Should you be required to wear a bike helmet? Why or why not?
(You could also write about whether or not cell phones while driving ought to be banned.)
Archive for April, 2010
Thoughts on the morning of my flight to Paris
My daughter, Johannah, lives in Paris right now. She’s an exchange student. She’s 20. When I was 20, I spent a year at a university in southern France. My mother came to visit me. Full circle.
I give a graduation speech in a couple of weeks to the local homeschool kids from our co-op. I’ve known these kids for ten years and have taught many of them in numerous classes now. What would I speak about? All the years I’ve known them? The various challenges they’ve overcome? Their collective adorableness?
It didn’t take long, though, for me to realize that what I wanted to tell them had to do with the future, not the past. I want them to risk. Home education is often as much shelter as anything else. Parents want their children to make fewer mistakes than they made. We want them to be free of the oppression of bad choices, and danger, and the regrets many of us harbor. So we keep them home, we guide their education, we supervise their friendships, we are selective about their extra-curricular activities.
And then we send them out into the world of college and adult life… and hope for the best. What is that ‘best’? It seems to me that the young 20’s are a rare moment in a lifetime. Big enough to drive, fly, drink in Europe, vote in America, volunteer in orphanages; unfettered by spouses or babies or home mortgages or careers or health problems. These “big kids, now grown-ups” can do stuff that they will never forget, that will shape their values for the rest of their lives.
Spending a year in France as an exchange student changed the course of my life. Not only did I learn to speak a foreign language fluently, but I was drawn to French speaking Africa for my early career. I’ve had an interest in and heart for the developing world ever since. I feel a kinship with issues and revolutions worlds away from Ohio just because I spent time living first in France and then in Central Africa, followed by time in Morocco.
I discovered the difference between first world “take it for granted” infrastructure and developing world hardships. I learned how to rely on myself in sticky situations without a mommy or daddy to bail me out. I found out that there are many ways to eat breakfast, or drink coffee, or flush toilets, or shower, or shop for vegetables, or dress modestly. I realized that my way (my familiar, seems-right-to-me way) wasn’t the only way, wasn’t the “morally clear, ethically superior, most efficient” way just because I am American.
Spending time in the Peace Corps or living in a foreign country as a volunteer, or student gives your young adults a view of the world that can’t be gotten from TV, newspaper articles, big budget movies or National Geographic, no matter how open minded. The best teacher isn’t information, it’s encounter. Once your kids are old enough to drive, they are old enough to begin that journey toward risk and adventure that will shape them for the rest of their lives.
Encourage them to dream of bigger vistas, send them to places they have never been, trust them to discover riches and ideas and empathies that you can’t yet imagine. This is the objective of home education: give them a firm foundation to stand on, and wings for flight.
I’ll be out of town traipsing up the steps of the Notre Dame, eating almond croissants and hanging around the Universite Catholique (where Johannah attends) over the weekend. See you on the flip!
Friday Freewrite: Long time
What is the longest time you ever waited for someone or something? Why did you wait?
Friday Freewrite: Prejudice
Why do you think prejudice exists in the world?
Email: After the convention…
Welcome new Brave Writer readers. I so enjoyed meeting many of you at the convention last weekend. I received the following wonderful email on Sunday and want to share it with you. It tickles me no end when someone puts into practice the ideas I share so effectively and quickly! Hope it encourages you too.
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Julie,
My name is Kari McGrath. I sat in on three of your sessions with my friend this past weekend, and ended up buying your book, and I just can’t wait to get started! I have told every friend I’ve run into that homeschools, and I shared last night with my husband, who thought it sounded great. Unfortunately, I got sick at the convention and lost my voice (now you might remember me!), so I stayed home today from church, and my oldest daughter stayed home with me. I was so excited, I told her about this new writing program we are going to be doing, how it will be fun, and I don’t think we’ll cry anymore! I know you talked about “Freewrite Fridays” and said that it would work Mon-Thurs…well, I have to let you know it will work on a Sunday, too! I just had to share this with you.
After I told her today what we’d be doing (freewriting), I couldn’t wait! So, she and I went into the kitchen, got our paper and pencils. I told her what we were going to do, and told her I was setting the timer for 3 minutes. She looked scared, so I said, “okay, we’ll write together for one minute!” One minute went by, and she was still writing, so she gave me permission to set it for 2 more minutes. At the end of 3 minutes, I stopped, and she said, “hold on, I still have another sentence to finish!” (This is my daughter who CRIES and gets spankings for her attitude when we write!) We stopped when she was done, then we read ours to each other. Here is hers: (note: The first sentence is from Lemony Snickets-when Count Olaf died, the second sentence is from Star Wars, then the rest of the sentences go back to another scene from Lemony Snickets..whose books she LOVED!)
count olaf laid in the water with the helmet in his hands. but master i Just saved your life. As the harpon {harpoon} hit his stomach he flew threw the wall and in to the fountin as he was drowing violet Klaus and sunny ran to the fountin they said they were sorry he drowned.
Ha! It was ALL I could do to not ask why she changed courses from Lemony Snickets to Star Wars and back, but I didn’t!!! I told her it was very good! Then I read her mine. It went:
I love my daughter, Myra. She is a precious gift from God to me. I wanted a child for so many years, and God gave HER to me. I am so thankful He heard my prayers! She is compassionate, kind, a great helper to me, a friend to me. She’s a beautiful girl, but she doesn’t see that. Others do, though-they tell me all the time. I don’t know what she’ll do when she grows up, but I think she’ll make a good mother.
I couldn’t get through reading that to her without crying. And, I kept crying. (I think it was half love, and half relief that she actually wrote!) She came over and hugged me. I explained that this was all we were going to do-once a week-for the next eight weeks, and then I explained how we’d pick one to revise, etc… Her response? “Aw..just one a week? Can we do more than that? That was alot of fun!!” WHAT???!!! Wow!!! Then she said, “Mom, your ‘poem’ you wrote was really nice…can I keep it?”
All I have to say is, Thank you, Julie! And, I haven’t even started reading ‘the jungle’ yet! Ha!
God bless,
Kari McGrath, Kentucky
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And that’s how it’s done!
