Thoughtworthy: A Whole Lotta Personality

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This week has been our first sunny week in quite a while. We spent quite a bit of time outdoors; and we also spent a little bit of time not outdoors because some people who shall remain nameless didn’t do what they were supposed to do, when they were supposed to do it. Painful consequences, but I would rather the training happen when it is sunny and in the 40s than wait until it’s a bad habit and try to break it when it’s sunny and in the 60s!

Needless to say, I don’t think there will be any further incidents.

 

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Raise your hand if you’re going to the CM West retreat in Los Gatos!! It’s not long now…

 

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This week’s links collection:

• How to Keep a Zibaldone, the 14th Century’s Answer to Tumblr from Atlas Obscura
  • Alternative title: Bullet Journaling 1.0
• Women’s March towards Islam? from Cheri Berens
  • I found this interesting.
• Sleep: A Surprising Reason to Homeschool from Sonlight
  • Are you taking advantage of this?
• This 3,500-Year-Old Greek Tomb Upended What We Thought We Knew About the Roots of Western Civilization from Smithsonian Magazine
  • It’s been too long since I shared an archaeology post!
  • And of course it’s the coolest thing ever: think the Illiad is nothing but myth? Think again.

 

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Answering your questions:

• Question:  I really wanted a little more info on how you handled narration with introverts. My oldest is definitely an internal idea processor and has always disliked and struggled with giving any type of narration after readings, although he can answer direct questions or discuss with me. In your interview it wasn’t clear whether you required narration from your introverts (the actual telling back of the story), and you didn’t mention how you handled it when any of them struggled with this. Would you be willing to share this with me?
  • Answer: The short answer is that I don’t do a whole lot that is different. Or maybe it’s more that the differences are minor ones rather than major. One reason for this is that I think that being trained to respond right away is good for introverts, even though it can be difficult. Most of us who are introverts know that feeling of walking away and thinking of the perfect thing to say later…when it no longer matters as much. It’s an unfortunate part of our lot in life. So while I do allow them a bit of time to gather their thoughts, I also try to get them to do the gathering faster and faster. Now, this is over years, not days. (My youngest introvert is almost 12.) One of my introverts took forever to learn to narrate at all! Patience is always the key in those situations, I think. But still, the goal is to help them go quicker this month than last month and so on. Charlotte Mason wrote about something like this, actually, in Home Education:
    

    The habits of mental activity and of application are trained by the very means employed to cultivate that of attention. The child may plod diligently through his work who might be trained to rapid mental effort. The teacher herself must be alert, must expect instant answers, quick thought, rapid work. The tortoise will lag behind the hare, but the tortoise must be trained to move, every day, a trifle quicker. Aim steadily at securing quickness of apprehension and execution, and that goes far towards getting it.

    Interestingly enough, both my introverts developed their own preferred tricks to help themselves. One of them recently developed a new favorite: doodle a bunch of stick figures directly following the reading, then walk me through the cartoon as a narration. They both like to write down proper nouns to help jog their memories. In my opinion, when it comes to personality, there is a balance we must strike in order to walk in wisdom. On the one hand, we don’t want to become so “understanding” that we actually coddle weaknesses when it is our job to strengthen them. On the other hand, we don’t want to ask so much that we crush or destroy what God has made. So for me, attempting this balance in regard to narration looks like patience in initial training of the skill — even if this means breaking up long readings into smaller for months or even years — but then coaching them to accelerate as the years go on.

 

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This month in 2015:

It’s the time of year I think about personality types, apparently. I’m not sure why. I guess starting “fresh” in January also means, to me, revisiting what I know about my children and double-checking what I’ve done with them.

 

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Speaking of personality types, Mystie is all over it, if you haven’t noticed. If you haven’t already, you really should go grab her 1-page reference sheet on cognitive functions. Combined with this week’s blog post, it’s a great lens to use when thinking about issues that come up in your homeschool. Or as I like to think of it, you can put the fun back in cognitive FUNctions.