Patti's Homeschool Mentoring

Of the Three Types of Education Which Will You Choose?

Conveyor Belt Education  

The modern public school system was set up about the same time as the industrial revolution with the intent to educate the poor so that they could get a job, and thereby support their families.

Each person who travels through the conveyor belt receives a stamp of approval at the end (diploma), and comes out into the world as a “finished product,” ready to be marketed to the highest bidder for employment. And like a factory, conveyor belt institutions test and grade all students on the same scales regardless of individual needs or interests.

The Conveyor Belt does precisely what it was designed to do. It produces a relatively literate workforce for the general populace. It is not designed, however, to produce independently thinking leaders.

Conveyor Belt education can be found in public schools, private or charter schools, and even in home schools. It is sometimes referred to as the “soviet conveyor belt,” because standards and grade levels are set low enough to ensure that nearly everyone can make it through the educational assembly line.

Conveyor Belt Education has as its objective to prepare everyone for a job, any job, by teaching them what to think. This includes rudimentary skills to help them function in society. In general, compulsory schools are set up on the conveyor belt model, although most of us can cite wonderful examples of many excellent teachers in the public system who use leadership methods.

 

…Conveyor Belts have an important place in society, but it is essential that they don’t become a monopoly and that professional and leadership training schools are maintained.

Oliver DeMille, A Thomas Jefferson Education, 2nd Edition, pages 21-22

Goals:

• Educate the Masses and Lower Classes
• Teach What to Think
• Get a Job

Curriculum:

• 85% Social
• 15% Textbooks

Method:

• “Soviet” Conveyor Belt—Schools look and run like factories
• Individual intiative and innovation from students (non-conformity) is discouraged
• Individual initiative and innovation from educators is discouraged

Careers: (According to age)

• 0-12 Study
• 12-18 Play
• 18-24 College Major/Job
• 24-68 Work/Job
• 68+ Retire or Volunteer

Most of us can point to exceptions to the rule: teachers or students who stood out and excelled within the compulsory system; the fact remains that the system per se is not designed to produce such anomalies, and does not, in general, encourage or reward such outcomes.

 

Professional Education

Professional education systems create specialists by teaching their students when to think. This model has been used much longer than the soviet conveyor belt, since it arose from the tradition of apprenticeship, where the student was systematically taught what his master knew before venturing out on his own.

Each professional, whether a mechanic, a lawyer, a doctor, or a financial adviser, is trained to meet a certain set of standards and to think creatively within his field of expertise. However, outside of that narrow scope of knowledge, he tends to rely on the understanding of other experts. A complex society such as modern day America reinforces this.

Professional education is also known as the “competitive conveyor belt,” since the methods used are the same as the soviet conveyor belt, but the standards are set much higher—the top 10-15%.

 

The professional system does what it’s designed to do—create expertise. And if you need a doctor, a lawyer, or a manager for your business, you are glad they are well prepared. The professional system has been very effective in achieving its goals, but it is not a substitute for leadership training.

Oliver DeMille, A Thomas Jefferson Education, 2nd Edition, page 23

Goals:

• Train Experts
• Teach When to Think

Curriculum:

• 50% Case Studies
• 50% Ethics

Method:

• Competitive Conveyor Belt—Students Compete

Careers: (According to age)

• 0-18 Play
• 18-22 College Major
• 22-26 Professional Training
• 26-65 Career
• 65+ Retire or Volunteer

 

 

Leadership Education

 Leadership Education has three primary goals.

First, to train thinkers, leaders, entrepreneurs, and statesmen—those with understanding and competence to lead society (do things right) and the moral character to act with integrity in the areas they lead in (do the right thing).

Second, to perpetuate freedom by helping people understand what freedom is and what must be done to maintain it, and inspiring them to actually do the difficult things required to make it happen.

Third, teach students how to think, which is how the first two goals must be accomplished. Those who know how to think are able to lead effectively and help a society remain free and prosperous, while those who know only when or what to think will be unable to do so.

The method for training leaders is as old as humanity—classics and mentors. The student studies the greatest works ever created, and submits to the guidance of great mentors, who customize the education for the student’s mission in life.

This is the simplest, though arguably the most challenging of the educational paths.

 

“Leadership Education, which I call ‘Thomas Jefferson Education,’ teaches students how to think and prepares them to be leaders in their homes and communities, entrepreneurs in business, and statesmen in government.

“…What happens when a society does not prepare leaders? We get managers and professionals leading in areas they have no training for, such as government, and we get a nation of followers who see no problem with that because they have no experience with anything else. …This was the legacy of Germany in the 1930s—a highly trained but uneducated people easily swayed by Hitler.”

Oliver DeMille, A Thomas Jefferson Education, 2nd Edition, pages 21, 27

Goals:

• Raise Great Souls
• Cultivate Leaders
• Teach How to Think

Curriculum:

• Classics (any works that inspire greatness and are worth revisiting time and time again)

Method:

• Mentors that Design a Custom Education for Each Student

Careers: (According to age)

• 0-12 Play/Family Work
• 12-16 Scholar Phase
• 16-20 Superb Education
• 20-24 Depth Phase (Liberal Arts College)
• 24-50 Build Two Towers (a Family and an Organization)
• 50+ Impact the World (Statesmanship)

From:  http://www.tjed.org/about-tjed/

What is TJEd?

Discovered and organized by Oliver and Rachel DeMille,Thomas Jefferson Education, or “TJEd,” is an educational philosophy and a methodology by which great individuals throughout history were educated.

 Thousands of families and professional educators are applying those same principles today, with amazing success.

 

Our TJEd Mommy School aka: KidSchool or Home School Co-op in Action!

 

"In short, something truly amazing is happening. It is happening quietly, usually in small groups in unconnected neighborhoods. It is uncoordinated and mostly unorganized. Yet I believe it will shape the 21st Century. In the year 2100, it may well stand out as one of the most important trends of the century. It is quiet, it is spreading, and it is real: Mothers are seeing a need and filling it—themselves." ~~Rachel DeMille

Every Thursday we host a Mommy School

(home school co-op) in our home.

This blog post was inspired by the joy and fellowship

found inside our weekly gatherings,

and by the following essay, which goes right to the heart of the matter: 

What Homeschoolers Want Most:  http://www.tjed.org/2010/12/homeschoolers-want/

We have seventeen families participating in our Mommy School, and the children are separated into three groups: Scholar & Transition to Scholar (high-school age) Love of Learners (elementary through middle school ages) and Core (six and under). 

The common thread of our SW Florida TJEd inspired Mommy School, is that each family values, on some level, A Classical Liberal Arts Education and that we honor the Phases of Learning as described in the book:

Leadership Education: The Phases of Learning 

by, Oliver and Rachel DeMille.

The Phases are:  

Core, Love of Learning, Scholar, Depth, Mission, & Impact

for a quick understanding of the Phases: http://www.tjed.org/?s=phases+of+learning 

Love this photo... Mommy School in Action! The key to a successful Mommy School is to have mentors that have a passion for what they are inspiring!  

***********

"Mom Schools meet according to the needs of the students, and most Mom Schools tend to focus on one or a few areas of expertise. A network of such schools in an area provides a much deeper academic offering than the traditional co-ops. I call them Mom Schools because of the hundred or so I know, only a few are initiated by Dad. But in many of them Dad is partially or very closely involved." ~Rachel DeMille, A Thomas Jefferson Home Companion

Our teens are a mixed phase crowd: We have a couple Scholars and the rest are in Transition or Practice Scholar Phase. On this day, they met for their Deeper Thinking Study Group where they rotate through reading Shakespeare's A Comedy of Errors and discussing it. They practice and play a Latin game, are discussing the book The One Minute Philosopher and from time to time play Chess. This group is Mentored by one our moms.

 

Meet Ms. Miranda http://mirandasartofliving.squarespace.com/ 

She is our Deeper Thinking Study Group Mentor, Art Teacher and our resident Health Coach. She is the mother of three children , all of whom attend on Thursday.  Miranda plays a big role in our Mommy School where she alternates from Study Group Mentor to Cooking and Nutrition Class Instructor, I can pretty much throw her into any group and she pops the learning!  Today she filled in for our Art Teacher and facilitated the Scholar's Graphic Novel, Art Class.  

 With sketch books in hand, the students worked on understanding the format of a story board. 

From time to time, if we don't have a mom or dad who can Mentor a class, or study group, we go outside our family circle and hire someone. We all pitch in to pay for that person.

Ms. Vivian Hadding is a local artist and home school mom, we hired. 
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1441553613

 

My husband is a part of our Mommy School, he works from our home and stops early on Thursdays to Mentor an American History Study Group, a topic he has much passion for!

Yes, they meet in our bedroom... by the end of a Thursday every room in the house has been used!

Mr. Jerry reads to the students, followed by a lively discussion.  

 Their learning is mostly conversational.

 

Keeping the learning simple and effective!  They read, narrate back, write essay's on the topic, discuss and from time to time present and/or debate in this group.

******

The Call of Community

"Many home schooling parents intrinsically know that their children need a community of other home schoolers.  A community of like-minded people.  A community of people who "get" them."  

"When we decided to start home schooling we really didn't know that it would make our children different somehow.  We wanted something different for our children, but we did not equate that if we offered something different, it would actually make them different."

The New Commonwealth School pg: 16

 

This is our Love of Learning Science Study Group. It is Mentored by Ms. Michelle one of our moms. She has two children attending on Thursday.  You'll see a big age span amongst the participants, as our Core Phase (pre-K ages) usually join in during Science.

Each mom in the group brings with them their unique talents and passions. Ms. Michelle has two children that she is homeschooling, five altogether, and works from home as an editor.  

Every week, Michelle, along with her passion for learning,

brings science to life with fun experiment demonstrations for our

Love of Learning- Liberty Kids and our Core Phase- Acorn home schooler's.

Look at the faces of our littlest participants... so curious! :-)   The lessons are short and sweet and the little children leave when they have seen or done enough.

 

Some of our kids love to present what they have learned (public speaking and additional learning practice) some don't, they have the choice. This is my grand niece, she is a few weeks shy of turning five and has been coming to my Mommy School since she was in diapers. She LOVES playing at school, and eats up everything we have to offer on Thursday's!

Creating Lap Books (hand made, authored by each student, personalized science text book). Each week after the experiment, we create a page in our books. Then we have the opportunity to read what we have learned. At the end of the semester,  we take our books home, to be placed on our shelves, so we can visit with them and continue our learning over and over again.

***** 

 Our TJEd Mommy School does not replace in home education, but is set up to accentuate what the students are already learning in their home schools.  We come together, parents and children, and decide what we want to learn in a group setting, then we look to our families in attendance, or the outside community for a Mentor, someone who would study the subject for fun is best!  

The study groups enable us to bring the learning to life in different, and at times, more effective ways. We get inspired by the people who have passions for what they are Mentoring, and the inspiration is contagious!  It  encourages everyone to help, we are challenged by other points of view, and we (children and adults) get to inspire the others around us.  

We base each study group, as much as possible, from a classic book.  We keep our lessons simple, mostly conversational, and relevant to the students life, and try to avoid Conveyor Belt educational patterns.    We break up the day with movement, the older kids take a walk, the younger ones play outside, as well as inside and, we eat together, each family brings a healthy snack to share.   

The Mommy School gives the children practice at growing up in a community with their primary role models or trusted adults close by, who can redirect and inspire good character development as needed.  

 The parents get much needed support and company in their home schooling endeavors!

 

We call the kids in the Love of Learning Phase-Liberty Kids at our Mommy School.

This is a Liberty Kids- Classic Book Language Arts- Learning Circle and is Mentored by Ms. Patti (that's been my nickname for twenty years now!)  Both pre-K and elementary ages sit through the reading and discuss it with us. I follow the Charlotte Mason philosophy, with a bunch of Waldorf methods sprinkled in, to bring the books to life. 

We read a classic book, discuss it, pull vocabulary words from the days reading and use and define them. From time to time, we take the words and create a story using them.

Each week we take an emotional (preferably)  passage from the reading and copy it. The older kids (when they are ready), don't copy, instead, they listen and write what they hear. They check their own work for structure and punctuation, and correct any mistakes, conditioning them for Scholar- self directed learning.

We draw a picture about the story in our language arts lap book, on the same page as our copy work. Narration plays a big role in our circle, each week we start our gathering taking turns re-telling the story and insights learned. 

We also try and bring some of the books we read to life;  we may do handwork, for instance we made log cabins using wood carving tools when we read the Little House series, we cook, reenact and for the current book The Tale of Despereaux we are creating, out of clay, a diorama of the castle and the characters from the story.

When it is dry, it will be available to play with.

When we do the Language Arts exercises, some pre-k'ers stay, some go off and play. For those in the pre- writing stage- they draw a picture based on the story and dictate to a mom what it is, we write it for them while they watch. When they are ready, we take a word or two and have them trace the words, they also practice writing them underneath.

I always have other moms with me to help and to redirect any behavior issues.  

They are encourage to share their wisdom with the group too!

Example of a Language Arts Lap Book

A Waldorf Inspired Wood Working Hand-Work Circle, creating logs for log cabins.  All ages participate and if a child is not ready to use pocket knives and wood working tools, they let us know, and can watch or practice on soap with a plastic knife.  

When it is time to learn a new skill, we look first to the other kids in the house to Mentor!

For our Core Phase group, whom we call Acorns, I run a Waldorf inspired, short and sweet circle time. We read a classic book, do some singing, finger plays, and movement (YOGA). We do a little journaling, where we draw a picture and dictation, based on the story... the older ones practice copying my writing. We may do some handwork or Waldorf type art.

It is important that the learning activity be natural, so we avoid pre-fab, cookie cutter-popular pre-school and elementary school arts and crafts activities.

Instead, we turn to resources like, water color painting, conte, felt, wax, sewing, knitting, and clay.

The idea when working with Core Phase children is to keep the children moving,  up and down... Contraction (academics short and sweet) and then expansion (movement & play).

For more information on Waldorf inspired art and crafts: http://www.openwaldorf.com/art.html

Talk about passion! Cooking Class with Mentor and Health Coach Miranda a woman who loves what she does!!!  http://mirandasartofliving.squarespace.com/

And, what would a Mommy School be without that -all important-in the background- kind of support? Ms. Christie is that for me. We have been homeschooling  together for fourteen year. Her son and my daughter have grown up together.  She is my go to person!  With help from other moms, she runs the kitchen, sets up the food, does the clean up, helps with the children, and fills in wherever we need her.  

She keeps the space running and knows where everything is so she can acclimate a new family if I am busy and makes sure the kids put everything away in the right place.  

   

We try and host a Mentor Lecture for our Mommy School participants a few times a year. We invite leaders, and inspiring members of our community to come and speak.

This is a photo of Lawrence Reed, President of the Foundation for Economic Education with the children.  Larry has come two years in a row to speak to our families. http://fee.org/people/lawrence-w-reed/ 

The first year, he gave a talk entitled: My Favorite President, Grover Cleveland. The second year, he spoke about Adam Smith,Philosopher and the man considered the, "father of economics". The talk was based on Smith's classic book: The Wealth of Nations.

Parents and students attend the lectures. The parents are encouraged, and come prepared to model group discussions, and to inspire the students into the discussion if needed.

Life Skills practice is a part of our Mommy School. We used drills, saws and muscle to create an Earth Box Organic Garden.

Learning to grow food here in SW Florida has been a challenge.  We've had to overcome the sand problem.  Here is the fruit of our labor!

We are always asking, "who in our group is connected to whom in our community?"  One of our daddies is connected to the fire department.  One day they showed up right outside our front door for a "come to us",  kind of  field trip!  

*****

"The most exciting thing about Mom Schools may be that they promise not only a better education for the rising generation, but they are also educating the parent’s generation in neighborhood after neighborhood across the globe. It is inevitable that this will impact our freedoms, our prosperity, and our future." ~~Rachel DeMille www.TJEd.org

The beauty of multiple age learning is how the older students model for the younger ones! 

Personally, I find that one of the added joys of creating a Mommy School in our home, is that my entire family has attended.

In this photo, my grand niece, my two nephews and the little guy is my grandson ♥♥♥♥

Our Mommy School on Thursday exhausts me, and some weeks I dread it... but always, I mean always, when it is over, and the last family leaves at 6pm,  I realize I am exhausted in a most soulful and very good way!  

I am blessed to be a part of each one of these families lives!

 Every one of them, adults and children, are here because they want to be, and they each bring their  positive energy, so full of inspiration for all of us!!! 

My daughter, niece, nephews and grandsons are equally blessed to have this wonderful community to grow up in!!! ♥

This Friday morning I woke to find this on my chalk board...

Warming my heart and creating  :-) BIG SMILES :-) 

((HUGS)) to whomever wrote it yesterday!

 ~~~:-)p

Chores: Do you give an allowance for them?

We don’t believe in giving allowance for chores anymore! Our first hand experience with our now adult son taught us valuable lessons. Our family had developed habits that were hard to break. When our son started to exhibit entitlement tendencies in his character, we stopped giving him an allowance and re-evaluated our approach. We decided on shifting our parenting from one of requirements, to inspiring natural consequences instead.

As part of our character building and life skills education everyone has a purpose in the family and is expected to pitch in! I have written often and in detail about the importance of young children, even toddlers, having a family purpose- that is just a given, just what we/they do everyday and each person no matter the age does something to support the family. Each of us is responsible for managing and nurturing the family as a whole, and for the up keep of the environment.

By inspiring and conditioning a purpose (doing chores) the family culture nurtures a character trait where it becomes a privilege and not drudgery to do the work of a family. Work naturally becomes a part of who we are. This culture of working together leads to family harmony and excellent study skills that are internally driven later in life, eventually the discipline of the work and study that was built on it, leads to an understanding of that persons true mission in life. In our family we learned early on that giving of an allowance for chores creates the opposite scenario of self reliance in a child’s core character development and does not prepare them for adult hood.

We questioned:, why we would give money for an allowance when that is not how money comes to us in the grown up world. No one pays us for keeping our adult home or managing our lives. Why wouldn’t we model and condition good work ethic, and the joy of giving and participating in the work of life, using real life scenarios when our children are young? Especially when there is an abundance of everyday opportunities that teaches how adults make money, why we do it, and what the value of monetary gain is.

We have a very well known check list of life skills that we make a big deal out of around here. Many skills on the list are everyday household chores. Frequent talk at family gatherings with siblings and cousins has the older kids saying things like, have you done this (life skill) or that yet? Then the stories come out, some are pretty funny... The first time I changed the oil it spilled everywhere, my first un clogging of the toilet, cleaning the gutters on the roof…. As the kids learn housekeeping, the other adult skills (see list attached) and then business/entrepreneurship skills, they get to check the accomplishment off the list in the book. Getting a check mark next to a skill is something we take pride in around here. Even some of us adults are still learning life skills; I just learned how to change the oil in the car and got me a new check mark in the “book of life“, as we like to call it.

I like our “book of life” skills but lately I am thinking of the growth chart on our kitchen wall instead. All of the kids in our life love coming into our house and going to that wall to measure themselves, even the older ones who are mostly done growing. One day watching my two year old grandson put his back to the wall, trying to see how tall he was compared to his cousin who is two years older, I started contemplating… Why not create a life skills growth chart right along side the height lines. Each skill would be noted on the chart as the kids progressed through them. These youngsters and young adults would be able to see themselves and their accomplishments, as well as what is happening with the others in their life. Since, not only do we mark our own family unit on this chart, but all of our kid’s friends, our cousins and their children have a place on our wall chart. .

The skills we require them to learn in our home usually end around the time they are getting ready to go off to college. I should note, college is not a given at eighteen. It’s when you have completed the life skills required for independent thinking and self reliance that determines your readiness. This could happen before age eighteen or after and it really is not important when, it is just important that independence happens.

The mantra is that we are equipping you for the real world.

 

There is a wonderful book: Life Skills for Kids by Christine Field that I recommend. Also TJEd has much writing about this subject in their books and on their sites, especially when talking about the core phase of child development.

Since we didn't want to have that fight every time we went shopping... you know the one, mom can I have ____ fill in the blank, we recognized that the kids needed to have their own money in their pocket, but they needed to value it.

So we asked family and friends to give money as gifts when appropriate. We encouraged them to say when giving this is for school, or your future investment and business plans. Since this culturally is a Jewish tradition, it was easy to condition in our circle.

We also encouraged many businesses endeavors throughout their young lives. Even if they were too young to really do anything we pretended they weren’t and set up creative situations that taught them money lessons.

We switched our son around age eight from getting paid for chores to inspiring him to be self reliant in his money making. It was hard, when he wanted something we would say sure you can have that, you just need to pay for it… the hope was to inspire him to overcome his obstacles. Then on our sons tenth birthday we gave him an investment property (real-estate investing has been our family business for 25 years) that was the beginning of his real life lessons in self reliance and entrepreneurship. Through and error, some big failures and some real success, his core belief about money changed.

No longer entitled, he learned to pay us along the way to help him run and grow his investment portfolio. This switched his core entitlement belief. This lesson in entrepreneurship also enabled him to live for free all during his college years and gave him the freedom to not have to work while receiving his higher education. We have a rule that we won’t pay for college either.

When our second child came along we had learned some more parenting lessons about instilling the value of money. We decided not to give her, her first investment property like we did her brother. Today she is fourteen and will have to save for it herself or take a loan from us to begin her investment career. If she so chooses.

As the children in our circle of influence grew we would loan them money to get started on a business or if they wanted something they would have to pay back a loan. They would "hire" us grownups or older kids to help them in their small business or with their tasks until they were able to do it on their own. Everything from running a lemonade stand, to dog walking, paper routes and car washes were a part of their natural consequences lessons in life.

Even if it was just a quarter or a $1.00 that they paid us when they needed help, the idea was to teach them the core values that we earn our money it is not given to us and that money is used for good. When needed we ask for help in the making of money and because we value that help we pay for it (sometimes we encouraged bartering as well) and that we can be a part of a team and create win, win situations in our lives, our community and the world. That our parents, the community and the world does not owe us anything- is pretty much the character we are developing.

Our almost three year old grandson came in the other day and asked his grandfather for a job because he need some money (he sees business happening all around him and is in the mimicking stage) Obviously his daddy got the lessons we taught him and now is paying it forward with his son (she said with a smile). Grandpop got very creative and our grandson Isaac made $25 cents for moving a stack of papers in the home office, where we run our business out of, to anther place that made it easier for grandpop to do his work. Isaac received a hug, was told why the task was helpful, and that it was much appreciated. He then received the quarter, which went right into his pocket. With pride, he showed everyone the quarter he made that day!

The office in our home is conditioned to be a place of reverence. When grandpop and daddy are working in there we are quiet and we don't disturb. The idea of just being able to work in this revered place was a big boy thing for our little guy.

Later grandpop took him to the store where he showed him some quarters and told our grandson that by his working in the office, he helped grandpop make this money and grandpop was now buying something... it was a kiwi which Isaac loves!

Since we work out of the house we make it a point to talk often about how and why we make money. We discuss who works with us and what they do and how our work changes our community and the world for the better and allows us to experience this blessed life, we live.

This modeling has been a wonderful learning experience for the young people in our circle of influence. I believe whole heartedly that children should be allowed to be in the company of adults while they are working and not segregated as our public schools and society tends to do. When children come into our home our business and the people working in it is also in sight. When we host the TJEd KidSchool in our home on Thursday’s the kids get to see adults in their life working. Because we believe in modeling, we take advantage of the frequent opportunities that arise to mentor a young person in self reliance.

 

As our kids and friends kids grow, they are invited into our business for apprenticeships