Category Archives: Alaska

as weird as you are: what homeschool really is

Posted on by March 10, 2022

Homeschooling has always been misunderstood, but 2020 didn’t do it any favors and now there’s even more confusion.

The fall of 2020 saw an unprecedented number of families transfer their kids from public and private school to homeschool. And this fall has been the same, for many of the same reasons; even more parents this year want to make the move to homeschool.

as weird as you are: what homeschool really is

It’s a bold, brave choice that requires a family to make significant changes, and it can be overwhelming. That has never changed; the overwhelm has always been there whether it was last year, this year, or sixteen years ago, when we started.

But this year I’ve noticed one difference: Many parents who wish they could get their kids out of public school have washed their hands of homeschooling because they feel like they tried it last year with the forced lockdown, and it was miserable.

So let me clear something up real quick. This is important:

If, because of lockdowns, you were forced into schooling at home, schooling online, or doing a ton of assignments with your kids that their school told you to do, then I hate to break it to you, but…you didn’t homeschool.

I hope that’s a relief to some of you.

Just because your child did assignments at home doesn’t mean it was homeschool.

If they were still registered with another school and doing everything that school told them to do, a repeat of that experience is not what you would be signing up for if you chose to (really) homeschool.

Because homeschool is not checking off a list that someone else assigned you. Homeschool is not hours and hours in front of a screen in zoom meetings or other online classes. Homeschool isn’t just doing the same things you would do at school, but moving the location to your kitchen table (or the couch, or your bed).

Homeschool is none of those things. So if you were given that impression last year and it left a terrible taste in your mouth, I am so sorry. No one can blame you for saying “We tried homeschool last year and we hated it” because we would hate it that way, too.

But we can show you what it really ought to be. And that should give you hope, especially if you wish there was an alternative to the indoctrinating mess that many public schools have become. If you are tired of the CRT and other agendas, the unhealthy mask mandates, the disregard of parental rights, and you want to make school about education again (whoa, what a concept!), let’s talk about what homeschool really is.

And right from the start, I admit that I can’t give you the full picture. Because homeschool is different for everyone, and that is the beauty of it. It is for you and for your kids, not for a predictable system so they will all go in different and come out the same after being squeezed to conform to a mold they may never fit into.

But here are some basic principles:

– We read. A lot. Out loud and quietly, to each other, to younger siblings, to older siblings, to Grandma, to the cats if they will listen. So many books, so little time. When someone’s sick, audiobooks work in a pinch.

– We do stuff: Projects and hikes and visits and crafty things and cooking and watching videos and I can’t even tell you what else. At home and elsewhere, on our own and with others, and we’re not limited to a 7 am to 3 pm schedule.

– We talk to each other, to extended family members and friends, and others. We discuss what we’re reading and learning. We visit people and talk on the phone, and we’re not segregated into only talking with those in our own age group, economic group, neighborhood, or gender.

– We try and fail and change things up, and try again. We’re not stuck with the math program that we hate. We try new language arts programs that might be a better fit. We don’t read the dry textbooks that put you to sleep.

– Our curriculum and schedule work for us, not the other way around. We are not a slave to the checklists and to-do lists (and neither are our kids). We adjust our school schedule to our lives instead of adjusting our lives to our school schedule. A new baby is born, or someone gets sick, or some major catastrophe occurs? We learn about basic skills and caring for each other for a few weeks, and the algebra and language arts can wait. There will be time to pick it up again when things settle down. We are flexible when we need to care for each other, help friends, do a major home repair, or get involved in community projects. So much that needs to be known is never learned in school…but it can be learned in homeschool.

Some of the most important learning is not academic, so don’t be afraid to go there.

So friends, if you want to homeschool this year but don’t think you can for a dozen or more reasons, listen to me:

You will be a terrific teacher for your kid. You’ve already been doing it a long time.

You can teach your kids. Yes, it’s hard sometimes. Yes, you’ll be sanctified. But you can go slow, read the books you want, do the activities you want, partner with friends, take advantage of online resources (they cover every subject or topic you could imagine), and make it your own. Make it for them. Make it for your freedom. Make it for their future.

We have all these preconceived ideas about what school should look like, and we feel like we can’t fit the mold. So, newsflash:

There was never meant to be a mold.

School is supposed to be as weird as you are. Go ahead and quote me on that.

____

Need a quick resource for more info? HSLDA has a terrific site right here, with everything you need to know (legal, local, academic, and otherwise) to get started.

prayer like clouds: when we notice things in a different light

Posted on by May 20, 2021

I’m not proud of it, but lately my domestic abilities are extremely…how do I put this? Minimalist. I don’t rearrange furniture, I don’t buy cute décor, I don’t keep up with style blogs. I suffer through necessary cleaning like everyone else. And now that Vince and I both work at home, our oldest kids do most of the cooking.

prayer like clouds: when we notice things in a different light (shannon guerra)

The only household chore I truly enjoy is rearranging books. But thanks to seven kids who never reshelve anything (insert strict librarian scowl here), I get to do it almost daily.

Vin knows I love moving books around and he recently left one of his new books to my disposal. It was light brown, clothbound, and he said I could put it wherever I wanted. So I looked around, pondered, and dragged the piano bench across the library. Then I stacked the new book on a high shelf with some of his other books.

He didn’t notice for a couple of days. Then one morning he found it and protested, announcing “it doesn’t go there.”

“What do you mean, ‘it doesn’t go there?’” I laughed. “You said I could put it wherever I wanted.”

He threw up his hands in exaggerated despair. “I trusted you to respect the book, and you put it way up there! It’s a beautiful copy about the War of 1812. And I didn’t expect you to put it on a stack, sandwiched between a book by Ted Koppel and an old copy of The Silmarillion!”

The nerd is strong with this one. As you can see, he is a closet book rearranger, also.

That was in the morning. By the afternoon we’ve reached the part of the day when I am at my desk to write, and the ideas and motivations are just…poof, gone. I sit and stare. I open and shut files, open and shut my journal. Look at my notes. I rearrange things on my desk, and somehow it’s not any neater after a few minutes of doing so. And I sit and stare some more.

prayer like clouds: shannon guerra

Yet on Sunday night when I was getting ready to take a bath – on the wrong day, at the wrong time, and in a place I don’t have any writing material whatsoever – all sorts of ideas just flooded over me.

The creative thoughts are supposed to come when I’m conveniently in front of my laptop, or at least have a pen and paper handy. But it almost never fails; the creativity flows without effort in the most unexpected places. The expected place requires work, and concentration, and discipline. Which looks like a lot of sitting and staring.

I don’t think it’s Murphy’s Law so much as it is the need for fresh oxygen to stir up new thoughts, creating opportunities to observe and notice new things. Up here in my office, in spite of all the windows, the view doesn’t really change all that much: The desk is a mess. The floor is lined with throw pillows and crates of books and yarn. Usually there’s a few blocks or toys scattered all over. And out the window, trees are trees.

But…not really. It’s spring and the leaves are unfurling outside. The aspens are covered in millions of pale green stars that flash and twinkle in the breeze. Sometimes the sky is classically blue, but on this day it was cloudy and dramatic, steel grey, shot through with shafts of sunlight against chartreuse new leaves. My favorite. Or one of my favorites, at least.

And there, noticing life around me, I have a few sentences to write about. They string together and start to accumulate into something substantial.

That night I drove to Bible study, and prayer came the same way as I sat and stared, driving down the highway. It came out in small phrases, thinking of what we needed for the night: Good conversation. No one feeling awkward or out of place. Everyone to be at ease, comfortable in their own skin. More concerned with encouraging each other than with impressing each other.

Sometimes they were real sentences, and sometimes they were just one-second thought prayers: Safe driving. Peace in hearts. Healing. Truth. Just sentence fragments, because God knows how to fill in the blanks better than I do.

And I wondered about the weight of those instant prayers. Do they really do anything? They feel so effortless, just thoughts directed at God.

I turned off the highway and drove up the hill, noticing the patchy clouds in a grey sky. And His answer was right there: Some clouds are darker and heavier than others, some will drop rain sooner than others, but all carry a measure of water.

They all accumulate, contributing to the provision for those who are thirsty.

And, hey Love – answering prayer has never been about your efforts, anyway.

This is abiding, the thought-life directed Godward. Unpolished, unpretentious, unrehearsed. Our incomplete thoughts at scattered intervals, strung together and brought back to Him in surrender. Some of them are intercessory, filling the cloud for someone else. Others are internal, our own thoughts and concerns and desires, and they condense as Living Water that washes through us, irrigating our hearts, and bringing wholeness.  

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
    and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
    giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
    it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
    and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

– Isaiah 55:10-11, ESV

That night in our small group of women, we sat around a long table with steaming tea in paper cups and discussed the book we’re reading together. And we’re learning so much just from the reading, but we go so much farther when we hear each other’s perspectives and questions. We ignite thoughts in each other we didn’t know were there if they hadn’t had the chance to come up in conversation.

We notice more when we put our thoughts in different places. I didn’t know I thought that, until I said it out loud.

I didn’t realize that was true until I typed it out.

On the way home, rain spattered the windshield and rinsed the highway. It soaked the ground, and the leaves will be bigger tomorrow.

I thought trees were trees – that is, until the sky changed color behind them and they shook in the breeze, demanding me to take notice.

awake: why we’re thankful in spite of the shaking

Posted on by August 26, 2022

Like many nights, I was already awake in the dark, in the wee hours, nursing Kavanagh. So I probably heard it coming but thought it was just the cats making noise downstairs. But then the noise turned into slight shaking, and then unmistakable rattling.

My first instinct is always to glance at the clock: 3:23. It rumbled in layers, increasing in volume and shaking – long enough that I wondered three separate times if this one would be as bad or worse than the 7.2 we had a couple years ago – before it finally slowed down, stopped, and everything went still.

awake: why we're grateful in spite of the shaking

But this one was only a 5.1. Vin checked on the kids and reported that some were awake, and some slept through it.

And then another one hit. But it was smaller, just 4.0.

Hours went by, and I was awake for most of it. So around six when I heard the dull, distant noise, I wasn’t surprised when another one came, smaller than the first but bigger than the second – we learn to judge these things based on duration, intensity, and whether or not certain wall hangings rattle. The website said it was 4.5 and apparently there had also been another one just half an hour earlier, but it was little and I never noticed. I probably thought it was one of us shifting in the bed, or Knightley stretching at the foot of it.

That evening I heard the noise again and immediately stilled, looking at the clock, wondering if another was going to hit. But no, nothing that time, so it must’ve just been the heavy tread of someone walking downstairs.

And as I realized it was nothing, I had a picture of the Biden-Harris campaign, and their fraudulent claim to victory.

The Lord knows the days of the blameless,
    and their heritage will remain forever;
they are not put to shame in evil times;
    in the days of famine they have abundance.

– Psalm 37:18-19

The mainstream news, social media, and anyone who gets most of their information from those entities and actually believes it, almost immediately proclaimed their victory and have continued to do so.

They did it, and still do it, in spite of enormous and mounting evidence of fraud, changes from recounts, and active and upcoming court cases. The streamers thrown in celebration are actually giving them more rope to hang themselves with.

They did it while suppressing information, censoring articles about criminal behavior, and “fact checking” posts they didn’t like.

They’re doing it about the election and they’re doing it about the virus and the jab and they’ll keep doing it about whatever else they want, if they can get away with it.

Meanwhile, governors continue to lockdown states and mayors keep locking down cities. Churches keep closing their doors. And in a move that looks very much like unethical job security, doctors who know that mask wearing both creates and aggravates terrible health conditions (see also here, and here, and here, and here, for starters) keep requiring them anyway.

It’s like hearing the distant rumble, wondering if it’s going to be the big one.

Is this the end?

In the upper rooms there were little rows of hard beds, and on every wall there was a notice and a list of Rules. Pippin tore them down. There was no beer and very little food…and Pippin broke Rule 4 by putting most of the next day’s allowance of wood on the fire.

– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

But no, I don’t believe it’s the end. I think it’s the tread of heavy feet, or at most, the relief of pressure in a small, harmless way that feels threatening at first but turns out to be nothing but the exhalation of pent-up gas.

The Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that his day is coming.

– Psalm 37:13

It’s causing us to stop for the moment and examine our surroundings, endure the brief threat, but overall it will bring alignment to that same environment, and prevent the big one from occurring.

The shaking exposes fault lines, weak places that require reinforcement.

“You’re arrested form Gate-breaking, and Tearing up of Rules, and Assaulting Gate-keepers, and Trespassing, and Sleeping in Shire-buildings without Leave, and Bribing Guards with Food.”

“And what else?” said Frodo.

“That’ll do to go on with,” said the Shirriff-leader.

“I can add some more, if you’d like it,” said Sam. “Calling your Chief Names, Wishing to punch his Pimply Face, and Thinking you Shirriffs look a lot of Tom-Fools.”

– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

The excess shaking is teaching people to be alert at the slightest rumble. We’re awake, alert, alarmed at the threat, prayerful for safety, and the shaking results in justice as corruption is exposed and people decide which authority they’ll obey.

[The Chief] doesn’t hold with folk moving about; so if they will or they must, then they has to go to the Shirriff-house and explain their business.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself having anything to do with such nonsense….You can give it up, stop Shirriffing, if it has stopped being a respectable job,” said Sam.

“We’re not allowed to,” said Robin.

“If I hear not allowed much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.”

– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

And there’s no doubt, the threat is real and dire. Many Christians shrug and say, Well, our hope was never in a president, persecution grows the church anyway, c’est la vie, what can you do – but if socialism came to any of our doors and completely removed our freedom of speech, our ability to purchase things we need, or force unwanted medical “care” upon our children, there would be no shrugging. These are not “oh, whatever” offenses. We’ve already begun to see them in social media censorship, threats from certain employers, and in the difficulty to get proper healthcare if you cannot wear a mask…ask me how I know.

“There’s hundreds of Shirriffs all told, and they want more, with all these new rules. Most of them are in it against their will, but not all. Even in the Shire there are some as like minding other folk’s business and talking big.”

– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

And some people are happy to mind your business for you, shaming and blaming and accusing, wagging their fingers in all their self-righteous virtue signaling. Bless their hearts, they believe everything the mainstream media tells them.

But there are more people who don’t. They tend to have better manners and aren’t as loud about it. But make no mistake, they will get loud if pushed to do so.

“Raise the Shire!” said Merry. “Now! Wake all our people! They hate all this, you can see: all of them except perhaps one or two rascals, and a few fools who want to be important, but don’t at all understand what is really going on.”

– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

This week, we are gathering.

Our neighbors are elderly missionaries, and they invited us to pray with them a few nights ago. They want to make it a regular thing. They’re not unwise, but they’re not afraid, either. Over tea and candlelight, we held hands and called on God to move in our country.

Last night we gathered with friends at church, studying forgiveness and honor and submission and authority. We honor the position, not the behavior. We obey unless we’re told to do something against God’s word. We shared homemade food and phone numbers, and talked about how, contrary to pop culture, silence should not be mistaken for betrayal, consent, or inactivity.

Tomorrow we gather with our oldest son and my dad and other family. There will be hugging. There will be political talk. There will probably be discussion of court hearings, more evidence of fraud, and likely – this is Alaska – a comparison of ammo inventory.

And I’m grateful for all those things, and more.

People are praying for us. Andrey is catching up in school and Reagan is reading five-letter words. Our neighbors are the cutest. People all over are dropping the bomb on election fraud. God is giving us wisdom and new ideas; our book sales are up and I’m excited about the next project already. And my African violet, which hasn’t bloomed since I bought it who knows how long ago, has flowers again.

I showed it to Vin this morning, and he said, “It’s the return of the King.”

And I think it is, or something like it. Thanksgiving is already here.