Success in Imperfection - Part 6 of 6

 This is Part 6 of 6.  Find the other parts here.

Less than perfect *is* success.  Focus on what happened, not what didn’t happen.  Today, this week, this term, this year, what did you and your students accomplish?  Where did you grow?  What new experiences did you have?  How did you improve?  Appreciate the beauty in what you *are* doing.  It’s easy to feel inadequate and worry that you’re failing. 

And of course we have to consider where we need to improve, but first we have to seriously look at where we’re doing well.  So your Year 1 student isn’t narrating beautifully even when you read a paragraph at a time.  But what *is* she doing that she wasn’t able to do at the beginning of the year?  Where can you see growth or forward progress? Where are you seeing small glimpses of success?  Maybe your Year 4 student isn’t adding Latin or taking to Plutarch or the original Shakespeare plays, but is he enjoying one of the literature selections?  Or is he beginning to see the panorama of history just a bit?  Or he’s fondly remembering a book from a previous year that you were sure he hadn’t understood at all?

We often scare ourselves with lofty visions of what our teenagers *would* be learning if they were in school.  Stop that!  The mythical school classroom looms too large in our imaginations; the real classroom is not nearly as intimidating.  Of course we want to offer a rigorous education that prepares our students for life, but that happens through slow and steady progress, mixed with delays and setbacks, bit by bit.  What does your teenager care about that most of her peers don’t?  What opportunities is your teenager getting at home to learn self management?  What subjects are you able to at least *touch* on that wouldn’t come up in a traditional school setting at all?

Oftentimes what looks like failure  is really a success because of our unique situations.

• So my 11 year old draws generic daffodils week after week in his nature notebook.    This was actually much better than what we’ve achieved in the past, so I was happy!  Plus, he’s been doing it with minimal prompting, and drawing is really a challenge for him so he usually won’t even try.  For all these reasons, this is actually a success, not a failure, even though it doesn’t meet our usual expectations for perfect nature study implementation.

• Usually dictation passages come from school readings.  I’ve been comfortable pulling them from other great literature sometimes, but it’s hard to justify using lines pulled from various episodes of a fictional TV series.  However, my son gladly is copying out the Hobbit in his commonplace book every day and already is an excellent writer, so this temporary compromise of using the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition as dictation doesn’t bother me too much.

• My daughter had a concussion last year and her ability to focus has taken time to return.  She’s also working and volunteering and participating in other activities that have great value for her now and in the future.  Our lightened version of a light year schedule is still incorporating great history and literature and theology.  She loves her readings!  We just had to cut back to what we can actually achieve with our current challenges.  This little bit done consistently is still beautiful, and when we can’t get it done we just have to let it go and try again.

Ultimately, are you honoring God in your home?  Are you following His direction?  If you are, then you’re achieving absolute success, even if it looks like failure from a human perspective.  The verse I cling to when homeschooling is hard is Isaiah 54:13:  “All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children.” 

We aren’t wise enough to plot out a definite course that’s best for ourselves, our family, our community.  No map we lay out or get from even the most expert source can account for the specific struggles and needs of our families.  We study the map, and we “mix it with brains,” but then we must defer to the Holy Spirit because He *does* know which course is best and it may look utterly different than what we would expect. 

If we stay close to Him, then ultimately our imperfection will be the greatest success we could have.

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