CHOOSING CURRICULUM

Choosing teaching materials can be an overwhelming decision because there are so many excellent products available and each one claims to be superior to all others. Many veteran home schoolers suggest that you stick to a 'prepackaged" traditional curriculum for the first year or so. Others encourage new home schoolers to consider correspondence schools. We do not completely agree with these recommendations, because for many it seems to perpetuate a mentality of home schooling as being "school at home' instead of an exciting lifestyle of learning. We know that it takes some experience to determine which materials are best suited to your teaching style and your children's needs, but we are also convinced that the Lord can lead concerned parents to the teaching materials and methods that work best for their family. Here are some suggestions concerning choosing curricula:

Rules of thumb for choosing teaching materials:

Rule #1: Consider your situation and budget. A farm family will have many opportunities for "hands on" learning in the areas of math, science, economics, etc. A city family has access to museums, libraries, cultural events, and more support group activities. You can make the most of the real life learning opportunities God gives you, perhaps never needing textbooks and teaching materials in certain subject areas. As far as budget is concerned, as our friend Carole Seid says, "All you really need for home schooling are a Bible and a library card."

Rule #2: Choose teaching materials that compliment both the teacher and the learner. Textbooks developed for classroom use tend to be "teacher directed" and chalkboard oriented, seldom taking into account different teaching approaches or the different ways children perceive and process information. Each student has a style in which he learns best. Different children have different learning strengths and weaknesses that the perceptive parent can take into account while choosing teaching materials. See information about learning styles.

Rule #3: If you don 't like the material, you will resist using it no matter how good it is. All teaching materials have a bias, not just in the subject matter, but also in the way the subject matter is presented. Every teaching parent, whether he or she recognizes it or not, has an educational philosophy-some set of values and beliefs about what and how children should be taught Sometimes we will have an unexplained inner resistance to certain teaching materials. It could be that this inner resistance arises from a conflict between our educational philosophy and that of the teaching material. Trust the Holy Spirit and choose from your spirit as well as from your head.

Rule #4: Avoid programs that require a great deal of teacher preparation. Unless you are a researcher-type or high-energy person, you will be frustrated by programs with detailed teacher's manuals to wade through, supplemental books or seminars that are necessary to fully utilize the program, or lots of activities to prepare beforehand.

Rule #5: Don't judge a book by its cover. Expensive and "glitzy" does not necessarily mean better. There are $250 reading programs with "bells and whistles" and $25 "bare bones" reading programs. Any dedicated teacher with a good phonics program can teach a child to read and spell well. Remember, this is home schooling. Some of our favorite programs look like they were put together on someone's kitchen table. We've been so conditioned as consumers to want slick packages that we will judge the quality of a product by how it is packaged.

Rule #6: Be aware that there are various schools of thought concerning the teaching of any subject
Some examples: In math there are programs that are primarily problem solving with manipulatives and programs that are primarily problem solving on paper. In reading there are programs that focus on learning phonics before learning to read, programs that focus on learning the rules while learning to read, and programs that focus on just learning to read and letting the rules come later. Each school of thought has produced excellent mathematicians, readers, or spellers.

Rule #7: Realize that needs change. What worked one-year may not necessarily work the next. Your family's needs and interests will change. Buy materials that meet present needs. Mold the curriculum to the child, not the child to the curriculum. Also, be aware that not all books in a series are equally as good. For example, the fourth grade level of a particular program may be excellent, but this does not mean the other levels will work as well.

It is probably happening in your own support group. Home schooling mothers sit nervously in living rooms, around picnic tables, in church gymnasiums. Then one of them rises, clears her throat and says, "Hello, my name is Mildred. And I am a recovering curriculum dependent."

Another woman stands and says, "I don't know what to do. I just can't seem to break free. Just when I think I'm going to make it, I find myself reaching for the workbook. I'm so ashamed. I'm even considering video school!"

Still another: "I knew something was wrong, but I never could put my finger on it. I'd go to these bookfairs, and it was like I couldn't control myself. Everything looked good. So I'd come home with complete K-8 curriculums that I could use for all of our kids, and then two months into the school year it was like I needed another fix. But by then all I could really get was catalogs, you know. So after every one in our house was asleep, I'd slip downstairs and fill out order forms for math manipulatives, and timelines, and science experiment books and science wall charts and tapes of phonics songs and paper model books... It is more than our marriage can bear."

"I know what you mean," says another, "I spent 495.00 on a complete phonics program I heard advertised. And then a friend of mine told me about a brand new $500 program that is guaranteed to work and I think maybe I've made a big mistake not getting that one...."

As soon as one mom sits down, another stands up. Their stories are surprisingly similar. There's only one problem with these conversations -- you'll never hear them in most support groups. Most of us are closet curriculum dependents. As far as everyone else is concerned -- we have it all together. But we all feel the effects of curriculum dependency. If we could just come up with a set of early warning signs (but they would probably sound a lot like PMS...) and a Twelve Step Recovery Program we could be a recognized recovery group.. We could give it a respectable name -- call it Curriculum Dependency Syndrome. We could even call it by its initials (CDS). Then we could put together a list of symptoms would help identify those of us who are most likely to be at risk for CDS.

Most dependencies are fed by false views of reality, and curriculum dependency is no different.. Those of us at risk for CDS fall victim to three main myths. We could call the first myth the "Myth of the Perfect Curriculum."

Now my criteria for the perfect curriculum is simple. I am looking for a program that will teach my children, keep them on (preferably above) grade level, fix the meals, do the laundry, and clean up after my daughter's cat without being told. Once I find that perfect curriculum, all my problems will be over. Once I find that perfect curriculum, I can relax and depend on it to get me through.

As our focus shifts to the search for this perfect curriculum, we begin to lose touch with the reasons we are doing what we are doing. As we lose our focus, we lose control of our tools and become AT RISK for curriculum dependence. And we do find ourselves always looking forward to that NEXT curriculum. "We'll go ahead and finish what we've already bought but next time I'll find the right one!"

The fact is, I'm afraid, that very little that is worthwhile in life comes in neat little packages. And there is something rather freeing about knowing that. It frees us to stop worrying about the perfect curriculum we might find tomorrow that will make everything we did today look like a waste of time. The search for the perfect curriculum just saps our energy and breeds discontent. The best defense against this frenzied search is to have a firm grip on your purposes for teaching. Otherwise it is too easy to be "cast about by every wind of doctrine..." to quote the Apostle Paul.

The first bit of good news I have for you is that We don't have to have the perfect curriculum and, the second bit is that We don't have to be perfect teachers.

This year has been a rather difficult year for our schooling and I have found great comfort in the scripture that promises that "the battle is not to the strong and the race is not to the swift" because there are days when I feel none too swift. I will never be a perfect teacher. There are no courses, seminars, or certificates that will accomplish that.

For those of us who have the nagging suspicion that we would be better homeschoolers if we did have some specialized degree, let me share something with you. Once upon a time I had an opportunity to take some teacher's education courses. I had taught in a little private school in California, and figured that it would be good time to go ahead, get a real teaching certificate and become a REAL teacher. So I took a teaching reading course. I had taught children to read before, but I would not have been able to teach any one to read based on the things I learned from that course, and neither could any of the other twenty five students in the class. We were all going to be curriculum dependent. Those of us who were handed good teaching materials to use by our first school systems would do well, those who would be given poor materials, would be stuck. But according to all the things that our society uses to measure "ability to teach," we were able.

Do not let any one make you feel intimidated by any lack of "professional training/background". And as many of you have discovered, there are those in the homeschool market who take great advantage of this latent parental fear that we are ruining our kids. One company many of us know and love really attempts to feed on this fear of our own inadequacy. Offering a video school package that says, "Let a MASTER Teacher teach your child." Now allowing our children to benefit from this master teacher, means sitting them down in front of a television for several hours every day while they watch children in the "Master Class" watch the "Master Teacher." We do not have to be dependent of this sort of thing. If we feel a need to fill in an weak area with such a tool, that's great. But we cannot lose sight of the fact that this sort of thing is only a tool.

I think my favorite image for thinking about study materials is that of a hammer. A hammer is a wonderful tool. You can build all kinds of things with it. But if someone picks up that same hammer and starts beating you over the head with it, it is no longer a helpful tool. It has become a murder weapon. Many of us are being bludgeoned by our tools. A study program/scheme is merely a tool. The tool is supposed to be used for the building of minds that can think and respond to the world around them. It is not the end or the goal in and of itself. It is a tool that is supposed to help us reach the goal. And the tool is supposed to be controlled by the craftsman, not the other way around.

You do not need to be intimidated by, dominated or controlled by master teachers. You are the teacher the Master, Himself, chose to provide for your children. Our job is to take our desires and priorities for our families as the whole, and our individual children to the Lord and prayerfully make decisions about what we need to do in order to meet those goals."

Belief in the "if onlys" -- if only I could find the perfect books, if only I could be the perfect teacher -- are really only submyths of the Big Myth. The Myth of the PERFECT Homeschool (also known as The Myth of the PERFECT Homeschool Family). This is probably the myth that holds the greatest attraction for me. The driving sense that having the perfect school is just around the next semester.

Now I realize that I probably do this to myself. I read all those books on the Proverbs 31 Woman -- on How to Be THE Godly Woman in Only 31 Days. For all my genuine desire to live a godly life, the Proverbs 31 Woman is the June Cleaver of my worst nightmares. If I could only get organized. If I could only get up at 3:00 a.m. and (wearing pearls and heels, of course) bake bread for my household and my servants. (Do notice that this woman had not a servant, but servants.)

If I could just be like this woman, then my children would rise and call me blessed. (Though in reality this only happened at her funeral -- the word rise is actually an obscure Hebrew idiom for obituary.)

In addition to these "GODly Woman" books, I keep looking at all those pictures on the front of homeschooling magazines showing all those happy children. Dad works with those diligent adolescent males over their advanced calculus. While Mom is teaching daughters seven and eight their Greek and Hebrew, daughters one and two are teaching daughters three through six how to sew all their summer clothes from patterns they have made themselves. Notice how you never see anybody's laundry room?

As long as I keep repeating the "If I could just. . ." statements to myself (If I could just get organized, If I could just find that perfect math program, If I could just get the kids to quit picking at each other....), I will continue to nurture the biggest Myth, the Myth that says that I can do it in my own strength.

Actually, this tidbit is more than mythology, this is a major league lie. I have finally realized that the Lord has spent this last school year trying to teach me -- that no organizer, no curriculum, no book on child training, nothing will enable me to do this job in my own strength. If the Lord God is not my strength, I will not make it. He has to be our ultimate support and refuge, and we have to rest in the confidence of the promise "Faithful is he who calls you, who will also do it."

Each year we homeschooling moms face a classroom that is totally different from the one we faced the year before. Each year brings a different set of ages, moods, and, if your house is like ours -- a different new baby! There's no way to set anything in concrete. In many ways we start over every year.

None of us can do this in our own strength.

We need to stop looking for "the perfect curriculum" or "the perfect home-school mom teacher training seminar" or "the perfect organizer" to depend on. If we attempt to depend on these things, they will always leave us frustrated and unsatisfied.

We need to depend on the one who has called us to our high calling. He is the only one who can be depended on. So as we begin to plan for the coming school year, may we get our dependencies in order.

"May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip us with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what his pleasing to him through Jesus Christ,"* so that when our homeschooling seems to go on forever and ever, it can be ultimately, to his glory.

*Hebrews 13:20-21