A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

You know, I appreciate how amazingly kind the Brave Writer community is. This has been a tough winter for me personally, but I feel bouyed up by the generous comments, enthusiastic reports and even the sincere, heart-felt questions that I get in my in-box or on my phone each day. It’s great to know you’re still applying Brave Writer insights to your children’s lives. Here’s one of the wonderful ones sent to me today, just when I needed it. (Btw, I use Help for High School in the co-op where my kids participate too. It’s a great resource to use in that setting.)

—

Julie,

Rough winter?  Well, they say, “what goes around, comes around,” (anonymous).  Since you’ve been so generous with encouragement to other homeschool moms, here is a little dose for you. 🙂 (sorry, the smileys are part of my vocabulary)

I’ve corresponded with you before. . . over the past five years I’ve used Writer’s Jungle in my homeschool with my own four, two of whom are now high school students, still homeschooling, one 6th grader, and a third grader.  One of my best memories is of Tuesday teatime in which we had checked out the audio book for Tom Sawyer (a few years ago) and giggled our way through it together over tea and snacks (the best part for my son) on sunny days, in our Florida room. (yes, even in Central Ohio!!).  I have the notebooks of illustrations, dictations and copywork from Prince Caspian, The Magician’s Nephew, and the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  They are worth all of the bad days of our 12 years of homeschooling put together! (not that there have been that many!—God if faithful!)

I started a new co-op a few years ago (The Shema Academy for Excellence in Homeschooling—we are the Shema Mamas!!) with some friends to address science, but alas, we were having such a good time that we have included writing and literature in our course offerings in the past year or so.  I teach the high school class, writing component, using Help for High School, and we have been working through the modules successively.  It is going. . . somewhat swimmingly!  My students have found that writing is work, but having worked through the various exercises, freewriting assignments, rough drafts, revisions and submission of final copies, I am thrilled to say all 15 students are growing! And that, of course, is very exciting.  This spring we will have our second foray into research projects, and I will say, that each student will research something that he/she cares deeply about and is interested in personally.

So while I have had to put my own writing endeavors on hold over the past few years (I haven’t submitted or published anything since 2005), having the opportunity to invest in the lives of some pretty terrific homeschool students is a pretty good tradeoff.

I pray God’s faithfulness will minister to you in your situation.  Your materials have been a great help to me in my homeschool journey!  I hope to be able to work with you some day!

Sincerely,
Jacquie Stevanus
Hilliard, OH