Summiting

From our earliest days of educational pursuits, I have been mindful of the "home" in homeschooling. It was important to me to take the road less traveled and feel free to stop and sniff some roses along the way if so inclined. For a period of time our family did get involved in a co-op in Ohio, but the focus for our family was social, not academic. Once again, when we moved to Florida, we participated in a lovely little co-op that was primarily focused on relationship. Our "classes" circled around building model rockets and launching them, learning how to knit, or reading Do Hard Things, and having a discussion group about it. I loved the relationships that came out of that experience, but as my boys were growing older, we were finding it difficult to attract other boys of similar age to the group so we decided to suspend it.

This past year was a year of reflection for me. No longer involved in any groups at all, our family rallied around home and hearth and spent the year delving into the mysteries of the Ancient World, the wonders of the science of physics, and the delights of Dickens and other classic literature. It was a good year. My oldest sat for his first SATs and ACTs and performed very well. We went on a few college visits, and my middle guy finished out middle school. My sweet girl continued to thrive in her custom designed curriculum, and we were all feeling pretty content. My middle guy, though, was lonely.

Now, as I should know by now, yet continually seem to need reminders of, God knew our family's needs before I knew to articulate them. While I was at the library one day, waiting for my oldest to finish volunteering and working on some knitting, a woman walked up to me and asked to join me with her knitting. This was more than a year ago. Through our conversation I learned that she also homeschooled, knitted, blogged, and had a child who volunteered at the library. She also had an academic co-op. From that perchance meeting a friendship grew, and through it all I continued to learn more about her co-op.

Michelle, Appliejuice, as she is known on her Wordpress blog and in Ravelry, loves science (I don't love teaching it). She was preparing to teach an honors biology course with Apologia (that's the text I use), and she had kids that my guy would love to get to know! It took some prayer, some guidance, and some courage, but eventually I decided that our family would join the Summit family as well! I traded in one mama tired of teaching biology and instead got one mama who is happily going to teach British Literature this upcoming fall to high school students!

Upon learning of my assigned class, I began writing the lesson plan. It's taken me a couple of months, because I have been so careful in trying to plan everything out. Here are the following texts that I'll be using for the course:

• Teaching the Classics by Adam Andrews
• Windows to the World by Lesha Myers
• Beowulf as translanted by Seamus Heaney
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Shakespeare's Macbeth
• and many short stories, poems, and snippets of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

To say I'm excited is an understatement! It is such a huge privilege to me to be able to introduce such wonderful works of literature to these students. Literature is so much more than an entertaining story. It is man's wrestling with himself, with the human condition, with God, with fate. It is an attempt to make sense of the world, and of its workings. It's a conversation about the divine or with the divine, or even in spite of the divine. Sometimes the author presents a world view that is comfortable and easily identifiable, and other times he makes us squirm with unease and unfamiliarity. And when we get to the end of the book, we learn not only about the author and his world, but we learn a little more about ourselves. I count myself truly blessed to have this opportunity, and am counting down the days!

To check out the lessons, head on over to my Summit Co-Op Lessons page!