Everyday Educator - Seasoned for a Reason, Part 1
00:00:00.000 | (soft music)
00:00:02.420 | - Hey friends, I am so excited to welcome one of my dearest
00:00:09.200 | and oldest classical conversations friends
00:00:13.960 | to our conversation this afternoon.
00:00:17.040 | I am blessed to have with us today,
00:00:19.840 | Melissa Ellison of Virginia.
00:00:23.600 | Melissa, how are you doing?
00:00:25.440 | - I'm great.
00:00:26.280 | How are you, Lisa?
00:00:27.200 | - I am so excited to get to talk to you.
00:00:29.520 | - Me too.
00:00:30.480 | - I miss regular conversation with you
00:00:33.820 | and I feel like we could probably just talk
00:00:35.720 | and talk and talk about many things,
00:00:38.180 | personal as well as homeschooling.
00:00:40.760 | So I'm gonna make myself stick to the subject at hand
00:00:44.700 | because I want my friends to get to know you
00:00:49.640 | as much as they can also.
00:00:52.180 | So let me start by asking Melissa,
00:00:55.760 | how long have you and your husband Mike homeschooled?
00:01:00.080 | - We have homeschooled,
00:01:03.820 | trying to think, well, my one son started
00:01:07.960 | a piece of Darien's and foundations when he was four
00:01:11.880 | and he is now 21.
00:01:14.480 | - Oh my goodness.
00:01:16.280 | - And we graduated him.
00:01:17.680 | So, and then we have one that's younger than that.
00:01:21.380 | So it's probably been, so how many years is that?
00:01:25.240 | (all laughing)
00:01:28.120 | - About 18 years, about 18 years.
00:01:31.040 | - Sometimes I ask people how long they've homeschooled
00:01:33.600 | and they start counting from the birth of their children,
00:01:36.620 | which I completely--
00:01:38.520 | - Yeah, that's true too.
00:01:39.720 | I mean, I got pregnant with my youngest
00:01:42.640 | when I was in my first year in foundations
00:01:45.520 | and he is going to be 18 next month, so.
00:01:48.720 | - Sometimes I ask people and I understand them
00:01:52.520 | saying that they homeschooled from birth
00:01:54.600 | because the things that we pass on to our children
00:01:57.840 | and the things we teach them are not just academics.
00:02:01.460 | And so a lot of times I feel like,
00:02:02.880 | yeah, I've been homeschooling their whole lives.
00:02:04.600 | My child's almost 30, I've been homeschooling
00:02:07.040 | for almost 30 years and that's why I have gray hair.
00:02:09.820 | But so, so I understand.
00:02:13.400 | - It's probably longer, but that's with Cece
00:02:15.280 | because I homeschooled a couple of years before I found Cece.
00:02:19.120 | - Yes, and so did I.
00:02:20.540 | And so I also have to clarify
00:02:22.280 | when I tell that to people too,
00:02:23.860 | 'cause we started before I knew anything about Cece
00:02:27.520 | and I was just, you know, maybe we'll get to this.
00:02:30.320 | I was making it up as I went along by myself.
00:02:34.260 | But let me ask you,
00:02:35.180 | why did you and Mike begin this journey?
00:02:38.360 | - Well, to be honest, I was homeschooling.
00:02:42.340 | I had, I guess I had two in school
00:02:46.580 | and I had one that was younger.
00:02:50.160 | And so we were homeschooling and Sarah,
00:02:54.100 | our oldest was doing actually,
00:02:56.600 | she was doing a traditional homeschool curriculum
00:03:00.920 | and we moved and our builder,
00:03:04.400 | his wife was starting a Cece community in our town
00:03:09.400 | and she invited me to join them.
00:03:12.180 | It was the first Cece community in Virginia
00:03:14.540 | and it was incredible. - Oh my gosh!
00:03:16.220 | - And you know, Duran and the Stockton's,
00:03:20.420 | Kelly Stockton and so she invited me to join them
00:03:24.940 | and I was like, oh, I can't,
00:03:26.720 | I just paid all this money for this curriculum
00:03:29.280 | and you know, I can't do that plus this.
00:03:33.920 | And so I just finished out the year with Sarah at home
00:03:38.920 | and then that summer I went to a practicum
00:03:43.340 | and Lee was there and so I heard her
00:03:46.840 | and I got to introduce to the program
00:03:49.880 | and was so excited and we joined for the following fall.
00:03:54.260 | - That is so cool, that is so cool.
00:03:57.500 | I was also hooked after I went to a practicum
00:04:02.500 | and did not really know how in the world
00:04:05.020 | I would find the ability to pay for that program
00:04:08.340 | but it looked really wonderful.
00:04:11.500 | So when you guys started your homeschool journey,
00:04:15.380 | even before you found Cece, did you have goals
00:04:20.380 | for your homeschool, like for education
00:04:23.460 | or did you have a family mission or anything
00:04:26.460 | when you started homeschooling?
00:04:28.460 | - I don't know that we had anything formal
00:04:32.780 | but I know that my husband and I both did not want
00:04:37.780 | to put our children in public school.
00:04:41.220 | We did not want the government to have them
00:04:43.940 | that many hours a day and we wanted to be the ones
00:04:48.940 | to instill the biblical worldview, the God that I use
00:04:55.180 | and I was blessed also to be able to stay home
00:05:00.140 | with my children from birth so I wasn't ready
00:05:03.500 | to give them up. (laughs)
00:05:06.500 | So that was really, you know, I guess the main reason
00:05:10.940 | that we started homeschooling.
00:05:13.260 | - Yeah, I remember telling people I started homeschooling
00:05:17.820 | because I was too jealous to want somebody else
00:05:21.400 | to have the light bulb moments.
00:05:23.340 | - That is true, yes. (laughs)
00:05:25.540 | - It was fun to learn things or to watch them learn things
00:05:29.880 | and be excited and I kind of wanted to keep that.
00:05:33.420 | Yeah, I love what you said though
00:05:35.520 | about the biblical worldview being really important
00:05:38.580 | to your family and recognizing that probably
00:05:41.860 | a government-oriented, funded, guided school
00:05:46.500 | was not gonna pass on the values that you wanted.
00:05:50.660 | Yeah, so you and I started homeschooling
00:05:54.380 | in relatively the early years.
00:05:58.740 | Before there was a lot of support, frankly, out there,
00:06:02.260 | what were your early years of homeschooling like?
00:06:06.400 | Where did you find support?
00:06:08.680 | - Well, I would say that definitely the CC community,
00:06:16.000 | you know, you found like-minded people and moms
00:06:20.620 | that you could commiserate with, right?
00:06:23.420 | And I started in CC my first year, I was a tutor
00:06:27.860 | and so I had, you know, they had their practicums
00:06:31.780 | and three-day trainings, that kind of thing.
00:06:35.540 | And then really quickly, I think the following year,
00:06:38.960 | I became a state manager, or I became a director,
00:06:42.960 | then a state manager, so it was a really quick,
00:06:45.740 | you know, kind of going up the rungs.
00:06:48.240 | 'Cause like you said, we were just starting out
00:06:50.740 | and there was a lot of need for leadership.
00:06:53.160 | But I would say that, you know, the support
00:06:56.820 | was within the community and the moms there.
00:07:00.140 | CC offered as much support as they could.
00:07:03.380 | It's gotten a ton, I mean, there's a lot more.
00:07:05.780 | And then, too, you know, our husbands, right?
00:07:08.700 | I mean, our husbands were really supportive.
00:07:10.920 | They couldn't be there on a day-to-day basis to help,
00:07:14.140 | but they, you know, were supportive.
00:07:16.540 | And their role as the head of the home
00:07:19.940 | and, you know, that kind of thing, so.
00:07:23.540 | - Yeah.
00:07:24.380 | - That's what I would say.
00:07:25.540 | - Was your family, how did your family feel
00:07:28.140 | about like your mom and dad and aunts and uncles
00:07:30.620 | and extended family, how did they feel
00:07:32.480 | about homeschooling when you told them
00:07:34.300 | that's what you were gonna do?
00:07:36.660 | - Actually, my parents were very supportive.
00:07:38.780 | My mom has been a teacher forever.
00:07:41.660 | And she's still teaching.
00:07:44.120 | And, you know, I don't even know how many years later,
00:07:46.980 | probably 50 years later.
00:07:49.120 | But, and over the years, she actually,
00:07:52.540 | even she taught in a Christian school for a long time.
00:07:56.000 | And then over the years, there's been times
00:07:57.900 | where she has not been working in a school setting
00:08:01.520 | and she has helped to homeschool my children
00:08:04.100 | and other children that, you know,
00:08:06.660 | were in our, you know, community kind of thing like.
00:08:09.620 | And so they've been, they were very supportive.
00:08:13.700 | - That is so great.
00:08:14.580 | I've heard lots, and I know that you have too,
00:08:17.420 | as you've served as a leader in Classical Conversations,
00:08:21.140 | we hear lots of stories of families who are not supportive,
00:08:25.240 | who are super suspicious, sometimes even spouses
00:08:29.660 | who are not initially excited about homeschooling.
00:08:34.500 | I can remember my own mom and dad and even my sister
00:08:38.380 | thinking that we were doing this weird thing,
00:08:41.100 | this counter cultural weird thing
00:08:44.340 | to their grandchildren and nieces.
00:08:47.760 | But there were great moments of repentance
00:08:52.460 | a couple of years in where they each individually came
00:08:55.680 | and said, yeah, we were so wrong.
00:08:58.980 | The results that they saw helped them to go back
00:09:03.740 | and take a second look at what we were doing.
00:09:06.340 | And they really became supporters
00:09:09.540 | of our homeschool endeavors as well.
00:09:12.980 | So why is community so important?
00:09:17.980 | You've mentioned a couple of things,
00:09:19.660 | but I wanna just really synthesize all those answers.
00:09:25.500 | As homeschoolers in the world that we live in now even,
00:09:30.500 | why is community so important?
00:09:34.020 | - Well, I think God calls us to live in community, right?
00:09:39.680 | And it's important because, number one,
00:09:45.780 | if you have two, if one falls down,
00:09:47.820 | the other lifts them up, and if one is cold,
00:09:52.260 | the other keeps them warm.
00:09:53.440 | And so I think God really meant for us to be in community
00:09:57.420 | and that it's for encouragement
00:10:00.480 | and we can share each other's burdens
00:10:05.400 | and pray for each other.
00:10:07.020 | And it's also to sharpen us, right?
00:10:09.420 | To challenge us when we need to be challenged
00:10:13.600 | and hold us accountable when we need to be held accountable.
00:10:16.820 | And so I think it's a wonderful thing
00:10:19.660 | that God has made us to be in community.
00:10:24.000 | - I do too.
00:10:24.880 | Community is awesome.
00:10:27.700 | And that's why I, that's one of the reasons
00:10:31.580 | that I absolutely fell in love with Classical Conversations,
00:10:34.760 | that classical Christian community.
00:10:38.220 | And it's the community that keeps us going.
00:10:41.360 | I've said for years and years,
00:10:43.040 | and pride comes all over the countries,
00:10:45.520 | that as long as we don't all have a bad day
00:10:49.600 | on the same day, we can all keep going.
00:10:53.140 | And that's the power of community.
00:10:56.400 | When you and your husband began homeschooling,
00:11:00.820 | did you know what you were doing?
00:11:02.700 | (laughing)
00:11:04.040 | - No.
00:11:04.880 | (laughing)
00:11:05.700 | Do any of us know what we were doing?
00:11:08.040 | - No, and sometimes I think if we did know,
00:11:10.880 | we might be afraid.
00:11:12.000 | - That is true.
00:11:12.840 | - Very, very afraid.
00:11:13.680 | - That is true.
00:11:14.500 | (laughing)
00:11:15.340 | - So how did you, but you kept at this for 18 years,
00:11:18.840 | so you must have learned what to do.
00:11:21.940 | How did you learn to homeschool?
00:11:25.280 | I mean, did you read about it in books?
00:11:27.280 | Did you go to conferences?
00:11:28.900 | Did you have friends who became mentors?
00:11:32.200 | How did you learn how to homeschool?
00:11:35.160 | - Well, I would say at the beginning,
00:11:36.880 | it was, I really didn't know anyone.
00:11:39.560 | Or if I did, it was very few people who homeschooled.
00:11:42.400 | Like there was no one in my church that was homeschooling.
00:11:44.240 | We were kind of thought of as kind of a little odd,
00:11:46.820 | you know, because we were old.
00:11:48.660 | We didn't have a lot of young families in our church anyway.
00:11:51.120 | But yeah, so I didn't really know.
00:11:54.280 | And my oldest daughter, Sarah, had been,
00:11:58.480 | our church had a Christian school.
00:12:00.180 | And so she was there for kindergarten and first grade.
00:12:03.120 | And they did a BECA.
00:12:04.620 | And so I just got online
00:12:06.800 | and got the BECA homeschooling curriculum.
00:12:09.680 | And that's what I did.
00:12:11.660 | - Yeah, and just look what you found.
00:12:13.800 | - So yeah, so I basically did that.
00:12:15.880 | And I started, you know, I would read,
00:12:18.740 | I would, you know, research.
00:12:20.440 | And I ended up at the ATAB Heave Conference
00:12:24.620 | in here in Virginia.
00:12:25.620 | And, you know, went to all kinds of seminars
00:12:29.740 | and, you know, visited all the vendors
00:12:31.700 | and kind of saw what I liked.
00:12:32.860 | And I just did different things.
00:12:37.060 | And then, but as I, as you know, as you get more children,
00:12:41.340 | you can't, you know, doing a traditional curriculum,
00:12:44.640 | especially, you can't teach everything
00:12:47.940 | to all of them in one day.
00:12:50.180 | It just was too much.
00:12:51.460 | And it was about that time, I guess,
00:12:55.100 | that when we had moved
00:12:57.140 | and I was introduced to classical conversations,
00:13:00.820 | I was, I had just put Sarah, my oldest,
00:13:04.580 | I had just started some like video homeschooling with her,
00:13:08.740 | with Rebecca, because I was like,
00:13:10.260 | I can't do her and my, you know, my next child,
00:13:13.660 | Jonathan and the third one.
00:13:15.580 | And so I had kind of was putting her, you know,
00:13:19.280 | in front of a computer, which I didn't really like,
00:13:21.540 | but I felt like I didn't have a lot of choice.
00:13:23.820 | And then was introduced to classical conversations
00:13:26.780 | and went to a practicum and saw how I could homeschool
00:13:30.120 | all my children with the same thing at different levels
00:13:33.720 | and very appealing as well as the classical model.
00:13:37.300 | And so that's when we started with classical conversations.
00:13:41.500 | - Yeah, that is great.
00:13:44.740 | I can imagine how frustrating it was to think,
00:13:49.740 | gosh, I'm doing this with Sarah, but now I have this one.
00:13:54.540 | Now I have this one.
00:13:55.620 | And if I add any more, what in the world?
00:13:58.820 | So I think that's cool that what you found refreshing
00:14:02.260 | about CC was help to homeschool all of your kids together
00:14:07.260 | so that it really was family learning.
00:14:11.380 | - It was, yeah.
00:14:12.740 | And even the little ones that weren't in school
00:14:15.320 | picked up a ton.
00:14:17.140 | - Oh my gosh, right?
00:14:18.580 | I can remember when my youngest, we were memorizing,
00:14:22.080 | we were gonna memorize this long passage from Philippians
00:14:26.080 | with our older daughter, who was four,
00:14:29.140 | she was four, almost five, and her little sister
00:14:33.180 | was just sitting on the couch with us at night.
00:14:35.560 | I mean, she was just, she just was like the lump
00:14:38.700 | that was sitting there.
00:14:40.100 | She was just along for the ride.
00:14:41.980 | We weren't trying to get her to memorize.
00:14:43.940 | And one night when I said, okay, let's start,
00:14:46.700 | I thank my God.
00:14:49.740 | And she started saying the verse with us
00:14:53.040 | 'cause I didn't say, you know, Stephanie, let's do this.
00:14:56.040 | I just said, let's start.
00:14:57.580 | And she started rattling it off.
00:15:00.100 | And I thought, oh my goodness,
00:15:02.420 | there is something to this repetition thing.
00:15:05.140 | - That's right, that's right.
00:15:05.980 | I love it that you found a way to learn as a family,
00:15:10.980 | which becomes, the more that we understand
00:15:15.300 | about building a family culture and being lifelong learners,
00:15:20.300 | the more appealing learning as a family becomes.
00:15:23.700 | So that resonates with me too.
00:15:25.860 | Let me ask you this question, Melissa.
00:15:27.900 | Are you still learning?
00:15:29.500 | Are you still learning at the homeschool?
00:15:33.140 | - Definitely.
00:15:34.540 | I am not homeschooling anymore,
00:15:37.580 | but I definitely am always learning.
00:15:40.560 | And that's one thing I see with my kids too.
00:15:43.540 | I think I see a love of learning which I really value
00:15:48.540 | because you don't see that,
00:15:50.660 | I don't think in our culture very much.
00:15:53.460 | And, you know, just to see that they love to learn
00:15:56.140 | and they're still learning, you know.
00:15:58.100 | - I love that too.
00:16:00.000 | And I often tell people that that is one
00:16:03.020 | of the happiest byproducts to me of homeschooling
00:16:08.020 | and especially homeschooling classically,
00:16:10.820 | that my girls really do, A, know how to learn, right?
00:16:15.820 | 'Cause those classical tools are just awesome
00:16:20.020 | and they become just your knee-jerk response
00:16:23.240 | to whatever you need to learn in whatever area of your life,
00:16:26.680 | not just academics, but they also really love to learn.
00:16:31.100 | - Yes, yes.
00:16:31.940 | - And that's just beautiful to me.
00:16:33.740 | - It is beautiful.
00:16:35.260 | - And we've talked about the fact
00:16:37.260 | that the classical education is really,
00:16:40.100 | 'cause I suspect that if Sarah had stayed watching videos
00:16:45.100 | for her education all day,
00:16:48.420 | that she might not have loved learning so much.
00:16:51.140 | - Oh, I guarantee you.
00:16:52.640 | (laughing)
00:16:53.940 | - So I really think that classical education
00:16:56.820 | is onto something.
00:16:58.460 | Let me ask, and I know we both have admitted
00:17:00.940 | that we didn't know a whole lot
00:17:02.340 | about classical education when we started.
00:17:05.260 | I mean, I had read "The Well-Trained Mind"
00:17:08.380 | and I kept getting--
00:17:09.220 | - That's off to you.
00:17:10.060 | I'd read little pieces of it here in the yard,
00:17:12.640 | but I don't think I got through the whole thing.
00:17:14.500 | (laughing)
00:17:16.540 | - Okay, I couldn't afford to buy it.
00:17:18.240 | It was a really fat book.
00:17:19.420 | - Yeah, it was.
00:17:20.260 | - And so I would check it out from the library
00:17:21.700 | and I'd read some chapters and I would think,
00:17:23.780 | yeah, that's really good, but I just can't.
00:17:25.540 | And so I would turn it back in
00:17:27.100 | and then I would be convicted
00:17:28.500 | and I would check it out again
00:17:29.900 | and I'd read some more and then I would turn it back in.
00:17:32.200 | And I really, and I thought, this is it.
00:17:35.020 | I mean, so I didn't know to call it classical education.
00:17:39.140 | And I just, there's something about the classical model
00:17:42.720 | that resonated with my soul.
00:17:44.620 | And I knew I want my children to be curious.
00:17:48.340 | I want them to be learners.
00:17:50.100 | I think that memorizing,
00:17:51.880 | I knew from being a kindergarten teacher,
00:17:53.460 | memorizing is super easy for them and it's very natural.
00:17:57.940 | I want us to dig deep.
00:17:59.620 | I want us to do it as a family.
00:18:01.640 | And so I tried doing that at my home by myself
00:18:05.260 | before we found CC and it goes really, really well
00:18:10.180 | for about two or three months.
00:18:11.980 | And then it gets hard to keep pulling all those resources
00:18:15.960 | and to evaluate what is it that we should be learning
00:18:20.220 | and is this gonna end up being anything
00:18:23.440 | at the end of all things?
00:18:25.000 | Will it tie together?
00:18:26.780 | And so I worried about that.
00:18:30.200 | And that's one of the things that really drew me
00:18:32.400 | and my husband to classical conversations
00:18:34.640 | is that there was a plan.
00:18:37.080 | There was a purpose.
00:18:38.920 | It was going somewhere.
00:18:41.440 | I wanna ask you, what did it look like
00:18:44.120 | to educate classically at your house when you started out?
00:18:49.120 | - Oh, that's many years ago, Lisa.
00:18:51.680 | (laughing)
00:18:52.800 | If I can remember correctly.
00:18:54.480 | (laughing)
00:18:57.000 | You know, it was just around the kitchen table
00:19:01.040 | or on the couch, reading books and wrote memory,
00:19:06.040 | those kinds of things.
00:19:11.460 | My kids, and I'm sure yours too,
00:19:13.480 | especially when they're little, they love the songs.
00:19:16.080 | So doing lots of singing and just hands on kind of things.
00:19:25.840 | And I remember, I was kind of like you
00:19:29.560 | before I found classical conversations,
00:19:31.560 | like I was a little bit nervous.
00:19:32.960 | Like, how am I gonna make sure my kids know
00:19:35.320 | what they need to know?
00:19:36.440 | And are they gonna be not prepared?
00:19:39.240 | Like people are gonna be able to say,
00:19:40.600 | oh, they were homeschooled.
00:19:41.480 | So they don't know what public school or whatever.
00:19:44.560 | - Right, exactly.
00:19:45.720 | - But one thing that always stuck with me
00:19:49.640 | and I still say this, my oldest daughter, Sarah
00:19:52.760 | is homeschooling her little ones,
00:19:55.480 | her kids with classical conversations.
00:19:58.020 | But I remember saying this too.
00:20:00.000 | I've said this to lots of people.
00:20:01.320 | I remember Andrew Poodle was saying once that,
00:20:04.560 | with the memorization and the classical model
00:20:09.260 | that history and science,
00:20:12.120 | no one knows everything about history and science.
00:20:15.520 | It's always evolving.
00:20:17.280 | It's always, there's always new things.
00:20:19.920 | And so not to worry about learning everything,
00:20:25.560 | because you can always, you teach your child how to,
00:20:28.600 | like you said, you teach them how to learn,
00:20:30.080 | you teach them how to research
00:20:31.880 | and they can find out the answers themselves
00:20:34.800 | because we're never gonna know everything about everything.
00:20:40.640 | And so teaching them how to learn
00:20:43.220 | and teaching them how to find the answers
00:20:46.360 | is just as important as not being worried
00:20:51.360 | that they don't know everything.
00:20:54.000 | That was very reassuring to me too
00:20:57.240 | at certain points in my journey.
00:20:59.440 | - I love that.
00:21:01.560 | I think that is really true.
00:21:03.360 | It is reassuring to have somebody say,
00:21:07.580 | there's no way to learn everything.
00:21:09.840 | So stop making that your goal.
00:21:13.160 | 'Cause I remember wondering,
00:21:16.320 | how am I gonna teach the things,
00:21:18.400 | teach them to be good at the things that I wasn't good at
00:21:23.440 | or that I didn't fully understand or appreciate?
00:21:26.840 | There were things that I could do,
00:21:28.280 | but I didn't appreciate it.
00:21:29.400 | And I knew if I tried to teach that,
00:21:31.760 | it would not inculcate love in them
00:21:33.680 | because the love was not in me.
00:21:35.360 | And so I thought this is gonna go awry somehow.
00:21:39.860 | But that classical model, I love, love what you said,
00:21:43.600 | that it's teaching them how to learn and how to find answers
00:21:48.600 | that is the best thing to be teaching them.
00:21:52.360 | And so what classical education looks like at home,
00:21:56.280 | yeah, what you said is really true.
00:21:58.040 | It's a lot of reading, a lot of hands-on,
00:22:01.480 | a lot of chanting and singing
00:22:02.920 | because it's a lot of memory work in those early years.
00:22:06.600 | And then even in the challenge years,
00:22:11.440 | as they become ready to use all that memory work
00:22:15.840 | to compare things or to solve problems or whatever,
00:22:20.120 | it still doesn't exactly look like what we came up
00:22:23.160 | through the public school doing.
00:22:25.020 | But it is a beautiful life of asking questions
00:22:32.360 | and running after answers.
00:22:35.320 | - Oh, I like that.
00:22:36.160 | Yes, running after answers, I love that.
00:22:37.960 | - Yeah, I like that.
00:22:40.280 | How did you grow in your understanding
00:22:43.400 | of the classical model and what helped you most?
00:22:49.360 | - I would say just immersing yourself in it
00:22:53.200 | and trusting, you know, just trusting,
00:22:57.280 | like with classical conversations,
00:22:59.280 | I just, I'm one of those people
00:23:01.200 | that I just kind of trusted what Lee said.
00:23:03.680 | It made sense and I, you know,
00:23:07.140 | and then being a learner yourself
00:23:09.680 | and just walking the path and trusting the process,
00:23:15.320 | trusting the model, trusting God through it all,
00:23:19.840 | you know, just kinda, and you just grow in your knowledge
00:23:22.940 | with, you know, community, other people around you
00:23:26.000 | and asking questions yourself, you know?
00:23:29.700 | So, and seeing the fruit of it, you know,
00:23:32.520 | you see the fruit of it in your children
00:23:35.240 | as they go through the different, you know,
00:23:38.720 | the different stages of learning
00:23:40.600 | and what a beautiful thing it is to see
00:23:42.900 | when they get to that, you know, dialectic and rhetorical
00:23:46.240 | stage and you're like, wow, you know,
00:23:49.480 | this does work, you know, and so.
00:23:53.520 | - Yeah, I know that I, like you said,
00:23:58.440 | grew in my knowledge of the classical model
00:24:01.800 | by reading, by going to practicums,
00:24:05.960 | by listening and that repetition is not just good
00:24:09.960 | for our little kids, it's good for us to hear
00:24:12.600 | those same ideas about the grammar of a subject,
00:24:16.460 | the vocabulary and the rules and the dialectic
00:24:19.660 | of a subject learning to wrestle with the big ideas
00:24:22.700 | and make those comparisons and then the rhetoric of it
00:24:26.020 | using what we know to be creative or to solve a problem
00:24:30.780 | or to pass on our passion, all of that I learned,
00:24:35.280 | like you said, by doing and by living it
00:24:39.220 | and by, frankly, by becoming a learner myself.
00:24:43.940 | - Yes, and just like you said,
00:24:46.900 | we all start at that grammar stage, you know,
00:24:50.400 | no matter how old we are, if we don't know something,
00:24:53.660 | you know, so you and me and, you know,
00:24:57.560 | hundreds and thousands of other, you know,
00:25:00.260 | classical conversations parents are, you know,
00:25:03.700 | that's how we learn the classical model,
00:25:05.460 | if we didn't know it, was starting at the grammar stage
00:25:08.260 | and, you know, walking through it ourselves, so.
00:25:13.260 | - That's so true, by doing it, by doing it,
00:25:17.740 | over and over and over.
00:25:20.140 | I can remember back when we were state managers together,
00:25:23.940 | it feels like a lifetime ago.
00:25:25.740 | - It does feel like a lifetime ago.
00:25:27.460 | - When I would go and talk about, speak at a practicum
00:25:31.300 | about the classical model,
00:25:33.180 | even though I was still learning about it
00:25:35.560 | and I'm still learning about it after all these years,
00:25:38.360 | I would go and talk about it and every year,
00:25:43.360 | I could talk about it with a little more assurance
00:25:47.080 | and a deeper understanding
00:25:48.800 | because I had walked a little farther along the path
00:25:52.580 | with my children and I can remember in the early years
00:25:55.840 | telling people how amazing the challenge program was
00:25:59.720 | because I truly believed the example that was set
00:26:03.460 | and what Lee had said and what I had read,
00:26:05.360 | but I didn't have a kid in challenge yet.
00:26:08.100 | But when my girls got to be challenge students,
00:26:12.140 | every year was a jaw-dropping aha moment for me
00:26:16.340 | because I saw a little bit more clearly how those pegs
00:26:21.340 | that we had spent all those years pounding in,
00:26:24.340 | all those little pieces of knowledge
00:26:26.340 | were really being pulled out of them
00:26:29.180 | at the opportune moment and they were wrestling
00:26:32.580 | how to put them together into some beautiful way
00:26:36.000 | of understanding the world
00:26:37.920 | and what they were being asked to do
00:26:39.900 | or even understanding themselves.
00:26:42.160 | And it was just great.
00:26:45.020 | So I think that you're onto something.
00:26:47.340 | We grow in our knowledge of the classical model as we use it
00:26:50.980 | and as we employ it.
00:26:53.840 | (gentle music)
00:26:56.420 | you
00:26:58.480 | [BLANK_AUDIO]