Mt. Sophia Ideas

This post ran recently at 7sistershomeschool.com. We had so much fun with it, that I am going to share it here today, and tomorrow the most awesome comment from Maureen: A Homeschooler’s Psalm 23. Stay tuned…

If I speak in the tongues of French or Spanish, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I have the gift of spelling and can fathom all mysteries of histories and all knowledge of arithmetic,

If I have a faith that can move mountains of laundry and dishes each day, but do not have love, I am nothing. 

If I give all I possess to the purchase of good curriculum and give over my body to hardship of long nights of lesson preparation and research that I may boast of how well my kids are educated, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient with slow learners.

Love is kind when they forget how to multiply again.

It does not envy my friends whose kids were born knowing long division.

It does not boast when my kids can sing well but my friends’ kid does not.

It is not too proud to admit it to my friends when I’m tired and discouraged.

It does not dishonor others’ homeschooling methods.

It is not self-seeking and unwilling to help invest in the homeschool culture around me.

It is not easily angered when my kid declares he doesn’t like science.

It keeps no record of wrongs- in me or in others.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth and teaches my kids the same.

It always protects my family and friends.

It always trusts that God has a plan and cares what is happening.

It always hopes that I will be able to hear God and obey His will for my family.

It always perseveres- even on LONG days.

Love never fails.

Do you have any homeschool adaptations of Scripture verses?

Competition is fierce for entrance into some colleges.

For many homeschoolers, college is the next step after high school. How can he/she add power to a good transcript?

1) Develop expertise in a talent.

Colleges are often impressed when a transcript shows that a student has put quality time into a talent and developed expertise in that area.

When my daughter was in high school, she was passionate about photography and showed talent in that area. In order to develop that gift, she took courses at the local community college- earning a certificate in Visual Communications at the same time she was graduating from high school.

When she interviewed with the department chair at the college she liked best, she came armed with a professional quality portfolio and walked out with an extra scholarship.

2) Find appropriate competitions.

One of my sons had skill in film production. We looked for competitions to show his determination and skill in that arena.

-As part of our Cinematography Club in our homeschool support group, we took some teens and their film entries to the San Antonia Independent Christian Film Festival for several years.

-He entered, with his friends, music videos into Association of Christian Schools International’s Regional Fine Arts Competition. (ACSI allowed our support group to participate as a non-member school.)

-He kept his eyes open for other, smaller competitions and, with his friends, produced small videos to enter.

3) Volunteer in the Talent Area

Find a community organization or ministry that could use your teen’s skill.

Both my son and my daughter used their skills to help out the local Urban Promise ministry. Ezra produced a promotional video. Joanna did photography for their promotional brochures.

All these things go work to make a powerful transcript. List special courses under curriculum, competitions and volunteer work in separate sections on the transcript.

This post is running concurrently on my other blog http://7sistershomeschool.com

Thanks to all who came and to all who donated (cash, school supplies, baked goods) to help our sister schools- Urban Promise High School and Elijah School.

Mr. O'Sullivan's Team

Thanks also to our 2 praise bands. Both bands gave us great praise songs and lots of fun.

Caitlin's Team

“I am very proud of our musicians AND our students. They understand the school mission of maximizing their potentials and creating a culture for Christ!”- Mrs. Tillman (notice, I enjoy quoting myself. *smile*

Earlier this semester I had to give someone some relationship advice. The question of who loved whom — and what exactly love is — was central to our conversation.

Then, a couple weekends back, my sister married a very awesome guy. I naturally had to write them a long philosophical discourse on the nature of relationships and love.

So, I hope you’ll forgive me if I devote this post the to topic of love. It’s not a homeschool-specific topic, but it’s one homeschoolers definitely have to deal with.

And there are few topics that are more important, in the end.

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I want to talk about romantic love specifically. I feel particularly compelled to talk about this kind of love because (a) I’m married, and (b) I teach college students.

As a married person I want to make sure I get love right. And as a teacher of college students, I get worried that they’re going to get love wrong.

I mean, have you ever listened to the songs about “love” that kids listen to, or seen the shows and movies about love that kids watch? You remember the songs you listened to and the shows/movies you watched when you were young, right? It’s essentially the same stuff: fun (for the most part), shallow (for the most part), and occasionally disturbingly bad.

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So, what is love, exactly?

I think love happens in three levels.

It begins as a desire, not as something you explicitly choose. Specifically, love begins as the desire to spend the rest of your life with someone, helping him/her to achieve his/her goals and to become as awesome as he/she can become.

That’s what falling in love means. It’s something that happens to you. You can’t help it, as it were. (But more on that later.)

And if that’s not what you desire, you haven’t fallen in love. You’ve fallen into something else, which may be perfectly fine, but isn’t love.

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The second (and deeper) level of love is the addition of commitment to desire.

Specifically, love becomes the desire and commitment to spend the rest of your life with someone, helping her/him to achieve her/his goals and to become as awesome as she/he can become.

This level is extremely important. This is where you shift from merely being in love with someone (which is a fine thing to be in, usually), to loving her or him.

This is the level where you engage not just the emotional/desiring side of yourself, but your full self — mind, emotions, soul, body, etc. — since you make a commitment to do whatever is involved in spending the rest of your life helping the other person to achieve his/her goals and to become as awesome as he/she can.

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The third (and perhaps deepest?) level of love is the acting out of your desire and commitment to spend the rest of your life with the other person, helping her/him to achieve her/his goals and to become as awesome as she/he can become.

Until you act out your love, your love isn’t fully actual. To actually love someone, you must act. (The word “actual” has the word “act” in it for a reason!)

And that means you must actually (a) do what is required to spend your life/time with the person you love, (b) do what is required to help him/her achieve his/her goals, and (c) do what is required to help him/her become as awesome as he/she can.

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But now we face two questions.

First, can you control whom you fall in love with?

Second, can you fall out of love?

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The answer to the first question is, “No, and yes.” What you find attractive depends upon your character and personality. You have the power to shape both your character and personality.

If you have a bad character — that is, if you are shallow and vindictive and immature — you’re going to be attracted by a certain type of person. If you work on improving your character, you’ll begin to be attracted by a different type of person.

So, your character determines who you’re going to desire to spend the rest of your life with, helping her/him to achieve her/his goals and to become as awesome as she/he can be. But you determine — and can change — your own character.

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The answer to the second question is, “Yes, but it doesn’t have to be a disaster.”

Love is one part desire, one part commitment, and one part action. The commitment in some sense is the completion or actualization of the desire, and the action is the completion and actualization of the commitment.

To “fall out of love,” I think, simply means losing the desire part of love. Desires are like emotions. They can be fickle. They can come and go. But the “heart” of love is in the commitment and action that actualize the desire, not in the desire itself.

If your desire flickers, therefore, I’d be willing to bet that continued commitment and action (which make love complete and actual) will bring the desire back to life.

And remember: While desire is the only part of love that you don’t control directly, you can control it indirectly by the way you shape your character. And you shape your character by the way you choose to act and think.

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So, that’s my theory about love.

What do you think?

-Micah Tillman

_{[Micah is a Mt. Sophia graduate who is working on his doctoral dissertation at The Catholic University of America. He also gets to teach philosophy (as a "teaching fellow"), which he loves.]}

You may have noticed that Mt. Sophia’s high school courses now have “Levels” attached to them.

What are levels?

Colleges these days are looking for a description of the amount of academic rigor associated with each class. Some high schools call this description “Levels”; some call it “Phases”.

Whatever a school calls the description, that must be put on the transcript  beside the course title. (Also a brief description of what our levels are is placed on the transcript. A more detailed description goes on the school profile that is mailed along with transcripts.)

There is not much standardization of levels from school to school. Mt. Sophia’s levels are much more robust than many schools. However, our reputation for high standards has opened doors for our students to many colleges.

LEVELS: All high school academic subjects have a specific level, or can accommodate multiple levels.  The key to the level is as follows:

Level 1- Remedial Courses
This level is for students who struggle in a subject. While it is acceptable for high school graduation, Remedial Courses are not acceptable for college applicants.

Level 2- Average High School Courses
This level is for average high school students. While Level 2 Courses are not as rigorous as Level 3- College Prep courses, taking a Level 2 course does not prevent a student from going to college.

Level 3- College Preparatory Courses
This level is for students who are certain they are going to college. These courses mimic the rigor of college classes.

Level 4- Advanced Courses
This level is for students in College Prep courses who are able to do more rigorous work. These courses add power to the transcript and are attractive to colleges. Level 4 at Mt. Sophia requires Level 3 work plus 1/2 more credit to equal 1 advanced credit.

Level 5- Honors Courses
This level is for highly competitive students who want the most powerful transcripts. These courses look very attractive to colleges but are very rigorous. Level 5 at Mt. Sophia requires fully double the work of a Level 3 course.

Revolutions seem to be the thing to do recently. In each we see a call for a change in leadership. And with a change in leadership, the people hope, will come a change in the ways their countries are organized.

A country, in a sense, is just a large organization. Fortunately for us Americans, the large organization we call our country is basically stable and relatively decent.

It’s stable and decent enough, anyway, that we generally have the time and energy to think about the smaller organizations with which we have more personal and direct interaction. The fact that we do not have to spend all our time trying to create a massive change in our country’s organization, and can therefore spend some of our time trying to improve organizations like our churches, co-ops, and youth groups, is a blessing.

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Now, you’ll hear a lot of people talk about organizations as if they were organisms. They think of groups as entities or objects — something over and above the members that make them up.

I, in contrast, would propose we look at organizations as people making decisions togther.

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For instance, the church that my wife and I attend — and of which we are now both officially members — is an organization. Part of what makes it an organization is that all of its members make essentially the same decision every Sunday morning. We — each and every one of us — decide, some time around 10:30, to walk out of our houses or apartments, get in our cars, and drive in the direction of the church building.

Then, once we all get to the church building, we all make another decision: to go and sit in the pews. We then, for some reason or other, all decide — at the same time — to grab the hymnal in the “pocket” of the pew-back in front of us, and open to the same page. And, then we all decide to stand up and start singing (again: at the same time!).

It’s the weirdest thing.

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At any point in that process, each of us could make a different decision. Each of us could decide to go to a different building, or to stay home. Each of us could decide to stand facing various walls in different parts of the church, or to walk or run around, rather than sitting in the pews. Each of us could decide to turn to a different page in the hymnal, to stand up at different times, to speak, shout, or whistle rather than singing.

The reason that our church is an organization is that we all make the same set of decisions together at the same time. And there are certain decisions that members of our church tend to make — decisions about being friendly, about our attitudes toward other people, about taking food to people who are sick, about asking certain kinds of questions — that give our church its distinctive character.

If you wanted to change the “personality” of our church, therefore, you’d have to get us all — each and every one of us — to start making different (kinds of) decisions.

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Leaders are the people who can do this. Leaders are people who get people to make decisions together.

Different leaders have different approaches. Some leaders get people to make decisions by scaring or threatening them. Others get people to make decisions by offering a reward. Still others get people to make decisions by making those decisions themselves, acting as an attractive model for the others to imitate.

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If you like an organization in which you participate, then, ask yourself a few questions: “What are the decisions that we all — each and every one of us — make, and what is good about these decisions? Which persons do we all follow in making these decisions? How do those persons get us to make these decisions?”

Then, learn to celebrate those decisions, and to be grateful for the people who encourage others to make those decisions (whether they realize they’re encouraging others to do so or not).

And if you are uncomfortable with an organization you participate in, then ask yourself the same kinds of questions: “What are the decisions that we all — each and every one of us — make, and what is bad about these decisions? Which persons do we all follow in making these decisions? How do those persons get us to make these decisions?”

Then, figure out what decisions you all should be making, and think about ways in which you can encourage your fellow members to start making those decisions.

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Remember: If I’m right, an organization, or institution, or group is not some kind of impersonal being or force. If I’m right, an organization, or institution, or group is just two or more individual persons, each of whom is making a certain set of decisions with everyone else in the organization/institution/group.

-Micah Tillman

_{[Micah is a Mt. Sophia graduate who is working on his doctoral dissertation at The Catholic University of America. He also gets to teach philosophy (as a "teaching fellow"), which he loves.]}