Jul. 6, 2007 - TJEd - Look and look again...
My mind is growing and expanding so much right now! I'm thoroughly enjoying a bunch of TJEd cd's I had purchased from The American Youth Leadership Institute, and I'm reading Ready for Responsibility by Dr. Bob Barnes.
A main precept of TJEd is the laying down of the foundation, the Core Phase. In the Core Phase one learns the basics, right from wrong, good from bad, true from false. Here is a direct quote from TJEd written by Oliver DeMille, to further shed light on what I'm trying to accomplish:
- Critical lessons of life are learned and assumptions are made that define the individual's concept of self, family, and the beginnings of their broader worldview. During this phase attention should be given above all to the nurture of a happy, interactive, confident child through the lessons that occur naturally during work and play in the family setting. Any programming of learning which does not fit this description can imperil the critical lessons to be learned in this phase. Such lessons are often extremely difficult to assimilate as effectively later.
- ...much harm is done to the child who feels pressured to excel, is labeled "slow," or in any way is made to feel "unacceptable" during this phase, especially in relation to academic performance. A child who plays at and practices learning throughout the Core Phase will approach skills acquisition at the self-appropriate time and pace with relish and self-confidence as her aptitude increases and the meaning of the tasks gains context through her experiences. The biggest need during this phase - for all children - is the rich learning environment and family culture of self-education that are inherent in the TJEd model home.
Wow, I just love that. And this just ties in so well with what I've read so far in Ready for Responsibility. As a society, we subcontract our kids out to teachers, to coaches, to others who we feel are more skilled, more educated, more xyz than we are. Nothing is further from the Truth. God gave us our children, HE purposefully placed them in our homes, knowing that we have what it takes to help our children bear fruit with their own lives. We have had that confidence stripped from us by the powers that be and we have to reclaim it. And another thing I've realized as I backtrack and work through my own Core phase skills (that I never developed as a child) and as I read Ready for Responsibility, is the wonderful overlap of these two forces, they both are helping me so much formulate a plan, see the relevance in everything, see how important every day life skills are, how teaching our children to be responsible, teaching them skills that will make them able entrepreneurs, great spouses, great friends, moral Christians, will give my children the tools to be successful in their own lives. Unfortunately so many of these skills are really not taught by parents nowadays, they are farmed out to Sunday School teachers, to everyone else but the parents, and we wonder why our kids aren't growing up with the values we'd like them to have (could it be we've never shown them what we value?) or maybe we wonder why its such a struggle as an adult as we have to now try to grow in ways that we should have grown in years ago. I now see how little I was actually taught, I now see why I had such a hard transition to motherhood, being the caretaker of a home, meal planning, soooooooo many things I was never taught. I have lots of growing to do!
I just have to share this little snippet (that I'm roughly paraphrasing, please forgive me) from the TJEd 2005 Conference cd I'm listening to (again and again). Ann Meeks gives a wonderful talk titled "Look and Look Again" and in that talk she discusses how we see but don't really see. How a man looked at a fish again and again for three days, and each time he looked at it he thought he saw all there was to see on that fish, BUT each time he looked again, he actually did find more and more things to 'see' on that fish. She says that is true w/ homeschooling. We may think we are off the conveyor belt of public school education, we may think we understand a homeschooling philosophy, but the more we look at it, the more we will in fact see (and understand).
Ann ends her talk with a wonderful story from E. T. Sullivan (I think that's whom she said, I'll look it up). "When God wants a great work done in the world, He goes about it in an unusual way. He does not stir up earthquakes, or send down thunderbolts, instead He has a baby born. Perhaps to an obscure mother, in a simple home, then God puts an idea into the mother's heart and she puts it into the baby's mind. And then God waits. The greatest forces in this world are not earthquakes. Or thunderbolts. The greatest forces in this world are babies." And this is where Ann adds to it and winds down her talk: "My friends, I feel like an obscure mother, in a simple home, but I know God has put something into my heart, and I'm going to do everything in my power to put it into my children's minds. I know they were born to lead. I know I was born to lead. And I know you were born to lead. Getting a Thomas Jefferson education is not easy, in fact its been one of the hardest things I have ever done and am continuing to do on a daily basis. Though it is not easy, it is SIMPLE if you are looking through the right lenses. What is distorting your view? Please look, and look again."
Wow. She put into words so much what I've been thinking and feeling. I think all of us, to lesser and greater degrees, look at our children through our own (often distorted) lenses, our own experiences, and while that can be helpful, oftentimes it is not. We need to reach beyond our own life experiences and look to God, He has put wonderful things in us that we have never tapped into, and He has put wonderful things in our children that they will never tap into if we do not challenge ourselves to grow and to be open to new ideas. Trust in Him. Have Faith. Recreating public school in my home is not an option for me. What is not an option for you? Where do you stand? What do you see?
Look and look again.
Blessings,
Ginnie
