When the Going Gets Tough...

I'm sure we've all found ourselves in situations beyond our control that are surprising, frustrating, discouraging and more.  I've been processing this for myself as I walk through an unexpected situation, and I'm trying to figure out how to navigate it. (I know you're all thinking right now this is going to be about coronavirus. It's not at all...)

After spending seven significantly lonely years in India, finding tight, close-knit community was really important to us when we returned. I worked hard the first couple of years here in the US to identify other people, specifically homeschoolers, looking for that. And then I worked really hard to build a homeschool community.  We started with about six families, and a core group of six fourth graders starting out with ancient history projects, Latin for Children A and Writing & Rhetoric together.  

That was five years ago.  We've been meeting for five years!  Those little fourth graders are finishing middle school and heading off into high school in just a few months.  My end-vision for my group was to have a deeply connected group of students and moms to study with in high school. I wanted the kids to have known each other long, be comfortable disagreeing, talk about books and ideas, and have built a culture of trust and transparency, of challenge and delight in stories and ideas and faith.  

But this past year, it's all fallen apart.  It probably started coming apart at the seams last year or the year before, but it's all officially finished at the end of this year.  In the fall, my two children will be the only two kids in that group that are still homeschooling. And it's left me grieving. 

I know and trust that all these moms are doing what's best and right for their kids in their specific situations.  I don't blame any of them. All of that is totally out of my control. But it doesn't make it any less painful to have poured so much time and energy into relationships that are now going to drastically change because the nature of their education is changing, and ours isn't.  It doesn't hurt any less to find ourselves alone. It doesn't make it any less real that at this point, going into high school credits and studies, pretty much everyone else who is homeschooling has found their group, their people, their plan, and we are kinda left with nothing to show for the last five years of "community building."  

We now have no community.  What do I do now?   

I've spent a lot of time this spring contemplating and evaluating what I really believe about homeschooling. Do I really believe in the mentor model of education? Do I really believe that I can provide my kids with the proper resources, the proper accountability, and the proper instruction and assessment to keep doing this through high school? Do I still believe that's best now that we're here? 

For the first time this year, my older two kids have taken an informal online class. I traded off with another homeschool mom: she taught the five common topics of argumentation, I taught Latin.  I definitely got the better end of this deal, because she was a phenomenal teacher, had a lot more students than I did, and just overall provided them with a great experience and drastically grew their reasoning and language skills this year.  I'm so thankful for her time, knowledge, and skill. 

But because I wasn't teaching, I didn't read their books or sit in on their class. I am uneducated on the five common topics, and I'm out of the conversation now. I can't ask them to use those tools in their studies, work at practicing what they learned in their writing the next couple of years, review or assess how well they're applying what they learned.  Because I don't know it. And I realized that for the few things that a liberal arts education is founded on, I, as their mom and primary mentor/tutor, need to be involved in their core studies.  That doesn't mean I can't or shouldn't outsource some things. It just means I can't check out totally when I do, especially if it's a core skill and if I don't know it myself. I still need to read the book and learn it. I still need to know what they're learning so I can help them apply it across their curricula. 

I realized, I do totally believe in a mentor model of education. I'm not at a place in my own self-education that I can afford to hand off their core skills to someone else, because I need to study and learn them too. I do believe that if I'm getting a liberal arts education focused on the right things, we can do it (we: Dad, Mom, kids, with Jesus as our Logos!) Finding myself as the only one of my group left homeschooling has made me question much. Am I crazy? But just like everyone else in my group, I'm choosing the right thing for us. I'm still more than bummed that there's no one else choosing the same thing.  That's beyond my control. What's not beyond my control is how I respond when the going gets tough. 

All this has made me dig deep and think about what we really truly need. In some ways, our community was taking a toll on us by inserting things we didn't need into our schedule. Community inevitably requires compromise, and that's as it should be.  With that gone, I'm going to be able to be very specific with what I seek out or offer for other people to join us in doing.  I've done a lot of thinking on how to determine what to outsource and why, which I will outline in a later post.  For now, we're going to be focusing on seeking community around a book list for next year, and that's it. Reading books together is the most important thing to me. It's so much better than reading them on our own. Getting other people's perspectives is challenging, affirming, and enriching, and talking about the ideas in books (especially learning to disagree) is one of the most valuable experiences I can give them.  So I'll be offering a literature class again next year. This will be the first time in three years I'm not teaching at least three classes. That in itself will be restful and is pretty exciting for me! 

I know that homeschooling through high school is not for everyone. My recent life experience has more than taught me that, if I didn't know it already.  If you're on the fence or wondering if you can do it, I can't answer that question for you. But it's worth considering for several reasons.  Here's my top reasons I'm willing to take the risk to keep homeschooling high school. 

1. Keeping spiritual and academic lives married to each other.  I heard Andrew Kern say in his Ask Andrew podcast that if you take the academic branch of the tree and chop it off, it might still look green and good for awhile, but it eventually it turns to rot. It's important to note here that the academic life is just one branch of the tree. He didn't say this, but I really see the spiritual life of the child as the roots and trunk of the tree.  But secular academics does not recognize there are roots, and can treat the academic branch as the trunk.  Maintaining academic discipline as an outflow of spiritual life and discipline is important to us. So keeping the two in proper relationship with each other and with Jesus Christ as the main central truth that is taught and allowing every idea we consider to flow out of His truth is best done through home school for us. 

2.  Relationships are essential to us.  I can look back on my life and recognize that from the age of 5, I spent the majority of my waking hours with strangers, not with my parents and siblings.  For me, this really affected the quality and trust in the relationships in my home. I don't really know my siblings very well. We aren't at all close. I love how close my kids are. I love how they really know each other. I love knowing them and being known by them.  Outsourcing half or more of their education writes the rest of out of most of their life experiences.  I don't want that for any of us. Yes, I realize I have to let them go at some point. Believe me, I want to let them go at the right time! (International travel: Paul and I are coming for you at that point!)  But I also want to enjoy building family culture every minute we're able to.  Our relational rootedness being so important is another thing best achieved for us by holding on to the bulk of their instruction through high school. 

3.  On a more pragmatic note: I've worked really hard and researched copiously to find programs that will make this possible.  There are certain areas that I *want* to dig into to know for myself in order to teach them. In order to do that, I've also found other programs that provide enough support and DVD instruction that I can learn alongside them without a ton of prep and still assess how they're doing. Now that I'm not formally teaching any classes except literature, we can learn history, Latin, logic, and writing together on our own schedule.  My time will be my own again. Finding the right programs makes me feel confident to keep going. One year at a time!

I want to be careful to say that these priorities are not unique to homeschool families. Most Christian families share these priorities and values. Homeschooling is NOT the only way to achieve them, NOT the best way to achieve them for everyone.  It is for us and our family  I know intentional, hard-working Christian parents doing a smashing job of this while harnessing public schools. I know homeschooling families struggling with their kid's discipleship.  There is no formula. It's about balance. It's so personal. It's so difficult.  Each family has to figure out how best to keep to their principles and achieve their goals for their family and their kids. 

I've got a long list of posts coming up on thinking through high school and what a liberal arts high school course could look like. I've been learning a LOT about how simple, yet deep and rich it can be, and I'm really looking forward to walking these ancient roads with my kids!