Two weeks ago I was attending our local Homeschool Expo and listening to Dr. Jay Wile speak. Although he’s best known for creating the Apologia science curriculum, this time he was tag-teaming with Diana Waring (who has her own history curriculum) to speak about homeschooling in general—specifically the things they wished they had known when they were teaching their own kids (dare I say decades ago).
One of the comments Dr. Wile made really stuck with me—he was actually quoting someone else but I didn’t get that in my note. He said “One of the worst things women do to each other is clean their house before another one comes over to visit.” On first hearing, this may sound odd to you. After all, everyone assumes we’re showing hospitality and respect to our guests by welcoming them into an orderly and tidy home. Dr. Wile went on to explain the comment. As women, we tend to compare our own home and circumstances with those of lady we’re visiting. Unfortunately the vision we use for our own home is the day-to-day version or even the crisis version and we’re comparing it to the home that has been cleaned and polished for the past two days before our arrival. No wonder we get complexes that we’re not doing enough.
The same could probably be said about homeschooling bloggers. I’ll confess to cleaning off areas that will be in camera-view before snapping pictures of my son for a review post. You as the reader will never know about the stack of junk hidden on the other side of the table. We also tend to write about the positive aspects and if something is not going just hunky-dory we try to give the impression that we’ve got grace under fire.
But next week the Homeschool Crew is going to pull back the curtain and let you see that we deal with life just like everyone else. Dirty dishes piled in the sink, kids that whine, backed up septic systems, and who know what else. You’ll want to visit every day for our 5 Days of Real Life Homeschool ( this link won’t go live until Monday 4/6 at 8:00am).
No comments:
Post a Comment