The most important things I will teach...

 In my last post, I talked about how I as a homeschooling parent will teach my kids to contribute to society. This was based on a question posed by a friend of mine, a question that for some reason really got me thinking about education and parenting in general.

I have been doing some deep thinking about what I hope to accomplish as a parent and what I hope to teach my kids as a home educating mom. Actually, this started with some lighter thinking. About the name of our homeschool. Let me explain.

In the state of Kansas, homeschools are considered non-accredited private schools. If you choose to homeschool your kids, you must register yourself with the state of Kansas by the time your student is 7, or, whenever you withdraw them from public or private school. Lexi will turn 7 in November so I need to register our school by then, which means I need to pick out a name for it. I love naming things so I have been giving this a lot of thought.

My first idea for our school's name was Upward Academy or Upward Sights Academy. I considered these because I feel that the name has two meanings. First, that we should set our sights upward, that is, on God. Second, that we should always strive to improve ourselves or move upward toward the next level. I liked these names, but I couldn't really figure out how to word it to best convey the concept I was going for. I wanted our name to reflect the purpose of our school.

So I took a break from the name game and decided to focus on defining the goals and purpose of our school. What do I hope to teach my kids? What is the most important thing they could learn? There are a million things I'd love for my kids to study, tons of books I'd love to read them, skills I want them to learn.

After a lot of thinking, I've narrowed down my aim as a parent and home educator into three simple skills/abilities that I hope my kids will be able to do when they "graduate":

The ability to think...
To use their brains to analyze situations and life circumstances
To understand how they learn
To thirst for understanding
To gain knowledge and apply
Basically, to use their heads.

The ability to care...
To love others, like Jesus did and commanded us to do
To care about people
To care about our world
To be sensitive to the needs and circumstances of others
In other words, to use their hearts.

To care without thinking can be ineffective. Thinking allows you to create plans to make an impact. If you think without caring, you may make a callous or selfish choice. Care and compassion are needed.

At first, I thought I was done at these two. I want my kids to think and to care. Sounds good. Then I realized I was missing a crucial piece...

The ability to act...
I realized, without this one, the other two don't matter at all.
This is probably the hardest skill to learn- to see what needs to be done and to do it.
To not let fear get in the way of moving forward.
To keep trying when plans fail.
To use their hands, their bodies, to accomplish what their hearts and minds know needs accomplishing.

All three are necessary. The head, heart and hands work together.

If my kids learn to think, to care and to act, I will know my job is done.

So for the name of our school, I'm going to try to incorporate these goals. Maybe we will be TCA Academy, T for think, C for care, A for act. Or maybe not. I'm still working the bugs out. But now that I know what my focus is and have put it into words, I am going to work on putting it into practice each day.


Note: Someone told me that this sounds a lot like the 4-H motto. I did not realize that when I was coming up with it. Maybe we'll join 4-H someday, since our priorities seem to align ;)

Society needs ya

Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6

Recently, a friend of mine posted a question on Facebook asking myself and other homeschooling parents how we approach selecting curricula and teaching our children how to contribute to society. It prompted an interesting discussion, and, for some reason, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I realized I had a lot to say about these topics, so I decided to write about it, a little at a time.

Thanks for the inspiration, Polly!

Original Question: How do you teach your children to be contributing members of society?

How does anyone teach anyone anything?  Whoa. Actually, I don't want to dive into that right now. Not at that level. But how do we parents, homeschooling or not, teach our kids important things? I'd say the number one way is by modeling. If I want my kids to see what it means to contribute to society, I should contribute to society. If I want my kids to be generous, I should be generous. If I want my kids to be hard workers, I should show them how I work hard. If I want them to know the importance of voting, I should vote, and explain why I do so. Actions speak louder than words. Lead by example. Insert a whole lot of other maxims in here. Our kids are constantly watching us and learning from us, which is kind of scary and off-color sometimes, at least in my house. But it's important to remember that.

When I saw this question was being posed to homeschooling families, it made me wonder about how homeschooling families might differ from public schooling families in regard to this question. Is there really much of a difference? I want to ask, how do public schools teach kids to be contributing members of society? So if anyone would like to share their feelings on that, please do! I'd love your input!

The main difference I suppose is that homeschooled kids spend the majority of their time with their families rather than at school. So it becomes our responsibility to teach them to become contributing members of society. We don't do this by taking extra time out of the day to have, "Contributing to Society 101" class. I think it is something our children learn by watching us, as I mentioned before, and through daily experiences and conversations as we do life together.

I think in order to best explain this, there's another question that needs answering. 

Follow up question: What does it mean to be a contributing member of society?

This wasn't one of the original questions, but the previous question made me think: what does it mean to be a contributing member of society? Well, I think it looks different for everyone but basically I believe it means to use your specific talents and circumstances to make a positive difference to those within your sphere of influence. 

I am the only mom my kids have. If I stopped being their mom, no one would pick up the slack and cover for me. Because of this, I feel that I need to make their upbringing one of my top priorities right now since it is a job that I alone can do with the amount of love and devotion that I (hopefully) bring to it each day. So right now, my family is my sphere of influence and I am trying to make a positive difference to them, hoping that they, in turn, will make a positive difference to others.  As my children grow and become less dependent upon me, I imagine my focus will broaden. Who knows what I will do some day. Right now, I'm focusing on my family.

While I focus on raising my family, I am growing and developing as a person. I am learning what skills I have and how I can use them to help others. I am modeling to my children how to use what they have to make an impact. I am teaching them to care about others. Our kids know that our family sponsors two children in other countries. They know that I vote. They know that we recycle as much as we can. We talk daily about how people are more important than things, and how our behavior should reflect that. They know that I am doing my best to educate them because education is important. My kids see me helping out at church. I used to work with the children and then discovered I enjoyed working with the youth group. I just began mentoring a youth who is going to be confirmed this spring. In fact, today she told me about two ways she enjoys serving others and I was really proud to hear that she has found ways to serve that are dear to her heart and that use her strengths.

I see signs that my girls are already learning about how to contribute to others. They draw pictures to send to our sponsored kids and remind me to pray for them. They try to share what they have with others when the opportunity arises. The other day, Lydia (age 3 1/3) told me that she wanted to give some of her toys to kids who don't have many toys. Even though she had a hard time deciding which toys to give, I was really touched by her generosity at such a tender age. They want to help others. They aren't perfect, but there is still plenty of time to continue training them. As they get older, I hope to help them find different ways to use their gifts to help others.

I feel like developing our talents and using them for the good of ourselves and others is a lifelong process. This is because it not only takes time to figure out what our gifts are and learn how to use them, but we also have different gifts that we use at different points in our lives. It's important for all of us to discover what our strengths are and to put them to good use. I believe that God made us all very different, and for good reason. There's a lot of work to be done here on Earth and there are a lot of different and important jobs to do.  We aren't all going to be good at all of them. But if we all take the time to figure out what we are good at and then DO it, we as individuals will grow and our society will benefit.

This is something I am still working at. I know that teaching is one of the gifts I have and am using daily with my girls. I thoroughly enjoy researching curriculum, writing lesson plans and watching the girls learn. I think that writing is another gift I have, but I am still working out how to best use it. And as simple as it sounds, sometimes I think I am just meant to make people laugh to make life a little more lighthearted.

I would not be a good daycare teacher for babies and toddlers. I don't have the patience to spend all day with a herd of nonspeaking people wearing diapers. But I have friends who work wonders with little people.

I would make a terrible nurse. Bodily functions are not my favorite and when it comes to human anatomy, I'm straight up ignorant.  But I've got friends who are smart, really nurturing and take great care of those in their care.

I really hate the world of insurance. It's confusing as crap and frustrates me to no end. I also think it is boring, to be honest. But my dad, brother and husband have a knack for it and I am glad, because people like them help people like me wade through that crazy stuff to make good choices and protect my family.

We've all got different gifts and talents to put to use to make this world a better place. One of my jobs as a parent is to help my kids figure out where they fit into society and how they make an impact. One of your jobs as a person is to do the same for yourself.

So, what's your thing? How are you giving back? Because society needs ya.