(soft music) - Welcome friends to this episode of the Everyday Educator podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Bailey, and I'm excited to spend some time with you today as we encourage one another, learn together, and ponder the delights and challenges that make homeschooling the adventure of a lifetime. Whether you're just considering this homeschooling possibility or deep into the daily delight of family learning, I believe you'll enjoy thinking along with us.

But don't forget, although this online community is awesome, you'll find even closer support in a local CC community. So go to classicalconversations.com and find a community near you today. Well, listeners, it is that time of year. We are buckling down. We are back into the midst of our studies.

We are immersed in science fair projects and the beginning of mock trial, the coming up on are we gonna go from memory master or not in foundations and in essentials. We are coming up on the Faces of History project. I feel like a lot of you listeners have a love relationship with Faces of History because it can be a lot of fun for you and for your students.

But I think that probably some of our new listeners have a little trepidation when it comes to Faces of History, wondering what is this exactly? How can I best help my child? And honestly, can my child really do this? And so I have as my guest today one of our academic advisors, Courtney Bradshaw, and she is going to share some big encouragement with you parents as you prepare your child to participate in Faces of History.

Courtney, thank you so much for sharing today. - Thank you for having me, Lisa. I'm excited to be here. - I'm excited to hear what you have to share. I have seen some amazing Faces of History projects come through over the years. Sometimes I see them on the Facebook page and sometimes even on the YouTube channel and in my own community.

And I watch these kids have a blast doing this. And I also, I'll be honest, I watch some parents start out very nervous about the whole process. So I want us to talk all the details of the Faces of History project. And I think that you are going to be able to help us see the delight in it, both from the parent perspective and from the kids' perspective.

So I want to start out. I want to just lay the foundation 'cause some of our listeners might not be part of the Essentials Program yet. And they're just kind of looking forward. What's ahead, what's my child? So they may not know very much. Give us the purpose of the Faces of History project for students.

- Well, the Faces of History project is the capstone event for the Essentials Program. This is where we celebrate students for all that they have learned throughout the year in their writing abilities. So they will take all the things they've learned to research and write a five-paragraph essay about a particular person in history.

And then they will present that to their community, as their families, or it can be a big event. Sometimes it can be small, depending on the community. But the main purpose is that five-paragraph essay and learning to do a research paper. And then it's to celebrate the students and what they've learned.

- Oh, my goodness. - Yes. - My goodness. Okay, so some, I can picture it now, some of our listeners are saying, a five-paragraph essay, a research paper, but don't you understand? My child is nine years old, or 10 years old, or my child is a beginning writer. It sounds amazing.

And I especially love what you said, the purpose of celebrating our students and the growth they've experienced through the years, through the year. So parents, listeners, if you are freaking out right now, just take a deep breath and calm your heart. And we're gonna walk through that a little bit more.

But I wanted you to know at the outset, what is this all about? I love it. So we're celebrating the students' growth in writing by letting them, well, so all the elements are what? You enumerate them better than I do, Courtney. Tell me all the elements of the project.

- Well, the elements of the project are, to begin with, would be writing the five-paragraph essay, which they have learned throughout the year. This isn't something we're springing on them right away. They've built to this through their writing and the Essentials Program. - Yes. - And then if you choose to do this, it is an optional project.

If they choose to do this, they may present their character or the paper, whether it be by reading their paper or by choosing to use an outline or a memorized speech to tell what they have learned in their research. - Now, I know that some families and some communities get kind of elaborate, and I understand, like I had, especially one of my daughters was way into pretending to be different characters, and she would really get into it.

So she wanted costumes and props and all of that. Is that part of Faces of History? - It can be, but yes. When we are presenting, a lot of times the students like to dress up as their character and bring a prop. Sometimes they might even do a tri-fold board to help.

It depends on the way that they choose to present, because different communities present their characters in different ways. Sometimes it is on stage, in front of an entire group. Sometimes it may be a wax museum, where people come around to different characters at different times. So depending on how the community is celebrating Faces of History will depend on how much the student may want to do, whether an elaborate prop is not for everybody, but it can be nice and it can be fun.

I know my daughter, she and her character based on the costume that she found before we ever even started. - Yes. You know what, and that is, thank you for being honest about that, 'cause sometimes you do let the props drive the choice, and that can be fine. I mean, usually do children, do the students themselves choose?

Well, I know that that's part of what parents might help their kids to do. When do families usually start working on Faces of History? - Well, the Faces of History project is at the end of the year, usually between weeks 19 and 21 is when you really buckle down and start working on Faces of History.

However, a lot of times, starting now, over the break, the winter break, or even beginning, now that we're getting back into the groove of essentials, they will pick their character and then begin getting to know that character through books and through their research. So that's when it begins, when you start it, but nobody's late if they have not even picked a character yet at this point.

- Yes, that is what I wanted to drill down to. What if we haven't started late? Are we just totally behind the eight ball? Is it too late for us? That's very encouraging, Courtney. So maybe what parents do now is start asking their children if there's somebody they're interested in.

How do kids choose their subjects? - Well, a lot of times, communities will focus on the particular cycle that you're in and foundations. So they may find something from the cycle of somebody that they have studied or somebody from that time period. So like with cycle three, it's a US history focus and geography focus.

And so they might discover somebody from the United States that they would like to learn more about. They also might would pick from someone in the great artists or a composer that we study, maybe a famous inventor that does something with the science focus that we have for that year, for that cycle.

But really, it's about who the child is interested in learning more about, because we know that if a child is interested, then they are going to enjoy the whole process a lot more. They're gonna enjoy learning more about this person and dressing up if they choose to do that.

It's just gonna make things easier for parents when the child is interested. But the parent has the final say. They are the teacher of their child and they have the final say as to who the child will choose to research or not. - I like it that you remind us that as parents, we are the teacher at home.

And so no matter what suggestions the tutor might offer in community or what other families are doing, that the parent does have the final say. So what are some of the considerations for us as parents to keep in mind when we are helping our children choose the object of their research?

- This is a great question. One of the things that is important for faces of history and for students to be successful, really, is that you wanna choose sources that are at or below their reading level, if possible. So sometimes it's not easy to find a source that would fall into that category or someone that your student has chosen.

So you may have to kind of guide them based on the sources that you're able to find. That's one thing I think that's important to think through. And then also, as an adult, we know that sometimes things in our histories, in people's histories, are not always something that we want to look into.

And so you wanna be able to guide, okay, well, this is somebody that reflects what I want them to learn at this time. And maybe even has the characteristics or shows the values or virtues that I would like for them to take from taking a deep dive into someone's history.

- That is really insightful. I really appreciate you doing that. It's so easy for our kids to see a flashy representation of a character, whether it's in a book or a story that somebody else has told or a Disney movie or something that they see on television that you know might not be representing the whole story and that there may, when you do a deeper dive, as you say, into the research, some things may surface that cause more consternation or concern for the student than you want to deal with.

I think that's really smart. And I do love the wisdom. There is so much wisdom in parents thinking through your child's choice. Am I gonna be able to find information about this person, like you said, on the child's level? And I do understand that parents could do some of the reading on the child's behalf and condense it.

- But by and large, what you're teaching the child to do, right, is their own research. - Yes, and parents can help so much. I know there have been times that my own students have chosen a character and we just either did not have the time to read every book that they were using or we chose a little bit of a larger book.

Sometimes you choose a character that they're only mentioned a little bit in the actual research. And so I have just made copies or pointed out the chapter, said this works really well with your topic. Let's condense the information for you. So it is possible to do that. And that's where parents are there to help.

We can't help them too much, as they say. - Right. - Yeah, especially because, all right, let's put the framework on it. These are essentials students. So how old, generally, what's the guideline? What's the guideline, Courtney, for the age of the students who are participating? - These students are ages nine to 11 or 12.

So that's kind of like fourth through sixth grade-ish, which are not, it's not nice and verbal here. - Right, exactly. So parents, remember that your children are not used to doing research papers, like you're thinking about, probably. And so the fun part of this is going to the library, looking for books about this character that they've chosen.

And you, as the parent, know that, here's the truth, there's probably not a dozen whole books on the character that you have chosen, or likely there won't be in your library. So this is a cool opportunity for parents to say, well, you know, there's not a whole book on Dolley Madison.

But if we looked in a book about American history, and they, and let me show you, we could look in the index, and if we find her name, we know that there's something about her in this book. So it's a great beginning to help students go really down to the nitty-gritty level, but then also to back out and look at a book or a resource that might be broader than they think is going to be helpful, and show them how there might be mentions of characters in a book about another subject even.

- Yes, absolutely. It also gives us a chance as a community to help each other, because I may not have a book about my son's voice, but my friend might, and I might have something that they are using, and so we share. That helps that if we cannot find it at the library, we don't have to necessarily purchase a book unless we really need it for our library at home.

So then we can work together within community. Also, we do a lot, in my home, we use the classical acts and facts timeline cards, or the science cards, or the ones for art and music, and those are great places to find information about your character. - And see, that might be one of those things that your kids don't think of right away.

They are so one-track sometimes, they just want, they think they've got to go and find one book that has this person's name on it, and they forget that they have learned or heard about this person, like you said, in their classical acts and facts cards, or maybe in a scientist card, and so we are, as parents, one of the things that we can help our students do is learn how to think through their research materials and their options.

So let me ask you this, Courtney, what are some good, if I'm a beginning parent and I've never done Faces of History before, and I mean, to me, I look at it and it looks like an elephant, okay? I don't know how to eat an elephant, I'm not sure how to get started, what are some good mile posts that I as a parent can have in mind that will help us stay on track with this project?

- Yeah, so we eat an elephant one bite at a time, right? And that was, and isn't that what we are taught? And so in, actually in the Learning Center on CC Connected, there is a Faces of History parent packet that gives a timeline for parents and students to walk through to know how, what we should be doing when.

And so really right now, a milestone is let's pick our character and maybe find one good source that your student could read or that you could be reading together. When you get closer to doing Unit 8 within your community, which is usually between Weeks 19 and 21, then you should have, we use three sources is the goal.

And so you wanna gather the sources and that's a good one before you start. And then follow the steps that you want to earn in Units 6 and 7 to put this together as the paper. So the paper itself, the five paragraph essay is the first thing that needs to be done before thinking about the presentation.

So once we get that five paragraph essay completed, then you go back to the essay and actually it is suggested to write a keyword outline from your paper for the presentation. So if they're going to present from the outline, that's one way to do that. But find your character, pick some sources, begin to get to know your character through those sources.

And then there's, you write, follow the Unit 8, the Unit 6 and Unit 7 and 8 outlines as to what you do. So you break that down with three topics and then an intro and conclusion for that paper. - Boy, see, that sounds like I can feel my blood pressure going down as a new parent.

I think, okay, those are steps that I could follow. I understand what those words mean and I can help my child work the program, work the outline. That's really good. That is in itself encouraging, I think, to parents. Okay, here's what I want to know. I want to know what is my student learning by doing this project?

Because if it's going to be hard or if my student's going to balk at it, or if my student's going to be really excited, I want to know what is going to come of this? What is my student going to learn? What skills are being strengthened? - Oh, this is a great question because don't we get those questions, why do I need to know this so many times as a parent?

Or I do. - Yes. - Anyway, so the five paragraph essay, any kind of research will follow them throughout their entire academic career. And this is the ground words, the skeleton of any research paper that they will do. And so they're learning that skill, first of all. They're also honing their skill of presentation.

We work on that in foundations. They really get to shine in that time during essentials with their presentation skills. But even beyond that, Lisa, they are working on the skills of invention, where they're walking through and discovering who their character is and how their character affected those around them.

And they learn more about the history of all the things that are going around are happening during that time. And they are working and learning and utilizing their skills of rhetoric. Even at nine years old, they're learning to arrange and they are choosing the best way to present. And so that's the skill of elocution.

And delivery used in really leaning into that storytelling that they are so good at at this age. - That's true. Man, this is all so good. And I think it helps us as parents to realize that this is a lot of fun. It could look like a lot of work, but how much your student is gaining.

They are building all of these skills a little bit at a time by doing something that's very fun that they get lots of help with. And one thing I will tell you, one thing that I think Faces of History builds into students is confidence. I have seen some kids come off the stage from their presentation.

I mean, and this has happened with kids in my own family who were not showmen at heart, but really gave themselves to the project and came off the stage just beaming that they had made it through this presentation and had a good time doing it. And it went well and people ask questions and people clapped and people thought they did a great job and their confidence just shot up.

Absolutely, absolutely. We had a student one year early on in my CC career who she began classical conversations and foundations as a five-year-old and she whispered every presentation to her mom at the beginning. But when she gave her last Faces of History presentation, she was Queen Victoria and gave it in a full British accent in a memorized presentation.

And it was phenomenal. The growth that we see-- It is so cool to see. It is. Yes, the growth. Yes. I think that is so cool. And you know that little girl is just beaming. That is so neat. Okay, what about like first young students, maybe they just turned nine, they're on the young end or this is their first time.

Is there any way to scale the Faces of History project? Yes, absolutely. One of the ways that I would suggest scaling would be to pick two topics instead of three so that this might would be a four paragraph essay instead of a five. That way they have a little bit less to look through.

Again, like I said, with parents helping to point out, hey, this chapter goes really well with one of your topics, even helping them to find the facts as needed. That's what I do with my students, especially when I had two in there at the same time. I had one third year in the first year.

So sometimes you want to make sure to help so that they don't feel in competition with their sibling or something like that. But less facts maybe to really try to summarize it a little bit easier. So we don't have to have 10 sentence paragraphs, we might have a five sentence paragraph.

They can make their paragraph. Yes, yes. Yes, and then also give them a chance with, pick their top three to five things that they loved, that they learned, that they thought was the most interesting from their research to deliver during their presentation time. This presentation does not have to last five minutes long.

It can be a very gentle way to approach that. It's scary as a nine year old to stand, it's scary as a 42 year old, sometimes to stand up in front of a large group of people, and deliver something that you've researched. It's nice to be able to help them to pick just a few things that they might want to say, especially if they're trying to memorize a speech.

It's not required to memorize it. So that's a good way to scale it, or even to just pick two sources instead of three, if that's a little bit too much. I have found even third years, at least in my home, my third year students at times, they struggled with doing this project, or not doing the project, but doing the research from multiple sources, because they're used to doing it from one workbook.

And so it's the same skill, but it looks different. And so there's always a little bit of a learning curve for them. So it's not just the first years who get nervous, so that you can tell them that too. Hey, you know what? Those kids have done this a bunch of times.

They might be a little bit nervous as well, and that's okay. - Yeah. Well, you know, the truth is every time you add a new skill, 'cause I had not honestly thought about the fact that we are asking them to have multiple sources of research and that that is different.

And like you said, even though it's the same skill, it seems different because now I have to synthesize. I have to merge this information that I have and how do I do that? And yeah, every time we ask our students to do something new, they have to get used to it before they fully embrace it and feel comfortable.

That's a really good reminder. And I also, I know that you would join me in just reminding all of our listeners that as the parent, you are the teacher, you are the decider of how the assignments go in your home. And so scaling is absolutely always an option on the table.

And so whatever you know that you need to do in order to help your child get the very most from this experience, that's what you and your family need to do. And it may be if you've got two young Essentials students that maybe you do research on related characters and you do a lot of things together instead of each student doing everything by themselves.

- Oh, that's a great idea, Lisa. - I wanted to ask you, I know that we're almost out of time, Courtney, but I wanted to ask you a question that has a little bit of a different flavor. How can communities use the Faces of History project to raise the awareness of homeschooling or of their CC community or even of just classical education?

How could that be an invitation to the community to understand more about what we're doing? - Oh, this is a great time to invite families, to invite your neighbors or your friends, maybe people who are considering homeschooling, to invite them to see what it is that we do. I think sometimes people might think that if you're homeschooling, you're alone and you don't have community who do big projects for, but we do have that here.

So we've always invited the pastor and people from our host church. - Oh, yes. - As well as community leaders to say, would you come and would you help us celebrate these students and see what it is that we have been learning this year? - I love that, I love that.

It does, we always invite the pastors and the other staff members at our church to come and see the science fair and to come and see Faces of History and sometimes to come and see when we do the egg drop and all that stuff, all our big projects, because we want them to know what it is that they are supporting.

And then I love the idea of inviting interested families maybe families who have come to an information meeting or families who have in the last year come to visit your community, invite them back for something like this so they can see what the culmination of the year looks like.

I think that would be really, really good. All right, final encouragement for families. Courtney, how can Faces of History be a family affair? - Well, it has to be a family affair that at the end, right, we all push together to really help each other. As in our home, we work together to get costumes ready.

I have, you know, I have older students as well as younger ones, so they help with all the fashion advice that there might be. But they practice in front of one another. You have an audience in your home to practice in front of. We invite everybody in our family to come and to watch and to cheer on the person, our family member who's presenting.

And we celebrate together, we make it a big deal because it is such a fun thing that they've done, but it also is, it's a big thing. So we try to go out to dinner one night or something that we can celebrate at for finishing and completing their hard work.

- I like that, making a big deal. - We also invite grandparents and dad comes when he's not usually here on community day. - That's really good, and I love, of course, it is the perfect time to invite grandparents. That is an awesome thing. I really like the idea.

More and more, I have really become a proponent of families doing the learning together. Instead of every level of classical student doing their own thing, I love to see the older, you know, the teenagers or the older elementary students helping the little ones, like you said, make their costume or find a new book or practice.

Sometimes I know that my older daughter was a better help to my younger daughter sometimes than I was because she was thinking more closely on her sister's level. And so she would understand what she really wanted to do with the project or what she was trying to show or what kind of costume she was looking for.

And, you know, we want to use everything that we do in our homeschool to build our family culture. And so I think making it a family affair really teaches us to love one another and to show kindness and gentleness and helpfulness and encouragement. It's just a great way to love one another.

- Yes, I agree. - Courtney, thank you so much for sharing about Faces of History. I think that this has set many a parent's heart at rest, knowing that there's a great purpose for this. It can be for fun and that there's so many good resources. I love that there's the Faces of History parent packet on CC Connected that will really give you some of the step-by-step milestones.

I think that's gonna be a great resource for all of us to make use of this year. Thank you so much for sharing the benefit of your wisdom with us. - Thank you for having me. - Parents, if you are looking for like-minded homeschoolers, community is the best place for you.

And podcasts like The Everyday Educator are another great way to build your own knowledge of classical education and to build some online community. I also want to let you know that Classical Conversations is constantly striving to build relationships with other like-minded organizations that can help assist you in your homeschool journey and really in furthering our mission to know God and to make Him known.

Lots of the organizations that we promote at the ends of our podcast are organizations that offer exclusive discounts or benefits or even scholarships to CC members. Some of the groups that we have relationships with are Educational Support and Advancement Services, the Extracurricular Support and Family Culture organization, lots of Christian colleges and universities.

We partner with a lot of groups that offer mission and gap year opportunities. You guys have heard me talk about Museum of the Bible on here before. If you want to find a whole list of the groups that we have relationships with, you can visit classicalconversations.com/relationships for more information.

So if you're looking for a like-minded company to partner with you on the journey, classicalconversations.com/relationships is a great place to look. So you guys go and enjoy faces of history as a family and I will see you next week. Bye-bye. (gentle music) you