(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 am excited to be with you today. I am excited to be with a dear friend of mine that I've not been able to talk to for a number of years.

Our paths have led us in different directions. But I have with me today, Rachel Moriarty. Rachel is a dear friend who is a classical educator, a fellow homeschooling mom. And I want Rachel to tell you a little bit about her family and her current journey. And then Rachel is going to help us find the gentle joy in assessment.

We're gonna talk about that, 'cause I know some of you are rolling your eyes when you see those three words together and think it's not gentle, it's not joyous, it's just assessment. But Rachel's gonna help us see it in a new way. Rachel, I'm so glad you could be with me today.

- Thank you very much, Lisa, for having me. I really appreciate it. I am very excited to be here and to share a little bit about the journey that God has taken me on. So I am a long time been in CC. Actually, you and I were in a training years ago.

- Yes, yes. - We first met maybe like 15 years ago or more. - Yeah, it was a long time. - It was a long time ago. But that's one thing about homeschooling is that the world of homeschooling is small, isn't it? And we get to cross paths over and over again.

So I'm excited to be able to cross paths with you today. So let me introduce myself a little bit. I have six children and I have been homeschooling with Classical Conversations since my oldest was four, she's 21 now. And I actually always say that CC raised me up as a woman.

They were, it was my second mom and I really love how God taught me the classical tools and learning everything that we wanna give to our kids. I got to learn right alongside my children as they grew. So we are, well, I say we are, man, we were a military family, but my husband just retired from the military.

He played the tuba for the Navy band for over 20 years. And as of right now, he is job searching as a project manager. And we are looking at possibly heading back overseas to do some missionary work. But in the meantime, I am very passionate about empowering and helping families in their journey.

I would say that so much of my confidence came out of times when other moms who were seasoned and ahead of me turned and said, "Hey, you can do this," right? That's the hardest part is feeling like you can't do it and it's a lie from the enemy. So I'm excited to now turn and do that for my other moms and dads who are starting their journey or on their journey and just need some encouragement and glad to be able to do that here today and in the conversation of assessment.

- Yeah, thank you so much, Rachel. I love that you have taken on the mantle of encouraging younger moms and dads who are coming behind where you have walked in the homeschooling journey because that is huge. That's very valuable. You are exactly right. Most of us, when we first started out, just needed somebody to say, "Hey, you can keep doing this.

You can make this and link arms with us and walk forward beside of us." And pretty much that's what kept me going at the beginning is being able to see that someone else was willing to walk alongside of me and help me do the things I was a little unsure of or a little afraid to try or not sure I was doing correctly.

And so that is awesome. And I thank you, Rachel, for being willing to give us the benefit of the hard lessons that you have learned. I know that for me, I used to be in the middle of some really hard times and think, "Well, Lord, I hope you are redeeming this for someone else's benefit because this feels really awful where I am." And it does.

It does redeem it when we can look back and think, "Yeah, that was hard, but I learned some good lessons and I'm not gonna keep it to myself because I wish somebody had told me or I wish somebody had known to tell me what could have helped me." So today, Rachel is going to help us with assessment.

A lot of us, when we come to the spring semester of homeschooling, that whole idea of assessment gets real. It's not that we weren't, hopefully, assessing our children all through the fall and all through the winter, but when the end of the "school year" starts to loom large in our view, we think, "Oh my word, I've got to know.

I mean, did we accomplish what we were supposed to do? Do my children know what they need to know? Have my children changed in the positive ways that I had goals for in the fall?" And so assessment becomes a bigger topic. So as an online community, we want to explore that a little bit together.

And I will just tell you guys, we're gonna take about three weeks to fully unpack this topic. So you set aside some listening time over the next three weeks so that you get the whole load of benefit from Rachel 'cause we're gonna start out really simple today. It's gonna be profound and might make a huge difference in what you and your spouse do in your homeschool, but it's pretty simple.

Rachel, I want to ask you, we want to talk about assessment, and you've been assessing for a long time. I assess my girls. My girls are now grown, graduated from CC, graduated from college, married with children or children on the way. So I've done a lot of assessing and Rachel's done a lot of assessing.

Rachel, what's the usual reaction to the whole idea of assessment? What do you expect that people are thinking as we enter this topic? - Oh, it's terrifying. I mean, who wants to be assessed, right? Like you're gonna tell me what I'm doing wrong. No, thank you. I already know all the things that I'm doing wrong.

Why do I need you to tell me, right? - Yes, it just always seemed like a test that even if I wasn't doing everything wrong, the whole point of the quote unquote assessment was to tell me how I could at least be better. - Right, well, and I think the negative connotation is the change in focus, right?

- Yeah. - Because in a classical setting of assessment, we are focused on what they have done well, not on what they did poorly. Yes, as a parent or as a director in a CC classroom or as a teacher, you are looking at, okay, what needs to be corrected?

That's not a part of the equation, but the focus is actually on what they did well and what we can celebrate. And it's real hard for people to consider the idea of assessment as a celebration, but that's exactly the paradigm that has to change, right? Is to go from something that's scary to something that is considered a celebration.

- I love that. - I don't know if you, Lisa, are like me, but in the years past, I had a hard time with celebrating. Celebrating was not easy for me, you know? And so I, the Lord has had to do a lot of healing in my heart and my life so that I could embrace the fact that He is a God of celebration, a God of feasting.

And He invites us to feast. And you know, we've heard this metaphor, how the Lord sets a table for us. - Yes, yes. - And He wants us to come not alone, but together. I just like, I imagine this like really long table that's like endless, you know, of all of us next to it or at it.

And it's just filled with all these like good foods to eat, like foods you can never even imagine eating. And He said, "Come and feast." And He wants us to feast at it daily. And so that's a weird concept to be in correlation with assessment. How is assessment like going to a table to feast?

- I can remember as a child, assessment just seemed to have some very dark, stern connotation, you know? And I was not a child that was ever afraid to get my report card. I was a good student. I was a people-pleasing, rule-following, good girl. And so I was never afraid to get my report card.

But still, assessment always seemed like a very somber, a little scary thing to do. I did not associate assessment with celebration, with balloons and confetti and happy sounds and high fives, you know? But I wish I had. And that's the kind of assessment I would love to provide for the students, whether they're children or adults, the students that I have influence upon, I would like them to see assessment as a time for us to celebrate together how we have grown.

- Yes, yes. And that we part is really interesting because if you think about a celebration or a feast, it's never alone. Who wants to go to a party all by themselves, right? And so we can come together with our students. And what's really interesting is in the homeschooling realm, the primary students are your children, right?

So to be able to, like we are practicing celebrating in terms of like birthdays maybe, or holidays that we come together, we just finished Christmas, right? We're like, okay, this is the space in which we see celebration. But to change the culture of our homes for assessment, to also be a part of this rhythm of celebration in our lives is a different way of thinking.

And it's a way that I would hope that others might come to embrace. I mean, they might be like, they might be nervous about this idea simply because it's a celebration, right? And maybe that's uncomfortable. - It's super appealing though. I mean, look at the contrast between the sober judgmental testing aspect or a party with hats and streamers and noisemakers.

- Right. - I would much rather participate in that. So what if we do want to change our mindset? That's a great place to start. And we know that changing our mindset is the way to change our practice, our habits. And that changes the culture of our family. So we do want to change from doom to celebration.

And we want assessment to be a celebratory thing. But what is assessment? Let's give people a definition. What is it that we're talking about? What really is assessment? And maybe you want to tell us what it's not so that we can see more clearly what it is, but I want to hear what you have to say.

- Oh yeah, okay. I like starting with what it's not 'cause we can, that is like a good tangible part where we can easily see. Okay, so what it's not is it's not just an end of the year thing. I know that we typically think of it as a thing that happens at an end of something.

But assessment is actually at the beginning, it's at the middle, it's at the end, it's throughout the day when you stand up, when you walk the way with your children, right? That the Lord refers to in Deuteronomy. That's actually the verse that kind of drew me into homeschooling in the first place.

How can I do this all day long, every day? If I'm not with them, right? So that was a question that I had to wrestle. So this assessment's the same way. I like to think of assessment, and I know you're gonna maybe balk at this for a minute, but I like to think of it in terms of Sabbath, right?

Like what does Sabbath and assessment have in common? - Huh, I've never ever had this thought. I can't wait to pursue it with you. - Okay, okay. So, well, what are some words that come into your mind when you think of the word Sabbath? - Rest, set apart, holy, contemplation.

- Good. - All that kind of stuff. Just ceasing, stopping, thinking, praying. - Reflecting. - Reflecting, yes. That whole idea of contemplation, sitting somewhere quiet with my thoughts so that I can actually hear my thoughts above the, because there's not the busy jangle of all the voices and all of the to-dos on my list.

- Good, okay. So are there different kinds of Sabbath? - I think that there are. I think that you can have Sabbath that is just still where you are, in fact, mostly resting from activity and movement and busyness. And I think there is Sabbath where you're taking a different kind of break.

Where you are maybe still doing something, but something different from what you usually do or in a different way, a more slow, reflective, intentional way. - Okay, good. - Yeah. - Well, and so a lot of times we think of Sabbath as like a day of the week, whether it be Saturday or Sunday, or even a different day.

I've heard of pastors 'cause they work really hard on coming in to leading a congregation. So sometimes they Sabbath a different day of the week, right? And then we also have extended Sabbaths, like summer rest from school in the years. - Yes, or sabbatical. I mean, my husband's a pastor and he had a six month sabbatical several years ago.

And so that was a different kind of, yeah. - Exactly, an extended kind of Sabbath, but he's also still doing some of those other Sabbaths in that extended Sabbath, right? - Absolutely, absolutely. - And then even in the daytime where it says, the Lord says, come to me, give us our day, our daily bread, come and sit before me and hear what I have to say, right?

And so even that is a Sabbath as we just sit before him, be still and know that I am God, be still and know that I am with you. And so that's a form of rest that comes to our soul when we encounter him. Well, assessment is very similar to Sabbath in all of these ways.

It is a time for reflection. It is a time, there are different kinds of Sabbath, or excuse me, different kinds of assessment. There are assessments that happen at the end of a year or the end of a season, but there are Sabbaths that are happening every day. There are assessments periods happening every day with our students.

So I know maybe you've heard of like a morning meeting, right? - Yes, yes. - What do they call them? What are some other terms for morning meetings? That's what we call it. - Some moms of littles call it morning basket time or couch time. Or I remember when my girls were in challenge, when they were in the upper challenges, when they were way more independent, we had morning check-in so that we could say, okay, how are you positioned for success today?

Let's figure out each other's rhythms to see if we can have a family rhythm that will work for everybody today. - Yes, ooh, that word rhythm, so good. Definitely falls in line with Sabbathing and I don't need, I just turned that word into a verb, I'm not sure I should have.

- It works in our conversation. - Okay, good. Well, the same thing with assessing, there's rhythms to assessing. So even my morning time with my students, my family, we usually take that time to just reflect on truth that God maybe has for us through some scriptures. We also have some conversation, but it's also a time in which we're reflecting on the calendar.

And what do we need to do different today than we did yesterday? What do we need to do? How do we need to improve our schedule or our communication with one another, right? These are all forms of assessing in the moment. - Yes, yes, good. And that's the kind of assessing that we all are used to practicing every day in our homes.

Like you assess, do I have enough groceries to get through the rest of today? Do we have enough clean clothes that I don't have to do laundry now? Do we have all the supplies for the never ending science fair project that is ongoing? - Exactly, exactly. And then we have to troubleshoot what, okay, this didn't work last time.

How can I do this better? Right, I mean, my first time I did Memory Master with my oldest kids, that was a painful process. But then I had to assess, okay, how can I make this less painful for my next student because I see the value in it. And how can I bring rest to them and myself through the process, not to mention the daily assessment of you need to work on this, right?

This is a subject you're struggling in. - This is your growing edge. - Exactly, exactly. But there's a lot more to assessment than just what grade did I get or what have I done wrong? Because I remember years ago, Lee Bortons made the comment that has stuck out to me.

I don't even know when or where she said it, but she said there were four things to consider when you have a problem. One is, do they know the information, right? Is their grammar down? The second is, do they understand it? Are the pieces practiced well enough for the understanding to have come?

The third would be, can they express it? Maybe they do know and understand, but they don't know how to articulate it to you. Or the fourth thing, maybe they're having some heart issues, some character issues, and if that's the case, put the books down and go deal with the hearts of your children.

And that has always resonated with me because assessing where the heart of my student is is actually probably the number one thing I'm paying attention to when I'm encountering assessment with my students. - And you know what? When your students are your children, that's actually the number one concern of most of us.

Most of us started homeschooling our children because we want them to know how to love the Lord and love their family and love their community, their heart issues that we felt like nobody could do or care about as much as we did. - Right, right. And so sometimes though, even being able to see what a heart issue is is something that has to be practiced and discerned by the spirit, right?

- Yeah, yes. - Is my student ready for whatever it is that I think they're ready for? Is this what God has for them or is this my plan for them? - Yeah, is it just what I think is next in the scheme of things, right? - Yes. Who is dictating what is next or where my student should end up, right?

Is it the Holy Spirit or is it a governing body of a local school department who's telling me what I have to have or not have? And I'm not saying those things are not important. - Right. - But they need to be questions that I've considered when I'm thinking about assessing.

- Yeah, it's not a knee jerk. It's not a knee jerk decision. It's not, that's what the state says so that's what I have to do or that's what everybody else in our community is doing so that's what I have to do or even that's what I did with my older child so that's what I have to do.

- Exactly and we all struggle with that one really easily. - Oh, yes. - Comparing, even if it's not to an older child, perhaps it's to another child in their classroom, right? - Right, right. - Oh, my student's not performing the same way. I remember a good friend of mine, her name is Kelly Hendricks and her oldest is the same age as my oldest and they were, excuse me, not my oldest, my son.

Her son is the same age as my son and they were in a Besidarian class together as four-year-olds and they were the only two boys in this Besidarian class. - Oh, my goodness. - They could barely talk and it was like cycle one ancients, you know, all those big words.

- Yes, all the big words, yes. - And our little boys couldn't even talk. These girls were doing circles around them and I remember feeling like, oh, oh no, my son, what's wrong with him? That he can't say all the things that I would compare. - Yes, because you don't know any better at that stage.

- You don't, you don't. And I mean, we do intellectually, but we end up still finding ourselves in that space, right? So it was really helpful to me because my friend Kelly, this was her younger children and so she was a little seasoned and ahead of me in the game and she's like, oh, Rachel, it's 'cause they're boys, they're gonna get it.

She was a real encouragement to me to put away those lies. But I had to deal with, you know, assessing, you're assessing whether you think you are or not and responding out of those assessments. But the truth is, is it a good assessment that I've come to a good conclusion?

A truthful conclusion? Is it something that's blessing my student and myself, right? So these are questions that I have to ask myself. If I'm entering into an assessment and we are feeling feelings like guilt or shame or condemnation, then that's gonna be a clue to me. I might not be assessing correctly.

Assessment is supposed to be joyful. It is a celebration. And if it doesn't feel like a celebration, it doesn't mean you're doing something wrong. It means the assessment part just needs to be changed, assessed, it's in other words, maybe how you're viewing the perspective of how you're viewing needs to be changed, not the thing you're doing.

Gotcha. Does that make sense? Might've been a little confusing there for a moment. So the way that you are drawing your conclusions, it might not be the thing that you're doing that is bad. It might just be the spin that you're putting on it or the emphasis that you're putting on it or the pressure.

Yeah, gotcha. Or the lens you're looking out of, right? Because if we're motivated by fear, then that fear is going to give us a view that fear is never joyful. Right, and it's gonna be very constricting. If we, whenever I make motions that are motivated by fear, I move in a very constricted manner.

Exactly. And how many parents I've talked to, they're like, well, I'm considering, which this is an assessment, they're drawing. I'm considering taking my kids out of homeschooling and I just can't do this anymore. I'm doing a poor job and I don't wanna fail them. These sentiments are usually, I mean, they're fear-based sentiments and we all can identify with those feelings at one time or another.

I mean, how many of us said, you want me to take you and put you on a school bus? 'Cause I'll take you and put you on a school bus, right? We're having lunch with my friends. My life could be easier than this. Right, I know. When people ask me, they're like, oh, do you like home?

What's the best thing about homeschooling? I'm like, the best thing about homeschooling is I get to be with my kids all day long. And they're like, oh, what's the worst thing about homeschooling? Oh, I have to be with my kids all day long. (laughing) I always, and people would say, oh, isn't that terrible?

I'm like, no, my kids would say the same thing. The best thing is that we get to be home with mom and dad all day. But the worst thing is that we're always home with mom and dad. Yes, yes. It just is a perspective thing. Exactly, it really is.

And so when I hear a mom saying that, usually it's like, that's an invitation to me to encourage them, to help maybe change the lens they're looking out of. Right? And it may be that the Lord would lead somebody to make different decisions than they're making. But the thing is, is we want to not allow our assessments to be led by fear, which is never from God, right?

Never from God. Yes, very good. That is very good. So let me ask you this, because we titled this podcast, "The Gentle Joy of Assessment," and I could feel people all over the world rolling their eyes. Can assessment be gentle and joyous? Yes. Well, okay. I absolutely think they can be gentle and joyous.

And I have changed how I interact with my children now. Ooh, tell me about that. Yes, yes, yes. So, okay, let me give you an example. If I have, I walk into the kitchen, and this probably can resonate with many other parents. If you walk into the kitchen and you had assigned a job to clean the kitchen, right, to your children.

Right. And I walk in and it is halfway done, or maybe not even done at all, or I can see they did something, but they're not even in the kitchen anymore. They're distracted and off doing something else. My first reaction, my old reaction, would have been to assess, where are you getting this kitchen?

You're not cleaning the kitchen. It's dirty. You have done a poor job. You're not listening to me. I may have even attacked motive. You don't even care that the kitchen is clean, right? So that initial response of how I'm walking into that assessment immediately puts my children on defensive.

It's not joyful. It's not gentle. It's not kind, right? And so- Definitely not a celebration. Not a celebration, exactly, okay? And so now, with learning these assessment skills and how to change assessment, I, and I'm not saying I do it perfect every time, Lisa. Let me tell you that's the truth.

Right, right. This is, it really has changed how I interact with my children, even on a day-to-day basis. I may come in now and say, okay, well done on how you wiped the counters, and I see that you loaded the dishwasher. I really appreciate that. You did a good job.

Is there anything else that you did not do that needed to have been done? And by walking my student into self-assessment, I'm able to actually engage and see where my student is in their heart. If they go, yeah, I did it all, it's fine. Okay. Right, right. Where's the list of where you're, what all the things you're supposed to do, right?

Can you help me and walk me through each thing that you did? And I'm able to gauge, is my child's heart not in a good place, and then that's the place we need to deal with it? Or is it that they don't understand, right? My instructions. Right. Right, that it means something different to them than it means to you.

This abuses me. Exactly. Not quite communicating it to them. Right, and honestly, it may be that I need to say, okay, that was poor communication on my part. I need to do a better job of instructing this area of what I expected to be done. Let's try that again.

And let me even actually, I'm gonna show you, right? And I'm gonna model for them the kind of level of cleaning I'm hoping to get, right, out of that job. So when I change the way I have learned how to assess in the classroom has actually spilled out and changed the way I parent as well.

I love that. I love that because I was gonna ask you, and I may still ask you again in a minute, what good is learning to assess well for life, not just for classroom? So keep going. Yes. It's great. Yes, and it actually changes how I interact with everyone, even my spouse and my marriage, right?

If I, how many of us jump to wrong conclusions, wrong assessments in the people we love most, and we do not approach the conversation or questions with hospitality or consideration of the other person's feelings. And I think that's a strategy of the enemy, honestly, Lisa, is to create division between us, for us to just look through the wrong lenses and to jump to quick conclusions that needed to have taken the time to reflect.

Yes. And I'm telling you, if you learn how to assess to bless, you will not only bless your students and your family and your coworkers, but you're going to engage in a different, it actually takes a lot of heat off of you because the first step of assessment is walking someone else into self-assessment.

Yes, that's beautiful. It's key. It is so key. Because if I, I mean, if you think about it, God did this all the time, all the time in scripture. Jesus did it and God did it. Jesus is known to be the master teacher of questions, right? Yes, yes. That draws you, it draws the listener into the process.

It's not just a lecture, it becomes a conversation. And there are two of us now thinking about this, not one of us thinking and talking and one of us listening. Exactly, and I think one of the big reasons why Jesus would ask those questions is to say, "Okay, where's the heart of this person?" Like, it makes me think about that one parable where, and you might have to help me 'cause I'm thinking off the top of my head here, but there was a guy who, he came and he said, "What must I do to follow you?" Right?

Yeah. And Jesus was like, "Go and sell all of your," you know, he asked him-- Everything you have and give it to the poor. Yeah, "Are you able to do that?" Or, "What's the greatest commandment?" I can't even remember exactly, but he asked questions that grew, he like basically walked this man on a journey of thinking.

And then it got to the point where they're now both where Jesus wanted him to be. And he said, "Okay, now go and sell all your stuff." Right. And the guy, he had assessed that there was an idol in his life, right? But he had, and the command that he gave him, "Go do this," create, it says that he left very sad.

Right, because I think he realized for the first time, "Oh, there's something in me that's not ready to give in." Yes, yes. And then Jesus was able to, you know, and there was a time of reflection that it caused him to have to go and say, "Am I willing to do that?

"I don't know if I am." And sometimes it doesn't mean you're evil 'cause you're not ready to do that. It's an invitation by God to say, "Well, let me heal that part in you "so that you could be ready," right? Well, and I think it's a way for us to acknowledge that there's a roadblock.

There's a roadblock in us. This is why I'm not getting traction on this. This is why I can't move ahead. This is why I'm not doing better. There's this problem, and you asking me that question forced me to identify that that's the roadblock right there. Exactly. That's why I'm not better.

Exactly, and my old person would say, "Oh, you're just being lazy," right? And I don't really agree that children are lazy. I believe that fear in our children causes them, and humans, all humans, not just children, but fear causes humans to do one of two things. It causes them to either overwork, right?

Perfectionist, driven by fear to not get something wrong, so I'm gonna do it all, which I remember, Lisa, you said I was a good girl who- Yeah, that was definitely my motivation, yeah. Okay, so I'm the opposite side, whereas you were maybe motivated by that. I would be fearful, and it would paralyze me, and I wouldn't be able to do things, and it looked as if I didn't care, but I wasn't doing them, but I did care.

Right, you just had no idea where to start because you were so overwhelmed. Yes, and I really believe that if you have a student who is struggling with just not, and I hear this from parents all over the place, we have an easier time dealing with a kid who's a perfectionist, who's driven, self-motivated, but self-condemns constantly, right?

Yes, yes. We, as parents, that's easier for us 'cause all the boxes are getting checked, but the student who's not, who's paralyzed and not able to do the things they're doing, but the truth is, both sides of the coins are not good, right? Yes, exactly, they both need us in very definite ways.

Exactly, and so we get to assess by asking questions to help them identify what is the motivating factor of me feeling like I need to do eight hours of school in a day or having a hard time accomplishing a single seminar, right, and my thing. And so assessment is, first and foremost, asking and walking our students into self-assessment, just like God did.

Where were you when I formed the earth, right? I mean, God did it all throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament, so we can take that. I mean, God, He knew the answers, right? Absolutely, absolutely. Sometimes, now we're not God, and as parents, we might actually not know the answer.

Sometimes we think we know the answer, and then they answer, our children can respond with different things that surprise us, right? Yes, yes. So I feel like by walking, learning how to assess in this way, you're actually practicing humility by saying, I think I know, but maybe I don't know, and I'm gonna ask the questions first, and I'm gonna walk my student into a space and make sure they're ready for what I think they're ready for, but maybe they're not.

It's worth asking the questions. And asking the question makes you a partner with your learner, and it is so much better. We've both already said it. It is so much better to walk arm in arm with a partner than to walk along by yourself. And so you have automatically, by becoming a partner in learning with your child, by asking them questions, you have opened their heart to you in a way it would not have been open otherwise.

Exactly, and you know, that's actually what acidity, which is the Latin word for assessment, that's actually what it means. It means to walk beside. Yep. And to walk beside, not above, where we are lording over them, not below, where we are cowering under them, but beside them, where we are partnering with our students, acknowledging the humanity that is within them, that they are made in the image of God, just like we are, and that we have value as the stewards over them.

How many times do we make the comments, Lisa? These are my children. Yes. And I have been convicted, Lord, these are not my children. These are your children. Yes. These belong to my master, and I have been given the great responsibility. Thankfully, it is tied to love, right? And it's only because of His Spirit we can even love.

But it's tied to, okay, thank you, Lord, I love these people, and I want to steward them well for you. And that means I want to assess well. I want to assess in a way that honors you, Lord, that brings joy, and that honors the person in front of me.

And I would say that assessing with joy means to honor the human in front of you. And to honor someone, like when we say phrases like in a courtroom, right? We say your honor to the judge. Yes. We would never say things to a literal judge in a courtroom the way we say things to our own children.

You're right. We would never do that, and we're all guilty of it, myself for sure included, right? And so by learning how to practice this assessment, you're practicing way bigger things than what do I need to do to get this schoolwork done, or finish the school year, or finish their homeschool career.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, listeners, I have good news and bad news, okay? The bad news is we've run out of time for today. The good news is our very next session with Rachel will be in one week, and we are gonna talk about how do we assess now that the Lord has given us this new vision, perhaps, of assessment as celebration, and the purpose of assessment to draw, to honor the human in front of you, and to draw yourself and your student, your child into partnership as you help them take up the reins of self-assessment.

And as we have really become perhaps convicted that our assessment needs to change in order to become gentle, and joyful, and spiritually edifying to the whole family, how are we gonna do this? Rachel is gonna walk us through how do we assess in our homeschool next time. And Rachel, I wanna also, I want you to speak for a minute, because listeners, Rachel has a conference that she leads that I'd love for her to tell you about, because if you want to hear more about this, and you want an avenue perhaps to practice some of these tools of assessing, Rachel might have just the thing you need.

Rachel, tell us about your conference. - Oh, thank you, Lisa, yes. Please join me for the next Tools for Transcripts online conference. It's gonna be February 13th, 18th, and 20th at 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. It is presented by Classical Tools for Change, and it's taught by myself. And we're gonna delve into the depths of assessment, exploring the answers to questions like, what is the nature of assessment?

Who is being assessed? What is being assessed? Who are the assessors? What is the purpose of assessment? And what are some forms of assessment? It is a three-part conference where we were gonna converse through ideas in part one, we're gonna practice the skills of assessment in part two, and then we're gonna walk through the logistics of crafting a transcript in part three.

So you can find more information at www.classicaltoolsforchange.com, and that's for the number four. Again, the dates are February 13th, 18th, and 20th, but I do add new dates every month. So check our website for those dates as they come. And I appreciate you, Lisa, just giving me this opportunity to come and discuss some of my favorite topics.

- Well, I have loved reconnecting, but I've really loved thinking about this whole idea of the connection between Sabbath and assessment and how assessment can be gentle and joyful and also honoring to the people with whom we practice it. So thank you, Rachel. Listeners, I hope that this has given you enough to think about that you'll be busy until next week when we'll see you again.

All right, bye-bye, you guys. (gentle music) you you