschooling worked for us at that time, now we have a more rigorous schedule. Do what works for you.”
“Go with your gut and trust yourself and your child.”
“Enjoy the journey, especially now when academics aren’t the big thing, and the Jibbers is learning through play.”
“Don’t let it stress you out.”
“Pray. A lot.”
“Connect with other homeschooling mums even if it’s just once a month.”
“My eldest learned to read at about 5-6 years old. My second one didn’t want to read, would cry and then within a week, when he was ready at 9 years old went from three-letter words to a novel. Now he’s the most voracious reader in the entire house and is writing his own novel.”
This chance meeting made me feel confident and reassured that even though this is not the path that many have taken, it is the path that a lot have taken. My fears, doubts and uncertainties are normal, but to trust in God, believe in my abilities, and love my child enough to know that this is right for him.
It is because he is so smart, rambunctious, mischievous, creative and funny that homeschooling is right for him, and me and us as a family.
“And so we discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by listening to words, but in virture of experiences in which the child acts on his environment. The teacher’s task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child.”
Maria Montessori in The Absorbent Mind, 1967
Image source can be found here.
Giving this the publicity it deserves. This is what we want for our children: to be good people who help others, even if it means sometimes coming at a severe sacrifice of their own goals, achievements and success. Original story and image can be found here.
“Fernández Anaya quickly caught up with him, but instead of exploiting Mutai’s mistake to speed past and claim an unlikely victory, he stayed behind and, using gestures, guided the Kenyan to the line and let him cross first.
“Ivan Fernandez Anaya, a Basque runner of 24 years who is considered an athlete with a big future (champion of Spain of 5,000 meters in promise category two years ago) said after the test:
But even if they had told me that winning would have earned me a place in the Spanish team for the European championships, I wouldn’t have done it either. I also think that I have earned more of a name having done what I did than if I had won. And that is very important, because today, with the way things are in all circles, in soccer, in society, in politics, where it seems anything goes, a gesture of honesty goes down well.
“He said at the beginning: unfortunately, very little has been said of the gesture. And it’s a shame. In my opinion, it would be nice to explain to children, so they do not think that sport is only what they see on TV: violent kicks in abundance, posh statements, fingers in the eyes of the enemy.”
Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve.You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.
– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.“The Drum Major Instinct”Delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, February 4, 1968
“In this 12-minute video, Canadian Golden Rule activist – Paul McKenna – outlines the basic tenets of the Golden Rule. McKenna demonstrates how the Golden Rule can be applied in numerous realms including social justice, multiculturalism and interfaith dialogue.”
Video found through this awesome initiative by Dr Karen Armstrong, Charter for Compassion.
Here is a simply awesome image by Laconic History Of The World: Martin Elmer Designs Typographical Map Using Countries’ Wikipedia Words. I found this image so telling on how we see the world, and how our perspectives are shaped and formed.
Image source found here.
“Martin Elmer, a Wisconsin-based cartographer and graphic designer, has created a typographical map of the world featuring the most-used word in each country’s Wikipedia history page. According to MapHugger, Elmer’s blog, the map was created by running the countries’ “History Of” pages through a word cloud, selecting the most common descriptive word (no “the” or “and”), and fitting it into each country’s borders.
Titled “Laconic History of The World,” the map represents 176 different countries and reveals some interesting, if not startling, aspects of our global history. A companion reader compiled by Elmer details the following tidbits, among others:
“Because there is a link between employee morale and employee efficacy, our children are not in fact being put first; they are being cheated. If we care about the public good, teachers must be respected and compensated fairly to attract the best and brightest. This bill will have a devastating effect on public schools. With the decimation of school board budgets and the possibility of formalized (e.g., work to rule) or individual decisions not to perform or coach extra-curricular activities, parents who can afford it may pull their kids out of the public system, lowering enrolment and teacher employment.”
Read the full post explaining Ontario’s Putting Student’s First Act.
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