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My dear friends, as some of you know, I am privileged to teach in the best on line Classical school, Veritas Press Scholars Academy; and I am blessed to count among my friends beautiful ladies such as Julie Etter, who also teaches in this school. She is a great friend of mine, and has agreed to come and be my guest blogger today.
Thank you, Julie!
This school year is quite a busy one for me. In addition to homeschooling my children, I have picked up teaching 4 classes of a History Survey and Transition class for Veritas Press Scholars Academy. The class is going so well and I am enjoying all of studying that I am getting to do. In the past I have only had 1 class. With the increase in students, I have noticed an alarming pattern. After my friend, Becky, noticed the same pattern in her classes, she asked that I write a post about it. We are seeing the disturbing trend of laziness in the student’s work ethic. Even more disturbing than that, I am also seeing it in some parents. I think we all know of the stereo-type of homeschoolers being unable to meet a deadline or having a lazy attitude about school work in general. I have always defended this. But, friends, it is something I can no longer ignore. Now, let me say, I have many hard working students. But, I have seen the inability to keep deadlines and complete quality work in enough students to become concerned.
I truly believe that our work ethic is tied to the condition of our hearts. God speaks of laziness many times in His Word. It is never in a positive light. I believe that training our children that it is acceptable to not meet deadlines, or to turn in substandard work is training them that laziness is acceptable.
I plan to spend some time posting some tips that I have found helpful in helping to train a child who is not quite motivated to get the school work done. However, in the mean time, please enjoy this blog post which I wrote a while back.
Homeschooling is a way of life. I really believe this is true, because if you try to separate it from every other part of your life, you are going to fail somewhere. It is just not possible to live two separate lives and be perfect at both. Actually, you are not going to be perfect anyway, and you will fail at times. Maybe I should say I believe it is difficult to function and be productive if you try to separate it. When someone spends time with us they will detect a certain aroma. It may be stinky or lovely. It does not take very long for others to decide what this aroma is. The aroma could be anything from chaos to stringency, or productivity to laziness. As believers, first we must produce an aroma which shows that Christ lives within us. This will be very evident to anyone who spends time in your home. Sometimes you can even just step in the door and tell. This aroma really envelops everything you do as a family.
What does this have to do with homeschooling?
You can not develop this lovely aroma by having family devotions, praying, loving one another, and then being completely lazy about your home-schooling. I am afraid it all comes as a package. Have you ever had this really good smell going in your home and then there is this nasty diaper or something else awful? It does not matter at that point how many candles you have been burning or pies you have been baking all day. It just really stinks now. Now you have to revamp and work a little to eliminate the awful smell. It is the same thing with your schooling. You cannot fool everyone by having this great aroma of Christ in your home, but completely nasty one in your schooling. The bad smell always wins over the good one. And it takes a little work to change things around. We all have different ways to achieve a wonderful smell in our homes. I love to burn candles and am pretty much a candle snob. I have one or two that I love and really do not use any others. There are others who use spray. Others love to just open their windows and air the place out. That does not work here in the midst of all of the farm land. Anyway, there are so many different ways to achieve a good aroma. We may all have different strategies to help us pull off a great homeschooling aroma. The point is, all areas of our lives are intertwined. Do not think you can take this one area and separate from all the others. It just does not work. Your home will have an aroma. Is it pleasant or not?
Julie.
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>Great reminders here, Becky. We address this quite a bit in our home as we desire to do all things for His glory.
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>Good post. Too often flexibility can lead to laxity and laziness. We're working on it in our household!
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>Great post. Having kids in VPSA can really highlight the potential for laziness in us all–kids and parents. Nothing motivates like a hard deadline!
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>This a great reminder! With the flexibility of homeschooling comes great responsibility! 🙂 And now off to some schoolwork . . .
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>Great post… I totally agree.. And please… I would like to know if in ANY way, that attitude show in my kids!. It is so important as you said, that the whole day reflects that lifestyle…Thanks and look forward to read more! Norma.
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