vocation

Goodbye Sixth Grade, Third Grade and Kindergarten

Devona 1 Comment

Our third year of homeschooling will be logged in the books this afternoon when we meet with our Education Specialist and turn in our final report cards. The charter school system is funny, great, annoying and helpful, all wrapped up together. I am lucky to have a supportive credentialed teacher to help us out with curriculum decisions and roadblocks, but that comes packaged with the requirement that our kids third grade and up take the state standards test and turn in report cards.Report Cards

Filling out the end of the semester report cards is always such a revelatory experience. After weeks of wondering if we’ve made any progress at all, being blind to the forest for all the trees, I sit down with my calendar and curriculum to document everything we’ve done which counts as school. It’s a lot. And it’s all beautiful stuff. And I get to give everyone straight A’s because we don’t give up on our work until we get it right.

In a couple of weeks we will be attending homeschool graduation for our Kindergartener, just like her two older sisters did in their traditional school. I can’t wait to snap pictures of her little tiny face, with a cardboard graduation cap on top of her curly head.

As I say goodbye to my third year of homeschooling what do I have to say about this lifestyle? Well, it continues to be less stressful for our kids, and about the same amount of stressful for me. I have learned a lot about setting a schedule in place and counting on that to return to as I plan my weeks. This might be normal regular stuff for those of you out there who’ve been excelling at adulting for years, but I have always been a reluctant planner. It was a revelation that doing some work planning ahead can leave me space for more flexibility each day.

I’ve also made big strides in learning how my kids learn, and how I excel at teaching. We thrive listening to books together and discussing them. The skill my older two have in critiquing a work of literature or dissecting an argument or philosophy astounds me. It has grown simply because we spend up to an hour every day listening to literature from different genres and eras as we go about our day. If nothing else, my kids will grow up to be skilled editors.

Most amazingly, I’ve learned to love being a teacher who happens to be teaching her own kids. A couple weeks ago at the members meeting at church our head pastor stood up to give his 5 minute breakdown of what he feels our church’s mission should be for the next ten years. “More of the same,” he said. Knowing that he is an enneagram 7 (the Ethusiast) like myself, this was a powerful statement. Embarking on an adventure of sameness is hard for 7s to focus on, but it’s exactly the most adventurous thing you can do. Picking a trail and walking as far along it as you can gets you deeper into the woods than anyone has ever gone before. Walking the first 5 miles of every trail you see doesn’t ever bring you to the serious mountaineering of life.

Homeschooling lets my kids deeply explore their interests without the distractions of busy-work and superfluous grade requirements. It lets me relearn these topics with my adult brain and understand them so much more deeply. Yes, even long division. It also gives us time to become more interesting people, who go camping, rock climb, write movies, travel together, and serve our communities. As I say goodbye to this year of learning, I think I am saying hello to a committed homeschooling future. I’m saying hello to more of the same. And that’s something I have been striving to say for all of my life.

Celebrating Life and Grieving Loss

Devona 2 Comments

I know the tone of our blog has taken a downward turn as of late. Unfortunately, in spite of great joy in most aspects of our life, we have had more than one instance of bad news. My last post about our dear friends moving was sad to write. But even sadder still was the news of the passing of my sister Brittany at the age of 29. This is our family blog, so we document the thoughts, experiences and happenings of our family. Even though I debated much about adding anything to the blog about her death, it is one of the most affecting events in my life and can’t be excluded. I’m not ready to write much detail about the actual passing, and perhaps I never will be. But I do want to include the eulogy which I shared in Akron at her memorial service in front of at least 100 friends and family members who have known us since our earliest days. I also want to share a letter which she wrote me to accompany my birthday present two years ago, but that will be saved for another post. Below you will find what I wrote for her memorial service:

My Dad gave the eulogy for Brittany at the service we had in Austin. There were over 300 people at there and I hugged each of them, which was hard at first but got easier as the hugging went on. My dad wrote out every word which I don’t normally do when I speak in front of people, but this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say to a room of people so I’m going write the whole thing out. I’m going to begin with the poem he read on Thursday. It’s not a poem I would have picked, but when he read it in that room it just made sense. Here it is: Continue reading →

I Finish Things

Devona 0 Comments

A few years ago I moved away from New Year’s Resolutions. It’s not because they aren’t great ideas, or because I was having trouble keeping them. Instead it was because I was discovering that focusing on a single goal stated in January was not always going to be the best way to use my time in March, May, and November of the year coming up. I’d had years where my resolution was kept, like my Marathon year in 2008. But I’d also had years where my resolution had to be forfeit because everything in our lives changed. You know, like when we moved to a new state.

So, last December, instead of making a resolution, I set an intention for the year. A mantra I’d repeat to myself that embodied the life I wanted to live. That mantra was “Focus.” I’d repeat it to myself when I was getting distracted on facebook. I’d say it in my head when I was getting frustrated with the kids and losing my temper. I said it to myself often while I was suffering through the annual “No Training Brazier Half Marathon.” I made it my intention every time I went to my yoga mat, or to do a skill on the gymnastics floor. It was really effective. It didn’t define what I was doing, it defined how I did it and what kind of person I was.

“Focus” motivated me to set education goals for the girls and keep them on track. It helped me remember to exercise even though I quit my gym membership. And it helped me use my one day of personal time well enough to complete a picture book manuscript and submit it for publication (still waiting for the response on that one).

This year I’ve decided my new mantra, which I hope will not replace “Focus” but compliment it, is “I finish things.” I have struggled in the past with quitting half way through a project, and just walking away. There are times when a chapter must come to an end, and I respect that. But what I’m hoping will happen instead is that my newly found focus will help me only start things I fully intend to finish. Just like everyone else, I only have a small amount of hours each week for my own projects and I want to see those projects through to the end.

I’m almost always working alone and one of my struggles is having no external force telling me when the job is done. Somethings can drag on forever, or I can stop them suddenly because it’s “done.” Honestly, I’ve just learned that I’m not setting clear enough guidelines for what I’m trying to accomplish. If my mantra is “I finish things,” then I’ll have to be more honest with myself at the start of a project what exactly it is that defines “finished.”

So, what about you? Are you a resolution person, or an intention person? I’d love to hear what your focus is going to be and what you plan to finish in 2015.