Goals or New Year's Resolutions?

Good news, everyone!  After a season of having no laptop available, I just purchased a new one, so I can start blogging again.  The subject of this blog is one I wanted to write about in early January, but obviously couldn't because I didn't have a laptop.

Perhaps it is better timing now, anyway.  I'm willing to bet that a lot of people have just recently discarded their most recent list of New Year's Resolutions that didn't look like they were happening. 

I liken New Year's Resolutions to that AARP advertisement where a bunch of people about my age are saying things like, "When I grow up, I'm going to start a band", or "I'd like to fall in love again."  Right.  Wishes and dreams are fun, but generally they don't accomplish much until they are turned into concrete goals.

I'll give just one example from my own life.  For years, every New Year's Eve, I would say, "This year I want to lose about ten pounds, develop a serious exercise program, and watch what I eat."   Typically this resolution would last about two weeks, and then I would forget about it (while beating myself up occasionally over the course of the year).

About four years ago, however, something changed.  First of all my motivation level went up, which is the first key.  You have to have a strong "why" in place to make goals work effectively.  As I got older, I started to realize that everything else I want to accomplish in life is now tied to my ability to maintain my health, from meeting my future grandchildren to developing my conference center in the Georgia Mountains.

Once the motivation was there, the second step was to form a concrete plan.  I knew that I wasn't about to follow through on some kind of gym membership, but I love to go hiking in the woods.  I therefore decided that I would make it a high priority to go hiking every single day for an hour, unless it was ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE.  Note that weather was not going to be a factor.  For the most part, I have followed through on this decision, and am now in much better shape than I was ten years ago.

More recently, I decided to move it up a notch.  After reading Bill Bryson's "A Walk in the Woods", about the Appalachian Trail, I have made a decision to walk at least one small part of the Applalachian Trail within the next two years.  That means I need a definite plan...not just a spoken wish, or even a spoken intent.  So here's the plan...This winter, I am simply going to follow through on my current hiking routine, which sometimes suffers as the weather gets colder.  In the spring, I'm going to start hiking with a small backpack, and expand my territory to hike in a few of the more mountainous state parks here in Georgia.  By next fall I will purchase a backpack that can carry up to 25 pounds in it, and begin gradually increasing the weight I can carry and the distance I can travel in a day.  If all goes well, by summer of 2013, I should be ready to face a few days on the trail.

Anyone want to go along?  You'll need to train with me!

.If you have a dream or a wish, try to turn it into a goal!

To reiterate: 

1.  Get a strong motivation in place.
2.   Make a decision.
3.   Turn the decision into a commitment through making a specific plan.
4.   See if you can find someone to share the goal with you, or at least hold you accountable.
5.   Execute your plan and amaze yourself at what you can really accomplish.

Remember that children and teens are also full of aspirations, dreams, and wishes....but they need to be taught how to turn them into realizable goals and follow through until their dreams become reality.

Glad to be back!!!  Thanks to the folks at the California workshop that supported us sufficiently to allow ARCHERS to be able to provide the funds for this new computer!

A Season of Gratitude

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it is I'm grateful for.  I could just as easily be focused on what is wrong in my life, but I've learned that focusing on what is right winds up keeping me happier and more apt to be productive.  Decided to share part of the list:

1. I'm grateful that, at the age of 61, I'm still on this earth, unlike several  friends in my age group who have already passed on...Jerry, Kenny, Jim, Harold, all three Pauls...I miss you guys and will remember every day to have a good time while I'm on this earth! I miss my mom, too, but she had a long life and made it all the way to 92, and besides, she is still here...."Somewhere this mother is alive, no more as one but in the breasts of five."...well, three in this case, but I still feel her presence in my life.

2. I'm grateful that, unlike my grandmother, I lived to see all five of my kids grow up.

3. I'm grateful that, unlike many others, my husband and I both have a way to make money, our house is paid for, and we're not facing foreclosure.

4.  I'm grateful that, unlike Joni, I have the use of all my limbs.

5. I'm grateful that, unlike Corrie Ten Boom, I'm not in jail, and there's no war raging in my home country.

6. I'm grateful that, unlike Helen Keller, I can still hear and see (albeit not as well as I did once!)

7. I'm grateful that I have a purpose and calling in life, and that I know what I am supposed to be doing every morning when I get up.

Now, I could have a different list...one that talks about my current problems, frustrations, and roadblocks, and then you could all join me in a big sigh, and say, "Poor Mary...Let's pray for her."  And then I'd feel depressed and run around telling you all how bad things are and asking for prayer, and the next thing I'd know, everybody I met would be patting me on the back and asking me in a concerned voice, "How is everything going?".....Blech.

By the way, I can already hear some of you thinking, "Yes, but number ____ isn't true for ME!"   So substitute in one of your own.  If one of the above is a problem for you, move it to your other list and then tear up the list of negatives.

I prefer to focus on the positives, and hope you do, too!  For one thing, ALL my kids will be here this Christmas for the first time in ages.   Oh Frabjous Day...Calloo, Callay!!!

Hope you are all having a thankful Christmas Season!!! Mary

Busy versus Purposeful

I was going to open this post with an apology for having missed a couple of weeks blogging...and then I noticed that it was a lot more than a couple of weeks!  Time sure does slip past sometimes.  Anyway, since I've just been too busy to keep up with certain things lately, it seemed like a good time to ruminate for a bit on the difference between being busy and being purposeful.

I, for example, know exactly what my purpose in life is.  At this point, after more than twenty-five years homeschooling my kids, my purpose is twofold..to continue to be an effective mom and a good role model for my grown children, and to help support and encourage younger moms, especially those who have chosen the homeschooling lifestyle.

So what has kept my so busy lately?  Mostly appraisal work.  Over the past two months, besides doing a lot of work in this field, I was studying and taking a test to elevate my appraisal license. Note that none of this has much to do with my expressed "purpose in life".  At some point, you have to start asking yourself what is going on, and whether or not it is time to make a change.

In my case, right now, I need to do a good bit of work in this field of appraisal, because it is the only immediate avenue for me to help out with the finances. I can also see that it has been helping in some measure with my work with homeschoolers, equipping me to help others during this whole real estate/economic problem that we've been experiencing. It has also helped me to move into the world of (semi) high tech, getting more comfortable with computers and other forms of technology.

At the same time, though, if I can't keep it under control, it will obviously take me away from my main purpose.  I'm reaching the age when many people think about retiring. I don't personally believe in retirement, at least for myself, but I do believe in balance, and I keep reminding myself, 1/3, 1/3, 1/3.. One part family/personal, one part homeschooling ministry, one part real estate & finances to pay for the other 2/3.  So this week I'm determined to bring it back into balance, starting with this blog.

This whole concept of balance, and recognizing the difference between staying busy and being purposeful is so applicable to the world of homeschooling and raising children.  It is incredibly easy to be busy as a homeschooler, or, I would imagine, as a mom of public school kids.  However, you have to stay focused on the real purpose of what you are doing.  The purpose of all education should be mainly character training, opening up a world of possibilities to your kids, and helping them develop the basic skills, habits, and attitudes they will need to become lifelong learners and joyful, productive adults.  This main purpose should never be allowed to get buried under mounds of curriculum materials, mindless homework, or blindly following the dicates of anyone outside of your immdiate family.  That is true whether you are a homeschooling mom worrying about staying on "grade level", or "making sure" you have "covered everything" (which you can't do, by the way)...or whether you are a mom of kids in school who is allowing a teacher to dictate the amount of work a child needs to do on a weekend when his help is needed on a family project (which is probably more important, in the long run)...

So please join me this week in thinking through what the real purpose is of whatever you are supposed to be doing...and then trying, as much as possible, to rein in the busyness of life to make sure that you are putting your efforts into those things that are the most important.

New article at The Old Schoolhouse Magazine

Mostly just blogging today to spread the word that The Old Schoolhouse Magazine did an interview with me in the current (Summer, 2011) issue. Easiest way to read it is to go to http://www.thehomeschoolmagazine-digital.com/, (links don't seem to work, just type it in if they don't), and either scroll to page 84 or click on the table of contents for the living books article on p 76 and scroll a few pages.

Actually, this week I'm doing another interview for the same magazine, this one on our Titus Brigade mentoring program.  If you are in the Atlanta area, watch for an ice cream social at Swift-Cantrell Park in Kennesaw, sometime in Sept.  (When details are available we'll post them on the facebook page.) Also, I'm probably doing a RHS workshop in LaCrosse Wisconsin in October.  Did that on purpose! This old Wisconsin native needs to see some of those colors once every few years.  Also my high school is having a 100 year reunion (not my class...that's how old the high school is) in Milwaukee that month. Not sure if I'm going or not. 

Finally, watch for details on a webinar Chris Davis and I are doing together a little earlier in October.  This is with Felice Gerwitz' Ultimate Homeschool Expo organization. 

I feel like I've been doing so little homeschool talking for so long, and now it is all lining up!  Probably also talking in Los Angeles in January, maybe Florida in Feb.  Hope to meet some of my new blogging/facebook friends at one of these.

Oh, and its my birthday tomorrow.  Accepting all the greetings I can get since my family is so scattered, I'll feel practically alone.  (Thank God for Skype.) 

Connecting with Your Audience

It's Saturday night and I just got back from the park with my dog.  It's become a ritual this summer, walking my dog at the park on Saturday nights and listening to the free bluegrass concerts. The band tonight had one of the very best mandolin players I've ever heard. (Keeping in mind I used to play mandolin in a bluegrass band way way back when, I know a good one when I hear one!)  The guitar player was also very good, as was the fiddle player.  Individually, they were some of the best musicians I've heard in a long time.  However, they just weren't connecting with their audience.

The people who attend these concerts are die-hard bluegrass fans.  They don't mind a little country gospel mixed in once in awhile, but they want their bluegrass clean and traditional.  These guys were into jazz....they jazzed up one Doc Watson tune so much I couldn't even recognize it.  Great musicians, but they were either just in the wrong venue, or didn't know how to read the audience to figure out what they wanted to listen to. One by one, people got up and walked back to their cars until there was just a handful of people left.

As a writer, and someone who has taught writing, this is a key theme in helping people turn into great communicators.  You've got to connect with your audience.  I learned this early in my writing career.  I had just finished up my Ph.D., where you have to write very academically, citing everything, and sounding as erudite as possible.  When I first wanted to share my Ph.D. research with the homeschooling community, I wrote a big ol' book called something like "Educational Philosophy and the Home Schooling Movement".  You all remember that one, don't you?  Huge success.

After a bit, though, I re-grouped, started thinking like a homeschooling mom again, and turned it into my Countdown to Consistency workshop, and actually eventually sold out of that big old first printing.  Later, I wrote a very simple book, called "The Relaxed Home School", and the rest, as they say, is history.  But I didn't do well at all until I figured out who my audience was and starting thinking like they did.

That's what this blog is all about...I suddenly had one of those epiphanies where I realized I wasn't connecting with an entire generation of new, younger homeschooling moms, the ones that were raised in an electronic generation.  It isn't easy to start new things when you're a little older, or remain flexible and open to new ideas, but I realized that if I wasn't willing to try something new, the only homeschoolers I'd be connecting with would be "ex" ones....

So whatever you're doing, be sure you're connecting.  Even if it just trying to see life from the standpoint of a teenager, or a mother-in-law, or a husband who doesn't support your homeschooling ideas,  you won't get anywhere if you don't stop for a minute and try walking in that person's shoes.

Okay, time for bed now...I've had a busy day, digging up tulip bulbs to try to trick them into thinking we live in Wisconsin or Michigan.  Hope you all are coping with the heat wave!

Bring Back an Old Concept

When I was young, one of the things I remember my mother telling me, over and over, was the importance of doing things in moderation.  Back then, almost everyone who was older and wiser would say that you should walk the middle ground, avoiding extremism.

To some extent, the world has simply changed.  There are times one must be a bit of an extremist these days because the middle road can lead to compromise.  It's true.  However, I think a lot of us could benefit from bringing back the concept of moderation.

One example is in the area of food and diet.  Some of my friends are really into the "no white sugar, no white flour, everything whole grains" thing. Others are vegetarians or vegans.  Others pig out on just about anything that isn't nailed down in the kitchen.  I've found that, in general, the people who are absolutely adamant about eating healthy at all times often have a real hard time sustaining it over the long haul. Then, when they do succumb to the occasional dish of ice cream, they beat themselves up to the point that they are damaging their own self-esteem. 

There are those, of course, with genuine health concerns.  My daughter used to vaccilate between being a vegetarian, a vegan, diagnosing herself with lactose intolerance, etc.  Finally she discovered her real problem, which is that she is gluten intolerant.  Now, she is again able to enjoy an occasional piece of meat or dairy, but really has to stay away from gluten, or she faces the consequences.  Real health concerns are a whole different issue than what I'm talking about today.

For those of us who don't have a specific intolerance,  I still maintain that moderation is the key.  I've found that as I eat less sugar, I crave it less.  As I get more used to eating fruits and vegetables, I don't miss having meat at every meal.  However, once in awhile, I just really feel like having a candy bar or a bowl of ice cream.  If I allow myself to enjoy these things in moderation, I dont' feel guilty and I don't feel deprived. Plus, I'm able to actually stick with the resolve to eat in moderation....I don't know about you but if I tried to give up all foods I like cold turkey, I'm betting I'd "fail" and then beat myself up about it.

Exercise is another example.  One man I know goes back and forth.  One week he is exercising every day, hiking ten miles, working out on the machines every morning.  Then for a month, it is nothing.  Some of the exercise programs are even labeled "extreme" these days...Personally, I go running at the state park almost every morning.  When I can't go for a couple of mornings, I miss it, but I don't yell at myself all day about what a slug I've been...I just try to get it back on the schedule for the next day.  What I call running is what a lot of people would call bouncing up and down while walking.  Every morning, I'm passed by real runners. You can tell a "real runner" by the spiffy new running shoes they are wearing, the walkman they are listening to (I prefer to listen to the birds in the early morning), and by the fact that I will probably see them for about six days in a row and then never again.  On the other hand, some of the early morning walkers and bouncers have been there just about every day with me for the past two years.  Once again, establishing some moderate form of exercise that you will actually enjoy and be able to sustain over the long haul is usually better than choosing something too extreme for you to continue day after day.

One more example:  technology, especially social networking.  A little is fine, laudable, good, productive, and fun.  However, when it truly becomes your "social" outlet, to the point you have no real friends, or you wind up getting up in the middle of the night and turning on your computer to to let everybody know you are having trouble sleeping, it can easily become an obsession.

So now I'm getting off the computer and going to do my exercises (in moderation). Bye.

Learning about "Social Studies"

On the fourth of July, it seemed like a good time to address a question I'm often asked, which is, "what exactly should we be teaching for social studies?"  I just answered this question this week for a mom who was thinking about high school and wondering what the colleges expect.

As with any homeschooling plan of action, the first thing is to ignore purposefully what the public schools would be doing in any particular grade.  As long time readers know, I am not opposed to everything/everybody that is involved with the public school. My own mom worked there for many years. However, social studies education is one area where the public schools have done a very ineffective job for many years.

So here we are on the 4th of July.  As many people know, recent polls have shown a pathetic level of knowledge of even the basics of American history.  Most young people these days have only a vague idea of what they are supposed to be celebrating on this holiday.  I have known supposedly well-educated young people recently who had no idea who many of the founders of the country were, who thought Thomas Jefferson wrote the Constitution, who didn't have any clue what the Bill of Rights was, and who  genuinely believed that the first amendment said something about the separation of church and state.

None of this is news to the average homeschooler.  Today I want to address a slightly different issue...the issue of ethnocentrism.  Yes, it is important to know about American history, to understand (and actually READ the Consitituition), to know how the U.S government works,  the basics of capitalism, and the ideas of the founding fathers.  However, as Christians, we owe our allegiance to something greater than a country.

Along with the U.S. history in your curriculum, be sure to help your children develop a knowledge of the rest of the world.   One thing I saw, over and over, at our resource center, was that by the time a student came to us for a high school level class, he or she often had huge gaps in their knowledge.  Those unit studies that were popular homeschooling topics, like Romans, or Vikings, or Greeks, or the Civil War, had been covered extensively.  Yet hardly anyone could tell me the names or locations of the countries in South America or Africa, or explain the history of "the two Chinas"....Everybody knew about World War II, and nobody knew about World War I.  Everybody knew about the Great Depression in the United States; nobody knew anything about the major depression that hit in Germany between the wars, resulting in the rise of Hitler.

Of course, this is exactly what makes moms come to me asking for help.  Everybody is deathly afraid that they will somehow "miss" something important when working with their homeschoolers, thereby somehow rendering them hopeless and unable to get into college. In the long haul, what matters most is developing a love of learning in your children and giving the desire and skills to enable them to continue learning throughout their adult lives.  Nobody can know "everything" at the age of 18. (Although most 18 year olds think they know everything...but that's another topic.) However, a little thought and planning can avoid such huge gaps and help provide a basic platform for further learning.

When planning for teaching social studies, I would follow these steps:

1. Forget/ignore what public school instruction is in social studies at a particular age. It doesn't matter, and your own plans will probably be superior to whatever they would be learning in school.  (Note to any public school parents who may be reading this:  Read to your kids, take them interesting places when you can...You can add on what the schools aren't teaching them and have fun doing it!)

2. Whatever you do, try to make it relevant and fun.  History can be the driest subject in the world or the most exciting one.  Start with local history, consider reenactments or theatre involvements, go on interesting field trips, read good books instead of textbooks.

3. When dealing with children 12 and down, there is nothing wrong with doing this a bit "hodge-podge"...but a good time line on the wall might do wonders in helping to tie things together.  Also, whatever you are studying, start with local, go to U.S., but don't ignore the rest of the world!  Learning about other cultures is vital in today's world.  Two of my own children live outside the United States; all but one have done extensive traveling.  I didn't leave this continent until I was in my fifties.  My mother never left the U.S.  My grandmother never left Wisconsin.  Things are changing, and we have to change along with it!

4. When the kids are about middle school age it is a good time to do some subjects more linear...U.S. history from the beginning to current, a good overall view of world history and geography, perhaps some emphasis on missions work.  Middle school years are a good time to prepare them for high school level work.  Emphasize the skills they are developing (research, public speaking, reading and writing, thinking), as well as  the specific knowledge base they are developing.  Both are important at this stage.

 5. When high school comes around, the typical social studies curriculum includes U.S. History, World History, World Geography, and Political Science/Economics.  Most homeschoolers already know a lot of U.S. History by then, so my tendency is to go heavier on the more difficult subjects in high school, such as economics, Constitutional law, and World History.  This doesn't mean you have to switch to boring methods of instruction...it just requires a little bit more planning, which should always involve the students at this stage.

6.  No matter what the age of the student, textbooks are always the worst kind of instruction in this area.  The best is personal involvement, (like real family trips), the second best is reading a good book written by someone who is actually interested in a particular topic. Good quality videos can also provide interesting vicarious experiences.  When I was teaching a world history class at the resource center, I always got the video of the bomber pilot who bombed Hiroshima discussing his experiences that day.  (For those of you in Georgia, it is available at the Cobb County Public Library). Just a little more interesting than reading about it in a textbook!

For those of you who have coops or resource centers where you can have group experiences, one final suggestion....my social studies classes at the resource center were also always my thinly-disguised speech classes.  Over and over, my old students who have now graduated college, come back and tell me this was the best thing we did for them there.  In middle school, they were expected to do group oral projects; in 9th grade they began taking ten minute pieces of class to teach, and by their senior year they were each teaching two complete classes a year.....An important part of this, I believe, is that they got to choose their own topics...It is always much easier to learn to speak in public when you are talking about something that you are interested in yourself!  I'm a great public speaker when I'm talking about homeschooling, but put me up there on a topic of someone else's choice, I'd probably be horrible.

Okay...way too long a post on a holiday weekend.  Get out there and enjoy the day with your families!