(upbeat 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, I'm super glad to have you today. I have, as I have looked outside at this gorgeous fall day, I've thought how much fun it would be to be outside and explore a little nature, take a walk, play in the yard.

And it made me remember one of my daughter's favorite birthday parties, okay? My older daughter never had a quote-unquote normal birthday party that you could go to the store and buy the plates and cups and party hats all in the matching theme. She never picked a normal theme. And so for her 12th birthday, she said that she wanted to have a treasure hunt party.

Yep, a treasure hunt party. And she's quite a bit older than some of your kids probably are, so that was a long time ago. And there weren't as many factory-made things back then, but my husband and I had a great delight in creating all this stuff. And we made poems, we made couplet clues for all of the places, and we burned the edges so they looked like ancient treasure maps.

And we had a gaggle of 12-year-old girls running all over our property, looking under logs and behind bushes and underneath old pieces of timber and in hollow knots in the trees for all of these clues. And I think, as I look back, it was one of the birthday parties that they seemed to enjoy the most.

And today, we are gonna talk about treasure, although not a birthday treasure hunt. We're gonna talk about the treasure that a classical education can be. Yep, the treasure of a classical education. And I've got one of my favorite podcast people, one of my best friends, through the years, as we have pursued classical education with our families together.

I have with me today, Jennifer Courtney. Jennifer, thank you so much for being with us. - Oh, thanks for having me, Lisa. I always love being here with you. - I love it when we get to share about our families and we get to share about classical education. Let me ask you this.

What, to you, is the best part of a treasure hunt? - Well, as always, I love your stories and I love your birthday party story. And I was asking, what a perfect fit for these ideas that we've been talking about with classical Christian education. And it's really fun to think about God Himself hiding these treasures for us to find as we study both His Word and His world together.

And I think that He probably delights in doing that as much as you and David delight in hiding things. - I bet so. Yeah, yeah, I loved it. And, you know, we got a charge out of looking through the sliding glass door, watching these girls. I mean, they're 12 years old.

These are almost teenagers running around the yard and finding a clue and unearthing it from the coffee can and pulling it out and reading it and arguing about what does it mean and where is it leading and watching them run around. They had the best time deciphering the clues and wrestling out what, well, your parents wouldn't do that.

Oh, yes, they would. Where do you think it could be? We're not gonna climb that tree, are we? Yes, we are. Going through all of that. So to us, watching the journey was a lot of fun. But you know what I discovered at the end and afterwards when we asked them if they had had a good time, what they enjoyed the most was the finding of the treasure.

'Cause honestly, y'all, I had made a treasure box. So there was a wooden treasure box that was buried. Yep, buried in the yard. But when they opened it up, I mean, it was tacky Mardi Gras necklaces and fake plastic rock rings and Hershey bar gold nuggets. And so it was not a big treasure.

And they enjoyed the chocolate and they wore all the necklaces. But what they really loved the most was the journey, was the finding of the treasure and the wrestling through the clues together. And so we're gonna come back to that. I want, you guys, I want, Jennifer has written an amazing article that is gonna be linked in the show notes of this episode about something that sounds complicated, but is actually very simply beautiful.

It's about the catechesis wheel. And this is the first, this is the beginning. I wanna read it 'cause I loved this quote, Jennifer. You did such a great job of wetting our interest. What if we viewed education as a giant treasure hunt through God's universe? What if we looked for all the ways that our academic subjects add to our knowledge of God's attributes?

What if we viewed the twin goals of education as falling down in worship and rising up in service? I love that. That's very eloquent, my friend, very eloquent. How is education at its best supposed to be a treasure hunt? - Yeah, well, I think that we have this lifetime that God has given us to learn about who He is.

And I always like to think about the three short years that the disciples had with Him and how He was constantly trying to teach them who He was. And He used the people around Him and the object lessons that they would recognize from everyday life. And we have a little bit longer than three years, thankfully.

And we also have the opportunity to look for Him in chemistry, in geometry, in Latin, in biology, in history, in literature. And so that to me is what turned my life, I think, upside down. And you and I, years and years ago, used to talk about this idea at practicum.

But the first thing, the first idea that's important in this treasure hunt is that God is at the center of education and not us as the students that we're focused in on Him and learning more about who He is. - Yes, yes, that is great. Okay, y'all, we see the catechesis wheel at practicum and we see the catechesis wheel in the catalog.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, you will see a picture of it when you click on the link to Jennifer's blog. But if you have access to a catalog, it's on page eight. So if you go to the catalog, you will find the picture of the catechesis wheel on page eight.

So Jennifer, you told us already what you think the key component is, what is worth noticing first. Reiterate that for us. When we look at that catechesis wheel, what do you want people to see first? - Well, I think our eyes are naturally always drawn to the center of an image.

And that's good because here at the center, not just of our catechesis wheel, but of the universe itself is God. And it's our job for all of our studies to be looking for Him and how He is the author of all the things that we're learning. I love that, that God is the author.

So it's not the textbook writer, it's not the scope and sequence creator. God is the author of all of that. And I love it that the catechesis wheel diagram makes that really easy for us. It's like the bullseye. God is the bullseye. That's what we are aiming for when we focus our energy on this.

- So talk to us a little bit about, I mean, 'cause this is very different. The education that most of us still received, we're changing that, okay? And when I started, when you started with Classical Conversations 20 years ago, there were way fewer classically educated Christian homeschoolers. But now we've got kids who are tutoring their own kids in foundations, and it's beautiful.

But still, for most of us, this diagram represents an education that's very different from what we had. So can you compare modern education to this catechesis view of education? - Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing would be that center again, right? So God is not at the center of a modern education.

The student is. And around the student are an array of subjects that they get to choose from. But the whole focus usually is preparing the student to get into a good college so that they can get a good job. And so everything is focused on the student and not on God.

And then on top of that, if you are looking at the diagram of the catechesis wheel, not only is God in the center and the subjects are around, but those subjects are connected to one another. And in a modern education, most of us went to a school where for 55 minutes, we studied math.

And then we went to a different teacher, and for 55 minutes, we studied English literature. And then we went to another teacher, and for 55 minutes, we studied some branch of science. And that process itself made it very hard for us to connect those fields of knowledge to one another.

- Yeah, it was not natural. I had very few history professors that talked about science and very few literature professors or teachers in high school who talked about what was going on in the world while this author was penning this novel. Or even if a novel was about a time period, we never really delved into what was that period of in history like and how does this novel give us an accurate or an inaccurate picture of it.

There was really not a lot of connections made. - Yeah, and I remember when I first heard about this thought of all of knowledge being integrated, I felt this weight of pressure. Oh gosh, I have to integrate all of this for my children at home and for my students and community.

I'm a little bit slow apparently. It took me a while to realize God had already connected all the things and that we were in a process of uncovering those connections, not creating them. And in fact, I think I was telling you the other day, last year I had a student who was kind of excited that he knew I worked on the CC curriculum.

And so he was always excited about being in community where we were putting into practice the things that my team had worked on. And he said, "We had a great day of integration one day." And he goes, "Wow, it's almost like you planned for this to happen." And I said, "Oh, you don't need to give me that kind of credit." It's almost like this happened because God has placed us in a universe where things are connected.

And we have gotten the delight of discovering that today. - That is the coolest. That is really cool. So I know that years ago and still at practicums, we practiced talking about some of the connections. Like how, like if you are looking at the catechesis wheel, as you said, all of the subjects are connected to God in the center as He's the author of all of the curriculum, which is the world.

And all of those subjects point back to Him and will tell us something about who God is and what He has been up to through all history. But there are also, like you said, arrows that connect each subject. So I'm gonna put you on the spot because I know that's really hard to do.

And because you're really, really practiced at this, make a connection for us between one of those in modern education, cloistered subjects and another one. - Okay. Yeah, I'll give an example of my... And this example is very near and dear to my heart because it came from my own quietest child at home.

And so I tried to pay attention, especially those last few years at home, I tried to pay attention to the things that she said and offered up because they were fewer and farther between than some of her siblings. And so I had her in my challenge three community and I had asked them to bring a word from the gospel of John in Latin that caught their attention or caused them to see a scripture in a different way.

And she was the first one to respond that day, which was extremely unusual. And she said, "Well, I was surprised "to find the word ratio in scripture." And so we talked about how it probably was pronounced ratio in Latin. And so we looked it up in our dictionaries and discovered that it's a third declension noun, meaning reason.

And the Holy Spirit descended on our class that day. And we looked at ratios in math. And then of course we looked at ratios in chemistry. - Yes, yes. - Hard not to do that. And then we looked at the relationships or ratios between notes in our music theory.

And then we talked about how that word also is the root of reason as in man's ability to reason. And so lo and behold, we saw in Shakespeare's "Hamlet" that he describes man as being noble in reason. - Oh, yes. - And then we talked about how we were comparing the French Revolution and the American Revolution.

And we were talking about how during the French Revolution, they took down the religious statues in the cathedrals and they put up statues to the goddess of reason. And by the way, that did not go well for them to either to disconnect reason and faith or to elevate reason over faith.

And so it just was a day when the Holy Spirit descended and we got to see that one idea, that one word that I wrote on the board to honor the contribution of my quiet girl. And then we got to see it all day long in every subject. - That is so cool.

So you basically had an all day, conversation about this one idea. That is perfect because I wanted to ask you, what does catechesis even mean? We talk about that wheel. And you know, I remember when we first started sharing about this in practicum years ago, that was a weird word for most people.

We didn't really know, why are we talking about this? And why are you putting this education stuff you want me to understand in words that I do not relate to? But something that your story just reminded me about the meaning of catechesis. So share us, what does catechesis mean?

- So it's a Greek word and normally we associate it with church instruction. So a lot of people are familiar with catechism classes in different faith traditions. And you have a teacher who asks a question and the student responds with a memorized response. And the whole goal of that is to prepare the student for membership in the church.

So they are memorizing points of doctrine and the instructor is making sure that they do that well. And a lot of times they're doing that together. So if you think about responsive reading in church, the pastor might read a line and then the congregation reads some lines back together.

So I have lately been thinking of a few ways this applies to what we're doing in classical education. One that you and I talk about a lot is the idea of instructing through conversation. So, and then there's this communal aspect, right? 'Cause you're giving back responses that are universal to the community that is your church.

And so that's true for us in classical education too. We're responding together in community. And then the goal is to worship. And so that is the end goal of the catechesis will as well. And I think that the church, if we talk about traditional catechesis as ushering people into church membership, this idea of catechesis in a classical Christian education is to usher our kids into full Christian living.

- You know what? I love that. Usher our kids into full, I'm writing it down 'cause I loved it that much. Usher our kids into full Christian living. As parents, we all have different goals when we begin the homeschooling journey. And for a lot of us at the very beginning, it was something simple like teach my child to read or make sure they can add and subtract and make change at the store or know how to find places on a map.

A lot of us began with very educational goals and then alongside of them were spiritual goals. I want to teach my children at home because I want to have their character formed in the faith tradition that our family celebrates and believes. And so for a lot of people at the beginning, those goals are separate.

And as the Lord works on our hearts and illuminates our understanding, we begin to see, like you said at the beginning, how connected everything is. And we realize that the education, the academics that we were pursuing are all tied up with the author of our curriculum, the world, God's world.

And the best way to achieve all of our goals is to unify our efforts, to know God by what He says in His word and by what He's done and is doing in His world. So I love that. You made lots of good points for catechesis. And I wrote them down because I want to ask you about them.

I think that catechesis, you're right, this is a great way to look at the education that we want to give our children. And it highlights, this whole idea of catechesis highlights some of the most important things that we've come to believe about education. One, it should be conversational. It should be conversational, why?

I know that you and I agree on that. So I'm not trying to put words in your mouth. Why is it important for the education that we pursue with our families to be conversational? - Well, I mean, I think that that has a lot to do with communal education.

So there have been in the last few years, really since COVID there has been a huge proliferation of online education. But one thing we know is that we are in soul bodies, CS Lewis would say, and that the physical world matters. And so by our very nature, being together every week in community matters.

Having an adult who is a tutor in classical conversations community, being physically present in the room for these conversations matters. That is how God designed us to be, right? He did not have the technology for this obviously, but Jesus was with those 12 disciples, day in and day out for those three years.

And that was the teaching that really embodied what we learned in Deuteronomy about, teach them when you sit down and when you rise up and when you're at home and when you walk along the road that we have, because we are in this physical body, the physical things matter and being together in community matters.

I was listening to Lee the other day and she said, everyone accepts the idea that the students imitate their masters. What happens when that master is a computer screen? - Oh, wow, that's really, that's deep. If you stop and think about it, I like that. I think it's really, really important to teach as you live.

I mean, some of the best lessons that I ever passed on to my children were not in my lesson plan. They weren't in my book. It wasn't in the syllabus. It wasn't in the challenge guide. It wasn't in the foundation's curriculum. It wasn't necessarily planned. They were lessons that we learned together, a lot of times, that we discovered together as we were living life.

And sometimes they were, sometimes, Jennifer, I can look back and think, yeah, some of the most important lessons that my children learned, the academic part of it was just kind of along for the ride. I mean, it was in the context. I keep going back to one of the lessons that my younger daughter learned through an absolutely mortifying experience for me as a classical educator.

At the time, I spent a lot of my time talking to other people's groups. I mean, I talked to, I was a practicum speaker and I was telling parents. I was modeling. I was mentoring them on how to live out this classical education journey in a beautiful way at home.

And one of the most mortifying experiences of my life was working on chemistry with my younger daughter. Now, I liked chemistry in high school, but let me share with you that the chemistry we did in CC with my children was way more chemistry than I had ever done in high school.

And it required me to remember math concepts that I had safely put away in cotton wool and thought I would never have to look at again. And so I can remember one day sitting side by side 'cause I usually picked one subject to do a deep dive with each girl each semester.

And so chemistry was what I was doing with this child. And we sat down and I guess it was a very harried week for me and I had a lot of other balls that I was trying to juggle. And she was having trouble with this stoichiometry problem. And I frankly had not really read the module.

And so I got really frustrated and I just looked at her and I said, "I don't understand. You went to class. It was yesterday. You went to community day. And I know that Ms. Carey introduced this in class. Where are your notes? What did she tell you?" I'm certain she said, "I wrote everything down, Mama.

I wrote everything down." And I said, "Look, if you had written everything down, it would be here. Where is it? It is Ms. Carey's job to have told you this and it's your job to have written it down." And I was just going to town and I all of a sudden heard what I was saying.

I had actually said to her, "It is Ms. Carey's job to teach you and it is your job to write it down." And I thought, "Oh my gosh." And so I had to take a minute and I said, "Okay, I'm really sorry. I have told you two untrue things.

Well, one for sure. I have told you that it was Ms. Carey's job to teach you and it's not. It's Mama's job to teach you. And it's your job to learn. And it's our job to struggle on through this together." I said, "So here's what the problem is. The problem is math.

I don't remember. Daddy remembers. You don't want Daddy to show you because you get confused. So I will go and Daddy will teach me and I will come back and I will teach you. And I'm sorry. You have done everything fine except for maybe write down what you could have.

And now we're gonna be back on track." And so I learned that lesson and I was mortified and I apologized and she forgave me and we went on. Years later, probably two, maybe three years later, she's in college and she calls home and she says, "I am having trouble with this photography class." And I said, "That is an elective that you have chosen.

Why is this a problem?" She said, "Well, I'm in this such and such level." And I said, "Why? That is not beginner level." "Well, my advisor said I would be fine." And I said, "Oh my word, you are not fine. There's only one day till the drop ad. You need to take care of this.

You need the prerequisite class." And so she said, "Okay, I'll take care of it." So I didn't ask about it for several weeks. And then I got on her Moodle or whatever you call her and looked and she was still in that class. And I said, "Honey, what is the deal?" And she just said, "Mom, I could tell what it was that I didn't know." It was some grammar.

I didn't understand some of the basic stuff, but I could tell what it was that I didn't know. And so I went online and I figured out what it was and I found what I needed to know and I learned that. And I just, I caught up. She said, "It's my job to learn it and I know how." So I did.

- Oh, nice. - And I was floored. I didn't know what to say to her. And I thought, "Oh my gosh." So that is the lesson of a classical education. And it happened while we were living life together. And I thought I was teaching her chemistry, that what she was learning is to take responsibility for her learning.

And that is a way that it has paid dividends 'cause she has children of her own now. And I see her teaching her two-year-old about his responsibility for things. If you make this choice, this will happen. It's up to you. And I just, I'm so, I'm so happy that we had that real life lesson from learning.

And it required a mentor who, you know, hadn't finished learning yet, obviously, me. But it was a great lesson and it was a lesson learned as we lived. - Yeah, I think that's so good. And I think you've highlighted in this episode a couple of things that probably our listeners are wondering about.

And one is just, I'm gonna go back to your history, your English teacher that you talked about how they didn't really give lessons in history. They didn't have a way. And so we've talked a lot in this episode about, you know, being together, both at home and on the community day, having one to be with the kids for all the subjects.

And so these conversations and these life lessons naturally happen because of the amount of time that either the challenge tutor or the parent is spending. And then the other thing that you illustrated is that even though chemistry wasn't the focus of your story, over the years of you working with your girls, you did recover that knowledge for yourself.

And so I like to think about this idea of both being the home educating parent at home or the challenge tutor in community allows us over time to become master teachers in a lot of things and not a master teacher in one thing. And that also ties into us being able to find all those treasures and to celebrate.

And it can take, you know, it can take however long the Lord needs it, it can take your whole lifetime. But so I would encourage our listeners not to try to fight off all the subjects at once, but I think you and I learned over the years to just take, like you said, take one a year and just dive 'cause you have time.

- You do have time and the joy, remember the treasure hunt, the joy is in the journey and you cannot imagine the riches you will find along the way. The things that you will learn when you're pursuing something else are beautiful. There's a lot of joy to be found in knowing your children and in having them know you and in having them know one another.

There's a lot of beauty in creating family memories together as you study together, as you redeem your education 'cause parents, you're gonna redeem your education alongside your children. And that's another beautiful way that the catechesis wheel works. We never fully arrive. You know the beauty of a circle in this illustration, right?

It's that you keep going around. There's not an out. You learn and you build a base of knowledge and then you grow in your understanding and then you get really good. So good at understanding what you know that you're able to use it. And then what that does is it moves you, like Jennifer said at the beginning, to celebrate.

It moves you to worship and your worship propels you right back into learning more. And that's a beautiful, eternal circle of learning. - Yeah, and right at the top of that circle it says the words Christian, echo, and celebration. So you're right that that learning to echo and celebration of who God is is the culmination of learning something but it's also what whets our appetite to learn the next thing so that we can circle back around and echo and celebration again.

- Yes, and I love that. And that is the beauty of the circle for this model. It really is a picture of what God has designed fellowship and community and education to be a continual echo and celebration. Jennifer, thank you so much for unpacking the catechesis wheel a little bit with us today.

I really appreciate your stories and your insights. - Oh, you too, Lisa, it was fun. - And listeners, remember, we are gonna link this blog post to Jennifer's article on the catechesis wheel for you in the show notes. And so you can go there and read the full article.

And then if you need a visual to look at and to explore more, maybe you'll even talk about it with your family at home, the catalog, page eight, is where you will find the picture of the catechesis wheel and the reminder that what we're all about in the CC journey is to know God and to make Him known.

Now, if you are listening to this podcast and you're not a member of a Classical Conversations community and you've never been to a practicum and you really don't know a lot about classical homeschooling, if you're just interested in homeschooling or in what makes CC unique, there's a way for you to discover our Christ-centered classical approach to education.

You can be connected with experienced CC parents and get answers, immediate answers, to your most asked questions. You can find an information meeting near you or online, okay? You can have an in-person information meeting or an online information meeting if you will go to classicalconversations.com/events, all right, classicalconversations.com/events, and that will give you information that you need to chew on to make a great decision about the education you're pursuing with your beloved family.

Jennifer, thank you again. Listeners, I've enjoyed this. I hope that it has helped you think more deeply about the treasure that education is supposed to be in our families. See you next time. (gentle music) (music fades)