I’ve made it my 5th day – one more day and I’ll have a half of year’s worth of posts done 🙂
Many years ago I heard that it takes till your third year of home educating until you really feel like you know what you are doing. I think that is probably true. But to take it a step further, I think it applies every time you switch approaches, the way you home educate. It’s all about retraining our minds to think differently and that takes time.
I’ve laid at the foundation of my teaching the principle of Renewing the Mind. It is a process that many home educators would just as soon skip over. They “don’t have time for this”. They just want to know how to teach this way – how to apply this method, and want to know it now. They have children sitting and waiting to learn, and they must start shoveling it in now. The clock is ticking.
But I think there is a reason Jesus walked daily with his disciples for three years. Perhaps it takes that long for us to make a paradigm shift. (Wouldn’t it be great to have a daily mentor for three years! We do, not just for three years, but for a lifetime. It is the Holy Spirit, our Teacher. He really is!!) But, as I was saying, there is no instant transformation except in our spirits when we are born again. Our minds must be laid on the altar daily. And the changes must be internalized. We can read something and “know” it, but it takes time for it to become a part of us, and to become natural for us to automatically apply – to automatically think that way.
We have been so trained in the supposed supremacy of content, “getting that building up”, that we forget that it is the foundation that is important. The things that aren’t always seen. The things that don’t measure on a test. But the things that will allow us/our children to stand, especially when the storms come.
There is no short-cut to renewing our mind to think or teach Biblically. Only study and time will accomplish that (in addition to the work of the Holy Spirit). As we work through Biblical principles as the foundation of our teaching for a Biblical worldview, it may seem like we aren’t “covering the subjects” like we “should”. At first, we may not even understand what the principles are and how they apply to anything, let alone everything. But as we continue our study, and leading our children as Christ leads us, line upon line, precept upon precept, eventually we will notice that it is starting to all come together. Things that made no sense before, suddenly all fall together. Application becomes obvious, and we can begin building the part of our “building” that will be seen. We are thinking differently. The foundation is set.
Never feel that the time laying a foundation on the solid Rock is wasted, unnecessary, or too time consuming. The “house” (education) without a foundation may look grand, big and beautiful, but its fall will be great when the storms of life come. It is only the life that is built upon the time-requiring foundation of Biblical thinking that comes from renewing the mind that will truly stand.
