Training: Method and Narration

Our community joined together last week for a training session. I am honored that these women would choose to spend a Saturday soaking in these ideas together! This serves as a way to bond over the beautiful as well as get some practical knowledge through a sample lesson and discussion of how to implement the model in their own home school.

Method

• Why must the children learn at all?

• What should they learn?

• How should they learn it?

  These are the questions that almost sound like educational-catechism and asked at the beginning of the section from Home Education read in our training session last week. They seem like simple enough questions if one’s own education is considered and it can be either repeated or remediated. However if we believe that children are persons and that learning is as important as food is for their body, some reconsidering is likely to take place.

  An idea is a seed that germinates and grows. These ideas placed before the child will become something much larger. If the child does the work of learning, then true education has taken place. The reason children are stilted in their flourishing and learning becomes a drudgery is likely because mere information, with no ideas TO live has been presented.

  Narration

  Children narrate by nature and we so often just tease them! Children love telling about all sorts of things, so let us allow them to tell their tales naturally instead of having it be a game of “guess what the teacher is thinking.” When they are older (six and older) this “power” can be used in their education.

  Narration is part of a lesson in which 1) a well-chosen text has been selected, 2)habits to be strengthened are in the heart of the teacher, 3) the lesson has been set up with a first LITTLE talk, and then a narration with a response following the reading.

  I have seen countless students engage with ideas that adults would otherwise think too lofty for young minds. Indeed, the group gathered for this specific training had different ideas brought out than those that had struck me in my preparation.

  *Pages discussed were from Mason’s Home Education 172-179, 232-234