Mt. Pleasant Classical Academy

A recent evening when I met with moms from my Classical HS group I admitted that we had had some failures in our homeschool. UGH, how could I admit or think that we had had several failures in my homeschool? After all it is MY HOMESCHOOL. But that’s just what I did, and just what I had thought at the time the failure had happened. When I confessed to the other moms our several recent failures, ahh, the relief on their faces,….it was precious. How often I had been in that spot too, thinking that others were succeeding with EVERYTHING in their homeschool and knowing full-well that I was NOT succeeding just made me feel, well, just awful. It caused me to think for a moment or two or three or four that the kids would be far better off in public school.

Failure. What does that mean? Failure; the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective. But what happens when you decide to not stay in that condition? What if you decide to take action and move on to the next step? Can’t be a failure then, can it? OK, so we had a failure, but we decided to move on. Moving on, taking action is what’s needed though when you realize that your present condition or state doesn’t meet your desired objective. THAT is what can turn a failure into a success. Taking action.

This past fall when ScienceKid pulled out his Henle Latin he tried to begin where he had left off last spring. He was soon frustrated and ready to give up on Latin. He was sure he didn’t know ANY Latin and that he would NEVER, EVER learn Latin and that we should just take Latin off his 9th grade schedule. I soon realized that getting through the second-half of Henle Latin 1 would not be possible this year. We were going to fail to get through the Latin book this year. Fail to complete the book is what I saw, but then I stopped myself and suggested to SK that he just start at the beginning of Henle, move as slowly or as quickly as he wished but that he was going to learn Latin. Keep in mind that SK started Henle Latin two years ago so this was a huge step backwards in my mind, failure. Failure for the moment is what I saw, but this is my homeschool and my kids can study at their pace so that they learn the material, not to met some “School” criteria. I caught us, or me, and decided that the condition I wanted was for SK to learn Latin, not get through some book or meet some school criteria. Reluctantly he started at the beginning of the Henle book and we proceeded slowly. SK studied the various declensions, studied the vocabulary, chanted often, and worked through the exercises.

What I saw by letting SK start over is a transformation in SK’s attitude toward Latin and learning a foreign language. At this point SK quickly translates Latin to English, almost without thinking about the process! Earlier in the week I placed Fairy Tales in Latin on SK’s desk and he proceeded to read the stories! He is thrilled with his Latin ability and anxious to move quickly onwards in Henle. We are also close to the Henle Lesson SK was at last spring however his Latin knowledge is solid now and his confidence has skyrocketed. It has not been all smooth sailing though. SK has had a difficult time translating from English to Latin but I stumbled upon a solution. I took the Latin sentence from the answer books, typed them out for him to translate from Latin to English one day, and then the following day he translates them from English to Latin. It has helped him tremendously in translating from English to Latin.

Failures. We had one in SK’s math too. SK finished Singapore’s NEM 3 this past fall. He was anxious to move into the Pre-Calc book and I was too. He quickly read through the Dolciani Algebra 2 and Trig book and concluded that he KNEW the material so Mom should just let him go into Pre-Calc. While I agreed with him part of me wanted to make sure that all ‘the i’s were dotted and the T’s crossed’ or in other words, that he really did KNOW Algebra 2 before moving on. We agreed that he would take the Chapter tests in the Dolciani book and if he scored 90% or above he would skip that chapter. Sadly he scored less than 50% on Chapter 1, so he did every problem in Chapter 1. While he knew the material he was making sloppy mistakes; forgetting the negative signs, writing a 4 so that he thought it was a 9, …. His score on Chapter 2 was slightly better but SK had not yet truly learned to be careful and error free. Chapter 3 was a bit better, but Chapter 4 he was able to skip :-), and Chapter 5 was another success. Sometimes it is best to just say, OK so we failed. We missed the mark, our desired outcome just didn’t happen but instead of chucking the kids back into public school we’ve used these moments to make a few changes, and help the kids learn, really learn.

But all this has also led me to a dilema. How do I give grades to SK for his high school transcrip? What I’ve decided is that I won’t. In my homeschool I plan to only give PASS / Fail for courses taken during the high school years. And since we turn failures into successes you know what the transcript will have for grades.