Decompression

Yes, I'm up at 1 a.m. blogging. But I fell asleep before 9 p.m.!

This week has been unusually filled for us. The Monkeys and I were up, breakfast completed, dressed, and out the door before 7:30 a.m. three mornings in a row in order to drive to Manassas for a Classical Conversations' Parent Practicum. The drive took about an hour and fifteen minutes, plus the inevitable potty break for the three-year-old, always within four miles of our destination. We unpacked from the car, sorted out the toys, and I escorted them to their playcamp classrooms before getting myself into the morning session.

The speakers were wonderful. April Cr... can't remember her name..., a homeschooling mom and Classical Conversations tutor who has schooled in several different states, spoke about "Children are souls to be nurtured, not products to be measured" and the stages of classical education -- grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. Also each morning we listened to an audio lecture from Andrew Kern of the Circe Institute and discussed it. The first morning was filled with C.S.Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, and Tolkien. The second morning criticized Darwin and Dewey. The third morning wrapped it all up, urging the need for the classical method of learning. In the afternoon I attended sessions reviewing English grammar.

I probably need to back up.

Monkey1 is still on the wait list for our parish's school, and her name is not advancing up the list. So we are preparing to homeschool, and I have found a community and educational philosophy called Classical Conversations. It is a national group with chapters all over the U.S. It preaches three stages of learning: grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. In the grammar stage, approximately kindergarten through sixth grade, the basics of language, math, history, etc. are emphasized, and yes there's a lot of rote memorization. The trained tutors (other parents) help introduce the weekly lessons. Around third grade the dialectic, or logical, stage starts coming into play, with more in-depth learning about the lists memorized -- and continually reviewed -- previously. For example, first a child will learn to spout off the definition of a verb. Later, the child will learn to look at a sentence and find the verb and eventually diagram it. Finally, the rhetorical stage, approximately the high school years, will build upon the blocks before it...

dang it, it is 1 a.m., how'm I supposed to remember all this when it is still new to me and some of it is years and years away? If we even get that far. Homeschooling feels temporary right now, "until Monkey1 gets into" our first choice school, my husband keeps saying. But as I read and read and learn about learning, and talk to other people, and observe my nephews and nieces who attend public schools and private schools, and think about my own education, both in school and at home as my mother helped me with my homework, I see I am falling in love with the idea of homeschooling and particularly this classical model of education. Leigh Bortins' "Echo in Celebration" and Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer's "The Well Trained Mind" helped and excited me so much, I wanted to get started right away!

But can we do it? Well, it's kindergarten, not calculus. I'm eager to try. We know so many homeschoolers that the idea is not at all worrisome to Monkey1, whereas the classroom idea is fraught with anxiety, separation, and conforming. These can be addressed in time. After all, homeschoolers do not just stay home; the world is our classroom.