Motivation & The Perfect Score Study (Part 1)

We’ve been talking at great length about Motivation over the past severl blog posts, and I finished off the last one by talking about the relationship between those children who did NOT eat the marshmallow and high SAT scores. Speaking of high SAT scores, I’d like to relay a little of my own experience in tandem with a study done by Tom Fischgrund, PhD.

While browsing a local bookstore a couple of years ago, I came across a book, entitled SAT Perfect Score: 7 Secrets to Raise Your Score. What interested me about this book was the fact that the author, with the blessing of the SAT Board, did a study of 160 college-bound high school seniors who had achieved perfect 800s on both the verbal and the math portions of the SAT in the year 2000.

His goal? Find out what makes these kids tick. What do they have in common? Who are they? How do they think? What do they aspire to? What are their academic habits? He also did a study of average-scoring kids, and this group served as a control group. No study like this had been done before.

Since I have a perfect SAT scorer and a near-perfect SAT scorer in my home, I was more than a little interested to see what this study revealed and how my sons, Nick and Taylor, compared to the kids Dr. Fischgrund interviewed for his book. Unfortunately, SAT Perfect Score is out of print, but you can find copies on Amazon and other used book outlets. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is a student of motivational theory. You’ll see why as I share some juicy tidbits of information that relate to motivation from my well-worn copy of the 7 Secrets.

First, here is what the author says about his work:

“I have to admit that I was surprised by many of the findings of the Perfect Score Study. As a professional educator and a high-level recruiter, I have studied the best and the brightest for twenty years. When I looked at the information I had gathered in the Perfect Score Study and shared the results with knowledgeable professionals in the education field, we all agreed that we were amazed by the common trends that exist among perfect score students.

The brightest of the bright students have common personality traits and lifestyle habits that made it possible for them to score a 1600. I call these the 7 Secrets of Perfect Score Students.”[1]

Keep in mind that this particular study involved the interview of one-hundred-sixty high school seniors, plus about fifty average students from a control group. Parents of the perfect score students were also contacted in order to corroborate what their kids said, as well as provide input on how self-motivated they thought their students were. I will not reveal the seven secrets here because I think everyone should get the book and read it for themselves, but I will share a few surprising statistics from the study. Here we go.

Who do you think studied more, the perfect score students or the control group of students? Surprisingly, they both averaged ten hours a week of study time. About 80 percent of perfect score students attended public high schools, and there was not a higher incidence of perfect scorers from private schools with smaller class sizes. The average class size was twenty-three students, which is close to the national average.

“Only 1 percent of perfect score students are homeschooled, which is even less than the national average.” And only one perfect score student in the study was home educated. In fact, Dr. Fischgrund states, “The 7 Secrets will reveal that homeschooling doesn’t offer an advantage—and may even be a disadvantage when it comes to doing well on the SAT.”[2] We will definitely take a closer look at home education and scoring well on the SAT.

Here is a startling statistic:

“Ninety percent of perfect score students come from intact as opposed to divorced families, compared with 66 percent of all U.S. high school students who come from intact families.”[3]

Just so you truly get this, let me put it this way: The vast majority of perfect SAT scorers came from public schools and from homes that had been untouched by divorce. Fascinating, don’t you think? It makes sense that homes where there is relative peace will spawn children who can be more single-minded in their pursuits.

One other statistic I am compelled to share:

“Perfect score students are just as athletic as other high school students.”[4]

Some people may find that surprising. I do not because my kids are very athletic. But they don’t get it from me!

Are Perfect Scorers Weird?     

What does a perfect scorer look like? First of all, it is important to know that perfect SAT scorers from this study saw their scores as simply a means to an end and not as the end itself. They had a well-rounded view of life in addition to a core set of values. They were always looking for a challenge, and they were multi-faceted individuals. Most were avid readers who read for enjoyment and learned for enjoyment. They were not motivated by external rewards; they possessed an intrinsic motivation system that drove them to do their best and to be self-motivated.

And believe it or not, these kids were not classified as geeks.

They were very likeable kids who were not likely to broadcast their perfect scores because they were quite humble about their achievements.[5] That pretty much sums up my sons, Nick and Taylor. They don’t discuss their test scores because they are not defined by a test score. They are both humble, athletic, fun-loving guys who throw themselves into every project they undertake.

Alas, my other six children are oddly motivated to succeed as well. They all have a desire to excel at whatever they undertake. While my kids may not all have perfect SAT scores, they all sport the same drive and determination to succeed. They each have one or two core passions that drive them, and they have parents, siblings, and friends who support them in their daily lives. I don’t care whether or not any of my kids ever score perfectly on any test. What is important is that they possess attitudes that fuel their motivation about learning and that they pursue their passions.

References:

[1] Tom Fischgrund, PhD, SAT Perfect Score; 7 Secrets to Raise Your Score, p. 53; hereafter cited as 7 Secrets.

[2] Tom Fischgrund, PhD, 7 Secrets, p. 44.

[3] Tom Fischgrund, PhD, 7 Secrets, p. 19.

[4] Tom Fischgrund, PhD, 7 Secrets, p. 49.

[5] Tom Fischgrund, PhD, 7 Secrets, p. 163

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About the Author

Joanne Calderwood has been called America’s Homeschool Mom. She is an underwhelmed Mom of eight great kids, owner of URtheMOM.com, and an author and columnist. Her new book, The Self-Propelled Advantage: The Parent’s Guide to Raising Independent, Motivated Kids Who Learn with Excellence, enables parents to teach their kids to teach themselves with excellence.

What About Grades?

 

Grades are a controversial subject. Is our whole educational grading system out of whack? Should we suspend grading students’ work altogether? Of course not. We need a system to evaluate how much a student has learned so that he can be given feedback, hopefully positive. That said, I don’t think taking grades is necessary in every subject every day.

Grades fall into the extrinsic motivation category. Some students are very motivated to work for an A. If parents set the expectation for their young student that he will learn his lessons to an A level, and if the student has the tools necessary to learn to an A level, the student should be able to meet that expectation. When we praise the student for his achievements, motivation to continue working hard is the result. However, we can’t set expectations that are not attainable for our children. Frustration will be the result in such a situation.

In the realm of home education, we have the opportunity to break tasks down into manageable pieces or skip over material the young student isn’t yet ready for and wait until he is developmentally ready to tackle it.

Contrast that with the first-grade classroom where a student’s readiness to learn phonics or tell time is not taken into account. If the textbook says it’s time to tell time, and he is not ready to tell time, he will receive a poor grade which will in turn lower his self-esteem. Receiving a bad grade is one of those “sticks” that Dan Pink talks about in his book Drive, while the promise of an A is a “carrot.” This is a common situation. Yet psychological research has shown that students do not respond well when they are bribed with carrots or threatened with sticks. In fact, the result is they tend to lose interest.[1]

In addition, comparing students to other students via grades is hardly fair, in the classroom especially. It is common knowledge that children do not all learn at the same rate, so why lump them all together and grade them according to how they compare to the other students in the class?

In the home-education environment, children move at their own speed (which is generally faster than the speed of a thirty-student classroom). Children are not corrected in front of other children, which is important to self-esteem. If a young child does not completely grasp a concept, the parent-teacher will catch it right away and can correct the situation early on, before the student is labeled a “slow reader” or “not a math whiz.”

Grades are not always useful metrics, and I don’t advocate their usage as anything besides a yardstick against which a child can measure his own progress.

While I certainly want my children mastering their material daily, sometimes they have to work harder to achieve mastery than they do at other times. Understanding becomes the goal, not simply getting an A.

Self-propelled kids understand that yes, they can do well independently, and they don’t want to lose that freedom by neglecting to reach mastery. Self-teaching is a freedom, but it is an earned freedom. If my students are not showing mastery, I will be looking over their shoulders to find out why. They don’t like being restrained in this manner.

Grades are not the ultimate goal for self-propelled students; freedom to work independently is.

Some kids read better than others, and as a result, they are able to progress quickly. Some kids may read well but be less gifted in logic. All kids have strengths and weaknesses. All kids have subjects they like more than others. The secret to motivating our children to learn is not to teach them that the goal is an A. We must go further than that and help them see the big picture: self-effort is rewarding. If you work harder, you’ll get further, faster. Making progress becomes an extrinsic reward.

Grades are a necessary evil in the classroom because a teacher lacks the time to teach everything to each student’s level of mastery. Unfortunately, some students become accustomed to failing which over time causes them to resist learning altogether.

Then there are the higher-achieving students who barely need to break a sweat in order to make all A’s. Remember those “smart kids” in high school who didn’t even have to study? They might not have it so good after all. When they are faced with a challenge that does require their utmost concentration and effort, they may actually taste failure because they haven’t been conditioned to put out more than a minimum of effort.

I’ve seen this happen time and time again. College is often a rude awakening. The motivation to work hard was never developed in these students because everything came easily, so when they actually need to pour on the effort, they can’t dig down deep and find the resolve to truly work for the sake of learning. That is unfamiliar territory.

Giving kids material that is challenging—not too easy or too difficult—is the key to full engagement in high school and beyond.

[1] Daniel H. Pink, Drive, p. 37.

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About the Author

Joanne Calderwood has been called America’s Homeschool Mom. She is an underwhelmed Mom of eight great kids, owner of URtheMOM.com, and an author and columnist. Her new book, The Self-Propelled Advantage: The Parent’s Guide to Raising Independent, Motivated Kids Who Learn with Excellence, enables parents to teach their kids to teach themselves with excellence.

So How Does a Child Become Self-Propelled?

Great question!  How DOES a child become self-propelled?

The answer is gradually and steadily.

Think about how you teach a child to ride a bike. Initially, you may take your baby or toddler for rides via a child-size seat on the back of your bike. But once the child is capable of learning to ride a bike independently, you offer him his own little bike as well as support in the form of training wheels. The child rides around the garage, around the driveway, and maybe even around the block with training wheels on his bicycle. Those training wheels are what support him, what keep him upright at that stage.

You also begin to teach him the rules of the road, right? You are going to make sure that the child understands the basics of bike riding. Learning safety rules is essential. We don’t expect the child to learn those on his own; we make sure he is well versed in safety and cycling rules before he is allowed to proceed to the next step. Before long, the child is ready for the training wheels to come off probably long before you are ready for the training wheels to come off!

Once the training wheels are off, the child needs to develop his own sense of balance. He has had a small taste of balance with the training wheels on, but the ultimate test comes once they come off. When the parents and child feel he is ready, off they come. How exciting! However, before the child learns to totally balance on two wheels, Mom or Dad needs to hold onto the bike seat and walk (or run) beside the child as he learns to balance on his own.

Before long, though, he is ready for you to let go.

You do.

He wobbles a little, but off he goes on his own. There may be a fall in the near future, but hopefully not many. You trust that he will obey the rules of the road, and you watch to be sure that he does so when he is within sight. Once he is out of sight, you have to trust him.

You begin to allow him to ride further and further from home, as you are confident that he is able to ride safely. You will make sure he is out of high-traffic areas as he begins to ride independently. He will not have the endurance yet to ride for long periods of time or to ride up long hills that require focus and greater athletic ability than he possesses initially. All that will come later with time and experience.

When you let go of that bicycle seat, your child becomes truly self-propelled!

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About the Author

Joanne Calderwood has been called America’s Homeschool Mom. She is an underwhelmed Mom of eight great kids, owner of URtheMOM.com, and an author and columnist. Her new book, The Self-Propelled Advantage: The Parent’s Guide to Raising Independent, Motivated Kids Who Learn with Excellence, enables parents to teach their kids to teach themselves with excellence.

Struggling with Curriculum Choices?

Ah, the end of a school year! For home educators, the end of one school year leads to a season of mass confusion as the search for next year’s curriculum begins.

And talk about CHOICES!

As most of my faithful 8 readers already know, I am reluctant to discuss curriculum. Why? I feel curriculum choice is a persona decision. However, my stance on curriculum is pretty simple, and I”ll share it with you shortly.

As a former classroom teacher, I did not have a choice in what curriculum I used with my students. The principal would hand me the books and the teacher’s manuals, and off I would go to use what I was given. (STUDENTS did not have a choice either.) Was that a bad thing? I don’t think so! And I’ll tell you why.

In just a minute.

Here’s what I’ve been hearing from a LOT of home-educating moms lately: “Would someone please just tell me what curriculum to get so I can just get it?” Now, not everyone phrases it in that exact manner; however, the feeling of frustration and overwhelm is the same. There is so much out there to choose from! How does one even begin to choose? Interestingly, the sentiment seems to be similar no matter how long a parent has been home educating.

True, you want to choose something with a worldview similar to yours. One of the greatest aspects of home education to me is the luxury of choosing a curriculum with a particular worldview for my children. On the other hand, they are going to catch my worldview by being part of our family much more than they will from a stack of books they are handed. It is important that there is a similarity between the two!

Would you be surprised to learn that I have used the same basic bunch of books and workbooks for learning sessions in our home for over 20 years now? Yep, I chose them via catalog–sight unseen–before I began home educating my first little guy 20 years ago. Of course I added to that first bunch of books each year as my oldest progressed, but I have STAYED with the same stuff and used it for all of my kids. The texts that Lilienne–my youngest–is working out of right now are ones that Nick used when he was in fourth grade…along with six other kids who also used those same materials as they grew into them.

Why change?

I can tell you that I’ve been tempted to change over the years, but not out of any need to change. There are flashier things available today with more bells and whistles than existed in 1992, that’s for sure. But I decided if there was not a need to change, why spend the money and jump around from one thing to another? I stuck with what we had, and it has worked marvelously. Ah, but there is a caveat here: the curriculum doesn’t magically work by itself.

When you think about it, curriculum is NOT the most important thing in a child’s edusphere. Now what could be more important than curriculum, you may wonder.

I have discovered that ATTITUDE is much more important than curriculum when it comes to educating a child.

Here’s the rejoinder to my query above: Why is it not a bad thing that teachers are required to teach from whatever they’ve been given? Really good teachers are incredibly creative and caring, and they can take whatever is set before them and present the information to their students, laying it out in a manner that is logical and makes sense. After all, there are only so many ways to spin mathematics.

The problem comes when teachers are given students who have attitudes that preclude learning. Parents dictate the attitudes of their children either knowingly or unknowingly. Give a teacher a child who wants to learn and is eager to learn, and that teacher can take whatever curriculum he or she has available and present lessons from it. Take the same curriculum, the same teacher, but add in a student who doesn’t want to learn and in fact refuses to do his work, and learning is obstructed. Why? Because of the curriculum? Of course not. Attitude truly is everything!

In home education, parents have the time and ability to set the standards for attitude and behavior in their offspring. If a child has a crummy attitude about schooling–or anything else–it is up to the parent to deal with that attitude. If attitudes about learning are not set by the parent and cultivated in the student by the parent–especially at a very young age–curriculum will essentially become a non-issue. Learning is hampered by crummy attitudes. It doesn’t matter what the parent sets before the student, the student is going to fuss and argue and chafe.

Show me a child who is happy, cheerful, obedient, and thankful and I’ll bet money that any curriculum will be suitable. Show me a child who is unhappy, disobedient, unkind, and irritable, and I’ll bet money that no curriculum is going to work well. Education is 99% attitude and 1% curriculum.

When seeking out the best curriculum for your children, my advice is to find what is:

1. well-presented (orderly, colorful, illustrated, etc.)

2. challenging

That’s it. Find the most challenging material for your students, making sure it is not “boring looking” (because what child likes staring at boring-looking stuff?) Yes, that’s my final answer.

Should it be classical? Literature-based? Or any other classification that’s out there today? That is your personal decision. I can’t answer that for you. I could tell you what we’ve done, but that may not be what you want to do. Trust your instincts and roll with it, baby.  🙂

In the meantime, watch and listen to your children to determine types of attitudes that are on display and see if they need adjusting. I can honestly tell you that I care more about my students’ attitudes and behaviors than I care about their curriculum. Curriculum is simply a tool that is used to train the mind.

Training a child’s heart is the fundamental process of education. Then comes the training of the mind.

Once the heart is well trained, education can then become student-led.

Do I hear the Hallelujah Chorus?

Says who?

Three of my girls take piano lessons. I am thankful to their Calderwood grandparents for funding the outsourcing of these lessons. I am a pianist myself, but I do not enjoy teaching piano. In the busyness of my life, I’ve found that it is very hard to find time to do things about which you are not passionate. Sometimes something’s gotta give; you cannot do it all. Know what I mean? I know you know what I mean!

Yesterday, Adrienne asked me to take a look at one of her assigned piano pieces. It was in 2/4 time, and the right hand was on the off beats in this syncopated piece of classical music. As I played through the piece for her, I flashed back to when I actually learned to play this piece as a child. I also remembered my teacher, who happened to be my mom, fuss at me because I didn’t always pay attention to the fingerings. And it didn’t only happen with that particular piece either.

There was a good reason why I didn’t always follow the suggested fingerings: I have a genetic thing where my pinky finger is smaller than the average person’s pinky finger. So what? Well, playing octaves is certainly a challenge. If you don’t have short-pinkyitis, don’t judge me. LOL Here’s a pic to prove my disability:

Notice how my poor little pinky only comes up to about the middle knuckle? Now look at your hand. I bet your pinky comes up to about the first joint on your ring finger, right? Because of this issue, I had to make some adjustments in the fingerings of music I played. I had to compensate for the stuff I couldn’t physically pull off.

I discovered that whoever wrote in the fingerings in my piano books wasn’t always correct. At least the fingerings didn’t always work for me. I had fun convincing my mom of this since I didn’t get the genetic issue from her side of the family. She would point out when I used the “wrong” fingers, but to me I was using the “right” fingers. Who said you have to follow fingering notations anyway? I doubt Mozart or Chopin included them in their original manuscripts.

Certainly fingerings in piano lesson books are there to help the budding musician adopt the easiest approach to playing any given piece. The fact was that just because it was easy for everyone else didn’t mean it was possible for me, so I adjusted the fingerings so that I could play more easily. I think my mom eventually gave up trying to enforce the fingering rules. I failed to conform because in many cases I just couldn’t due to the fact that my young hands were small, and they just couldn’t stretch like everyone else’s.

How does a tiny pinky relate to education?

Not all children are alike. Guidelines that work for one child may not work for the next child. In my teaching days, I was not always able to tailor a lesson to the needs of individual students due to time constraints. In fact, it was more like throwing all the information out there to the class and hoping some of it would stick with a high percentage of the children. I’d tell the class what I was going to tell them, then we’d go over the information together, and then I would tell them what we just “learned,” followed, of course, by some sort of quiz or test to see if they learned what we’d discussed.

Not all the children in my classroom were ready to understand the “ph” sound when I presented it. Not all children had the mental maturity to understand fractions just because the math book said it was time to learn fractions. In a classroom, it is difficult for a teacher to monitor each student to ensure that he/she has mastered each subject each day before moving on to the next lesson. The child either succeeds, partially succeeds, or fails. Or figures out a way to work around what they can’t do that everyone else can do.

In some cases, this involves self-protection devices where the child just gives up and accepts failure because he gets used to it, hoping that he’ll “get” the next thing that is presented in the sequence of the school year. Just as I totally disregarded the fingerings because so often I had to find my own way through the piece, children will find a way to work around what it is they cannot do. Or they will give up.

Had my mom insisted that I conform to the fingerings, I would have hated piano and felt a definite sense of failure. Instead, she let me find my own way through.

As a teacher of my own young children, I have learned not to be a slave to our curriculum. If my child is not understanding basic phonics skills that we’re doing together, perhaps I need to back off for a season. Who says every 6-year-old child is ready for phonics just by virtue of the fact that the curriculum says he should be?

Failure is not an option in my home school.

If a student isn’t “getting” something, I’m looking to see why. I’m looking at the possible reasons why he or she is struggling. Very rarely is it laziness on the student’s part. More often it is just a concept that needs to be presented in a fresh manner. (Reteaching, so to speak.) Or perhaps I need to set aside the consonant digraphs until the child is ready to understand blends.

The most important part of teaching children is understanding how their young brains work and not expecting them to conform to a curriculum in the elementary and middle school years especially.

What a great benefit of home schooling! The students move on when they are READY to move on. They don’t fail at a lesson and then just move ahead because we don’t have time to make sure they know everything to an A level. Of course we have time! But do we have the patience and stick-to-it-tiveness to identify the issue and then help the child find another way to understand the material?

If you get to a point in your child’s educational path where he is really struggling with something that is being presented, find out *why*he is struggling instead of moving on to the next day’s work, and help the student find a work-around.

Sometimes that may mean allowing them to do something a little unconventional like not forcing their little hands to conform to the fingering markings because they aren’t physically capable of playing that way. Or are they being lazy? Hmmm….as the parent, I should be able to discern the answer to that question. A teacher, on the other hand, may not be able to uncover the source of the issue because she does not know the child as she would know her own child. Conformity is the issue in a school classroom. Conformity is not always possible.

Says who? Says me, the parent of my children. Says you, the parent of your children. Don’t force conformity to curriculum without a good reason.

~ Amazing Insight from a High School Valedictorian ~

And this is from a public school valedictorian. Love her insight!

http://americaviaerica.blogspot.com/2010/07/coxsackie-athens-valedictorian-speech.html

Here is one of my favorite parts:

“And now here I am in a world guided by fear, a world suppressing the uniqueness that lies inside each of us, a world where we can either acquiesce to the inhuman nonsense of corporatism and materialism or insist on change. We are not enlivened by an educational system that clandestinely sets us up for jobs that could be automated, for work that need not be done, for enslavement without fervency for meaningful achievement. We have no choices in life when money is our motivational force. Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires us.

“We are more than robotic bookshelves, conditioned to blurt out facts we were taught in school. We are all very special, every human on this planet is so special, so aren’t we all deserving of something better, of using our minds for innovation, rather than memorization, for creativity, rather than futile activity, for rumination rather than stagnation? We are not here to get a degree, to then get a job, so we can consume industry-approved placation after placation. There is more, and more still.”

And Erica has MUCH more to say than this excerpt! I hope you will take a moment and read this piece from the mind of a young rebel dressed in a cap and gown, inspiring her classmates to stop the madness that is the public school system. Or any school “system,” really.

~ Upcoming Teleconferences ~

Announcing two new teleconferences from URtheMOM.com coming up in March!

Each call will be on a Monday night, and each will begin at 8PM Eastern/7PM Central. Each call will be about an hour, depending on how many live questions there are to answer.

The dates to scribble on your calendar:
March 14th & March 28th.

March 14th Topic: Self-Teaching 101

I love to share the secrets of homeschooling freedom! How can you avoid burnout yet give your children the best education possible? Be on this call to learn the basics of the Self-Teaching and Mastery methods of education & how you can raise lifelong self-learners who work with excellence.

Feel free to e-mail me beforehand with any specific questions you may have that you would like to have answered and that are relevant to this call.

I’ll also open up the call and take your questions.

March 28th topic: All About College Prep & Testing

This will be an exciting call! Be on this call if you want to hear tips for preparing your student for the SAT/ACT. When should these tests be taken? How can your student prepare for the college entrance process? What steps should you take in determining the best college for your student? Looking forward to dumping a ton of info on you in this call!

Again, feel free to e-mail me before the call with any particular questions you have. We will go to a live Q&A session at the end of this call as well.

**Feel free to invite your friends to listen in to these calls. There is a limit of 250 people on the calls. Dial in at least 5 minutes EARLY to get your spot.**

CALL-IN INFO FOR THE TELECONFERENCES:

Dial 1-(507) 726-4217 and enter the Pass Code 149647 followed by # key.

If conference is not in session, system will put you on hold until the moderator arrives.

During the Conference

Conference Commands:

Press *3 – Exit Conference

Press *4 – Help Menu

Press *6 – Mute Individual Line

**************************************

If you have any questions on these teleconferences, please e-mail me at joanne@joannecalderwood.com. Hope you can join us!

~ Why don’t more parents homeschool? ~

I know it is kind of silly to ask my 5 loyal readers this question because you all homeschool. However, I am wondering what the major reasons are for parents NOT to homeschool their kids? Now this is a very serious question, and I am hoping to glean a lot of insight should I get any responses.

In this day and age, there are so many resources available for parents to provide their children with an excellent education at home. There are also homeschool groups all over the country. Most folks, I’d think, would have access to a homeschool support group or co-op of some variety. Socialization is really a non-issue these days. There are many activities available to homeschooling parents and their children in most parts of the country.

So why do parents choose NOT to homeschool? There is no right or wrong answer. I’m just looking for some reasons to fulfill my own curiosity. And become less ignorant. I’m sure economics is a big issue. But aside from that, why NOT homeschool? I ask with all due respect and with a desire to learn.

If you do not homeschool, would you be open to leaving a comment with your reasons for choosing a different educational option for your children? If you do homeschool, would you be open to listing some reasons you know of for parents to choose a more traditional educational route for their children?If you’d rather, you can e-mail me privately at joanne.calderwood@gmail.com.

Thank you in advance. I appreciate opportunities to see things from differing perspectives.

~ Self-Teaching Saves the Day(s)! ~

 

sick mom

Recently it became my turn to enter the land of fever, dizziness, aches, and general malaise commonly known as the flu. I spent one entire day in bed, and I was able to sleep peacefully due to the fact that life continued on in my absence. While my husband was at work and I was miserable, the kids knew what needed to be done chore-wise and school-wise.  Throughout that particular day, I would hear little knocks on my bedroom door, and one of the girls would come in and ask if I needed anything. It was very sweet. Almost made being sick worthwhile. Almost.

I actually was out of commission for more than one day, but I am not a patient patient. There was business stuff that needed to be done once the tylenol kicked in. But one thing I did not have to stress over was how we could continue schooling when mom was sick. We’d just taken two weeks off for the holidays, so taking another week off would not have been a good thing. I guess that depends on who you ask though. The kids just went about their daily work, nary missing a beat in the rhythm of family life. Even with mom sick in bed.

If you have children who are in grade three or older, it is not only possible but also preferable for children to work as independently as they possibly can. Not every subject needs to be done on the child’s own, and self-learning certainly is a process. There is a transition time necessary for the child to go from parent-directed learning to student-directed learning. This length of time will depend on the child’s makeup and maturity level.

Eight out of eight children surveyed recommend self-leaning for their peers who have to learn stuff. 🙂

There are many, many benefits to a child being raised to learn without being spoon-fed every tidbit of information,  benefits to the child as well as to the parents but mostly to the child who in turn grows into a motivated, inquisitive young adult. To read more about self-learning and the tools necessary for a smoothly running self-teaching home school, pop over to URtheMOM.com.

I think I will settle back down here on the couch for a bit. Not sure where everybody is right now, but I know what they are doing. I love home schooling! It is simply a *part* of our lives. It is not who we are. It is just a part of what we do in a day.

That reminds me. I haven’t been out of the house since Sunday and it is Thursday. I love being at home and having my family around me, and I am thankful for good health once again.

I hope you manage to avoid the flu this year, and I also hope that you enjoy today with your family to the fullest!

 

~ Each New Day ~

As most everyone does at this time of year, I’ve been pondering the New Year stuff. What change do I want to see in my life? How can I determine which goals are most important and deserve my energy and attention? How can I even set goals when I don’t know what each day may bring? How do I actually achieve those goals if I manage to set them in the first place?

As a homeschooling mother of eight children, three of whom have graduated from high school and are currently in college, I can look back and see that my now-young adults achieved their goals step by step by having good habits that were established at a young age, the habits of working to the best of their ability one day at a time.

Did they have goals? Yes, where their studies were concerned especially. Short-term goals were  used as guides to mark progress. However, the goals were accomplished day by day, a little at a time. Goals are good things in the educational realm.

Long-term goals can be helpful as well: graduate from high school. A student doesn’t wake up one morning and think, “Today I am going to graduate from high school.” This long-term goal is reachable when taken one day at a time; there will be just one day in the young adult’s life when he wakes up and thinks, “Today I am going to graduate from high school.” A whole lot of effort went into achieving that goal, right? Most certainly!

Then what?

Time for the next goal. And so goes life.

Isn’t life more than traveling from goal to goal? One who lives only to meet goals may miss out on the joy of the journey. If you are a workaholic, you know this only too well. The desire to achieve for the sake of achieving wears thin after a while, and burnout sets in. I still find myself striving to reach goals and missing out on JOY. Do you do that as well?

Are goals a bad thing to have then, I ask myself? Ummmm….yes and no. It is hard to be single-minded about reaching goals when one has young children unless the target goal is simply survival until daddy gets home from work. Or the goal of getting children bathed and into pajamas and to bed before utter exhaustion hits. Gosh, I used to not be able to go to sleep unless everything (and I mean everything) was in its place, including laundry folded/ironed/put away. How times and goals change! I remember when I had four babies, ages five and down, and I would go to bed with a table full of dirty dishes because there was nary a drop of energy left to do the dishes, (and my husband worked nights).

Children sure change you, don’t they? The dreams you had as a bold, energetic young adult take a turn when your first child is born. Suddenly, the joy of a newborn baby takes over, and all else takes a back seat. Goals that I may have had before having children changed drastically as the stork dropped off bundles of babies on my doorstep, year after year. (Sometimes even skipping a year.)

It was painful at times, exhausting for sure, yet as I look back now, I easily forget the hard stuff and remember the good stuff: cuddling a sleeping baby, reading book after book after book to little ones sprawled on the floor in front of a roaring fire, planting and tending a garden together in the warm summer evenings, catching lightning bugs together, going for walks as a family down the country lanes past stinky dairy farms.

Life seemed simpler back then; memory feigns the idyllic.

Time changes everything. Today I am blessed to have all of my offspring gathered here in my home. I realize  much more NOW what a blessing it is to be together as a family. Ten years ago, I could not have imagined the joy one could feel just by sitting around the supper table all together, enjoying a meal, because this was a daily occurrence. I wish now that I had not taken those times for granted. I am saddened just by the thought of three of my kids going back to their respective worlds in a matter of days. Oh, to learn to live in the moment instead of looking down the road. I have spent many years looking down the road at the next destination instead of dancing in the puddles of joy that are directly beneath my feet TODAY.

Back to goals, my personal goals for 2011. My first goal is to remember that it is no longer 2010 when I write a check or write an entry in my journal.

Last year I hoped to reach my “goal weight” and I did! For some reason, I didn’t maintain that goal weight past October. Why not? Because I only was exercising to achieve my goal. Once I achieved it, my motivation to maintain never really kicked in. Oddly enough, I am not setting a weight goal this year. (You may not care to know this fact, but I jot it down here anyway.)

Since I met my goal last year but then FAILED to maintain, how then can I get motivated this year to once again reach that goal? I think I have discovered the secret.

The secret, I’ve learned, is not to look down the road at a whole year stretched out into somewhere in the future, but I will look at today as a new day. Just for today, I am going to DO the change I would like to see in my life.

Here is my little checklist for myself:

1. Do I want to feel better? Exercise.

2. Do I want to have more energy? Exercise.

3. Do I want to be more productive? Exercise.

4. Do I want to be inspired to eat right? Exercise.

5. Do I want to be motivated? Exercise.

Notice there is nothing in there regarding weight. We’re talking benefits that I can have TODAY, not down the road. I know that exercise will yield each of these benefits, so I am much more likely to answer YES to these questions each morning and look for a time to exercise during the day.

That takes care of body and mind. What about the spiritual?

1. Want heart change?

2. Want peace?

3. Want joy?

4. Want to love more?

5. Want clarity of thought and vision?

6. Want to be more productive?

7. Want to really have faith?

The answer (for myself) to all of the above questions is to daily read the Word, meditate on it, journal about it, pray about it, pray for others, (Job 42:10), and finally, listen and do. If I want to meet each new day of 2011 and fully experience it, all I need is to read, pray, and listen. Enormous changes will come from those three items! The hard part is not jumping out of bed and doing my own thing to meet the day’s challenges in my own strength.

It’s pretty simple: spend time at the beginning of the day getting with God, then do what I am led to do that day in His strength. View exercise as a blessing, not a negative, and enjoy the benefits of it all year long.

Woo hoo!! Happy New Day, y’all!