Mt. Sophia Ideas

Do you get nervous before a big test?

Try these ideas:

1) Study each day. A little daily learning helps develop strong neural pathways in your brain. These strong neural pathways make information easier to retrieve even if you feel tense during a test.

2) Review your notes the evening before the test. Take some deep breaths (to lower your stress levels) and read your notes outloud. THEN find something to laugh about (laughter makes things easier to remember).

3) Quickly look over your notes again in the morning.

4) Talk to yourself well. Remind yourself of other times you’ve done well on a test.

5) Do some deep breathing before you begin the test.

You’re going to do well!

We are getting ready to leap into the new school year.

Here are 3 tips to help this year be successful:

1) Make a schedule

Students who make and follow a schedule tend to do better than those who don’t. Schedules help you pace yourself- not over work and not over play.

2) Make friends

High school is an important time to surround yourself with friends who believe in you and your ideals. You need the support and the fun of having friends.

3) Make time to pray

Sounds cheesy, maybe- but you can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens you. BUT you can’t do all things on your own. Check in with Him daily! Learn to listen for His voice.

Have a great year!

Life is full of ups and downs.  We’ve all seen days when the sky is gray, the birds aren’t singing, and the car won’t start.  Just because you love homeschooling doesn’t mean it will always be fun or easy.  Sometimes it’s just plain lousy.

Maybe neither you nor your child can understand logarithms, or the college admissions deadline that you thought was still weeks away is suddenly–TOMMOROW! Or maybe you just woke up on the wrong side of the bed.  For whatever reason, you just start to think, Why me?  This isn’t fair?

You might try to curb your inner grumbling by telling yourself not to overreact or to count your blessings, but you can’t help feeling as if you somehow have a right to be dissatisfied.

Guess what.  You have every reason to be dissatisfied!

Bad days are a blessing because they reveal an important truth: that all is not right in the world . . . yet.

When I have bad days, I think of what Paul says in Romans 8 about the groaning of creation as it awaits Christ’s return to restore all things.  We shouldn’t try to quiet our own groans by hoping that tomorrow will be better.  We KNOW that eternity in heaven will be much, MUCH better. It would be wrong to be satisfied with anything else.

In May 2011, Mike Rowe, creator and host of “Dirty Jobs,” testified before Congress about the “skills gap” in America. He said, “We’ve elevated the importance of ‘higher education’ to such a lofty perch that all other forms of knowledge are now labeled ‘alternative.’ Millions of parents and kids see apprenticeships and on-the-job-training opportunities as ‘vocational consolation prizes,’ best suited for those not cut out for a four-year degree. And still, we talk about millions of ‘shovel ready’ jobs for a society that doesn’t encourage people to pick up a shovel.”

Homeschoolers have a long tradition of creating more opportunities for students to have hands-on experiences and apprenticeships.  Therefore, we may be uniquely positioned to help fill this skills gap.  Here are some very good reasons for some students to consider a trade or vocational route.

1.         Trade schools can be a financially responsible choice. According to the College Board, the cost for an in-state public college for the 2010–2011 academic year averaged $20,339.  A moderate budget at a private college averaged $40,476.  In our current economic environment, it may be appealing to spend a great deal less time and money to prepare to make a good living.  In addition, the average pay rate for many trades – right out of school – is higher than many other entry-level jobs.

2.         Trade schools have hands-on appeal. If you want to spend less time learning theories and esoteric knowledge, and getting right down to learning the nuts of bolts of your trade, then you should consider mapping out a vocational school route.

3.         Technical schools require less time. If you prefer to get out in the world and start making a living sooner, consider trade school.

4.         Avoid test anxiety. Vocational schools don’t need to see your SAT scores.  They want to know that you are willing to learn and ready to apply practical skills.

5.         You may face less job competition or outsourcing. Hoards of people graduate from college each year and face stiff competition for jobs.  However, fewer people are going into trades, and there is more attrition, so occupations requiring skilled tradesmen have less competition.  Also, it’s pretty hard to send your car to India to be worked on, or to import a plumber from China, so outsourcing is not much of a worry.

6.         Our country needs skilled workers. Mike Rowe said it best: “I encourage you (Congress) to support these efforts, because closing the skills gap doesn’t just benefit future tradesmen and the companies desperate to hire them. It benefits people like me, and anyone else who shares my addiction to paved roads, reliable bridges, heating, air conditioning, and indoor plumbing.”

Who is your homeschooler?

If I ran into you in an elevator and asked you to describe your homeschooler(s), could you give me a one-minute answer?

(This by the way, is called an elevator pitch.)

If you don’t have an elevator pitch about your kids, maybe your mission has become fuzzy?

Why are you homeschooling? What are you hoping to create (work for God to create)?

This is a GOOD homework assignment for the summer.

Here are some things to help you get started. Let’s look at what your homeschooler is not:

-His transcript

-Her SAT scores

-His acheivement test percentiles

-Her number of honors courses

-His awesome apprenticeships

These are things your homeschooler DOES, but WHO is a different, more essential question (the rest is icing on the cake).

Try these questions:

-What does God say about your child?

-In whose image was she created?

-What gifts did He place within him and why (as much as you can know)?

-What is her character?

If you know these things, you can be faithful to the mission God has given you as a parent. The effect will be a transcript and activities that meet your child’s needs and the family mission, but it will be formed by God’s ideas.

Why not try composing an elevator pitch about your homeschooler?

Monday will be — or was (depending on when you read this) — the 4th of July.  We Americans will be — or were — celebrating our independence.                   

From what? you might ask.

From our oppressors, we would respond.

The English? you ask. (Poor English people. Can you imagine them watching us celebrate being independent from them every year?)

Not really, no, we respond. After all, none of us were ever oppressed by England.

I mean, raise your hand: Have you ever been oppressed by an Englishman or -woman?

Didn’t think so.

____

The 4th is not about our freedom from England. It’s about freedom from tyranny — from unjust, exploitative, illegitimate force and violence.

It’s about the day when the leaders of the thirteen “united States” (not, interestingly, the “United States”) said that there are certain fundamental truths that everyone can see — truths about people and governments and God and countries — and that anybody who violates those truths forfeits his (or her) authority to rule.

But notice that they claimed these were truths everyone could see.  And notice how they felt it necessary to explain their actions to the world by writing up a “Declaration.”

And notice that they didn’t declare war on the 4th. They simply claimed to be speaking the truth and explaining themselves.

____

Now, the guys who wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence weren’t all good guys. But we can learn something from them, nevertheless.

The Declaration of Independence was an attempt to remind everyone of important truths (important truths they all already knew), to convince them that the government of England had violated those truths, and to convince them that the citizens of the thirteen American colonies were justified — because of those violations — in no longer seeing the government of England as their government.

The road to independence, in other words, begins with truth, reasoning, and argumentation.

____

If you want to teach independence to your children, then, what must you do?  

First, teach them to see truth.

Second, teach them to understand how others see the world.

Remember, the Declaration of Independence doesn’t appeal to truths that only Americans or Christians could see.  It appeals to truths that everyone could see. The Declaration of Independence tries to start its argument from “common ground.”

But even if you can’t find “common ground” with an opponent, you still need to understand how he or she sees the world.  You can’t help someone get from the wrong place to the right place if you don’t know where he’s coming from!

Third, teach them how to make a case, or construct an argument, that others will find convincing.

Remember, the job of the Declaration of Independence was to convince the rest of the world that the American colonists were right.  The Declaration isn’t a law that forced people to agree.  And it isn’t a declaration of war that threatened violence if they didn’t agree. Its job was to make a rational argument that rational people would find convincing.

Fourth, teach them how to write.

The Declaration is extremely well written. It wouldn’t have had nearly the force it’s had for 200+ years had it not been.

Fifth, have them read great literature and study great thinkers.

The secret to the Declaration of Independence is John Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government. Everyone had already read John Locke’s book, and been convinced by it.  All the Declaration had to do, then was to remind everyone of what John Locke had said about people and governments and God and countries, and then convince them that what Locke had said applied to the American situation.

John Locke’s book was a culture changer. Without it, there would have never been a Declaration of Independence.

____

As homeschoolers, you have already declared your independence from the “normal” school system.  And that means you have the freedom to teach independence to your children.

The 4th of July is here to remind us not to let such opportunities go to waste!

-Micah Tillman, PhD.

This post is running concurrently at http://7sistershomeschool.com