News – Page 17

Commitment

January 8, 2013 by Carey Jane Clark

I decided to homeschool before I even had children. It was a noble idea born out of conviction that I could offer more to my children than I had received through the public school system–a conviction that there was a better way.

When it came time to begin, I was excited. I still am. I enjoy learning alongside my children. Every day holds a new challenge.

I always assumed I would educate through elementary school, but that my children would enter public school for high school. However, as we go along, learning together, it seems more and more likely that I will teach them all the way through their school careers. Since I taught my oldest two since preschool, and assuming our family dynamic remains the same, by the time Sprout graduates high school, I will have been teaching our children for 15 years.

When it stretches out before you like that, it makes you really stop and think. That’s a lot of one’s life to dedicate to the education of children!

But as I prepared for the new year, I dug a little deeper yet again. The new year for me is always a time to reassess. There were some things I needed to change in our schedule, and I wanted to do more in the way of teaching literature and to improve the methods I’ve been using to teach writing. I’ve been immersing myself in teaching training materials.

And the last two days with our new schedule and new approaches have been fantastic! I know I’m giving my children what’s best for them. I’m giving them things that are truly important, and it’s worth the commitment.

We’ve begun reading comprehension instruction from the Center for Literary Education and I’m beginning writing instruction from Excellent Resources. I’m already amazed at what we’ve learned together. And I’m keeping my commitment to limit my computer activities to “office hours” so I can get down to the important work of teaching.

Why is all this important?

Ultimately, so the more valuable lessons can be taught: independence, servanthood, a heart for others. Could there be anything better to commit your life to?

- Carey Clark

Word of the Year 2013

January 5, 2013 by Carey Jane Clark

Readers tell me that my writing is very visual. After reading After the Snow Falls, numerous people have told me that they can see the story like a movie in their minds. So when it came time to choose a word for 2013, the picture the word evoked was just as clear as the word itself: I had seen others choosing words or pictures for the year, and frankly at first I didn’t plan to jump on the bandwagon. Mostly because nothing seemed to inspire me, particularly. And yet, I believe it’s important to set one’s course, and had some goals I wanted to set for the new year. I sensed a stirring, and I am certain good things are ahead. I wanted a way to set that out clearly, and what better way than a word and a picture? But still nothing occurred to me. Then on January 1st, this verse dropped in my heart as “my verse” for the year:

And God is able to make all grace about toward you that you always having all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work – 2 Corinthians 9:8

And then someone repeated the verse in a sermon I heard. He mentioned in that sermon that in this year, God wants to teach people grace. So I dug up a book I knew I’d heard of recently and bought it for my eReader. In it, the author, Tony Cooke, defines grace, not with the typical definition one hears repeated to explain grace, but with this simple phrase: grace is love in action. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t believe I’ve often been a recipient of grace before. Certainly over the last couple of years, I’ve been very much aware of the grace of God functioning in my life and the lives of our family members. And yet I feel I’m just learning what it really means and all that God makes available to his children because of it. And it’s begun to seem like such an inexhaustible subject–one of those things that the more you understand it, the more you know you’re just barely scratching the surface. So welcome to 2013, the year of grace. I can’t wait to see all that will unfold. - Carey Clark

I Am Resolved

January 4, 2013 by Carey Jane Clark

New Year’s was always a very special time for me. When I was a child, it was tradition for us to go to church on New Year’s Eve and spend the hours counting down until midnight with our church family.

Here in China, January 1st comes and goes without much fuss. There were some fireworks here and there (although not that many in our neighborhood—certainly no more than normal), and everyone wished each other xin nian quai le. There’s a holiday as well, though not specifically attached to the idea of the new year. The bigger deal is the lunar new year or Spring Festival coming up in a few weeks.

But New Year’s for me has always been a time of introspection–of deciding if I’m happy with the direction of my life and whether any changes are in order.

In recent years, many people have declared resolutions no good because few people actually keep them. While I understand this sentiment, I nevertheless think a bit of introspection and examination of the direction of our lives is a healthy thing. And setting new goals (as long as they are realistic, measurable and attainable), may be in order as well.

According to Webster’s to resolve something is to to reach a firm decision about a matter. I frankly can’t see any harm in that.

There is more than one area I want to see change in. I don’t think I’ve entirely figured out yet the whole direction of the change necessary in our homeschool. I thought I had a plan, and then received a phone call yesterday that our Chinese tutor can no longer teach our kids, which may mean a serious shake-up in our current schedule. But until I am resolved about that matter, here are my other firm decisions:

Bring better organization to our homeschool, including firmer routines for our morning, so my children know what is expected of them in the mornings before homeschool starts. To that end, I found this great checklist and have tweaked it for our use. I also find that at least one of my kids needs very specific instructions about how to get jobs done, so I purchased this ebook with printable chore cards that describe each task in detail, so kids have a reminder right in front of them at all times. (Special thanks to Tricia Hodge of www.hodgepodge.me for pointing me to those wonderful resources.) I also purchased a used copy of the out-of-print book, What to Do when Your Mom or Dad Says, “Clean Your Room!” because every kind of medicine goes down better when there’s a good book attached to it.
With the lessons I learned during NaNoWriMo about just what I’m capable of when I set my mind to it, I want to move my writing time from segregated times during my week to a daily activity every afternoon, after my “office hours,” which I have made a firm decision need to be in the afternoon. (It is very tempting to keep hours first thing in the morning after rising, since this is when all our friends and family back in North America are still up, and it’s possible to send emails or even chat on Skype, but this is not conducive to beginning the homeschool day on time.)
I became much more consistent at keeping a daily devotional time last year. But I want to see that time go deeper this year. I’ve adopted a less rigorous reading schedule in favor of more time for scripture memory. I plan to keep up with 100 Bible Verses Everyone Should Know by Heart, but in looking over the list of verses, I realized I’d already memorized quite a number of them, either on my own or with my kids as part of homeschool, so I’ll be supplementing frequently with verses of my own choosing.
I’m almost afraid to put this next one out there, it’s so cliché, and it’s the one I know will be most difficult for me to keep. Yes, I am resolved to exercise more faithfully (as in 2-3 times per week). I always see the results when I do, and I always feel better for it. However, it’s the first thing to squeeze out of my morning when push comes to shove.
And please don’t look back at last year’s blog post on goals, or you’ll see that this is a repeat from then. I am resolved to be in bed by 10:00 to 11:00 p.m. most nights. It’s what my body needs to do the rest of those things above.

What steps am I going to take to be sure and follow through on these, so they won’t just be resolutions, but reality? Well, I’ve already talked about them with my husband. It helps to be accountable to him and to get his help and encouragement when I’m feeling weak. And I plan to reassess every month, to make sure I’m staying faithful to what I’ve resolved. Keep me honest, will you?

- Carey Clark

2012: A Look Back

January 1, 2013 by Carey Jane Clark

Standing at the stove, preparing Christmas dinner, it suddenly occurred to me that we had spent Christmas in six different homes in the last six years:

2012 – Here in our home in the north of China
2011 – a temporary home in Cobourg, Ontario
2010 – a temporary home in Scarborough, Ontario
2009 – our home in the south of China
2008 – our previous home in the north of China
2007 – our home in Toronto, Ontario

But we’ve always been together, and we’ve always had warmth and love to spare. While we were back in Canada, someone approached me in a church once with a scripture verse for me. She read it out of the Message translation: Psalm 90:1 “God, it seems you’ve been our home forever…”

This year marked the culmination of a few years of efforts: getting back to the city that feels like home so JavaMan could finally launch his business here.

In January, we spent time with family after Christmas, and got to indulge in lots of snow play and making lots of Canada memories before we left. It was as cold as it looks!

In February, we said “goodbye” to JavaMan, who left for China to find us our fantastic apartment. He did such a great job keeping me up-to-date with his search while he was in China and we were back in Canada.

Finally, in March, our day to board the plane arrived. We crammed everything we could into those suitcases, had to leave a few cherished possessions and homeschool things behind (and later found out we had several more pounds luggage allowance than we’d been told, despite asking), and were on our way!

We jumped into the homeschool routine just as quickly as we could in April, when our belongings were still somewhat in bins, and we still had no heat in the house. We went out on nature walks and stomped around (and got lost) in our new/old city. It was good to be home!

We still had no furniture, except for the small table and chairs we used in the homeschool room, and had no idea then that we’d be waiting until the end of October before it finally arrived!

By May, spring had sprung in our city, and after a bit of a scare with our paperwork for our visa applications, we were finally granted one year visas for our stay here. We settled in even more and began our Chinese lessons at HoldtheMSG.com,

Summer went by all too quickly, with only a short break for regrouping and planning the new school year.

In retrospect, we’re glad we took only a short break, since the new school year turned out to have lots of breaks, with seemingly one holiday or interruption after another–a trip to the Chinese countryside, the Chinese national holiday, Canadian Thanksgiving, American Thanksgiving…

…and the arrival of our furniture!

Since then, we’ve begun ESL classes and other meetings in our home and have had a chance to entertain quite a bit, including 7 friends on Christmas Day!

I’m participating in a Blog Cruise with The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew. Click here to read more of these posts.

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