Posts Tagged Post-Trivium Homeschool | High School
Homeschool Kids Compete for $22,000 in Prizes
Posted by Diane in How to Teach Homeschool Skill 2: THINKING on December 20th, 2008
Inspiring Homeschool Invention
I get so excited when I come across a national contest that homeschool kids can enter, and this competition inspires invention which fits right in with teaching the three skills of the classical trivium in your Christian homeschool: language, thought, and speech. Two winners will be selected, one from the k-8 group and one high school student, to receive a huge prize package each. If you are creative and diligent in recording the work performed, you can incorporate the entire process from start to finish as part of your homeschool curriculum for the high school transcript. For example, Meredith and Connor are both writing essays for the homeschool speech ISI George Washington essay contest, so I will be including that as part of their composition credit. This particular contest involves video production and the use of software, so you could incorporate this project in any number of courses for homeschool high school credit: composition (writing the script), information technology (using the video software and video camcorder), or even art (graphics and photos). Here are the competition highlights:
The Advertising Council, Sony Creative Software and Discovery Education have announced the “Inspiring Invention” public service advertising (PSA) development contest to engage a new generation of children in innovation. The contest is part of the Ad Council’s “Inspiring Invention” campaign, sponsored by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation (NIHFF). The contest is open to school groups at the elementary, middle and high school levels nationwide. In addition to prizes including Sony video and audio production software and hardware, the winning entries will be distributed to media outlets throughout the country in spring of 2009.
Entrants to the Inspiring Invention PSA Contest will submit their video in either the elementary and middle school or high school categories by March 15, 2009. Contestants are encouraged, but not required, to download a demo of Sony Creative Software’s leading video editing application, Vegas Pro 8 software or Vegas Movie Studio software. Initial entries will be submitted to Sony Creative Software on DVD accompanied by a backgrounder on the production and theme. If selected as a semi-finalist, participants will then furnish broadcast-ready components for final judging.
One grand prize winner will be chosen from each of the two categories and awarded a prize package valued at more than $22,000, featuring Sony Creative Software’s professional video and audio production applications, Vegas™ Pro 8, Sound Forge™ 9, Cinescore™ and ACID™ Pro 7 software, as well as Sony Creative Software content including loop libraries, sound effects and Cinescore themes, in addition to having the PSA aired on national television. See full contest rules and regulations including a printable pdf with lots of details for your budding homeschooler videographer.
I am a firm believer in competition even if the homeschool child has little realistic hope of placing in the top finalists. Why is that? Well, when you give a homeschool child or teen an attainable goal with a hard deadline, they usually step up to the plate and give their best effort. They also learn so much in the process about being organized and systematically tackling a task. Why not incorporate this video contest into your homeschool curriculum after the holidays? You’ve got plenty of time before the March 15, 2009 deadline, and it will look great on the high school transcript whether your homeschool teen wins or not!
The Post-Trivium Years: Dialogue Drives Instruction
Posted by Diane in Post-Trivium Homeschool | High School on October 24th, 2008
Mastery of the three skills of the classical trivium is not achieved on a single day in homeschooling history. You will never be able to look back and pinpoint the day when your homeschool child “graduated” from the trivium. Some time during the teen years, you will realize that she has become extremely proficient in the use of language, thought, and speech. There could be some areas of the trivium that she still needs to work on, but by and large, she is ready for more. For what has the classical trivium prepared her?
The Roman Quadrivium
If this were ancient Rome, your rising scholar would progress to the remaining four liberal arts of the the quadrivium taught by a private tutor: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music theory. The pragmatic Romans took the Greek idea of paideia and decided that every free man should learn seven “arts” in order to be fully educated. Nearly three millennia later, we know that learning the four mathematically-oriented disciplines of the quadrivium is no longer sufficient. Unlike the timeless skills of the trivium, the Roman quadrivium is obsolete.
A staggering amount of discoveries have been made since then in math, science, and technology that preclude any man from being a true expert. The inherited body of knowledge accumulates at a frenzied pace as the record of human history continues. In short, the choices for learning in the 21st Century are limitless. Yet, there still remains a core set of fundamental truths with which every educated homeschool high school student should grapple. The Roman quadrivium is not enough.
The Greek Paideia
You may recall that the Greek paideia is the foundation of a true classical education. According to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, paideia is the:
Training of the physical and mental facilities in such a way as to produce a broad enlightened mature outlook harmoniously combined with maximum cultural development
Learning was the path to a higher nature through the exploration of abstract concepts such as truth, goodness, and beauty with the expectation that such examination would lead to noble character, gracious behavior, enlightened minds, and enriched society. Exploration of ideas between pupil and teacher usually occurred through a two-way dialogue made famous by the philosopher, Socrates. However, the early Greek culture from which classical education arose was pagan, and as Emperor Charlemagne realized hundreds of years later, classical education would never accomplish its true objectives unless informed by relationship with the Living God. Man is limited in his knowledge. He needs inspiration. The Greek paideia is not enough.
The Christian Paideia
Most contemporary Christians cannot read Koine Greek, the language of the New Testament, unless they have been to seminary, so you might be surprised to discover that the Apostle Paul uses the word paideia at least seven times in the New Testament in his letters to the Hebrews, the Ephesians, and to his disciple Timothy. Upon reflection, this isn’t really surprising because as I discussed in the posts on rhetoric, there is quite a bit of textual evidence that Paul received a classical education with a concentration in Jewish theology.
I believe we can take the Greek idea of paideia (the search for knowledge) and look at Paul’s use of the word paideia (discipline or instruction in righteousness) to understand the next homeschooling journey for our high school age kids. Paul knew that the Greeks had a good idea, but their educational philosophy lacked one critical component: the inspiration of the indwelling Spirit of God. True education is a transformational process of growing in knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.
In the early section of the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul spends a lot of time developing the thought that God’s foolishness is wiser than man’s wisdom. God reveals His knowledge to those who love Him so that they can worship and serve Him in spirit and truth. Unlike the unrealized dreams of the ancient Greeks, our search for knowledge is exquisitely fulfilling as the Lord of Glory reveals little bits of truth in our daily walk with His abiding Spirit. Faithful followers use what they have learned in service to others. Enlightenment for the sake of worship and service is our final objective. In this way, we reclaim our classical inheritance and join the long line of ancestors who realized the wealth of a true classical education.
Jesus gives us the perfect example of what the this looks like in the Gospels. He lives with his disciples (by the way, disciple is a derivative of the word discipline which is the English translation of paideia) and in the course of every day life, he conducts an ongoing dialogue about ideas:
- ideas about God
- ideas about man
- ideas about man’s relationship to God
- ideas about man’s relationship to man
- ideas about life
- ideas about death
In short, Jesus instructs his disciples by asking them questions about the fundamental realities of life. Sometimes he provides immediate answers, but more often than not, he allows them to wrestle with the questions through life experiences, parables, and more dialogue. Like Socrates before him, Jesus knew the value of dialogue or conversation in learning. He has always been after relationship with us, and in that relationship, we learn more and more.
So what do the post-trivium years look like in authentic classical homeschooling? They look like the socratic model that Jesus followed with his disciples. As parents, we supervise the dialogue that our teens are having with the classics and with other authorities like university professors. We narrate. We write. We disagree. We agree. We listen. We discuss the big ideas on a daily basis. We allow the dialogue to drive the instruction, so sometimes we end up going off on tangents, but that’s okay because we are wrestling with knowledge. Despite the apparent sanctity of the public school formula, knowledge cannot be perfectly squeezed into discrete subjects. Every home school minute is an opportunity for learning as parent and high school age teen engage in an ongoing dialogue about the fundamental realities of life.
father and daughter photo © Mikhail Lavrenov – Fotolia.com
Supervised Independent Study: Your Personal Fitness Program
Posted by Diane in Post-Trivium Homeschool | High School on July 9th, 2008
Progressive responsibility and appropriate consequences are two characteristics of self-discipline in a classical home school. But those are not the only attributes. Supervised independent study, a superior alternative to a canned homeschool curriculum, is the pinnacle of self-discipline to which all parents using this classical homeschooling method should aspire. When your children have substantially mastered language, thought, and speech, pay attention. You will probably notice that your preteen or teen is also regularly teaching himself the material instead of relying on you to relay knowledge.
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David and I belong to a local health club. During the first few months of our membership, we hired a personal trainer to (1) perform some tests, and (2) show us how to use the equipment correctly. We had to fast from food and drink (no coffee…oh the headache!) the night before the first test, and when we arrived that morning, we had to wear this strange mask that measured our resting heart rates over a 20 minute interval. Next we both got on a treadmill and, still wearing the masks, ran a difficult course of increasing elevation to determine our body’s minimum and maximum metabolism. We were told to do as many push ups as we could (I hate pushups), and timed abdominal crunches. Finally, we were weighed (gasp…did I really weigh that?) and the dreaded pincher tool grabbed our thighs, waists, and arms to measure body fat percentage.
After all the results were entered into the computer program, a concise report was generated which gave us our personal baselines for improving our health IF we ate a healthy diet, exercised aerobically, and lifted weights. Personal goals for weight loss, strength, and body fat reduction were established. We then began a 12 week program with a personal trainer who used our personal plans to teach us how to use each piece of equipment without injury. Each week we saw improvement in strength, endurance, and weight loss as she challenged us to work at our maximum abilities.
When we began the program, we had high hopes that we would see results immediately (after all, we had doubled our exercise time!), but each week, we only saw little gains. However, now that the entire regimen with the personal trainer is over, we clearly see a difference in the way we look and feel; the physical results are measurable and positive. Neither one of us met the computer’s prediction by the end of the 12 weeks, but we are both still faithfully working towards those goals and know that, with time and practice, we will arrive at our destination even if it takes longer than expected.
Although we greatly enjoyed our personal trainer, we no longer need her help. She gave us all the guidance and even shared copies of her twelve plans with us so that when we were ready, we could launch out on our own fitness adventure. If we need any help, we can find her quickly and resolve any concerns or questions that we have.
Supervised Independent Study is like a Personal Training Program
Coaching your maturing child to the point of supervised independent study is like starting a homeschool sports fitness program. Imagine that you are the personal trainer, and he is the trainee. After all those years under your careful guidance, he has learned how to use the language to express his thoughts in writing and in speech. In essence, you have taught him how to learn!
As he gains confidence and age, he begins to take ownership of his own learning as he acquires more knowledge and interprets the meaning of what he’s learning. Not only have you taught him how to learn academics, but you have taught him administrative skills, too. Over the years, you have given him more and more responsibility. You’ve shown him how to regulate his own schedule. Perhaps you even have him check and correct his own work now.
Once you determine that he is ready to begin the systematic study of disciplines like economics, history, and philosophy, your role as personal trainer changes. Just like our personal trainer showed us the ropes then released us to implement the regime on our own, so, too, you need to release your child to supervised independent study when it is time. In this regard, the homeschool curriculum can be uniquely tailored to his interests, abilities, and goals.
If there is knowledge that you or your husband are especially qualified or eager to teach him, then by all means, continue teaching that information! My husband, David, is an American Civil War buff, so there is no better mentor in that area of U. S. history for our kids. I love to write, so I take responsibility for supervising their increasing competence in composing speeches and essays. However, we employ the expertise of outside personal trainers in some areas: Meredith takes voice and piano lessons from a university professor, and we use video, audio, and live instruction from other experts as necessary. I regularly download the mp3 lessons from The Teaching Company, and I’ve spent too much money taking the kids to debate camps and Andrew Pudewa workshops!
Most of all, I’m delighted that both kids are able to let the text teach them! The homeschooling tools that we have given them (like annotation and abstracts) enable them to have a “conversation” with the author of the text that really helps them to get to the bottom of the author’s intent and take ownership of what they discover. Later in this series, I’ll outline the scholar’s tools.
Four Mental Attitudes
Self-discipline is often about pushing yourself to accomplish tasks or adopt behaviors even though you’d really rather be doing something else. Every time that I had to do those push ups, I inwardly dreaded them but willed myself to move forward. Obstacles to progress, temptations to slothfulness, and hardships along the way will inevitably arise. You need to train your kids in rejecting immediate satisfaction for the greater good. Here are four lessons that David and I learned in the gym.
1. Identify your goal.
Before you can make progress, you need to first establish the baseline from which you are starting. Ask yourself, “where am I in terms of…?” Accurate assessments, no matter how embarrassing or painful, will help you realistically set achievable goals. Decide what steps you need to take to get there. Which steps are easy, and which steps are challenging? Be realistic as you establish the goals of the homeschool curriculum for your high school student.
2. Take the plunge.
As the Nike ads say, “just do it.” Once you have decided on a course of action, it’s time to move forward. Train yourself in tackling the project sooner rather than later. Don’t procrastinate. Attack the steps identified in reaching your goal systematically and strategically. It helps to break the goal up into to baby steps, plus you’ll get more endorphin rushes when you check off more to-dos! Don’t try to write a homeschool curriculum for the entire four years of high school. Take a semester at a time and adjust accordingly.
3. Work hard.
Achieving your goals is hard work, but you need to work hard to achieve them. The challenges will be great, but so will the reward. Learn to use your time efficiently so that you are productive and effective. The pain may seem unbearable, but you will get through it. As mentor to your homeschool high school teen, you and your spouse initially work hard to cast the vision of the homeschool curriculum and sketch out a plan of attack.
4. Keep moving.
Don’t give up. There is such a joy to pushing through the pain even if you think you cannot take another step. The sense of achievement is worth the difficulties that preceded the goal. Move on even if you don’t feel like it. As creator of the customized homeschool curriculum, you have a responsibility to make sure that your homeschooler is on track periodically. Keep your eyes on that vision that you established earlier and imagine what can be. Persist. Persevere. Supervised independent study is the very best kind of homeschool curriculum!
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Ready to homeschool high school? Get ready now by gradually weaning your homeschool child from too much dependence upon you.
Teach Three Skills Until Mastered
Posted by Diane in Personalized Homeschool Curriculum on June 16th, 2008
It might take you a while to fully divest yourself of the vestiges of the public school paradigm, but in the meantime, you can begin to focus on the essential core of authentic classical Christian homeschooling: the trivium. Trivium is a Latin word for the first three skills outlined by the ancient Greeks and adopted by the ancient Romans in the Seven Liberal Arts. Officially, the three fundamental skills of the trivium are called grammar, logic, and rhetoric, but I prefer to simply call them language, thought, and speech. Your primary goal during the early elementary and middle school years is to teach these three skills to mastery.
The three skills of the classical trivium are not taught consecutively over time; rather, they are taught concurrently, and some areas of study like math involve more than one skill (the unique language of math is learned while critical thinking skills are being developed.) Here’s another example of the concurrent nature of the true trivium: the child is learning how to write a paragraph (skill 3 – speech) while analyzing a piece of literature (skill 2 – thinking) while perfecting her cursive handwriting (skill 1 – language).
When should you start teaching these three skills?
Realistically, involved parents unknowingly teach all three skills from an early age as a matter of daily life in the family. The new parent who enthusiastically gathers the small toddler into her lap for a snuggle and a good board book is already teaching language. The playful parent who regularly works puzzles and plays games with the child is teaching critical thinking skills, and the parent who consistently includes the children in adult conversations teaches effective speech.
For purposes of official homeschooling, most parents find that their kids are eager to join their neighbors and siblings in formal education around the age of six years. Some kids are ready earlier, and some need a little more time. Historically, a classical education was begun much later (from the ages of 11 to 14) than today’s public kindergarten which often recruits the five year old.
How long will it take to teach these three skills?
That depends on each child, too. In our family, our kids had mastered language and thinking skills before they mastered oral and written communication skills, so I would say that when your preteen or teen is regularly writing analytical essays, he or she is ready to move on to the acquisition of knowledge as you mentor the socratic paideia for homeschool high school credit. Once you teach your children to master the three skills of reading, thinking, and speaking the student can explore any number of disciplines that excite his or her passions.
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If you are already familiar with the term trivium…
Recently, I attended our annual statewide home school convention, and I was appalled by the number of products available in the homeschool market that teach a false understanding of the classical trivium! Have you ever played a child’s game called “telephone?” In this simple game, one person starts a rumor, whispers it in his neighbor’s ear, then the neighbor passes it on to the next and so forth until the message is finally repeated to the original “caller.” Without fail, the message comes back garbled and often bears no resemblance to the original rumor. A similar misstatement of the truth is occurring right now in the classical home schooling community, and it is costing you and your children!
So many well-meaning parents, eager for guidance, embrace and execute a method that they think is classical because the “experts” say that it is, but it isn’t. I know because I was one of these parents. After much frustration, I began to research the history of classical education and was astounded to learn that what is being touted as classical education more closely resembles the American public school paradigm than the historical, authentic classical model.
There was never a grammar “stage” nor a logic “stage” nor a rhetoric “stage” in the ancient, medieval, or colonial classical education. This urban myth or legend was started by Dorothy Sayers in the 1940s, and homeschooling author after author just accepts her premise of the stages as truth without checking the facts. Even Ms. Sayers admitted in her thesis paper that her premise was not based on factual evidence but rather the experiences of her youth. I’m sure that if she were still alive, she would be appalled to learn that her unsupported premise was being perpetuated as gospel truth! To understand more about Sayer’s stages, see “Shaky Speculation: The Lost Tools of Learning.”
True classical education is much simpler and less restrictive than the current educational pedagogy being disseminated in the homeschooling market. The parent in an authentic classical Christian homeschool is not locked into a rigid 12 year public school paradigm because learning cannot be squeezed into discrete compartments like months or years.
The Audience is Always Right!
Posted by Diane in How to Teach Homeschool Skill 3: SPEAKING on May 26th, 2008
Successful home schooling communicators consider the audience who will read or hear the composition before they begin researching the topic. Think about how a speech on euthanasia might be received by each of these audiences:
- a few medical doctors who work at the local hospice
- a Sunday School class of 11 and 12 year old girls
- a funeral home director and his staff
- a group of state or federal legislators
- a gathering of elderly nursing home residents
- a convention of pharmaceutical reps
Obviously, each of these collective audiences would have a different perspective and perhaps a biased self-interest in advocating or outlawing euthanasia. No two audiences are ever the same. (My homeschooled speech students who compete in different regions of the country know this hard fact!) Excellent public speakers do their best to assess the audience in advance and tailor the message accordingly. If poor or unenlightened choices are made during the content phase, the message may be doomed no matter how brilliant the delivery of the homeschooled youngster. Failure to communicate ultimately rests with the speaker because the audience is always right.
Whether addressing a parent, a small group of friends, a few thousand newsletter subscribers, or an auditorium full of paid attendees, the home schooling speaker and writer is particularly challenged by this compound question:
Who is my audience, and how will I reach them?
Understanding the audience – who they are, how they think and feel, and what they need – is essential to effective communication. This concept applies to all ages and levels of expertise: from the little homeschooled boy who desperately wants another cookie to the grandparent who needs a ride to the pharmacy to the homeschool high school debater who hopes to persuade the judge to vote affirmative. Possible attitudes toward your appeal include:
supportive (they agree with you) apathetic (they don’t care) doubtful (they’re not sure or have serious reservations) hostile (they are actively opposed) knowledgeable (they already know a great deal) unlearned (they know nothing about it) indifferent (the thought never occurred to them)
Knowing some key facts about the audience favorably impacts the message. The home schooling speech or essay can then be crafted in such a way that the ideas have personal meaning and relevance to your unique audience. People pay attention to ideas that compliment their own hopes, needs, and goals.
Savvy home schooling speakers and writers adjust the theme (invention), structure (arrangement), style, vocabulary, length, and delivery to each audience. If addressing a large, heterogeneous audience, more explicit syntax and background information is needed. If addressing a specialized niche (for instance, baseball players), specialized language (like earned run averages) can be used to illuminate.
What do the members of the audience have in common? Do you expect them to be good listeners? Can you estimate collective age, social status, ethnicity, education, and cultural background? Consult others who have spoken before similar audiences in the past, or check out any written records (bylaws, public minutes) that are available about the group. Will the surroundings such as lighting, acoustics, and distance impact their ability to favorably respond to you?
Communication is an exchange of information. The word exchange implies giving and taking. The homeschooled orator or writer gives three things: (1) a debatable idea, (2) the evidentiary proof, and (3) a call to action. The audience receives this offering and responds with verbal, nonverbal, and sometimes written feedback. Nothing is more deflating and discouraging to a homeschooled public speaker or writer than a tepid, unresponsive audience. To improve immediate feedback, consider adding novelty, humor, contrast, movement, suspense, and intensity to command attention. Above all, use your writing and speaking skills to tailor the message to the audience. Certainly, the audience has the right to disagree as in the case of the mom who refuses the second cookie, but if the audience doesn’t understand the idea, plea, argument, or information, somehow the author has failed to communicate. Although it’s hard home schooling work, effective communication rests primarily with the creator of the message because the audience is always right!
