Event Organizers' Heaven

Wow! Have you seen the speakers' bureau listing at Balancing the Sword? I just discovered it! Allen Wolfe has done a spectacular job of creating a huge database of speakers for the Christian and homeschooling community.

Not only does Allen list hundreds of speakers, but their profiles really give event organizers a good look at what they will likely be seeing and hearing if they invite a particular speaker. He includes a personal bio, accomplishments, a list of topics, former speaking engagements, and contact information galore. The Balancing the Sword speakers database makes conference organizers' jobs a breeze - well, almost!

And if you are a speaker, it's a great place to send potential clients to view your offerings.

See my full profile there - including descriptions of my NEW workshop series, Age to Age: Parenting for the Transitions of Life.

A Sense of Place

We are developing the life of the mind. Does it matter where we do it? I am a radical fan of the God-Man, Jesus Christ. The Word that deigned to become flesh. Oh yes, place, food....stuff matters. Place, like clothing, reminds us of who we are and what we are doing.

Now that my two eldest are studying in parts distant for the present - one in music conservatory in California, and one in St Petersburg, Russia - I am especially delighted that my at-home student wants to study wherever I am. Our favorite spots therefore, have to have room for at least two.

So, the kitchen table...Especially for the last couple of weeks, when I have been teaching, discussing and dispensing aid while stirring up fresh bruschetta, freezing green chili sauce, drying tomatoes and herbs, and baking zucchini herb bread. The harvest not only of garden gems, but of camaraderie has been bountiful.

Though our girls are gone, we are still a productive family.



And since autumn has come in with darkling rain and frosty mornings, we curl up with our books and cups of hot mocha before the fireplace. We revel in the delicious warmth of fellowship with great minds - some of them in our books, some of them right there by the fire in the flesh.



Our tech den is really more of a wired library. Desks tucked between bookshelves lit with Tiffany lamps and softened with a futon where we can both settle with laptops to get down to business. Witness to our labors are the beautiful paintings and photographs the children have created over the years. We remember there that the works of our hands will endure, so we should labor to craft them well.



And finally, we love to study with our speech and debate club, Counterpoint Cultural Alliance. We explore the interface between philosophy and theology and find ways to speak to those around us who are still lost in a closed universe where God doesn't burst through the brazen heavens. We make history come to life in documentary films and inspirational one-acts. We make opportunities to bring our book-learning into real world impact today. So our study spot might be the classroom, but it might just as easily be pounding the pavement promoting the Denver Rebelution Tour or questioning defendants in Teen Court, or jolting a jaded church youth group out of their rut with hilarious and searching dramatic presentations.

Most of all, we love to study wherever our Lord places us. We are everywhere He wants to be (apologies to VISA).

Policemen or Encouragers?

Today's Carnival of Homeschooling references a riveting article at The Thinking Mother about a state proposal to ask homeschoolers to "monitor" or to "police" each other for educational neglect. Talk about poisoning the well!

I help to run a high school level homeschool co-op, and I have seen some pretty strange things at that level. Many parents simply feel overwhelmed and either consider putting students in public schools or sort of throw up their hands and abandon students to their own devices.

I am finding that it is indeed in our interest as homeschoolers to work hard at building a community of caring and accountability. Not just because the state will be encroaching for the slightest reason, but also because we need to encourage each other not to grow weary in doing well. Homeschooling is not for the faint of heart under any circumstances. But turning the homeschool community into a police state is not the answer.

Surely that concept of encouragement needs to be foremost, rather than an idea of monitoring. "Monitoring" and certainly "policing" do assume that those under scrutiny have done something wrong or are under suspicion of wrong-doing. However, "encouragement" carries none of those connotations, but cannot be done unless there is an appropriate amount of transparency between encourager and encouragee.

Building a community of encouragement not only effectively "polices" possible educational neglect, but also solves it within the community without state involvement.

Independent Movement

Recently, I've been asked how one nurtures children towards responsible independence, particularly as a home-schooler.

We all want children who exhibit a level of independence that allows them to move out into productive lives, but most of us haven't really thought about what we mean by 'independence' beyond a vague cultural norm. Often we miss the mark because we can't see it very well.

In our household, 'independence' is not merely being able to do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it, which is what our culture tells us we ought to pursue under the heading of independence. It isn't even 'being able to take care of myself without help'. With these definitions of independence, home-schooling would rightly be perceived as a hindrance to developing those qualities.

In our house, 'independence' means being equipped and free to serve those God has put within my sphere.

In these terms, home-schooling is the ideal laboratory for developing independence. In a home school, your community is present to sense and to mind all day, every day. It is a practice realm of manageable size, but it contains a wide variety of needs.

Some of those needs are so simple that the smallest child can meet them. And as soon as he does so, he realizes that he does not have to wait until he's 25 or 30 to make a contribution to others' lives. This is the first step towards independence. Real life begins right now.

Suddenly, learning becomes the means to improving one's ability to solve problems, to meet needs, to be useful. Learning that has immediate application to service is instantly engaging and endlessly delightful. The basic instinct of independence is developing the habit of finding ways to use what has been learned in order to help someone else.

Next time, we'll explore some methods to help children develop the habits and instincts for true independence.

To learn how this kind of independence is vital to earning college scholarships, check Countdown to College Launch: a Homeschooler's Guide to Winning Scholarships.

Comfort and Discipline

In my mother's home there hangs a mysterious pen and ink drawing. Two overlapping faces. A weeping toddler rubs his tear-stained cheek on one side. On the other, a dark wolf snarls out at us. They share an eye. They are the same face.

As parents, it is important to remember that sometimes bad behaviour comes from physical or emotional pain rather than from bad character. And it is important for us to learn which is which.

I knew a toddler who had chronic urinary tract infections. She had no vocabulary to describe the agony she felt. She just screamed and cried for the slightest discomfort - a wrinkled sock or a tight waistband. It took some time for her parents and her doctor to discover her illness, and meanwhile, no amount of reproof could stop the screaming. When the illness was treated, the child became a cheerful, reasonable, delightful person.

While pain should not be allowed to become an excuse for inexcuseable behavior, godly discipline must take circumstances into account. Comfort must be as present to sense as firm, familiar boundaries. If a child knows that Mommy always puts him down for a nap when he is irritable, perhaps the nap is exactly what he is asking for when he throws a tantrum. The embrace of a familiar routine and expected cause-effect relationships are part of the comfort we can offer to those who are hurting.

However, we must take care to keep in mind the whole object of discipline. Discipline should restore the soul, not woodenly apply the law. We need to lean on the Lord to show us when to address the wrong first and when to address the wound first. Setting up a test of wills which the hurting child will fail again and again in her wounded state, is abusive.

And is this really so different from our dealings in our adult relationships? Consider this bit of wisdom from John Piper:

"Let us learn to discern whether the words spoken against us or against God or against the truth are merely for the wind--spoken not from the soul, but from the sore. If they are for the wind, let us wait in silence and not reprove. Restoring the soul, not reproving the sore, is the aim of our love..." A Godward Life

Recovering the Bard

We have forgotten how to read. We have even forgotten how to tell stories. We sit in front of a blue plasma screen, mezmerized by the latest string of inanities. But nothing touches us. Nothing there heals or challenges or strengthens.

The shocking thing is that we begin to approach every story, every event in our own lives in the same passive way that we approach television. Life is just the latest string of inanities. Entertaining but empty.

But the reality is: "God has delivered us, He has parted waters for us, He has made water gush forth from rocks and sent us our own manna from heaven. He has brought us into our own Promised Land. Will I miss the opportunity to tell the story to our children?"
~ Ann Voskamp, Holy Experience ~

We are working to recover the Bard at our house. We read the Scriptures and look for the ways that God has translated those stories into our own lives. When we learn to tell our own stories in those terms, we understand what those events mean, and how to proceed from here. We learn how to 'read' the events in others' lives too, when they tell us of the droughts and deserts and homelessness in their experience.

Our family is also looking for ways to make our everyday routines tell the stories of God's work on our behalf. That is why we love the Church calendar. It disciplines us to remember to tell the stories of the seasons and to give ordinary things like weather and time their true voices - the voices that speak to us of their Creator.

We are approaching Advent, the season when we prepare our hearts for a fresh Visitation of the Lord in a very personal sense, and look forward to His final coming when He will write us into the end of all Creation's stories, and like Scheherezade, will weave us into the next, more glorious tale of Eternity.

Come back tomorrow if you would like to join me in preparing Him room in your heart and entering into the world's joy at the coming of her King. I will be beginning a weekly meme on Advent.

Socializing Homeschool Moms

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, "What! You too? I thought I was the only one!"

~ C.S. Lewis ~

As a homeschooler, I am often asked whether I think my children are properly socialized. Ho hum! The more pressing question to a homeschool mom is whether I am (properly socialized, that is). Everyone has a considered rejoinder to "have you let your children out of the basement lately?" But I'll bet you'd stop us dead in our tracks if you asked, "have you let your mom out of the laundry room/kitchen/garden lately?"

Absolutely the best answer to that question is that the best friends I ever hope to have were found in the course of doing what homeschool moms do: feeding the neighborhood, schleping children to various lessons, colaborating on development of opportunities beyond those found in one's own backyard, researching the next unit-study...

I met Bev, technically, on a sleeping bag in my living room. She and her husband were schleping their daughters 600 miles to the nearest good speech tournament - and helping me run it. But Bev is the sort of person who will drive all day, fasting, in order to stay up all night keeping the Easter Vigil and anticipating the midnight feast that ends it. She is also the sort who arrives with sinful gluten-free cheescakes and craft supplies for impromptu joint projects. Now that we are both launching children to college and the larger world, we are kicking around plans to colaborate on a series of women's retreats.

Jeannette turned up at a Communicators for Christ conference far from home for both of us, where I was actually kitchen staff. Her children were such enthusiastic, interested, courteous, intriguing people (my children bonded with them instantly) that I had to get acquainted with their mother. Over the years we have solved bogus murder mysteries, made gorgeous photo albums and holiday memories. We have become a writing-critique group and entrepreneurs' support group of two, encouraging and inspiring each other to new heights of free expression and free enterprize. Jeannette can turn mountain drive in sleet to a non-existant Christmas parade into a cocoa and carols moveable feast.

Time fails to tell of Parveen, my Persian-cooking friend, whom I met at a homeschool conference on the receiving end of a hail of questions about our co-op group. Or of Coleen, my online auction tutor and farmer's market crony. Or Martine, who is game for the zaniest things: underwater aerobics, impromptu car concerts conducting us to wild urban detours, midnight ice creams and film editing. Or Kathy, the wackiest poet I know, professional-wardrobe consultant, and prayer partner.

Suffice it to say that I'll stay in my kitchen/laundry/garden, thank you, doing my homeschool mom thing. You meet the nicest people there.


Also visit the Carnival of Homeschooling. Next Carnival is at The Thinking Mother.

Thought Control

"We don't need no education! We don't need no thought control!" Pink Floyd Thought control.

The real question is not whether our thoughts will be controlled, but by whom will they be controlled? And the irony of Pink Floyd's raw lyric is that those who have no education are the particular prey of those who have a thought control agenda.

As parents, we all want our children to be able to make up their own minds, to be thinkers who are independent of media and government agendas. If we are faithful stewards of our children, we spend a lot of time and money giving them enough background in history, literature, science, government, Bible and experience to form a stable vantage point from which to evaluate what life (and life's manipulators) throw at them.

The beauty of learning is that it will enable us to exercise control over our own thoughts and opinions. But I submit that being able to make up one's own mind isn't enough. Even the most sophisticated human mind can be fooled. If we fail to teach our children to "bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ", we will still have failed to protect them from perverse thought control.

Is it possible that there should be no thought control? No. Who should control our thoughts? Surely only the One who IS the truth.

Check Scribblings by Blair tomorrow for more thoughts on the Beauty of Learning at the Carnival of Beauty. And don't miss the Carnival of Homeschooling hosted this week by Category Five.

Hot Moms Play It Cool

No, I don't mean sweaty. It's now official. Moms can be "hot". The Today Show says so. Homeschool moms have known this for years. So today, I thought it would be fun to see how homeschool moms stack up against this newly-discovered hotness.

The Today Show was promoting a new book called The Hot Moms' Handbook, which was a witty exposition of the joys of motherhood - with fashion advice. "Motherhood gives us depth, compassion, and a level of love and awareness so heartfelt it is indescribable..." (Are you feeling the resonance yet?)

What makes a hot Mom? Well, she plays! She spends time having fun with her kids, surprizing them with new ideas and creative play. (Isn't that the definition of a homeschool mom? Haven't you made cookie-dough topographical maps of the ocean floor, dressed up like Eleanor of Aquitaine and gone on Crusade, stalked through the backyard searching for the Northwest Passage while picking botanical samples to preserve for posterity, roused your kids at 2am with hot cocoa to catalog a meteor shower, laid out a garden using only ancient Roman surveying methods, gone without running water for a day to illustrate the soul's thirst for Living Water, conquered the Spanish Armada on a giant world map with a pocket-sized punch-out British Navy, and such like?)

Hot Moms keep current and make time to enjoy grown-up conversation with their husbands and their friends. (Ummm! Let's see...my homeschool mom friends are current enough to be actively involved in local-to-national politics - with their husbands. And many of them maintain a regular date night. Does that count?)

Hot Moms ditch the sweats and wear practical, stylish outfits even if they are just taking the kids to Little League (OK, maybe they've got us there. Homeschool moms spend way too much time in denim jumpers and prairie skirts. Still, that's got to beat sweats - ewwww! Play day for my girls and I: Have coffee at a bookstore, perusing the fashion magazines (we employ the mommy-censor for those unbelievable ads), then hit the mall to window shop. Finally, we take our wallets to the thrift store, where you wouldn't believe what current looks you can put together for the price of a retail blouse. Nobody believes that our favorite clothing store is the DAV.)

Now, something that the Today Show didn't mention, but that homeschool moms employ to ensure that life can continue to produce joy, even when the baby projectile-vomits all over that stylish outfit, hubby loses his job, and grammar, long-division and dirty floors crowd out playtime for a week...a long-term time horizon. Homeschool moms are sure that what they are doing will have eternal consequences in the hearts, minds and characters of these little people, who are in our care. And most of us rely on the unbounded energy and care of the God who will receive us and our children at the end of all the troubles.

This hope allows a playful spirit. It is light and air. Life's difficulties take on a more manageable size.

I think that makes the score: Hot Moms - 3. Homeschool Moms - 5
Play on! It doesn't get hotter than this.

Creating Homeschool Traditions

As homeschoolers, we tend to be rugged individualists pioneering (mostly alone) through academic and relational terra incognita. So much so, in fact, that we tend to forget that some things do take a community. Marking milestones and applauding achievements are two of those things that simply shouldn't be done alone.

My eldest graduated in May - and in June. The first time, we crafted a ceremony for our tiny homeschool co-op and for a shy young man who was new to our group. The graduates were led in by our daughter's menfolk dressed in full Highland regalia, bagpipes blaring. The graduates' remarks focused on thanks to those who have made possible their achievements. And the fathers presented diplomas with words of encouragement and inspiration. We finished off with cake, hors d'ovres and a Scottish country-dance ball for the whole local speech & debate community (Think Jane Austen at Bath). And when the musicians tired, we roasted and toasted the graduates.

It was simple and heartfelt. I felt sorry for the non-Christians in the crowd, because the graduates' remarks and the fathers' charges had so many references to the faith that it surely amounted to mission work. However, one of those nons told me at the punchbowl that he had really enjoyed himself. Most other graduations, he said, were all about how hard the graduates had worked and what heights they had achieved. This one, he mused, was about gratitude rather than self-aggrandizement. It was about families working together and enjoying each other, having a part in the successes each member accomplishes.

Others went home rubbing their hands with glee, because "now we have a tradition to look forward to when it's our turn. This IS going to be a tradition, isn't it?" Yes, it must become a tradition. We need them. They provide us a way to enjoy the fruits of our hard work, and to realize how much it means to us to have companions in the field hoeing alongside us.

Even if it means that I'm not left alone to revel in decorating the hall and preparing gourmet goodies. Even if I have to do the (shudder) admin.

Homeschool for Socialization

"You're homeschooling? Do you ever let Johnny out of the closet? Does Jane have any friends? What about socialization?"

Wanna peek at homeschool socialization? The real inside story...

My teens and I (plus an honorary-Anderson-for-the-week) traveled to an out of state debate tournament. During the flight, the young people traded evidence and expertise, testing each other's reasoning, even though they knew they would likely face off against each other sometime during the tournament.

We roomed, not in a scantily-chaperoned hotel, but in the homes of perfect (and I do mean perfect) strangers from the San Diego homeschool community. But we quickly grew to be perfect friends. Our hosts were an extended family of grown-up homeschoolers, siblings and their spouses, whose infants were too young to benefit (except for the cuddles and dances with my debaters) from hosting a bunch of teenagers.

Though they live scattered across the city, the clan C still function like an old-fashioned family. Two generations now work together, re-investing in the community that launched these young parents. They find themselves gathering at Mom and Dad's place to cheer their favorite football teams or to plot their next service project. The whole family turned up to help with judging the tournament.

We girls stayed with Emily and Andy in their freshly remodeled bungalow carved into a suburban hillside with a glittering view across a morning-side valley. Emily is a vivacious young mother, designing House-Beautiful kitchen make-overs and women's Bible studies with equal aplomb. Andy is a wickedly funny gentleman, who rose early every morning to escort us safely down his vertiginous driveway, and stayed up late to shuttle our boys to their digs across town so that the girls could get a little extra rest.

They showed us land-locked mountain-dwellers the near-by beaches where we could explore sea caves and laugh at the lolling seals, or simply dream over the rainbow crowned surf exploding over the cliffs at our feet. Emily kept tucking extra treats into the debaters' lunches, and Andy initiated us into the mysteries of their gourmet coffee maker so that we could have brewed-to-taste coffee no matter what time it was.

The boys reported similar hospitality tucked into David and Joli's condo hidden among the rhodedendrons. David, armed with board games to dispel the boys' pre-tournament jitters, was chagrined to find our guys already sleeping the sleep of the just, shirts ironed for morning efficiency and showers done. Joli, not a morning person, was nevertheless found in the dark of the morning turning out creamy-crisp french toast from her belgian waffle iron.

The tournament itself was a hubbub of two hundred-plus homeschool students from all over the country. There were squeals of delight as old friends collided into orbital hugs. And online acquaintances lit up as they recognized digital sparring partners, "So it's you - in the flesh! I thought you'd be taller."

Unlike the fully-socialized debate squad of my public high school youth, these teams met between rounds to encourage, to strategize and to fortify each other with throat lozenges and Jamba Juice. That done, they could be found hunched over tables with teams from other states, discussing theology, current events and how to take over the world, while swilling coffee. For stress relief, they teach each other their newest swing steps or how to play Whist like Jane Austin. And whenever a piano can be found, someone will sit down to improvise some hot jazz or to gather the singers of Broadway hits and classic hymns.

When the eliminations are announced, winners turn to thank losers for helping them to hone their skills and solicit their losing teammates' advice about their upcoming finals rounds. Losers graciously congratulate winners and race to find the brief that will trounce the case their teammate will face. Sure, there are the abusive louts who think they made it to the top on their own, and who don't care who they crushed to get there. But those are the exception rather than the rule. And nobody is fooled when those debaters ostentatiously ask their opponents to pray with them before the round - as long as the judge sees it.

After the trophies were handed around, everybody went out to celebrate over a communal meal at a quickly-overcrowed local restaurant. Alumni of the program, returning as judges and administrators, congregated in one section, reminiscing and trading recommendations about life after homeschool. They were planning their next cultural initiative, coordinating across state borders and denominational lines. It may qualify as a conspiracy.

The Season Begins

We have just returned from the first speech and debate tournament of the season. We find that involving the children in competition provides a healthy dose of accountability (The speech has to be ready in time for the tournament.) and an incentive to progress quickly up the steep learning curve of communication excellence (If I do well on this, I don't just get an A, I get a trophy - in front of my friends!).

But the very best things that come out of competing in the National Christian Forensics and Communication Association, are the character development and the relationships. Our children have the opportunity to practice saying what needs to be said, even at some personal cost, and build a network of comrades who will stand with them when the boom falls.

Victory

"Are you going to be all right?" Lauren's flaming hair swinging off her shoulder curtained this private concern as a cacophony of self-congratulations and farewells swirled around the still center of the two friends. Elizabeth looked at her folded ballots, considering.
Roughly roused babies fussed. Toddlers, too long confined under their mothers' command to silence, wailed their relief. Teens in stage make-up and skewed wigs wrestled cardboard castles and desert sunsets into dusty oblivion in the family pickup.
The county junior-senior high talent competition had featured everything from MTV-style dance routines to classic melodramas, monologues to fully-staged casts-of-thousands. But the only time during the five-hour spectacle when the entire surging, shushing sea of spectators had preserved a rapt silence, had been when Elizabeth took the stage.
It had been an exquisitely executed original monologue detailing the young woman's struggle to find an identity of uniquely feminine power and maturity. She spoke from the maiden's yearnings, from the loving admonitions of mothers, and finally, she spoke with the voices of women millennia-old, upon whose courage and sacrifice the golden age of Greece had been built. Her conclusion? To aspire to motherhood is to seize on the secret dynamo of human society. As she took her bow, there was a long moment of perfect quiet. Next to me, a woman hiccoughed and buried her face against her swaddled infant. A sighing tide had shuddered through the room, swelling into breakers of applause.
Elizabeth unfolded her judges' evaluations. Blazoned in red: "choose a more age-appropriate theme, like dating," "Perhaps your costume could be more matronly," and in sum, "fair to average performance."
Anne, Elizabeth's younger sister, had joined the two. Fresh from her delightful performance of a Kipling story, she clutched the first trophy of her own forensics career: Best Actress. "I don't understand," Anne put in loyally, reading over Elizabeth's shoulder, "You deserve this more than I do."
"Are you going to be all right?" repeated Lauren, whose wickedly funny rendition of C.S. Lewis' ditsy Tarkheena Lazaralene had received equally ignominious treatment.
"Oh, yes," Elizabeth's eyes were over-bright. "If I had just wanted to win, I would have given my humorous speech. But this was my first chance to speak to a secular audience, and I thought that this was something they needed to hear."
The three girls clung together. Branded by the county's scorn they might be. But they wore their crowns of compassion, courage, and humility undimmed.

Kim Anderson
April 2002. All rights reserved.