For the month of July, I am featuring Testimonial Tuesdays. I invited my husband to wrap up the month and guest post this week.
Why I like this post:
I like it because it is from my husband. It is a very honest account about the role of the father in the homeschool. I am always glad to hear what my husband gleans from as it relates to fathering like the heavenly Father, and how to best achieve a level of discernment and intention. It took my husband a lot of dedication and thought to put together his intentions for this post, and I am so glad he decided on this topic because I can use some reminders in this regard!
So with that said, here are his words…
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It was just about a year ago that we began our homeschooling endeavor. We felt like pioneers going out west, charting new territory for our family. This undertaking was something completely new for our family. It was never done before or even considered. My wife and I are products of secular education and for a while we saw that as the modus operandi for our children as well.
It wasn’t until several challenges came our way that we took to heart what the Bible says in Deuteronomy 6. My wife and I agree that we want our children to grow in a direction that leads them to Christ so they understand that their sole existence is to glorify God (Ecclesiastes 12:13) and not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of their minds. (Romans 12:1-2). We want our children’s legacy, and their children’s legacy, to follow the Lord their God all the days of their lives for His honor and glory. We believe the Bible is sufficient for doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness (1 Timothy 3:16) and for our family to go this direction requires faith in God’s Word. Our responsibility as parents is to educate our children, which is not too common in Christian circles or secular circles. After receiving godly counsel and prayer from a few friends, we were able to establish the Noble Arrows Academy on Sept. 30 2013. By God’s grace, we will enter our second year in a few months.
Looking back over the mountains we trekked this past year, I can only thank God for His grace and mercy for having helped us in every possible way. Not only did we learn to run a little school at home, but we learned much about being home educators and much about our children. There is no way to quantify just how much we’ve learned about each other simply by virtue of spending most of our time together as a family. That alone is justification for some parents to surrender their children over to someone other than themselves. But my wife and I concluded that the only way to claim the promises of God’s Word and ensure that our family legacy continues to glorify God even after our passing was to put all our might into educating our children ourselves.
I’ve learned some hard lessons this year; some utterly painful, others discouraging. Journeying through a new frontier has its challenges to say the least but despite the hard lessons there were joyous moments that only Christian home educators can truly appreciate and value.
One lesson I learned was understanding how important it was to “look for direction and not perfection.” This brought a sense of balance and normalcy to our first year of homeschooling, devoid of secular expectations. Sure there were other lessons in discipline, teaching methods, planning, recreation, record keeping that were of extreme value, but “looking for direction and not perfection” brought a perspective to our homeschooling endeavor that helped keep the frontier wagons pull the Noble Arrows Academy forward.
As a newly minted home educator, I quickly realized that we have the tendency to narrow our perspective on what is important in a typical homeschool day. Completing the worksheets based on the curriculum guideline for that day might seem important but is that more important than knowing our children appreciate the lessons while delighting in spending time with us? We are quickly disappointed when our child incorrectly answers his math equations, but we don’t seem to spend time to comprehend what his thinking process is. This alone can show us the levels of logic and effort it takes for him to answer complex ideas and problems. Likewise, we can react negatively to poor reading skills and that can quickly discourage. We need take more time to realize that there is much more going on in our child’s learning process than can be perceived at first glance.
These moments call us to look for direction rather than perfection. We can ask ourselves, Is my child, in this subject area, moving forward despite the challenges he is facing? I’ve learned that what I decide in moments like these can make an enormous difference to the outcome of our day.
Our homeschooling perspective can incarcerate us in the details, losing out on what is truly important: the progress (not perfection) of our children’s education. Much of the struggle we have with our perception of homeschooling stems from our expectations as home educators. While we subscribe to reasonable expectations, many of them are unnecessary pressures on us once it is decided to take our children’s education into our hands. Educators, experts, friends, and even family have a way of influencing our thinking and thus, our perspective; and from there commences the struggle between reasonable expectations and unreasonable expectations.
As home educators, we also find ourselves shifting our roles in the home. We are parents, and we are teachers. Although biblically speaking these roles are one in the same, at one instance we can be teaching multiplication while in another we can be having a heart to heart talk about correction and character. It can be all too easy to overlook moments in which long term learning has arrived into the heart of our children. As home educators we walk over a delicate balance that can either help us excel as parents, or help us inspire as teachers.
My lovely wife some time ago put into words what I felt was happening on occasion within our school, and she correctly pointed out that “we mustn’t teach our children with just words and expectations.” What she implied in this is that we need to bring our children alongside us in order for them to learn, with example and cooperative participation, in approximation to us. Many occasions call for us to demonstrate an example for our children, but it is easy to fall in the trap of selfishly denying them a teachable moment due to trivialities. What our children need is parent who will learn with them; someone who is in the trenches with them as they tackle objectives and face challenges. This can be categorized as learning by example rather than teaching with just words and expectations.
As we reflect on our expectations it is important to remind ourselves of a few things as it relates to our children:
- Our children do not prioritize the way we do.
- Our children do not reason the way we do.
- Our children do not listen the way we do.
I have caught myself time and again interacting with my children at a level beyond their capacity. I’ve tried explaining certain things to my boys and I can just hear my words come out of my mouth and hit their young faces, flying right over their heads. There have been times where I feel the need to project urgency with my words about something, only to discover that my children didn’t get what I was saying. We can forget, as home educators, who it is we are speaking to: little people we once were.
As the Noble Arrows Academy prepares for a new expedition this next school year, it is refreshing to know that as we look for God’s leading, His grace and mercy will continue to set us on the right course. His map through the journey reminds us that He is the navigator, the captain of our road through life with our children, keeping them beside us, and never behind; as perfection isn’t the goal or direction, but teaching our children that Christ is.
