This week I worked on reviewing our school goals, seeing what's been achieved, what needs to be made a higher priority, what needs to be added to the list, etc. It would be so much easier, in a way, to just buy a stack of books every August, work our way through, and then say that we're done. But I can't. There's so much more to education than that! There are so many fantastically intriguing things to learn! There are so many mind-expanding ideas to expose the kids too! There are so many books ... and so little time!
I've been trying very very hard for the last two school years to cut back DEEPLY on the school goals. Otherwise, my grand plans are simply unachievable. Looking back over the last several sets of school goals, I saw that we had indeed accomplished a lot of them. But there's so much more we could do. Of course, if we did school for 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, we still wouldn't accomplish all the things we should. Besides, my read-aloud teacher-voice would never hold out for that anyway.
Now comes the hard part. Again. Paring back the amount of stuff we "should" do to a list of schoolwork that we actually CAN do. And then the harder part: being satisfied with leaving so much undone.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
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Great post Susan. I have pondering some of those things as well. I think we are just going to keep plugging along with what we have next year. There is nothing wrong with it and the kids love it so....why fix it. We have accomplished a lot and I have no idea who really gets all of this curriculum done in a year anyway. They must not be addicted to church and everything that goes with that so they get more done. You have been an inspiration of minimizing by-the-way. My goal is to get rid of 50 percent of our stuff over the summer. So far so good - 26 steralite containers so far!!!! Gone. Have a great week Susan. I enjoy your writing!
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