I have a hundred things to say about Mexico, but life isn’t stopping here to let me say them all. So I’m introducing a new feature: Mexico Mondays. I will be sharing a snippet from my Mexico adventures every Monday for the next however long. So tune in to hear what God did in me and others in July/August of 2008.
I’ve always thought it would be cool to be a teacher. It was on my list of top three career choices during high school. I’ve read up on it–probably way too much. But even more than being a teacher, I wanted to be a HOMESCHOOL teacher. After all, an ordinary teacher is limited by all sorts of things–government standards, boards of education, time, curriculum, and on and on. A homeschool teacher, on the other hand, can do it all. She can write her own curriculum should she so choose, she can set her own schedule, she can mix and match and have fun while she’s at it.
I’ve read a dozen dozen books on homeschooling, and taken notes on them all. I’ve read about the Classical education, the Montessori method, the Charlotte Mason method, the unschooling approach. I’ve read about homeschooling preschoolers, kindergartners, elementary aged children, middle-schoolers, and high schoolers. I’ve read about homeschooling certain subjects, about creating unit studies, about taking care of paperwork. And I’ve absorbed the ideas. For years and years, I’ve soaked up homeschooling theories, methods, and ideas.
But I’ve never really had a chance to put them into practice. Until last month, that is. Because last month, I went to Mexico to homeschool Rebekah. I arrived having no idea what grade she was in or what level she would be at. Because she’s fourteen and I’d been told she was behind, I guestimated that she would be somewhere between fifth and seventh grade. So my reading directly prior to going was focused on that stage–the transition from “learning the rules” (grammar stage) to “thinking through things” (logic stage). I arrived to discover that I was on the wrong track entirely.
The first day I was there, I got out the many books I had brought along and Rebekah and I started reading together. I quickly discerned that I was not dealing with a fifth to seventh grade student. Rebekah’s reading was halting. She was having a hard time decoding–just figuring out what the words said. She was definitely not ready to start thinking about what the words MEANT (looking at themes and literary devices and the like). I scaled down my expectations, prayed for wisdom, and started in.
Within the first few days, I learned some important things about my student. At fourteen years old, she is very self-conscious and afraid of being thought of as a child. Being behind in school only increases her nervousness. Unfortunately, that meant that she was scared to even put pencil to paper for fear that she would spell something incorrectly. She would rather guess at an unfamiliar word than sound it out, because she thought sounding out was a “baby thing”. She was desperately perfectionist–wanting everything to be perfect before she put it down on paper. She continually searched for my approval before answering any questions.
The first thing I did, to help her to overcome her fear of writing, was sit her down to do copywork. I opened the Bible to a passage and had her copy it out. Thus, she had a chance to work on her writing, to see how words are spelled correctly, and to see what some of the conventions of grammar are. The copywork served its purpose within the first few days, and then she grew frustrated with it. She thought it took too much time.
In the other subjects, which I was piecing together as I went, I started at too high of a level. I was discovering holes here and there and everywhere–and having to backtrack to cover them. But both her and I seemed to be getting frustrated at starting on one thing and then backtracking. Rebekah seemed bored with the schoolwork we were doing–yet it wasn’t because it was too easy. On the contrary, it was still above her level.
I wrote in my journal–“She’s bored with school work, Lord–what shall I do? Give me wisdom…” And God led me to Proverbs 3:5 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.”
I trusted God, and He provided. The next day, we began our new program. I shared with Rebekah what God had been speaking to me–then she did her journalling. We did math from a text–She played around with a mosaic while I read her a chapter from a book. We went over history–She taught me some songs in Spanish. We did spelling practice at the chalkboard–She reviewed her multiplication tables. She read from a book and answered questions about it. We played Yahtzee. We went back and forth, switching it up all the time. And it kept her interested for a few days. We tried a brief experiment with doing Hooked on Phonics–she wanted to do that instead of reading the book I’d picked (Mary Poppins). She changed her mind about doing Hooked on Phonics after she learned that I would not give her the answers.
She would continue to get frustrated with me when she would ask me if a certain answer is correct and I would return the question to her. “Well, does that answer the question?” I would ask. “If that’s the answer, then that’s what you should write down.” Initially, she took my response as a negative–that her answer wasn’t correct. So she’d try to ask me about something else. After a while though, I think she caught what I was doing. Then she started to tell me “I was just asking! There’s nothing wrong with asking.” And there wasn’t. I just wanted her to learn how to determine whether her own answers were right or wrong. Or, on other occasions, I wanted her to learn to sound out unfamiliar words instead of just telling her what the word was.
Those are the things you can’t learn about teaching from a book on homeschooling–or on pedagogy of any kind. I’ve studied learning styles and teaching techniques. I’ve studied material galore. I’ve read a thousand articles and hundreds of books. But they can’t tell you what individual issues you’ll come up against in the child you’re teaching. They can’t tell you about the heart issues behind behavioral issues. They can’t teach you about the passions that stay guarded. Only God can do that.
And by God’s grace, He opened my eyes to some of those issues as time went by. I discovered that my method of teaching history and science was a complete failure. It went in one ear and out the other. So God led me to do it differently. I discovered that I COULD NOT explain place values to Rebekah–despite trying for several hours (over the course of several days), I could not make it clear. Once I finally came to the end of myself, God told me how to teach–and she got it. She was writing extended form up to hundred thousands without aids after 20 minutes.
A new book, an abridged version of Jane Eyre, fell into our laps and we started reading it. Rebekah discovered her first favorite book. She has already read it over several times. A coincidence? I don’t think so. It was God’s grace. I opened an English text as I was sorting through the supplies that were there and discovered that it was just at the right level for Rebekah–and it was comprehensive enough to catch her up on all the grammar and writing stuff she hasn’t been doing.
When I arrived, Rebekah was a halting reader struggling with decoding and could only read out loud. When I left she was confidently reading silently. When I arrived, Rebekah was afraid to put pencil to paper because her spelling was so awful. By the time I left, she could write a page on a topic–with only two or three spelling errors. When I arrived, Caroline had all but given up on educating her daughter–she was exhausted, frustrated, and overwhelmed by the task. When I left, she felt she had a system that she could continue with despite the many distractions of their life in Mexico.
All this happened in four short weeks. Was it me? No way–I can’t accomplish that much. Maybe I am a good teacher–but I can’t take a student from a second/third grade reading level to a fourth/fifth grade reading level in a months time. Only God can do that. He made my time in Mexico more fruitful than I could have imagined. I am overwhelmed by the greatness of God.
Sidenote: I intended to tell you all about the curriculum I (by God’s grace) eventually set up for Rebekah–you know, what I actually ended up doing with all that homeschooling knowledge. But I got sidetracked by the greatness of God. I suppose that’s okay. But maybe someday I’ll tell you about the “curriculum”. ‘Cause I’m pretty excited about that too.