Planning for the Never-Been-Planned-Before Pt.2

I asked in my last post, "Where does a rookie even begin to plan how to do all of this and to do it excellently for the glory of the Lord, to honor the parents, and to help grow the kids as God would have them?" And I said that I would share more in my next post, well here is me following through on that.

As I said, I really was a rookie with some school and little classroom experience, but what I did know was that the families that started the school were family to me, and they loved and trusted me.  That makes things easier but also way harder because giving up is never an option.  So with the help of our Headmaster, and my friend and brother, Jonathan Sarr, I jumped right in with shirt and tie and all, and boy did I get soaked.  Talk about learning by full immersion.

Once we had chosen what curriculum we were going to teach, we then had to figure out how to actually teach it to a multi-grade classroom.  Like how do you keep everyone interested and challenged when some can barely read and write while others are looking to be challenged and pushed with more difficult concepts?  That was and still is a hard question to answer.  

It has been said that as a Christian, if you want to know how much sanctification you need, then get married, and if you want to know more, have kids, and still more, become a teacher.  Man was I stretched and pulled and poked.  I had to learn the subjects with the students for the most part, well at least how the curriculum presented it, and then process it enough to be learned at different levels.  This was/is hard.  Sometimes you have no idea how it is going to work out, so you admit that and go for it.  This is where planning comes in.

I knew that I needed to be really prepared for each and every period, but one of my weaknesses and fears is the possibility of failure, but as we all know if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.  My tendency is to get paralyzed in the details, you know "paralysis by analysis," and because of this I started out giving the kids way too much and too hard of work, especially with the pre-polly kids (K-2nd graders) like making them memorize crazy amounts of science facts for our sound-offs, which they did well but not without exasperation and tears.  I also gave the 5th grade ladies tons comprehension questions on top of the 10 plus novels they were reading that year, and all because I thought I had to do all of what the curriculum offered.  By the way this also meant I had a lot of grading to do also.

I am thankful that this did not go on too long.  Our Headmaster and Sean K. Higgins stepped in with some timely reminders that less is often more, and with some helpful tweaks to help my planning align more with how each student learns at different stages of development.  I am very thankful for that reminder.  I am reminded of that daily.

I'll have to share some more of my joys and trials from our first year at ECS in another post soon.

Planning for the Never-Been-Planned-Before Pt.1

So three years ago I had the privilege of helping to start Evangel Classical School.  I had never done something so bold or so crazy ... ever! I already had a BA in History and Master's in Teaching but had not done any official teaching other than a few substitute gigs. But I had ZERO experience teaching classically or in a classical christian school. So really the only clue I had was from reading some books on the subject and visiting an information meeting of another classical christian school in area.  Thankfully I wasn't the only one doing this, but we were/are convinced that this was/is the right and best way to educate our children.  All of us who started the school had children who needed educating or will have that need, so we said why not start a school. 

At this point I bet you're rightfully asking why not just send your kids to the classical school in the area that you visited, well that school is 45 minutes to an hour away depending on traffic, certainly not ideal, and no other schools were closer.  We saw a BIG need, we were overwhelmingly convinced that classical christian education was the right and best approach to educate our children, and we saw it as a great opportunity to have a multi-generational impact in and on our community. So we went for it.

But here is the scary part, I was clueless, but I was eager and excited.  How do you plan for such a monumental task? You know, no big deal educating and enculturating my children, my friends' children, and those-who-partner-with-us' children. YIKES! This is the most important task a parent is given.  You know--to raise them up in the nurture in admonition of the Lord; to train them up in the way that they should go; to teach them to glorify God in all that they do. Oh yeah no big deal--right!

Thankfully, we had some to helps from the Association of Classical & Christian Schools.  They have a whole start up manual which was vital, but that really didn't help me with how to plan for each day, or how to teach in a pseudo one room school house.  We started off with 12 kids day one and two weeks in added two more to make 14.  We also started in the basement of a farm house and started with kids from kindergarten through sophomore, which wasn't ideal but was needed.  I was tasked with the lion share of the teaching because was getting paid for this after all.  So if I recall right, I taught logic to our three secondary kids, 2nd grade Saxon math (2 students), 5th grade literature (4 girls), 5th grade Saxon math with two different levels of math (4 girls), K-5 history and science.  All of which I had never taught before. Can you say overwhelmed and excited? Which by-the-way is right where I am supposed to be.

Where does a rookie even begin to plan how to do all of this and to do it excellently for the glory of the Lord, to honor the parents, and to help grow the kids as God would have them?  Well more on that on my next post.

Beginnings

Beginnings are always new, for no two beginnings are exactly alike. Beginnings are gifts, but can also be groundhoggish if they never lead to satisfying endings.  Many of my beginnings are out of my control and many I have started but have never completed. Beginnings to me are glorious and can be quite frustrating.  But I am a child of one who loves to begin each day with a new and abiding dose of overflowing grace.  This grace is poured out from a never-ending source of Life. The Life-giver is always giving me new beginnings and has and is always providing the Way to the ultimate satisfactory finish.  My first beginning and my daily beginnings are Jesus, and my eternal finish and completeness is Jesus.

I am beginning again; beginning a series of blogs with the purpose of giving to others; giving of my story of beginnings.  I was challenged today by my brother, tohu va bohu, to begin blogging again. So with the motive of being a resource to others, I am beginning again.

I hope to give by sharing my story particularly of one of my favorite beginnings, the beginning of Evangel Classical School.  We are about to begin our fourth year, and I have been blessed to serve the families of our school by being its first full-time teacher.  This year we have the blessing of adding another full-time teacher.  So my goal through this series of blogs is to share my story of beginnings at ECS.  I hope to be an encouragement and resource to many over the years.

Here's to beginnings.