Truth About Mom
“Plan primarily based on the truth about Mom, playing to my strengths, secondarily on the needs of the family as a whole, thirdly on the individual needs of each child, playing to their strengths. “
The above was taken from an old (now outdated) post by my friend, Angie, on the Principles of Happy Home-Educating Moms.
Many of the principles really resonated with me, but this one did especially so. How often do we feel guilty because we find ourselves unable to cater our curriculum to the interests of each of our individual children? I have found myself in that position many times. I’ve even perpetuated the feeling among other homeschooling moms, I’m sure.
Isn’t life interesting?
We find ourselves growing, changing, doing things new ways, being enlivened by different ideas.
I have spent a lot of time (too much, actually) thinking about my children’s learning styles. I’ve pondered how to meet their unique needs and provide them with learning opportunities based on their own interests.
It never occurred to me, during all that reading and pondering, that I just might burn out if I didn’t consider my own personality and my own teaching style into the whole equation.
So… what’s the truth about Mom?
Well, for better or for worse, I’ll tell you what’s true about me. These are not all wonderful-and-inspiring-things. But they are true.
It is with great humility, for example, that I admit my own love for checklists. Before last spring, I had never before employed checklists in our learning. In my mind, checklists belonged to a fill-the-bucket mentality, and even though I use checklists extensively in almost every other facet of my life, I hadn’t allowed myself to use them when curriculum planning.
Last spring, however, I decided to let them have a place in our daily learning. Immediately I saw a difference, and checklists have proven themselves to be a valuable asset to our learning here. We thrive using them. They provide all of us with a visible track of progress.
Recognizing this “truth about Mom” and then using it for good in our home learning has been a blessing.
The idea is to look ourselves squarely in the eye- decide what is true about how we operate best, and then base our homeschools on those truths, playing to our strengths and providing for our weaknesses. The result? The children benefit tremendously, regardless of their unique learning styles.
In light of the checklist success, I decided to sit a spell and consider other truths about myself that may bear fruit in our home learning. I’m sure there are more, but this list is what I came up with right off the bat.
The Truth About Me
- I love reading aloud. It is my favorite thing to do with the kids.
- I have the most energy in the morning, and very little by mid-afternoon.
- In general, I plan ahead and write everything down. Our calendar, our menu, our homemaking routine, what we need at the store, what I want to tell my friend when I call her… everything. (Side note: I don’t usually let myself do this with our homeschool. Isn’t that ridiculous? I always feel guilty when I do. Maybe I’ve read too many unschooling books. Anyway, this kind of thing is precisely why I think acknowledging these truths about myself is a good idea!)
- I detest “pea and stick” work (making salt dough maps, building pyramids with sugar cubes, creating a diorama- that kind of thing). Such projects seem to me like a lot of fuss for minimal learning value.
- I also detest busywork.
- I enjoy teaching life skills. I’d rather teach my kids how to bake a cake than how to make a paper bag puppet.
- I feel most productive when checking off lists. I am encouraged to continue when I can see quantifiable results.
- I need certain times of day blocked out for school time (or chore time, or prayer time, etc) to ensure that such activities happen every day. Otherwise I am easily distracted and tend to lack necessary self-discipline.
- I am inspired by beauty. Making it beautiful (a checklist, a notebook, a space in my home) ensures that I will be much happier working with it.
- I have a tendency to start strong and then fizzle. This means I must have good habits in place to help carry me through when I’m feeling less enthusiastic.
So… what’s true about YOU? How will acknowledging it make a difference in your plans for next year?
Wow Sarah! I love this post. Thank-you again, you’ll probably see me say that a million more times as I discover the vast array of your work. Your thoughts are absolutely excellent and ring true I’m sure for many parents out there who are in the adventure of homeschooling. I loved the honesty which you conveyed in this post and definitely have taken to heart your words on considering who I am as a parent, strengths and weaknesses together, in how I will continue to evolve and put together a family culture and education for my children in the home. I can relate on many levels on ideas that you shared. Blessings for your continued journey.
love this! Thank you <3
Wow, this is an angle I never really thought of! I think that I’ve been taught to think that children come first to such an extent that it is detrimental to them through me. If God has designed me in a certain way, I should work with it, not against it! I plan to sit and really think about this over the weekend, as I try to get ready to go full force after Christmas again!
That quote just became my facebook status. I don’t homeschool (except sporadic Spanish, Sign and summer review) but I think that applies to EVERYTHING we do as parent.
just read this post of yours and it is like reading my own journal entries this past month!! off to share it with my husband :)
Oh my goodness, how I could have written this myself (almost – except for the good-at-planning part). So much of what you say makes sense to me, and I’m so grateful for having been referred to this post. Oh how I’ve been struggling with guilt and thoughts of failure and discouragement! Thank you for writing this.
I agree on the “pea and stick” thing! And I’m always wondering afterwards, “Now what do I do with this? Where do I put this in our already crowded home?”
One thing about myself that I’ve had to finally admit is… I’m not a very good teacher. I’m not verbally nimble and don’t express myself well orally. I’m an intelligent woman and received an excellent Catholic college education, but that did not overcome this defect. I can plan a good curriculum and choose excellent books which I love to read aloud. And my verbal deficiency makes me frustrated and often impatient and critical with my students. So I’ve finally tailored my curriculum to minimal verbal instruction from me and relied more on CD’s, independent learning, written instruction and much help from my verbally gifted husband.
Wow. This whole list is true for me too. I’d like to think more about this.
I gave you an award!
Thanks for the refection challenge Sarah,
http://sevenlittleaustralians.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-truth-about-mum-and-planning.html
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Sarah – rereading this and loving it again. I share SO much of this – down to the “list for things to tell my friend” but feel guilty to do that for school. Why? Why do we think the skills of others are better than ours because they are different? Thank you so much for shouting this out so we can all stop feeling guilty about those salt dough maps! lol
No need to print this one if you don’t want to – just wanted to say thanks for this great thing you’ve written!
Truth about self as an instructor is, in my mind, paramount to being a Master Teacher. It’s more difficult than it sounds, as you eloquently say here in your post.
The hardest part for me is taking time to think about it, then apply it. The reflection time is powerful, but is difficult to come by – especially for someone like me who is ‘go go go’.
Truth about me as an instructor/person? I rarely do the same exact thing twice – I like to tweak things and find the joy of them in the moment. I like to ride the limbo line between being in creative disarray and OCD organized. I’m always late for things – and have to plan in transition time and “extra” time when planning lessons to account for the ‘extra’ enjoyment, conversation, exploration I’ll inevitably be drawn to do. I like to have a purpose. A real one. I like ephemeral art (dance being my biggest passion – is totally ephemeral) – and thus the work in my classroom is often in the process, not the product. (which some parents find difficult) There’s more – but I’m hogging your comment section, so I’ll stop. :)
Oh Sarah, you are finally getting it and putting it down on Virtual Paper in such a glorious way. After five years of homeschooling, I finally admitted last year that I am a box checker. Yes, that is right. This CM momma loves to check those boxes! I am also a planner. I like to see it up on the screen and printed out on paper. Even if it does not happen that way. Once I gave in to a more organized, relaxed schedule our learning year just flowed. You are so smart to have this knowledge early in. I hear it can take 12 years to grasp! :) Blessings and a big thank you for the post. I am going to reflect more about “ME” next week as I begin our planning.
“I’d rather teach my kids how to bake a cake than how to make a paper bag puppet.” Brilliant. In acknowledging this, you’ve actually just soothed away all my personal guilt for not planning a weekly craft for my girls!
Truth be told, I’ve not spent any time making learning plans for this year. Not. at. all. One thing I have done is spent entirely too much time reading other people’s plans and have bookmarked more blogs and forum threads than I will actually, really, in all seriousness, ever read (but being truthful about myself, I won’t delete them, they are there as a comfortable safety net while I figure out life as it is today, this day). Truth about myself: I use a ridiculous amount of Post-Its to organize my life… and it works wonderously beautiful and I will never again force myself to make a homemaking notebook.
Yes! I finally realized about a year ago that MY needs, personality, life experience, needed to be taken into account as much as the children’s needs. That’s why I’ve found myself shifting more and more from classical to CM to unschooling with CM “sensibilities” ;-). I like checklists but I like them to be open-ended if that makes any sense. :-) As mothers we really need to learn to take the time to look inward and reflect on the past day, week, month, semester etc. I’m going to use this post as inspiration to hammer out my needs for homeschooling. I’ve had them in my head, it’s time to blog about it so I can solidify them.
bookmarking this one…inspiring! thank you :)
Excellent stuff Sarah – As for me, I need a plan, a “mapped out, weekly checklist with lots of books and some wiggleroom plan”. This year I’m letting a curriculum provider do the curricula planning work (curious? It’s not SL – can you guess? and do you want my SL? lol) and I’m going to focus on laying out my own plan of making home/school flow smoothly, not just fly by the seat of my pants, which I hate.
OH! And you forgot something about yourself – that you are a caring, loving Mom dedicated to providing a nurturing and lovely environment for your family. Can’t forget that! ;)
Sarah, this is a great list and can relate to so many things. Ditto on the “pea and stick” and life skills. I don’t do crafty too much but cooking and baking is a different story. My oldest loves a checklist and I am a planner, but right now I have no inspiration or desire to plan for fall….Also, I would rather read to my kids than just about anything else!! Thanks for this!!
This is so interesting, Sarah. I like following your personal evolution in understanding your schooling philosophy! The mother (teacher) is such an important role in the family dynamic. I tried to begin exploring that in a post a while back: http://soulsarefed.blogspot.com/2010/05/family-personality-learning-styles-and.html but I didn’t emphasize it very much. It’s so important to play to our strengths, as well as our children’s. On the flip side, recently someone gave me more food for thought regarding “overcoming shortcomings” in personal learning styles. So I am chewing on that too. Thanks for a great post!
Sarah, just before I read this I told my husband that today I was going to begin planning the next homeschool year. What a timely piece!! My truth: I need a plan mapped out in advance. There are certain things that I think are important to learn that others do not. I too like checklists. They keep me on track and offer a sense of accomplishment. I like to get things done in the morning too. Afternoons will be for play. Thanks again for this awesome reminder. M
By far absolutely the BEST homeschool planning post I have read this year — and I have read probably far too many (one of my truths — I like to plan). This is exactly why we will not be unschooling. I am not a fly by the seat of your pants kind of girl. Going to try to carve out some time this week to write up my truths. Thanks for the inspiration.
We are sisters separated by an ocean. Wow I could have written this post , nearly word for word!!! Dh and I admitted this need a few years back, I must be inspired in my teaching or it doesn’t work, if dh was the main teacher he would have a different approach to me, both good, just different. But I really think the teacher’s enthusiasm is catching (mostly;)
I can feel a post coming….You have inspired me to write again, for so long I’ve been in stalemate. Thank you:)(