I'll be there!!

My wrestling with the idea of "it is their (the children's) business to know what has been taught" vs. being the guide and doing my job as their teacher has come to an end! I listened to an episode of The New Mason Jar Podcast with Simply Charlotte Mason (season 3: episode 42) and it set me at ease. We are NOT the sole end of their education. "We must bear in mind that growth: physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, is the sole end of education" (from "The Story of Charlotte Mason"). And that we are to be their guide, philosopher, and friend. I know I get too caught up in the specifics of what to do in certain situations, and try to script a lesson, and that just doesn't work out to be true learning. I'm absolutely pondering on Ch. 3, it was just a huge chapter full of ideas that are different than what I've been taught to do.

It's going slow! But I plan to spend tonight finishing Ch. 3 and tomorrow reading a good chunk of Ch. 4+5. This past week has flown by!

@Elise Thompson I've been making it a habit the past few days to read 30 minutes in the morning before getting on socials! And 30 minutes is about 4 pages for me with notes. So that helps me plan out the next week!

Chapter 2 thoughts: a child's thinking is the same level (if not higher) thinking than an adult's, and sometimes we inhibit children from discovering by "protecting" them from what we think is too big of an idea or too scary or too dangerous. Pg. 36 "Is he "cabined, cribbed, confined" in our ways and does the fairy tale afford a joyful escape to regions where all things are possible?" - - we tend to grow kids out of their imaginations too young. Prevent them from being silly or say things that aren't in any way reasonable, but that's where their joy is for the time being. And it takes curiosity and imagination to discover things in the most delightful way. Isn't the Bible filled of things that aren't reasonable to our small, minute minds? Yet all of that was possible. Imagination and creativity glorify God because He is imaginative and creative. Pg. 37 "It is in him to be a little tyrant...she is mistaken in supposing that his stormy manifestations of greed, willfulness, temper, are signs of will. It is when the little boy is able to stop all these and restrain himself with quivering lip that his will comes into play..." - - No one can force a child to be obedient or kind or patient when he'd rather (and naturally) do the opposite. The will is the act of going against our sin-born nature because it is the right thing to do. Pg. 38 "...a child comes into their hands with a mind of amazing potentialities: he has a brain too..." - - in my work as a public education and special education teacher, my, don't I hear (and admittedly say) all the time, "they're going to give me what they give, which is very minimal." And that's probably true because that's all that's been required of them before. But they DO have more than that, even with real learning disabilities and struggles. They may not show it well on paper, but having a conversation with them, or incorporating art into their learning, and you've opened up ideas that were stuck (more like suppressed by all the educators insisting it's on paper to be graded).