Create Your Own Literature Class

So, it looks like I'm going to be teaching Freshman English this fall. And, of course, my mind is already running with the possibilities. (I remember one night, when I had my first baby in the bassinet beside me and had not taught for two or three years and had no prospects of teaching for quite a while, I woke up and had an idea for a poetry unit. I stayed awake for a couple of hours mentally planning a poetry unit for Juniors. Never used it -- don't remember it now -- but it was an awesome unit. This is what I do.)

But some questions have come to mind as well, and I would be curious how my readers would answer them, so here goes:

1) What should we read? The class is "World Literature I", to coincide with the World History class their taking at the same time, so we're reading literature NOT written by Americans (that's for later) written from the beginning of history to around the time of the American Revolution. (Yes, that's a huge amount of history to cover in one year . . . I don't have any say in the history curriculum.)

And realistically, it's not actually "World" Literature. It's more "Western Civilization" Literature. Because no, we probably won't get to anything written in Africa, Asia, or South America during that time period. Not that such literature wouldn't be of value to read -- we simply don't have a lot of time.

So, given those parameters, what goes on the reading list? I skimmed the table of contents of a few college level world literature books just to get authors and titles in my head and see what stood out as "one can't graduate from high school without reading this" material. And there was far too much. We have to read a Greek play, yes? And some Homer. And something from the Canterbury Tales. And something from Dickens, certainly. A King Arthur something. What about poetry? Which poets are a must?

And Shakespeare! Shakespeare falls into this time period. When I ask myself, which Shakespeare plays is it necessary that every person with a high school diploma must read, my list is far too long.  Romeo and Juliet . . . Julius Caesar . . . Macbeth . . . Hamlet . . . A Midsummer's Night's Dream . . . Taming of the Shrew . . . (okay, the last one isn't a must except I just love it, and you have to get in some comedy). That's a year's worth of study right there! Sigh.

2) How much of each piece do we read? My first year of teaching, we were required to cover The Scarlet Letter, and I found that every other Junior English teacher in my school (and there were a few -- it was a big school) only had the kids read excerpts. They summarized many chapters for them and had them read the crucial chapters. I was stunned; I'm not sure it had ever occurred to me before that one could read a book that way, much less teach it in English class that way. But, frankly, it made a lot of sense there. We simply didn't have time to cover everything we were required to cover, and there are parts of The Scarlet Letter that really drag, after all.

But this fall, I get to determine my list of what I'm required to cover. (Well, for the most part.) So, the question is, do we read more material but read some of it in excerpts so they get at least an exposure to the piece, the author, the "type" . . . or do we read less material so we can read each piece thoroughly and deeply?

This depends, of course, on my goals for the course -- so that is the real question here. Is my goal that each student leave with a big overview of the vast library of literature the world produced in that huge swath of time? Is my goal that they learn to read any piece of literature thoughtfully and analytically? Is it my goal that they enjoy reading serious literature enough to want to read more for the rest of their lives? Is my goal that they find meaning in every piece we read that can make a difference in their lives now?

Yes. Simplistic answer, but ALL of those are my goals. And that's the problem.

So, anyway . . . I'd love to hear some perspective from the rest of you. Most of you are grown now, I believe. Looking back, what did you learn in high school literature classes that really made a difference to you today? Or what do you wish now you had learned? I'd really love to know.

Oo! Oo! I'm All Bubbly Just Thinking About It!

I could not go to sleep last night. It wasn't pity for the Broncos or elation for the Seahawks that delayed my repose (although you can't help but feel sorry for poor Payton -- wow, that was a painful trouncing). It was the prospect of a new English teaching position this fall.

Nothing certain yet -- I just had a casual talk with the principal about the matter with further talk on the way. But already my brain started cranking. A brand new class! Starting from scratch! Oh, the thrill of it all!  A chance to build a curriculum and a system to be whatever I want it to be.

What do I want it to be?

Well, I'd start with the writing curriculum, and fortunately, these kids already have a base in IEW (Institute for Excellence in Writing) training. IEW is great; it's kind of like running drills in basketball practice, or painting the classics by number, or acting through strict imitation. It teaches you the basics of what the deed looks like and FEELS like when done well to train that feeling into your bones.

But by 9th grade, it's time, I think, to step beyond the drills and into the real game of writing where those skills are applied and modified to fit the situation, or writing assignment, at hand. I think it's time to introduce 6-Trait Writing Analysis. (Oooh!  Ahhh!) Papers will be evaluated according to the 6-traits of excellent writing: Ideas and Content, Organization, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, Grammar and Mechanics, and Voice. (Is anyone else tingly? I'm tingly. Yes, I'm an English geek, and the idea of 6-Trait Writing Analysis makes me tingly!)

Also, since writing is a skill applied to information that is gleaned elsewhere, I would want to work together with the content area teachers (History, Science, Bible and Literature -- though that last one might be me also). I'd want to discuss with them short writing assignments (paragraphs) that they could assign over their topics which we could discuss in writing class. And the other teachers and I can grade them together -- they grade Ideas and Content, I grade the rest.

In addition, I'd want to have some regular routines dealing just with words and language and the fun and beauty of them. Like . . . one vocabulary word a week (not the ten a week my eldest is trudging through in AP English only to forget the minute the quiz is over). One good quality, practical word a week that we define, discuss the usage of, seek to plug into our conversations (with quickie rewards for that -- toss them a piece of taffy?), bonus points for using them in papers . . . and a brief "quiz" or activity every Friday over all the year's words to ensure none of them are forgotten.  To ensure mastery. If high school students master thirty new high-quality, useful, practical words a year that actually become a part of their active vocabulary and alter the way they think as well as write, that would be a great accomplishment right there. Wouldn't it? Wouldn't it be awesome?  (Pant, pant.)

Literature? I'm not as strong here as I am in the writing area, but I would want to start by making the distinction for the kids between reading for pleasure and reading to study. Both are valuable and necessary skills, but the trick is to teach the latter without killing the former.

The IEW program already taught them the Story Sequence chart which introduces the literary elements. It's a small step from there to analyzing a piece of literature by how the author uses those elements.

Oh -- another thing! Since I last was in the classroom, we've jumped into the computer age! I can have the kids send me assignments online, so I can read and evaluate and make plans for the next class day based on what I see. We can do chatrooms or something on homestudy days to answer questions about the literature their reading. I can create an online literary magazine to "publish" student work! Yeah! Oh, yeah! How cool would that be?

Oh, oh, oh!!! . . . and one of the biggest advantages of working with such a small class is being able to individualize. SO important in my book! Any checklist for a writing assignment I give will also have a item for the student's "Personal Challenge" -- the one thing he and I have identified that he personally wants to work on to improve his writing.  That may be increasing sentence fluency. It may be finding interesting ways to introduce your topic. It may be figuring out how to use commas correctly once and for all. It may be playing with figurative language. Again, if each student has two or three personal challenges during a year that he focuses on and meets to improve the weaker areas of his own writing, that right there is a significant accomplishment.

I'm SO excited about the possibilities here. Can you tell I'm excited about the possibilities here?  I really need to get squared away soon whether or not I have the job -- otherwise, I'll be up every night planning poetry units and grammar units and such for a phantom class I'll never teach . . . and that would be pretty lame. (Although it wouldn't be that different from what I've done in my spare time for the last fifteen years or so. I really need to get back in the classroom . . .)

Schooling that Makes Sense! Wahoo!

When I taught at Hutchinson High School for a few years B.K. (before kids), I spent half my day teaching Honors Sophomore English and the other half of the day in the CAI (Computer-Assisted Instruction) room.

This was a program for at-risk students; they were able to take any of their basic required courses in the CAI room. Most of their work was done on computers (an exciting proposition for kids twenty years ago), working at their own pace, with individualized help from the two teachers in the classroom. It was a great program -- turned around the lives of many kids I knew in there.

But there was one hang-up that always bugged me. You see, some of these kids were quite bright -- a few I would have even called brilliant.  (Does that surprise you? I always said that my honors kids and my at-risk kids had more in common than you would think. The two things that set them apart: parental support and a willingness to play the School Game.)

So, because these bright kids were able to work at their own pace, they could have finished all the requirements for credit in the class early -- some of them, in some classes, could have even done a year's worth of work in a semester. They knew that, so they ended up goofing off a lot while they were in there -- which didn't hurt them any, but it distracted the kids that needed all their class time to get their work done.

We had an idea: we wanted to give these students the option that, once they finished the coursework for that class, they could stop coming to class.  They could get out of school an hour early, or come an hour later. Seriously -- how huge of a motivator would that be for kids like this?  HUGE!

But it was a no-go. State law mandated that to get credit for a course, the student had to spend a minimum amount of time actually sitting in the classroom. It was infuriating to me. (My years at Hutch High were the impetus for my incessant dreaming about the ideal school.)

Fast forward to this morning in the car where my eldest is telling me about her friend's new class at Sioux City East. A very similar concept to my old CAI room. He (a bright 19-year-old senior who basically supports himself and wants to go to college next year) is able to take all of his courses in this classroom. He works at his own pace (in fact, she said he's almost done with English for the year). And . . . he gets to leave every day by 11:30am! 

I can't tell you how excited I am about this!!  Not only am I excited for this boy (really, this is the perfect arrangement to meet his life and educational needs -- he's even been able to take a much-needed second job).  But I am so thrilled that somebody was able to get past the butt-in-seat issue and do something that makes sense for the kids!!  Hallelujah!

This gives me a little bit of hope. Maybe I could work in the public schools again without going postal. Just gotta find the right school.

Teaching Science to Non-Scientists -- Which is MOST of Us

If you read here much, you've probably picked up on the fact that I'm more of an English/History gal than a Math/Science one. My girls are the same -- which is why I'm quite interested in how they are taught math and science, because I suspect some of my dislike for science, anyway, is related to the way I was taught.

So, I was pleased to be invited to a meeting at my youngest's school to discuss the science curriculum they may implement starting next year. (Although I'm still not quite sure why I was invited. I may have signed up for a committee at the beginning of the year. Or I may have annoyed the principal too much with my questions about high school. In any case, I was happy to be there.)

The curriculum they are looking at is brand new.  There are only a couple of textbooks written at the moment, but more in the works. What I liked about them is their approach.

The author (who presented at the meeting) explained that most science textbooks are massive, back-breaking tomes stuffed with far more information that a person can master in a year. (No lie -- have you looked at a high school science textbook lately? Picked one up? Holy smokes.) Because of the overload, students have no choice, really, but to fall into the pattern of cramming for the test and then immediately forgetting everything they've learned to make room for the next flood of information.

(Can I hear an "amen"? Preach it, brutha!!)

This guy's textbook's were small. He said he pared down the content to only the essentials for the course and then focused on mastery of those essentials. 

Mastery!!  Actually learning the stuff. What a concept!

He has taught science for many years and has seen how much more effective this method is. But I didn't need to hear that to be convinced -- COMMON SENSE tells me that's a much more effective method.  What possible good does the cram-test-forget method accomplish?

He also recommended only 5-6 real experiments during the year and teaching the students to write up high quality lab reports over those experiments. Again, an amen from me. Hands-on stuff is important . . . discovery learning has its place . . . but I've observed that the plethora of experiments my eldest has done in her science classes have not accomplished what the teachers hoped they would. Again, it was overload. Do a few really good ones and integrate the writing skills with that.  (I've become more and more convinced that writing cannot be taught well in isolation by high school -- writing has to be about something.)

This guy also had recommendations about math offerings at the high school level, because math and science are so connected.  The one I liked: for the kids who are not math whizzes and who DON'T need to learn trigonometry and math analysis and pre-calculus, offer them AP Statistics after they complete Algebra 2.  (Aha!!) Much more practical, but also at a high academic level to push them a bit . . . and they get college credit when they're done.  Love it.

Really, I loved it all.  It was enough to make me want to be a science teacher. (Ew . . . okay, that was hyperbolic.  Big words. Whew. I feel better.)

Let's Get Physical

I keep referring back to that Bill Bennett book -- it really was that good.  (If you're interested, you can get in on Amazon here.)  In a couple chapters, he refers to one Matthew Crawford, an author who wrote Shop Class as Soulcraft and "The Case for Working with your Hands".  Crawford says,

It is a rare person, male or female, who is naturally inclined to sit still for 17 years in school, and then indefinitely at work . . . Some people are hustled off to college, then to the cubicle, against their own inclinations and natural bents, when they would rather be learning to build things or fix things. 

Can I get an "Amen", brothers and sisters??  He continues:

One shop teacher suggested to me that 'in schools, we create artificial learning environments for our children that they know to be contrived and undeserving of their full attention and engagement.  Without the opportunity to learn through the hands, the world remains abstract and distant, and the passions for learning will not be engaged.'"

Oh, yes.  An abstract and distant world.  Contrived, artificial learning environments "undeserving of their attention and engagement".  He hit the nail on the head.  Case in point: a few teenage boys I know through my eldest daughter who I suspect will not be getting their high school diplomas in the next couple years, if ever.

Reading these passages, I remembered Booker T. Washington's autobiography where he described how every student at the negro college he founded was required to learn a skilled trade along with their academic book learning.  And I increasingly see the value of that.

What would it look like if every student had to learn the basics of a skilled trade before they could graduate from high school?  Something physical and concrete -- something they do with their hands.  That could be auto maintenance, hair styling, carpentry, sewing, plumbing . . . there are so many possibilities.  I see tremendous benefits to this requirement.

For one, no more issues with kids graduating and not having the basic skills to make a living.  Have you had a plumber in to work on your pipes lately?  They make a darn good living.

Also, the skilled trades would have their dignity restored to them, as would the students who excel in those trades.  I remember the kids in my English classes who were outshone all day long by the honors brats -- but who, if given the chance, could have put the brats to shame in the industrial arts department.  I always kind of longed for them to know what it felt like to excel over their peers for once.

But even more so, I think it would do everyone some good to have to work with their hands.  I'm a perfect example of this.  I live in my head; I'm an academic nerd.  The few opportunities I get to do something physical and concrete (like take care of the lawn, snow-blow the driveway, or try to figure out how to repair something in the house) can be very aggravating, but they are also fulfilling in a way.  I wish I had the skills to do stuff like that. I can imagine what my friends experience when they say that going out and working on the car they're fixing up in the garage is very relaxing to them. 

Yeah . . . let's do that.  Add that to graduation requirements. I think I need to start my own school . . .

Creating my IDEAL School: Grammar School, part 3

This is my ideal school, right? Kind of a dream school, yes? Because what I'm about to describe will probably make you all say, "Yeah, in your dreams." So, I'll agree with you from the start.

The girls and I spent a lot of time at various kinds of children's and living history museums on the east coast, thanks to homeschooling and the opportunities to go on numerous field trips. A book I read once talked about how children's museums do a better job of educating kids than schools do. And they do sometimes, because they have a lot of advantages over the classroom teacher. Bigger budgets, for one thing. But the good children's museums are very hands-on and interactive. They allow kids to spend as much time as they want in the different areas and exhibits. They are memorable and fun.

So, here's my proposal: I think every school system should run their own children's museum. (The really small districts can work together with other small districts to have a museum in common that they all use.) They should have rotating exhibits (they could even be traveling exhibits among various districts) timed with the unit study topics being studied in the grammar schools.

Teachers like Mr. from my first grammar school post can schedule time in the museum for his advisory group whenever he would like during the unit. They can explore the Ancient Greece exhibit on their own, or sometimes he can teach a lesson in a particular area, using the materials and resources from the museum, saving himself the time and money of creating such a display.

Even better, the museum can employ people who can teach lessons in character -- like Pericles explaining to a new group of Athenian citizens how their democracy works. Or Archimedes demonstrating how he figured out the king's crown wasn't made of pure gold. (Sorry, I'm on a Greek jag lately.) High school students can do work in the museum during certain units as special projects -- or help create the exhibits.

Since eventually the grammar schools will come back to Ancient Greece in their rotation of unit study topics, all the materials for the exhibit can be stored away for next time, saving time and money the second time around. Businesses can sponsor certain exhibits that are in line with their work -- like a bank sponsoring an exhibit on economics. Homeschooling parents could use the museum, too, as well as the primary school teachers. Seriously, it would be QUITE cool, wouldn't it?

As I said, it's a dream. But I can dream, can't I?

Creating my IDEAL School: Grammar School, part 2

Returning to my Ideal School. In an earlier post, I wrote about Grammar School, the later elementary years, but I mainly addressed how skills would be taught at that level. As I said in another even earlier post, I think skills and knowledge should be treated differently. Grammar School-age kids, in my school, will learn the "grammar" of the various knowledge areas -- that is, the bits and pieces of information -- through unit studies.

What's a unit study? If I taught Ancient Greece to my youngest this year as a unit study, we would employ all the traditional "school disciplines" in our study of Ancient Greece. We would read children's versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey--that's literature. We would learn about the scientific experiments and discoveries of Archimedes -- that's science. We would talk about Pythagorus and learn the Pythagorean theorum -- that's math. We would make masks and act out scenes from Oedipus Rex or Antigone -- that's art and theater. We would write reports and stories and plays and journal entries -- that's writing. Get the idea? Take a body of knowledge -- usually from science, history or "social studies" -- and attack it from all angles.

Some activities will be done with the whole advisory group. Some will be done individually or in small groups, geared toward the students' interests and ability levels. So, Johnny in my advisory writes a one paragraph description of what the Olympics were like (Olympics!! There's PE!). Janie writes a two-page essay comparing Greek gods to Egyptian gods -- cuz she has a different set of writing skills and is really into mythology. Tommy rewrites the story of the Trojan horse from the point of view of someone inside the horse. They're all writing . . . they're all developing their skills and applying them to the subject matter (which is the purpose of those skills after all) . . . and they're all absorbing information about Ancient Greece.

Not necessarily all the same information, either. Let's face it -- 90% of the little facts about the world which we learned when we were young were immediately forgotten, unless they were facts that we used on a regular basis or just found particularly fascinating. Janie may remember the names of the 14 primary gods and goddesses until her dying day, while Tommy never bothered to learn all the names to begin with. But all the students will learn that the Ancient Greeks worshipped gods and goddesses. Because this is one of the "framework"-type facts that everyone should know, and and upon which all of the other bits and pieces of information we learn in our lives are eventually hung.

What do I mean by "framework facts"? The animal kingdom can be divided into vertebrates and invertebrates, broadly. Vertebrates can be divided into mammals, fish, birds, reptiles and amphibians, broadly. Fish all have gills and scales, lay eggs, and are cold-blooded, for the most part. These are framework facts. Students may forget details they learn about specific species of fish, but when they go to SeaWorld and hear that whales give birth to live young, they will know whales are not fish but mammals and can fit this new information into the broader framework of knowledge already in their minds.

Unit studies are FUN! -- if they are done well, as they would be done in my school. But since I'm creating the IDEAL school, I have another piece to fit into the puzzle. A critical tool for use in these unit studies.

To be described in a later post . . .

Creating my IDEAL School: Grammar School

So, next step up the educational ladder in my fabulous Ideal School System is Grammar School. (Again, suggestions for a more creative name are welcome.) And the most distinctive new thing here (which continues through the next two school levels also) is the use of what Big Picture Learning Schools call "The Advisory Group".

An advisory group consists of an advisor and 10-12 students. No, the advisor is not quite the same as a traditional classroom teacher, even though the advisor does teach. The advisor's primary role is to work with each student and his/her parents to set up an individual educational plan for that student. They consider skills, learning style, interests, and any other extraneous concerns and come up with a plan for where the student should head in a semester and how we're going to try to get them there.

Let's look at little miss Suzy, for example. Suzy's parents meet with her advisor, Mr. ("he has another name, too, but I just like Mr. and that's all." LOL! A bone there for fellow Junie B. fans). Here's one of the goals they set for Suzy: that by the end of the semester, little miss Suzy should have simple multiplication down pretty solid. Right now, she understands the concept of multiplication, kind of. But they want her to demonstrate that she knows how and when to use multiplication in real life. And they want her to have the multiplication table memorized.

So, here's the deal. Mr. may end up teaching Suzy this himself, alone or with some other advisory students needing the same instruction. Or he may find a computer program, if Suzy mainly needs a lot of drill and practice. Or workbooks, if Suzy's a left-brained workbook kind of gal. Or DVDs, if Suzy's a visual learner. Or perhaps a "workshop" class taught by another teacher in the school, if Suzy needs more extended direct instruction. Or maybe another student in the advisory group can solidify his own understanding of multiplication by teaching it to Suzy. In any case, Mr.'s job is to find the right means and environment for Suzy to learn the material, based on her individual learning style and needs.

This means, as you can imagine, that Mr. will be monitoring lots of different activities going on in his room at the same time. This may sound chaotic, but it is quite doable. Homeschool mamas do it all the time. As do many regular classroom teachers, for short periods in the day. If Mr. has done a good job of matching his students' learning styles to the instruction he chooses for them, they will be engaged and learning will happen.

Now, Mr.'s students won't all be "third-graders" -- they won't have a grade level, because grade levels are essentially meaningless. And they won't all be 8-year-olds -- whoever had the idea that kids need to spend the bulk of their days with kids all born within a year of their own birthdays? They don't need to be grouped by reading ability or anything, because they aren't learning skills as a group -- they're working individually, at their own pace. Mr. will have a nice, heterogenous group of kids of various ages and abilities, who get to know each other and cheer each other on in their learning, because they don't need to compete and compare themselves to each other, because there's no reason to believe anyone should be progressing lock-step with anyone else in there. They're all DIFFERENT, and they're all LEARNING; they're all exactly where they are supposed to be.

Of course, this doesn't mean no group interaction ever occurs. It does; it's just not the means for teaching skills. Remember when I said that skills and knowledge need to be dealt with differently? Here's where that comes in. Part of our "classroom" time in Grammar School is spent working individually on skills. The rest of it is spent in unit studies of knowledge areas -- done as a group.

And I'll talk about that in my next post.

Creating my IDEAL School: The Primary School

I have a personal bias about early childhood education. I strongly believe that the best place for a child in the early years is at home. Yes, I know some homes are horrendous places -- that's beyond the scope of this discussion. Given a reasonably healthy home environment, I think children should spend most of their first seven years or so with their families and friends and not in a structured setting that looks anything like our modern educational factories.

Unfortunately, keeping 'em home is infeasible for some families and undesirable for others, so a school option needs to be available. But in my ideal school, the learning environment for these young children is as close to a home atmosphere as possible. Very informal and unstructured. No grade levels--a multi-age group all learning together. One teacher for maybe 8-10 children at most. It would be awesome, in fact, if that teacher could have her classroom in her own home, like many daycare providers work out of their own homes. Call these first few years Primary School. Something like that. A more creative name would be good, but I'm not creative like that.

There are three primary goals for students at this age. The first is for the teacher to get an idea of each student's learning style. Are they more of an auditory learner, a visual learner, a kinesthetic learner? Are they more left-brained and systemic, or more right-brained and random? Do they need noise or quiet, activity or calm, etc. etc. You can't necessarily pinpoint a label on kids at this age (not that they ever should have a label pinned on them), but you can get a feel for their particular bent.

Secondly, this is the time to get kids started on their basic learning skills. Counting. Printing. Adding and subtracting. Spelling. And most importantly, reading. At this age, such skills develop in spurts and have varying ages of onset. Group instruction -- where a child is made to feel inadequate compared to others -- or where a child is forced to rehash skills they have down solidly to the point of stripping all the joy out of them -- is a no-no. Teach skills through games, play activities, one-on-one casual teaching moments, the way good parents already teach. And just let each kid advance as far as they can, as quickly as they like. Make it fun, low-pressure, and geared toward their learning styles, and they'll fly through the basics.

Finally, one of the most important goals is that kids come to see learning as exciting! Fun! They WANT to dress up like ancient Egyptians and learn about how to make a mummy! They WANT to catch butterflies and draw pictures of them and categorize them by color and size. They WANT to hear the story about Gulliver and the Lilliputians. School is A BLAST! There is no set curriculum to be covered at this age, information-wise. The teacher simply works with the kids' interests and plans activities to engage their curiosity. Sometimes in the "home/classroom", but often out in the real world. (Each teacher will need a van and a bus-driver's license to transport his/her own students around to where the action is.) A positive attitude toward learning is far more valuable at this point than "covering" a prescribed amount of material.

The teacher and parents together will decide when the child is ready to move on to Grammar School and a slightly more structured environment. I would expect that would be at approximately 7, but age is not the issue. Readiness is.

And, by the way, I would expect that ultimately, a lot of parents would decide to skip this level and "homeschool" their kid until Grammar School. And that would make me very happy. :)

Creating My IDEAL School

So, before I launch into a detailed description of my ideal school (which is more like an ideal school system, because it involves four schools -- yeah, this may take a while . . . ), I want to give you an idea of some of the basic principles behind my plan here -- the Ideals behind my Ideal School System:

1) Individualized learning. People learn differently. Yet, in schools, we continue to teach every kid the same way -- at the same pace, in the same style. Students need to be taught in the method and at the speed that fits how God made them. AND . . . not only do they need to be taught IN their individual learning styles, they need to be taught ABOUT their individual learning style -- so that when they are in a less-accommodating educational environment someday, they can adapt.

2) Real world environments. Students will (we hope) be learning for the rest of their lives, but almost never in the kind of environment a traditional school imposes. We should make "school" as much like the real world as possible -- or better yet, do our educating in the actual, bona fide, real world.

3) Knowledge vs. skills Schools have traditionally divided up all the material to be learned in a myriad of "subjects", and had different methods and techniques for each subject. In my mind, the stuff we want our kids to learn falls into two categories: skills and knowledge. There are basically five major "skills": reading (inputting information -- this would include listening), reasoning (the processing of that information once it's inputted), writing (output of information in a new format), mathematical reasoning (because reasoning about numbers is different than reasoning about words and ideas), and "research" (not quite the correct word, but I like the alliteration! -- this is knowing how to find the information you need).

All else is knowledge -- the information to be input and processed. And while we tend to divide knowledge into categories like history, science, geography, etc., there is a tremendous amount of overlap and we should acknowledge that as we teach. The real division is between knowledge and skills -- and they should be dealt with differently. Certainly, the skills are applied to knowledge. But if, for example, we try to teach a 7-year-old about dinosaurs (knowledge) mainly by means of reading a textbook (a skill -- and one they may or may not have developed very well by the age of 7), and then assess their level of knowledge based on how well they read . . . that's an epic fail.

I'll also add here that we need to emphasize skills more than knowledge. We will NEVER be able to teach anyone all the information they will need to have in life -- and if we could, they would forget it before they need it. More important to teach them the skills of where to find information they need and what to do with it when they find it.

4) Classical education model. One of the happy things I discovered in homeschooling is the classical model of education. ("Classical" meaning from the times of the ancient Greeks and Romans.) It's not perfect, but it's an imminently useful way to look at kids and their educational needs. Learning is divided into three stages: the Grammar stage, the Logic stage, and the Rhetoric stage. Personally, I think of these in terms of the input/processing/output analogy I used when talking aobut skills earlier. Let me try to give a quick overview of the concept.

In the Grammar stage (remember when elementary schools were called "grammar schools"?), we focus on students learning the "grammar" of a subject -- that is, the information. For example, when studying ancient Rome, grammar level kids would learn about togas, aqueducts, Julius Caesar, emperors, Roman mythology, etc.

In the Logic stage, students start seeing patterns, relationships, connections . . . what caused the Roman Republic to morph into an Empire? How is Roman mythology connected to Greek mythology? How was the rest of the world affected by the Roman empire?

In the Rhetoric stage, students start applying what they've learned and reasoned out to their lives -- and learning how to effectively communicate their unique perspective on these things. A Rhetoric level student would be examining what lessons from the Roman Empire can be applied in our current political climate and seeking out ways to use those lessons to make a real difference.

Again, a very brief overview, but hopefully as I continue, you'll see how it makes sense with how I want to teach.

5) Student ownership of their education. One of the things colleges have noticed about homeschoolers is that they tend to be more independent learners. They feel responsible for their own education. They use their professors as a resources for their learning, but don't rely completely on them to pour learning into their heads. This is why they succeed in school . . . and in life. We need to encourage this more.


I may be missing something here . . . if so, I'll hit it later. Now, on to my remake of elementary school . . .