Sonlight Homeschooling Blog

Jul. 13, 2012

Thinking Bigger in Ministry

By Luke

My perspective is often far too narrow. Take, for example, the following that literally just happened:

A friend called needing me to bring him a spare key after locking himself out of his house. Happy to be of service, I dropped everything at work to come to his aid. What a good friend I am, right?

Right.

Except every red light stopped me from rescuing my friend. Every bad driver left him stranded a moment longer. The streams of cars blocking my turn held me back. And that made me upset. In a wide variety of creative expressions I muttered and mumbled against these barriers to my good deed. "Get out of my way!" I said in many an ungracious manner.

Red Light

A gentle nudge forced me to pause in my ranting. The thought floated to my conscience: 'In your desire to help your friend, you've forgotten that every vehicle contains a least one other soul, Luke. They likely need grace and compassion and help as well.'

"But they're not my friend," I grumbled. And in that betrayed my veneer of selflessness. That passage from Matthew 5 seems appropriate: I was caring for my friend but no one else... which is something everyone does. I'm a fine friend, sure, but I want to be more than that. I want to be someone who loves and blesses everyone around me. I want to share the love of Christ with everyone.

I read once that the reason we get road rage when someone cuts us off in a car but not while walking is due to a lack of feedback. When it's an impersonal car, we get mad at it and the person controlling the thing. When a person almost trips us accidentally, we exchange a brief apology in a glance. That makes them human and so we are quicker to forgive.

It's fascinating and terrible how easily I convert people into blockades. A similar thing can happen when the person isn't in my group. Like homeschooling. It's so easy for me to put non-homeschoolers in a group I can dismiss. I don't mean to do this. I think homeschooling a great option, but it's just one of many totally viable options. Parents who purposely choose the educational pathway that fits their family and children should not be put in a box of "oh, Thems" like in Gammage Cup.

May we continue to think bigger about ministry. May we, like our Sonlight curriculum encourages us, gain a global perspective that gets our focus off ourselves and out to the world around us. I talk about this a bit in the Christlike Thinking podcast I was a part of recently, if you haven't had a chance to listen to it yet.

Enjoy your weekend, and may God's grace flow from you to everyone around you.

~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester

Tagged Homeschooling, Meditation, missions | Leave a comment

Jul. 11, 2012

The Catalyst for Learning

By Luke

Cherish, one of my bloggy friends, suggested I read her post on instructional technologies. The title hadn't grabbed my attention while zipping through my RSS feeds this morning, so I'm glad she encouraged me to check it out. I'm still processing all the information in the post, but the first thing to hit me was the research that shows lectures aren't a very effective way to teach. Yet educators and professors across the country continue to stand in front of the class in an attempt to impart knowledge to their charges.

Check one for homeschooling. It's not often we engage in a lecture. Reprimanding a child... that's different, and yet, possibly, equally ineffective <smile>.

That's not to say formal education itself is pointless. Rather, the methods and tools we utilize can be more or less beneficial. Which brought me back to a discussion I had the other night after watching Waiting for Superman. There are far more factors involved in the success of certain charter schools than simply a lack of unions and poor teachers. In fact, thinking about the statistics, the deciding factors are likely the parents and the home life of these students. The perspective that getting a better lecture will redirect your life appears is blindingly short-sighted.

And yet, the environment and methodology of teaching can have a profound impact on a student's desire to learn and grow. I can name the high school and college classes I took which drained my will to learn faster than a toilet flushes water. And then it hit me: Learning opportunities--like classes, lectures, books, online videos, articles, discussion, or curricula--are the catalyst for learning rather than the mechanism. As many have said before, the best learning opportunities give you a thirst for knowledge. You are the one who does the learning.

I'm personally very excited about online learning opportunities--considering I just finished creating one. The ability to find lessons on just about any topic you can imagine is thrilling. The classroom of the future is being molded today. And I'm looking forward to seeing where we end up.

One last point: Great literature is still one of the most powerful ways to learn. It allows us to wrestle with big ideas and discover worlds and interests outside our own. So if you're looking for a non-lecture-based, literature-rich homeschool curriculum, Sonlight's a great option.

~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester

P.S. I had an opportunity to be a guest on the Christlike Thinking podcast. Listening to myself, I say "umm" a lot <sigh>. But toward the end, after I got on a roll, I did a bit better. We covered some interesting stuff. You can download the .mp3 here: http://www.brucesabin.com/podcast/Luke_Holzmann.mp3

Tagged college, curriculum, education, high school, learning, lectures, literature, Teaching Tips | 2 Comments

Jul. 10, 2012

What Matters Most?

By Robert

Waldo Canyon fire, view from my backyard (June 26)

On June 23 I looked out the window and saw a large plume of smoke in the distance, near the mountains.

A few days later, on June 26, half the sky was darkened by smoke from the Waldo Canyon fire near Colorado Springs. Within a matter of hours, the smoke and ash in the air were so bad that I could hardly see anything at all outside--just a hazy brown and orange.

Although our home was far enough away to avoid evacuations, the possibility of having to quickly depart brought to mind some important thoughts and questions. What do we take? What's important? What matters most?

I remembered a passage from Eric Sloane's book Diary of An Early American Boy: "The good things of the past were not so often articles [possessions] as they were the manner in which people lived or the things that the people thought. This, of course, is still true; the fine TV sets and modern kitchen equipment we prize now will be junk within a matter of years; the lasting examples of our time will turn out to be the ways that we live or the things that we think."

With a limited amount of time available to evacuate their homes, I heard story after story of families first of all seeing to their safety, then the importance of their photographs. Whether they grabbed collections of printed photo albums or computer hard drives containing their digital pictures, no one wanted to lose their pictures.

We value relationships and the memory of times we've spent with loved ones. While it's important to keep helpful homeschool records, and to celebrate our children's accomplishments, ultimately our relationships with our children matter far more than grade point averages, standardized test scores, or whether or not they graduate from a top-rated university.

Sonlight excels in bringing families together. Sharing great stories with one another is a fantastic way to grow, learn, and strengthen the bonds between parents and children.

What matters most? It's not the size of our television screen, the square footage of our house, the kind of car we drive, or whether or not our children are good at memorizing and regurgitating facts for a test. There are far more important things in life: wisdom, virtue, truth, relationships, the ways that we live, and the things that we think.

Robert Velarde
Author/Educator/Philosopher

Tagged Diary of an Early American Boy, Eric Sloane, fire, learning, life, Sonlight, stories, truth, Waldo Canyon | Leave a comment

Jul. 9, 2012

Celebrate Accomplishments

By Luke

As a child, my summers were filled with activities: Swim team, mission trips, sleepovers, summer camp, camping, travel, hanging out with friends, and--later--work. I'm guessing the same is true for your kids. Returning to school in the Fall was sometimes a shift to a more relaxed and dependable schedule. But I always found time to create. Homeschooling--with all the free time it gave me--was a perfect setup for establishing this habit.

Saturday morning I finally finished up a project I've been working on for a couple of years now. It's a 36-week free Filmmaking 101 course... and it's been a ton of work. But I'm stoked that it's finally all out there for the world to see and use.

What have your children been up to? Have they created anything cool lately? Have they accomplished a goal? Have they achieved something new?

One of potential drawbacks of accomplishment is the letdown that follows. After a flurry of activity, the quiet afterward can be disappointing. That's why it's so important to celebrate! If your child has just reached a new goal, make it official. Awards banquets are an excellent example of this: There's food, official praise, and often special awards on top of whatever accolades have already been earned. Sonlight's Instructor's Guides come with a special completion certificate for your school year, and I hope you share that with your children. Cast parties and launch parties are common forms of finalizing an effort. But the less formal projects and achievements can be easily overlooked. Please don't! Encourage your kids by rejoicing with them when they reach new heights.

Celebrate

My wife and I often go out for ice cream when we reach a new milestone. The party doesn't have to be big. Will you celebrate with me the completion of my project? A simple "huzzah" would be more than sufficient <smile>.

How do you celebrate accomplishment in your house? Anything we can join in applauding?

~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester

P.S. Did you know Sonlight has an entire Forum dedicated to Student Recognition? Please share achievements there too!

Tagged celebrations, Encouragement, extracurricular, forums, summer | 4 Comments

Jul. 6, 2012

It Doesn't Matter What Curriculum You Use

By Luke

Which curriculum you choose to purchase makes little difference to your student's academic performance.

Ouch.

Let's take this a step further: The data show it doesn't matter if you are homeschooled or public schooled. In the end, educational outcome boils down to a few key elements centering on the home environment... whether the student is educated there or not.

You may be wondering: But what of all those nice stats I've heard?

Milton Gaither sums it up this way: These studies show that "some middle-class, white, two-parent, conservative Protestant homeschoolers who volunteered for a research study that was pitched to them as a great opportunity to show off homeschooler success to the public, score in the 80th percentile or above on standardized tests." In short, the data is rigged, or, perhaps, merely unscientifically gathered.

Sonlight does something similar. When we talk about Academic Excellence (see point #5), we show a chart where our numbers are far above all others. That's because the only numbers we have are from our Scholarship Winners. We do state this, but the fact remains: Our graphic plays loose with stats to make a completely unsubstantiated claim. We'd need to put the few test scores we have against the test scores of similarly stellar students to be fair. We don't have that data, so we're stuck using what we've got.

The more research I see out there, the more painful this equality becomes. Painful because I want Sonlight to be the uncontested winner of all things awesome! At the same time, a deeper truth emerges... something I've been saying for a long time: Homeschooling is a great option! Feel free to use whatever will best fit your family; homeschooling is fantastic.

Who you are as a family matters far more than where your students imbibe their formal learning. I'm guessing that which curriculum you choose has a negligible impact on your family's dynamics... in large part because you can select a curriculum that fits your family.

Put simply, based on the available data, all things academic seem to even out between educational options.

All things being equal, how do you choose curriculum?

The way you choose anything: By balancing the options with your values. That's why we have our 27 Reasons NOT to Buy Sonlight article. We want you to think through the values you have and see if they line up with what we offer. If not, please go find something that will work best for your family!

The one thing we can (and do!) guarantee is that you and your students will love learning together.

If all other things are equal, that's a really big deal. So, in a way, it does matter what curriculum you use because it's better, by far, to love learning than to merely muddle through.

Academic performance and relishing learning clearly aren't the only factors to consider when choosing curriculum and educational approach. What factors have encouraged you to make the choices you've made?

~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester

Tagged academics, curriculum, education, guarantee, Homeschooling, statistics | 3 Comments

Jul. 4, 2012

Fireworks, Picnics and so much more...

By Jill

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…

Ahh, Independence Day. From childhood I have loved this day with its picnics, ice-cream, watermelon, fireworks and family. It was also my Dad’s birthday and with Dad being an American history teacher, we always got some history lessons along with his ice cream and birthday cake.

Dad loved to teach us about history. He would take us to the places where history was made…Little Bighorn, the banks of the Mississippi, the Oregon Trail, Pony Express stations, Gettysburg, Washington D.C. and more. But, it was not till I read Johnny Tremain to my children that I really understood what “The shot heard ‘round the world” meant.

In fact, when my children and I did Core D+E I learned more American History than I had learned through all the vacations, field trips and stories my father could provide.

Now, when I raise the flag on the Fourth of July I remember Dad, of course, but I also have a keener understanding of the people who fought for our Independence. Books like And Then What Happened, Paul Revere?, If You Were There When They Signed the Constitution, Toliver's Secret and Winter at Valley Forge made the events and people come alive for my children and me.

In fact, after we got done with Core D+E we ended up buying the readers and read-alouds from Cores D and E that weren’t in the combined core so we wouldn’t miss any of the great stories. The books are that good!

If your kids think that Independence Day is just about fireworks and picnics, or even if they have some understanding about the day but you haven’t read these great books, I encourage you to choose one or two to read [or re-read] this summer so they can appreciate the people and events which helped establish the United States as a free and independent country.

I hope you have a great day today. I am off to our small-town festivities which include our homespun parade, 25 cent hot dogs, watermelon, Ale-8-1 [a local soda], homemade ice cream and a spelling bee for the children.

I hope you have a wonderful day as well.

Take care,

Jill

Tagged books, celebrations, education, family, history, Independence Day, learning, reading, summer | Leave a comment

Jul. 3, 2012

OPoN: Books, Stats, and Dropouts

By Luke

If you haven't checked out my Other Posts of Note recently, there's some noteworthy stuff in there... including a quick way to shuck corn.

But a new stat grabbed my attention. Apparently, 857 students drop out of high school every hour in the US. I know that people are prone to manipulate using stats, but let's assume this figure is completely true. By my estimation, it would take less than a third of a year for the number of high school dropouts to surpass the entirety of the homeschool populace.

So, why, I wonder, are lawmakers concerned with our measly population? We're hardly significant enough to be a major issue. Right? What am I missing?

Misuse of Stats

Speaking of misusing stats, I've got a post coming (maybe Friday) about how we--as homeschoolers--happily skew reality. For example, take a look at the Homeschool Domination infographic. Looks pretty nice, eh?

We'll talk about that more later. <smile>

Rebecca LuElla Miller's Enduring Bad Theology post further illuminated the Why Sonlight Uses Certain Books that Some Homeschoolers Won't Touch article. I really like her conclusion: "The problem isn't reading or viewing something with bad theology. It's doing so and not recognizing it." Of course, her point about Jonah is excellent as well. If you haven't yet, check out her post.

Unfortunately, bad theology can be incredibly hard to spot, especially when it is espoused by a group you trust and with whom you are aligned. May the challenging titles and posts and ideas we encounter drive us ever closer to Christ! And may we recognize truth and falsehood as we encounter them.

~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester

Rough calculation:
2,000,000 homeschoolers / 857 dropouts/hr = 2,334 hr
2,334 hr / 24 hr/day > 97 days

Tagged books, Homeschooling, statistics, theology | 3 Comments

Thinking Bigger in Ministry

The Catalyst for Learning

What Matters Most?

Celebrate Accomplishments

It Doesn't Matter What Curriculum You Use

Fireworks, Picnics and so much more...

OPoN: Books, Stats, and Dropouts

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