Thursday, August 24, 2006

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective New School Years:

This is for Maureen's neat project at Trinity Prep School. Willa's contribution could have been written for me (i.e. exactly what I need to work on). Here I'll just include the little tidbits that are most helpful to me in having the right attitude towards my children and learning.

1. Remember that regular learning and effort are far more important than one child, one subject, one year, one textbook.

2. Don't do for children what they can reasonably do for themselves.

3. With children we need to think "effective" rather than "efficient" (with another hat tip to Steven Covey)

4. Achieving a balance is key in so many areas (structure vs. flexibility, "In the world but not of the world", etc.)

5. Cultivate a love of the good and a desire for the truth - our goal is to have our children choose these for themselves.

6. Knowledge and virtue are both important, but they're not the same thing.

7. Age quod agis. This phrase, which means "Do what you are doing" helps remind me to not be in such a hurry or get frantic about all that needs to be done. Focus on the thing at hand and don't drive yourself crazy.

2 comments:

love2learnmom said...

Thanks for your very nice comment Maureen. I think the quotes are basically original - it's so hard to know how much of the phraseology gets into your head from various things you read. I could associate a book with most of these concepts - where I learned or began to understand the concept or at least something that really helped solidify them in my head. Reading Chesterton has helped reinforce and solidfy pretty much all of them.

1. For the Children's Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay

2. Montessori

3. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

4. Too many to have one stand out
- but this would include many of the Catholic homeschool books I've read.

5. Another Sort of Learning by Fr. Schall

6. Swimming with Scapulars by Matt Lickona

7. Lunch Bag Notes by Ann Marie Parisi and Al Parisi

Karen Edmisten said...

Great list!