Inspire Not Require

Inspire not require is the mantra of the TJEd education philosophy and it seems pretty straight forward but when it comes to the "inspire" word I fretted and searched and researched and didn't have a very satisfactory understanding of how to go about doing this. I still don't have a full understanding of it, which is perhaps the way it should be. One could probably never know all they need to know about inspiring children, even and especially their own children.

My first taste of the way this works has been with my daughter Ra and her reading. I have homeschooled her since kindergarten, save for short stint in public school which ended only a few months ago. However, until this latest venture into homeschooling I was using the K12 curriculum.

This approach was what most homeschoolers refer to as school-at-home. I still had tests and curriculum and teachers to deal with. And right from the start they evaluated Ra and said she was behind in her reading skills. They practically panicked me about it to the point where I felt like a drill sargent with poor Ra and all we accomplished was getting me frustrated and her upset.

When I enrolled her in public school I hoped that the teachers would have some magic know-how that I didn't possess on getting Ra to understand reading better. But after two parent-teacher conferences in school they showed me her evaluations and she had not progressed any since the start of the year. She was well above expected averages in every other subject except reading. The school even posted an enormous bulletin on the wall in the hallway that kids who were on target or above target in reading could put their names on. Ra was really distraught that her name was not on the list and this made me upset. What right does the school system have to put up "scores" to show everyone how each other student is doing. I can't possibly think of a worse way to get kids who are doing less than average to feel even worse about themselves.

I was appalled and the next day I had pulled my children from the public school system and given the state my affidavit for homeschooling. From that day on I frantically searched for information on homeschooling because I was quite certain I was not going to do school-at-home again, because it hadn't worked well for our family; but I didn't know how to go about homeschooling on my own. I read blog posts and articles and websites on how to start homeschooling and one thing in common with most everything I read said you need to choose a homeschooling style.

I had heard mention of a few different styles so I began researching those. Thomas Jefferson Education had been introduced to me by a family friend who runs the Kimber Academy in Draper, Utah as well as my Bishop's wife in my old ward in Bountiful who used this style. I read a ton of reviews about it and developed enough of a knowledge about it to cause me to buy the book. This wasn't the only education 'style' book I purchased but it is the one I decided is going to be the core focus of how I homeschool. This is where I was first introduced to that daunting idea of "inspire not require".

In the book he mentions that his wife reads to their children every night for an hour. The idea blew me away. I knew the importance of reading to your kids, but wasn't a short kids book before bed good enough? They said not to "dumb down" your reading for the younger kids. We do them a disservice by this. They are just as capable of learning the big ideas as the rest of us, if not more so at such impressionable times of their lives. It made sense and so I decided to try it. I also decided that I would not ask Ra to read at all. I would read to her, every night, for an hour and I would also read myself during the day so that Ra could see me reading and hopefully, by being able to experience the stories without having to put in the "required" reading effort that she would develop a curiosity for what was on the next page.

After the first week Ra began asking me if we could keep reading, even after we had already been reading for an hour! I was floored. Little more than three weeks in I came upstairs while trying to get everyone ready to run some errands and Ra was sitting on the couch with a book, reading. I will never forget the sight; it nearly put me in tears. When we got in the car she brought the book with her and read it out loud to me.

Since then she has started reading books to her brothers, taking a part in reading a full page on her own in the scriptures with us every night and even doing the story time reading to me and the boys instead of me reading. I have not asked her to do any of these things. I simply led by example, I believe that for me, at this point in transitioning from Core to Love of Learning with Ra, if I lead by example I am inspiring my daughter. There are other ways to inspire and I will discover those along the way, but this is what worked first and works so well I can hardly believe it. 

I had been attempting to get her to do better with her printed hand writing, making it less sloppy, but I hadn't succeeded. I stepped back and decided I wouldn't push her in this, fearing that I was doing with writing what I had unintentionally done with reading, require it to the point that she doesn't like to and doesn't want to do it. I stepped back and led by example instead.

I have been writing all my notes about homeschooling and whatnot in cursive to help me retain the skill and perfect it so that I could better teach the kids when it came time. Unknowingly I had approached cursive the same way I approached reading. I did it in front of her often enough that she wanted to know how to do it herself. I never once asked her to do it.

She told me the other day that she couldn't wait to learn to write in cursive. I had previously thought I shouldn't teach her cursive until she was better at printing, but that day I decided that if she was so excited to learn cursive, she just might excel at it because she was passionate about it. I started off showing her how to write her name and she did such a wonderful job I really could hardly believe it. She practiced writing her name for a day or so then asked me to show her how to write some of her friend's names in cursive.

I was absolutely amazed with how well she did without any formal instruction on cursive. When I learned cursive I learned the letters individually, the same way you learn to write in print. Starting out with writing words makes more logical sense (to me at least and apparently to Ra as well) since in cursive every letter in a word is attached to the next letter, that is how it is designed. It wasn't really meant for single letters and alphabet drills.

I believe that if I continue my pursuits in furthering my own knowledge it will be the best way to stimulate a want of that knowledge in my children.