Archive for the ‘Brave Writer Philosophy’ Category

Email: Going on vacation and journals

Dear Julie,

Hi! I just came across your Brave Writer website from a fellow homeschool mom and it sounds great.

I have a 7 year old daughter who writes very well, she creates stories and illustrations, and she also does copywork, all on her own. She is a good reader, too. I pretty much stay on the side of this whole natural process. I supply supplies for her and give her encouragement and listen when asked but pretty much not actively involved in it.

We are getting ready for a move from California to Indiana and we are planning on a 2 week camping trip from CA to IN. Camping down the coast of CA to the Grand Canyon and on from there. She has been designated as our Secretary and Artist of our trip. I took her and she picked out a travel journal and a special drawing pad and pencils. Can you think of anything further I can do to encourage this process? She has been actively involved in the planning, too and has already prepared a scrapbook for our photos. I am thinking that on a daily basis, back at camp, we can sit and record our days activities. Should I do it with her? What are your thoughts? I already have a notebook filled with all the things that we are hoping to see on the way. Should I also get a travel journal and we do it together? I want it to be fun for her. Should you have any further ideas or suggestions, please let me know!

Thanks for your consideration.

Sincerely, Renee

—
Hi Renee.

Great question! We drove across country from California to Ohio ten years ago and took a similar route. I think you’ve already got as much going on to encourage her as possible. The main thing to keep in mind is the opposite. Don’t push. Let this project ebb and flow as suits the trip. You might even take this attitude. Rather than trying to get her to be stimulated or interested, each night you can pull out your own journal, markers, stickers, maps, scotch tape etc. and begin working on your own book. If she wants to join you, how much more fun! You may even consider turning on music to create a mood (if appropriate). As you go through your trip, collect old tickets to museums or the Grand Canyon park. Glue these into the book too. Sketch as you go. Do your own book and she’ll want to do one too.

The main way to incentivize any activity, is to do it yourself. Kids want to do “adult” things. They love using grown up tools and participating in grown-up activities. If journal making is for her “education,” she may resist. If it’s the cool thing adults do on trips, she’ll likely be asking you to “get to do it too.” See what I mean?

You may find that activity therapeutic for you too. One thing I’ve noticed in homeschool is that many moms are so thrilled by the possible activities and studies, they feel compelled to “get their kids to do them” so that they can enjoy those same activities vicariously. I say, “Do the activity! Right in front of your kids.” Let them see you having fun, learning, buying supplies, getting absorbed. They’ll be drawn to try it out. Remember, though, sometimes even the coolest projects aren’t interesting to our kids. Or they try them for a few days and then are done. There’s no right length to this project, no right number of pages or days. Enjoy it as long as there is interest and time. If there isn’t time, you can do it once you return home. Keep the souvenirs and fill the journal in then.

Above all: savor the trip! Don’t ruin it with nagging or heavy-handedness. Have a great time, and save a little of it in journals. (smile)

Julie

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We Teach Writers, not Writing

We teach writers, not writing

When asked to sum up the essence of Brave Writer, I like to start by looking at the company name: Brave Writer (not Brave Writing). That was a deliberate choice. Most companies describe themselves as “writing instruction.” Brave Writer could be described as “writer coaching.”

Our core value is to honor people: their voices, their insights, their unique learning styles, their real felt needs, their gifts and talents, their weaknesses and struggles. Writing is the result of unlocking words that lurk inside writers. As a result, we spend our energies in service of people:

  • exploring their experience and process,
  • explicating what is going on inside to help them connect to those words,
  • and then getting the words to paper.

An analogy I like to use is the difference between reading a book that explains the nature of pregnancy (what is it biologically, what happens to your body and the baby’s, what are the stages of pregnancy, what are the signs of labor, how does birth happen, what kind of birthing options are available, and so on) and reading a book that helps you understand what you will go through as a pregnant person (how to manage cravings or signs of cramping, what sorts of exercises help prepare for natural childbirth, what emotions you’ll experience during each stage, possible ways to cure morning sickness or to relieve swollen ankles, how to handle gestational diabetes, what the body sensations are of swollen breasts and that inevitable “drop” right before labor…).

The first book may give you lots of information you want to know (and all of us want to know it!), but the second is designed to hold your hand as you walk through your pregnancy. In the first, you are left to interpret for yourself how to apply that information to your experience. In the second, someone is actually describing your experience and then sharing possible tactics for managing it and making it more pleasurable, tolerable and enjoyable.

We teach writers, not writing

Most writing manuals are like the first kind of pregnancy book. They tell you what a descriptive paragraph is, for instance, and what one must contain to fit the definition. Those manuals provide examples of other descriptive paragraphs; they may even give of list of elements to include. What they don’t do is describe in a process-oriented way what is going on inside of the writer while trying to access descriptive language.

Brave Writer is like the second kind of pregnancy book. Brave Writer materials and classes focus on the writer: “I want to write that descriptive paragraph and include those elements, but how do I find the clever or interesting words hiding inside of me? What do I do with my writer’s block? What happens when I churn out a lousy first draft – how do I revise it?”

Brave Writer provides you with a collection of

  • experiences,
  • techniques,
  • and coaching insights derived from the writing lives of other writers,
  • as well as investigative tools to help you and your kids dig deeper inside to catalyze writing.

In essence, our programs are labor coaches. We not only know what gestational stage your kids are in when they attempt to birth writing (some of them may still need to get pregnant and we can even help there!), we know how to coax those words forward so that once they make it to the page, we can go ahead and shape them up into something concrete like a descriptive paragraph or an essay. See the difference?

That’s why we say: We teach writers, not writing.

Brave Writer Online Classes
Image of girl and dog by Brave Writer mom, Joanna

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Homeschool Advice | 5 Comments »

Email: Spelling

Hello, Julie.

I have some samples and questions regarding my son’s horrid spelling that I was hoping you would not mind giving me some guidance with.  My son, Clay, just turned 9 in March and he says he hates to write (and read).  He reads at grade level (3rd) or a little below.  He enjoys stories ~ he says he hates reading however because he stresses himself out regarding the length of the story and the amount of writing per page.  He does plenty of copy work and has very neat writing.  He is struggling with creative writing because he is challenged to get his thoughts out of his head and onto paper.  We don’t do a lot of creative/freewriting becasue he is young and I don’t push him.

(more…)

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Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Dictation and copywork, Email, Homeschool Advice, Language Arts, Young Writers | 5 Comments »

Marriage and homeschool

Marriage and homeschool

We’ve talked about the rosy sides of parenting, when life is a swirl of activity and spilled orange juice, and the greatest problems seem to be syncing up naptimes between babies and toddlers or figuring out when to take the 15 year old to a parking lot to learn to drive. Slowing down to savor the intentional educational and sentimental moments helps a lot in this context to keep you on track both emotionally and practically.

But what about when there are added stresses?

I spoke at a local homeschool group this past February. As I explained how the Brave Writer philosophy worked (our non-workbook approach to things like spelling and grammar, the freedom in writing without a systematic schedule, fewer writing projects with more revisions), one mom raised her hand. She asked, “How can I get my husband to accept this? He really wants proof that we are doing school and I don’t think he’ll accept this idea.”

My initial reaction startled her: “I don’t know your husband. So I don’t know if he’s a control freak or a nice guy you can talk to about stuff that matters to you and he’ll listen.”

She laughed nervously. I continued.

“See, I don’t know your dynamic together. I imagine he’s a nice guy and if so, appeal to his desire to trust home education to you. Share materials, send him to my website, suggest he read The Writer’s Jungle, if he’s really concerned. That said, if he’s a controller, none of that will work.”

We moved on because I’m in the writing business, not marriage counseling. Still, this is not an infrequent question and it’s a part of a larger context of difficulty in home education. I can’t help your marriage or partnership. But I can talk about the stress that relationship issues create for you and what to do when homeschooling.

Marriage:

Home education is unique in that it requires total responsibility taken by parents. My sister-in-law, who home educated her six kids, once said to me that she never needed to give her kids tests because whoever met them, tested them for her. Somehow relatives and friends would hear that one of her kids had never been to school and semi-interested person would say, “What’s 8 x 15?” to see if her child knew anything. This random act of standardized testing is annoying, to say the least. Our pediatricians, aunts, next door neighbors and even swim team coaches will give the pop quiz to our kids. It makes us nervous!

When school kids don’t know something, parents (as a rule) blame teachers, curricula, the child’s laziness, the flu, too much attention to soccer, ADD, allergies and so on. You rarely hear a parent of a schooled child say, “My kid is failing math and I wish I knew what I was doing wrong.” When homeschooled kids don’t know something, it’s me. It’s you. And by extension, it is also the non-home educating parent. We immediately feel it’s our choice of curricula, our failed methods of teaching, our lack of insight into learning style, our child’s learning disability we have yet to detect. We feel the full weight of responsibility.

That responsibility is even more difficult to manage when you’re not directly in charge of the decision-making. A parent who is not home to see you agonizing over websites, poring through borrowed materials from friends, and listening to your conversations at the park, may have a truncated view of how much education is happening in your home. If you have a relaxed learning style with your kids and your partner is a Type A “show me the results” kind of person, tension over what is the right way to home educate is likely.

Homeschool is deeply knitted to the atmosphere of the family and the marriage dynamic. A supportive context is essential for your kids. They make the most progress in their education when parents are on the same page because then the home educator isn’t trying to please someone else’s idea of learning even while secretly distrusting it. The best ways to foster this kind of shared philosophy are as diverse as healthy marriages. Letting one person be fully in charge while the other gives lots of compliments, all the way to reading everything together and discussing until consensus is reached are two ends of the continuum.

Problems arise when one person has the responsibility
and the other person has the control.

That’s when homeschooling becomes a battleground in a marriage. (Pssst. It’s usually not the only battleground in the marriage, either.)

It’s very hard to home educate when you’re pressured to perform a philosophy of education you don’t hold. It’s very hard to generate good feeling, hope, optimism and attentiveness to your children’s specific interests and needs if you’re afraid that you’ll “get in trouble” for the methods you use to meet those needs. Typically we pass stress along. So if you feel stressed by the pressure your spouse puts on you to “perform,” you’ll transfer that stress to your kids. You’ll do it if you feel pressure from any source (your mom, your mother-in-law or the ghost of public school past that still haunts your imagination!).

If that unwieldy pressure comes from the person you rely on to be your biggest support, your closest confidant, and best friend, the level of disquiet you carry will be substantial, and naturally will transfer to the kids. It matters that you take seriously your level of stress, anxiety, and feelings of pressure.

If the usual methods of problem solving don’t work between you and your spouse, it’s time to get help. Don’t wait. Your kids live in the atmosphere created all day long. Compromise is a normal part of marriage. Capitulation is not the same thing, and it leads to resentment.

If you truly can’t get to the same page philosophically after exhausting all the methods of conflict resolution, you may have to consider that homeschooling is not for you or for your kids. It may mean that your marriage is not capable of supporting the demands of home education. If that’s true, it’s okay. Peace in the family is more important than homeschooling.

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Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, General, Homeschool Advice | 6 Comments »

Copywork and Dictation: How Often? (Revisited)

Homework

Julie,

Could you briefly share with us how copywork and dictation look in your home and include the highest grade you’ve had at home? I’ve shared your arrow and boomerang (the concept) with several friends and the common concern is that it doesn’t appear to be enough. Many believe that copywork and dictation should be daily not weekly. I would love your insight on this matter!

Lisa

—

Hi Lisa.

Sure, I can share.

My oldest kids are in college (the oldest two are 21 and 18). I homeschooled both of them through high school, though the second one went part time to our local high school as well. Our third child is a junior in high school and goes full time. He was homeschooled through 9th grade. We have two more kids: 8th and 7th grades – all homeschooled.

Copywork and dictation can be done more frequently than weekly. The Arrow/Boomerang are designed to support the homeschooling parent, not to replace her own good judgment and her skills as a home educator. In fact, when I first designed the Arrow (which came first), I used to always say that the goal was to model how copywork and dictation can be done (how to select passages, how to teach them, how to make them more meaningful). Mothers can learn to do it themselves, if they like.

I included only one passage per week for several reasons:

1) Discouragement: Many mothers set out to do copywork/dictation more than a couple times per week and then when they fail to hit their target, they give up and stop doing it all together. I’ve found that copywork/dictation once per week is way better than not doing it at all while holding the ideal of doing it twice or three times or every day of the week. In fact, I’ve found that once a week adds up to a lot of copywork/dictation if done all year.

2) Length of passage: Some of the passages in the Arrow and particularly the Boomerang are long. They benefit from being broken up into multiple days of work.

3) Personal preference: Kids like to pick their own copywork. Not all copywork has to be selected for them. By offering only one passage per week, your have the freedom of selecting other passages to copy (song lyrics, poetry, passages from a beloved book, refrigerator magnets, a religious text). If I give you more than one per week, you will feel you must impose those passages on your kids to get your money’s worth. But this way, you focus on one passage, really teach it, and then can allow your kids to select the ones that they want.

4) Stress: For reluctant writers, it is a lot to ask them to do handwriting work (in a book, for instance), copywork, dictation, freewriting, and any writing project all in a week. The Arrow and Boomerang allow you to feel that you are covering the material necessary to a good language arts program without putting your child through too much pencil trauma.

Brave Writer is different than other programs. I believe firmly in a parent’s role in the homeschool. We are supports to what you do. We offer products that teach you how to teach. Of course you can do more copywork and dictation if you like. I have a son (14) who copied things every day and did special handwriting therapies for his dysgraphia. Yet two years ago, he could hardly write even one passage a week. I have an 11 year old daughter who doesn’t like the passages I pick who writes in her journal and her Greek notebook every day, even in summer. We talk about grammar over lunch or in the car. She is learning spelling through Facebook status updates!

My older kids credit their years of dictation with their punctuation skills (the ones in college). They feel like they learned mechanics painlessly. My junior in high school has successfully gone straight into Honor’s English without having ever done a formal grammar or spelling program. He’s learned it all through less than once per week dictation over his lifetime.

Pay attention to your kids. Do what you believe nourishes them. Let them tell you what is working and what is not. Kids don’t learn as well when they are numb to the subject matter, when they feel obliged to fulfill your expectations without their buy-in. If once a week copywork/dictation is tolerable (even enjoyable) for you kids, they will learn a lot! There’s no reason to think that more is necessarily better.

Image by Alastair Vance

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Copywork Quotations, Email, Writing about Writing | 3 Comments »