Gist'ery

I got to thinking about this, the words 'ridiculous amount of time' jumped out at me.

YES.

then I realized, we are home schooling ourselves HOW to home school. A significant number of us have never been home schooled. we didnt go to school to learn how to home school, we are all being self taught in a baptism by fire methodology.

so the learning curve for us as Learning Coaches is even more significant than it is for our children.

We were raised to follow the procedures, you go to school, you get your diploma, you get a degree, you get a job, you get married, you have kids, you put them in school, they get a diploma, they get a degree..... you get the idea.

but at some point we screamed out, I so totally did not sign on for this. now we have Learn how to Teach, we have to Learn how to think outside of the box so that our children can Learn to THINK outside of the box. this takes a lot of hours of research on top of the hours we are investing to teach one, two, three or more kids. it is intense, there is a fear of failure, there is a fear that our children will not be socialized, there is a fear that we will break them. we really are burning the candle at both ends.

last year I was a freshman in homeschooling university, and I worried and stressed and worried some more. I think I got the beginning stages of an ulcer I was so worried that we would end up at the end of the year an the education police would do a pop quiz and BAM someone would figure out that I had no clue.

let me tell you a secret, PROFESSIONALS do not have ALL the answers.

my son was educated by the 'best' and he still has issues with SUBTRACTION. it was not like he was not exposed to it, but he didnt 'get it' and they moved on.

if you do the same, your children will not implode, they will not forgo any chance of ever seeing the material again. it is virtually the exact same stuff each year, I KID YOU NOT

the health books and information is virtually the same for 3rd, 4th, and 5th because seriously we have one body and there is one message, you have a brain, you have a heart and you have lungs, take care of them. ;-)

if they do not get it this month, you can always come back to it, you do not need to stress and struggle over it, even if they say MASTERY, what they mean is not PERFECTION, but that they get the GIST of it.

so it is the GIST'ery program, and when you get to the UNIT EXAM, if there is a GLARINGLY problem, go back and review those items that are an issue.