Teaching from Rest: A Homeschooler’s Guide to Unshakable Peace by Sarah Mackenzie. Sarah produces the podcast, Read-Aloud Revival.
“[W]e have been blessed and loved by a God who even enables us to love our enemies. Surely if we can love our enemies, then we can love the laundry, or Latin, or math studies.”
This book was good for reminding homeschool moms, in particular, to slow down, get rest, and not sweat the small stuff. Most of it really is small stuff. Sarah MacKenzie has some specific advice that would be quite liberating and well, restful, were the right people to take her advice. I find that the people who are too loose and carefree in their homeschooling don’t need the advice to “loosen up and rest”, and those who are too structured and perfectionistic will have trouble listening to a message that tells them not to worry and just be happy. But some of us who are in-between might be able to take Ms. Mackenzie’s words to heart.
For example, her “Five Ways to Simplify the Curriculum” are no real revelation, but they are solid, good advice:
1. Do less: “What most curricular models provide today is a survey of everything and mastery in nothing, so our children get an education that is a mile wide and an inch deep. That’s not true eduction. We need to lead our children out of the shallows in order to dive into the deep.”
2. Integrate: “Realize that when you are reading aloud from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, you are not just doing literature. If you read it slowly, enjoying it, taking time to contemplate the ideas and discuss them with your kids, you are taking on history, geography, writing, vocabulary, theology, and philosophy as well. This isn’t dabbling; it’s wrestling.”
3. Understand the limitations of published resources: “Remember that the published resources are to be weirded by you, not to rule over you. . . . We are teaching people, not books.”
4. Bake in review time. Plan ahead for “times of reassessment as the year progresses.” Ms. Mackenzie says, “Doing so helps me progress through daily, consistent work without falling prey to frenzy, anxiety, or an impulsive change in the curriculum.”
5. Remember the point: “A child who loves and hates what he ought is a truly educated child—and that is the larger ‘point’ of education.
Nothing really new or ground-breaking in this book of good old-fashioned maxims similar to the above, but then I’m getting old and crochety and suspicious of new and ground-breaking advice. Sarah Mackenzie encourages homeschool moms to remember their roots, trust their instincts and teach from rest. Not a bad reminder at all. And quite restful.