CM 4 Episode #16 Transitioning from Written Narrations to High School Writing with Guest Chelli Guthrie

CM 4 Episode #16 Transitioning from Written Narrations to High School Writing with Guest Chelli Guthrie

Show Notes:

Chelli is a homeschool mom to three children, ages 17, 13, and 11. She tries to follow Charlotte Mason's principles as much as possible in her homeschool but is too much of a rebel to do it perfectly. She has spoken at retreats and conventions about homeschooling, especially how to teach writing. She teaches high school, middle school, and elementary level writing and literature classes online. Chelli has also written a year-long homeschool devotional book, Revitalize: Breathing Life and Encouragement into Your Homeschool.

Resources:

Know and Tell: The Art of Narration by Karen Glass

Show Transcript:

Julie –

Welcome to the Charlotte Mason show, a podcast dedicated to discussing Miss Mason's philosophy, principles, and methods. It is our hope that each episode will leave you inspired and offer practical wisdom on how to provide this rich living education in your modern home school. So, pull up a chair. We're glad you're here.

Today's episode of the Charlotte Mason Show was brought to you by Medi-Share. Find out more about this affordable Christian alternative to traditional health insurance at medishare.com.

All right, hello everyone. Welcome to the Charlotte Mason Show. I'm your host Julie Ross and I'm here today with Shelly Guthrie and I am so excited to talk about writing for high school because I get asked about this all the time. Mainly because I don't feel like it's real easy to obtain what Charlotte Mason actually did in high school. And I'll let you talk about that, Shelly, if you want. But you know, her high schools were really at that age for women. The boys would have gone off to boarding school. What she had the women doing was incredible for the time because the most, you know, teenage girls were learning how to embroider and dance and paint. And she ??? but they were also reading books that I would say are upper college-level material today, so they were very, just well rounded.

But you know, in terms of how did she actually teach them to write these things that we now need. So, these girls you know that was the extent of their education. They were not gonna go on to University, so it, you know what did she do? Or what can we do then to take these narrations and get them ready for college if that's what our children are going to do? So, before we get started Shelly, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself?

Shelly -

Absolutely. I am a homeschooling mom. I've been homeschooling from the beginning.

My kids have never been in public school. My oldest is now a junior in high school, so I've been doing this for is that 12 years now?

Julie -

I know, when I say something I'm like, how is it possible since I'm still only 30? I don't know.

Shelly -

Like I'm in my 20s so I don't even know I have a kid that's a junior.

Julie -

We're like sisters. Yeah.

S -

Yeah. So, and I blog at the Planted Trees occasionally. Theplantedtrees.com. About homeschooling. I don't do that as much anymore. I'm much more active on my Planted Trees Facebook page, so if you find me over there, I usually post a lot more over there than I do on the blog. I just I don't have time anymore to blog as much as I would like because I teach writing classes now. So that takes up most of my time and I've been married to my husband for, oh no, I think I was going 20 years this June. It'll be 20 years. And he's a minister, so we are one of those preacher families, whatever that means. And everybody is going to have their own view of what exactly that is.

J -

That's awesome, yeah.

S -

I'm very boring. That was like the worst intro.

J -

How did you, have you always done kind of a Charlotte Mason philosophy? How did you get into her?

S -

I have not actually. We started classical, which I know there's debate. Charlotte Mason is classical, classical is not really classical. I'm not even going to touch that with a 10-foot pole because I don't care.

J -

Me neither.

S -

I took a lovely quiz when my oldest, well, I guess I should back up even further. I didn't want to homeschool. I have an education degree and I taught in the public school system before my oldest child was born and my husband and I had agreed when we had children that I would stop working and stay home with the kids. Like we were on the same page about that. So that wasn't an issue.

We moved from when my husband went to seminary in Denver, we moved to Texas where we lived for a while. We just recently moved from there, but when we moved to Texas, my daughter was, well she turned four and that was preschool age. And while I was pregnant with our second child, we needed money. So, I went and started subbing in local schools to earn some money, and I discovered very quickly that the school system that I had exited when our oldest child was born was no longer the school system that existed. And after one day of subbing at one of the local schools, I came home to my husband and I said we're gonna homeschool. And he had been wanting me to homeschool from the get-go. And I had been very much like no, you know. I'm not gonna do that. I've got a teaching degree. If I'm going to teach, I'm going to get paid for it. Yeah. It was a very good submissive wife.

J -

I think there are a lot of people who can relate to what you're saying.

S -

Yeah, and so, I was a very, didn't want to do it, but after I saw kind of the environment that was the public school system at the time, I could not imagine sending my sweet little blonde-haired blue-eyed girl off to that environment at the age of five. So, in Texas you do not have to officially enroll your kids in school till they're six. So, first grade. So, I told my husband I said, well, we'll use pre-K, preschool, and kindergarten as a trial run and if I feel like I can handle this then we'll just keep going. And if I feel like I can't, then you know we'll just have to pray and hope for the best. And, you know, put him in public school.

So, after two years and it really did take two years, so those of you who may be jumped into homeschooling because of this pandemic, I just want you to know that, do not determine if you are successful at homeschooling based on one year. Cause it really takes a while to find your footing and then it feels like once you find your footing something changes and now you've got to find it all over again.

J -

Amen.

S -

That's just the nature of these so. Anyway, so after two years I was like yes, she was reading. She was advanced in some areas and I was like, yeah, we got this. We can do this and so that was really what started my homeschooling career. And once I had decided I was for sure gonna homeschool, I took one of those quizzes that are everywhere. What kind of home school do I want? You know, like what philosophy do I subscribe to. And it came out overwhelmingly classical, so that's where I actually started and we stayed with classical. We did a classical co-op. We dived all in with a lot of the well-trained mind stuff. That was pretty much all that was on the market at that time for if you wanted to be classical, was those kind of things and it wasn't that that stuff was bad, it just did not fit my child and I realized very quickly that it doesn't matter what philosophy I like. I'm not educating me.

J -

Well, in a way you are.

S -

Well, now that's true. That's true. You do learn, but as far as my oldest daughter, she was, I mean, she was the perfect Charlotte Mason child. She was all about being outside and learning nature and the painting and the living books. And you know all of it. And so, I naturally started just to veer our homeschool in that direction, and then I came upon, I guess my oldest daughter was probably third or fourth grade, and I actually came across a name for what we had kind of been doing, and that was Charlotte Mason and so that just sent me down that whole rabbit hole and I loved it. It fit our family. It fit what I thought education should be. I was watching my kids flourish with it and so that was kind of, so yeah, we've been doing Charlotte Mason, for a while. Nothing really consistently as far as curriculum. I would just kind of pick here, pick there until A Gentle Feast came out and then we've been using that for four years now, so.

J -

It was crazy, isn't it crazy? Yeah, so tell us kinda how then did you veer into teaching these writing courses.

S -

I, well, it's what you said at the beginning. I talked to homeschool moms and it amazed me because my, as my oldest daughter approached Junior high well, I call it junior high.

Now they call it middle school. Back in my day, it was junior high. As my oldest daughter approached junior high, about six, seventh grade, you know all of a sudden as a parent you're like these fun elementary days are quickly passing and high school is right there, like looming over me. And I started really looking at okay, what do I need to have her do in high school?

Well, I'll start panicking about math and science in high school because I am not a math person and I'm not a science person. So, I start panicking about that and I start asking other homeschool moms. What do you guys do? You know high school math, science.

What do we do? What do we do? And they're like, oh, it's not a big deal. You can buy online courses for math and just get in a co-op for science and let somebody else do it.

And so all these homeschool moms just seem so you know these subjects that were scaring me, they just seemed really, you know, like oh, it's not, those aren't a big deal. And I kept listening to them talk and what I realized was the big deal for them was writing. Every thought was like I just can't get my kid to write. I know their writing's not good, but I don't know what to do about it. And I'm sitting here, like, well, that's like, that's like the thing I'm good at. Like writing doesn't scare me at all. Like I didn't understand it.

And the more I paid attention, the more I listened, I realized that honestly, I fully believe that more homeschool moms are worried about writing than even higher-level math. Like I honestly believe that.

J -

You're exactly correct. Cause there is so much. Like I ain't teaching calculus with a 10-foot pole, but I know that I can easily find a class, there's a plethora of them, right? Or like chemistry or anything like that. I totally agree with you. But then the writing is this kind of nebulous thing that you're like, what are we supposed to do to get them ready for this. And most adults aren't that great of writers themselves. They weren't taught well in school, and so it's like this really stressful thing and it triggers all that within them too.

S -

Exactly. There is, which to me is sad, and I don't mean it's sad in the sense that I'm disappointed in people that they're not good writers. I just feel like it's sad because of, I guess who was it, was it Beatrix Potter that...no it wasn't Beatrix Potter. It was someone, I can't believe I can't read this quote. But someone famous said I did well in spite of my schooling. And that's how I feel about writing. I think I was just naturally a good writer in spite of school. Like they didn't teach me anything about how to be a good writer.

J -

And most good writers actually have to thrive despite school. The school didn't make them good writers. School tried to make them bad writers, but they cut that intrinsically. Yes, right.

S -

And more so even now, now that there's so much testing and there's a writing portion on most of the school testing, and so they very much become this, here is the format. You have to follow this format to get a good grade on the test, so that's what we're gonna teach you is how to follow this format. And that does not make good writing. That makes horrible writing actually.

J -

Yes, and I've even read, you know, college professors saying that, like they bemoaned the five-paragraph essay, the essay. I can talk. Essay because, you know it's so formulaic. There's no voice in the kids writing anymore, and I think it becomes from that formulaic writing and the fact that they expect children to write way too soon, but that's a different topic for a different day.

So, let's focus on high school now. So, in a Charlotte Mason education, you know there are not formal writing lessons. We're not giving them this program or this kind of method that they have to follow. The children learn to write how we naturally learn, which is they're talking and talking and talking. Which is writing. It's just oral. And then eventually they learn how to take all that writing that they've been doing orally, and they'll put it on-page, which at first is a big, huge transition and it comes clumsy and it's like really stressful because they had to think about spelling and mechanics and all that, but eventually it flows where the writing is matching what they were saying for their narrations.

But at some point, right? A child needs to learn kind of more of this formal writing that they now need to have for college. Like I was talking about in Charlotte Mason's time. Those girls, you know their writing, they're gonna have to learn this kind of University prescribed writing because they weren't gonna go. But if you read like in the appendix of Volume 3 the writing that those high school kids did is phenomenal, right? Any like parent of a high school or like oh my goodness, I might get it right. This would be awesome, right? And it does follow those kind of natural format writing that we talk about today, like they're here, writing letters to editors. So this we call that the persuasive essay, right? They're write and compare and contrast these two characters, which is the??? She just didn't call it that stuff, but they were doing it, yeah.

S -

Yes, exactly. One of the things that I think is really important in this progression is you can't rush it, and that's what I see most parents do. Your kid hits high school. All they've done is oral narrations. Maybe some written narrations and suddenly with high school in front of them, parents freak out and they're like, oh, they've never written a research paper. Oh, they've never written an essay. They've never done this. And so, what they do then is they throw all of this at their student and say we have to learn to do this. And of course, the child struggles. Probably revolts. Says, I hate writing. I'm not doing this.

And the whole reason is that you are giving them a, you're asking something from them that they have not learned how to do. And it's because you're panicked. And that's understandable. I was there like that. I get it. I was there about math and science. I'm still there about math.

So, I understand it, but that that's gonna do a lot of damage. So, what I do is just how what you were talking about when kids go from oral narration to written narration, and that step is clumsy, and that step is not polished. And that step is, you know they struggle because it's a new skill. Now the beauty of Charlotte Mason though is and this is where public schools and even private schools, depending on what kind of curriculum they follow. This is where those schools get it wrong. Charlotte Mason allows children to develop their voice in their writing first.

J -

Yes, it's so good.

S -

And what public schools do is they try to teach form first. Well, when you try to teach form first guess what never develops? Voice. Because the kids are too worried about structuring their essay, like you said in that five-paragraph essay, that is the death of good writing. They're too worried about fitting the format to ever really just let themselves loose and find their voice. The beauty of Charlotte Mason is, your kid has spent years finding their voice through these oral narrations and then eventually their written narrations. So, the part that makes good writing your child already has. The voice. Fitting voice into the format is easy as long as you just take it step by step and don't overwhelm them. They've conquered the hardest part of writing. You can't teach voice. That's what I'm trying to say. You can't teach voice. You can teach format.

J -

Yes, which I think is why Charlotte Mason waited til high school for formal composition lessons. It wasn't like they never had any formal writing instruction. I mean, if you look at her programs, the upper forms you know she had a book that they were reading that you know if you read them, they're intense. But it's actually teaching them you know how to have those forms and have that structure and kind of take that voice like you're saying and put it into these kinds of formats. Even if they're not the ones we might call them today, but it really was teaching them basically the same thing cause writing is writing, you know.

So, let's talk about the kind of how and when we get to those steps. So, our child is getting to high school. We freaked out when we need to go take a bath and breathe a little bit. And then. Yeah, chocolate sounds good. So now that we're calm and realize we can do this, how do we start?

S -

I start with paragraphs. Go back to the beginning. Do not worry about essays yet.

J -

You mean they shouldn't start with a 10-page research paper?

S -

No, goodness, no. I'm right now in the middle of teaching a research paper to one of my online classes and we had been, I'm just going to give you guys an example. This is real life. We started working on this research paper before Christmas. We're right now to the point that we're writing the last piece of it.

J -

Awesome, yeah?

S -

And the reason why.

J -

I love that example. Yeah, slow and steady.

S -

Yeah, the reason why is for a lot of these kids it's the first research paper they've ever written.

J -

But then it becomes easier, right? Yeah. Yeah.

S -

Exactly, so if I assign them another research paper later in the year, which if I found did, they would probably all jump out of their...

J -

That's for next year. That's for next year.

S -

But if I assign them another one, there's no way I would make it take as long, but I really wanted them to learn the process cause research papers are very, out of everything that your kids going to write, that's going to be the one that I would say you hold off on...

J -

Yes, I agree.

S -

...as the latest that you, because it is a multi-step, multi-dimensional type of writing.

They will need this skill in college if they pursue higher education because research papers are assigned, and I'm pretty sure every discipline in common in your science for a math person.

J -

You're gonna have to take an elective.

S -

That's right.

J -

You're gonna have to take those core classes. Right, so you're gonna write those pretty much every class.

S -

So yeah, hold off on that, but I brought up the research paper to point out how long that process is taking.

J -

That's a great example, right.

S -

You start with a paragraph and what I mean by starting with a paragraph is this. Your kid's been writing narrations. Maybe they're still just writing one-paragraph narrations, maybe they've upped it to where they're writing two or three-paragraph narrations. That's great. Remember that's voice. Okay, we're working on structure now. So, when I'm wanting to teach structure, I go from it, whatever kind of narrations they've been writing to one paragraph because believe it or not, every type of essay that you're going to want your kids to write that can be whittled down to a one-paragraph version of it. So you can write persuasive paragraphs. You can write, compare contrast paragraphs. You can write research paragraphs about just one thing instead of trying to do a whole paper. You can write literary analysis paragraphs.

So that's where I start because it's easier to learn the form in a one-paragraph version than to say okay, we're going to do this in a five-paragraph version or a four-paragraph, or whatever. So, I start there with the paragraph and if your kids been writing narrations, they know what a paragraph is and it's not going to seem as daunting to say I would like to teach you how to persuade in this paragraph. So, start with the paragraph. Start little because this is what I tell my parents. I have parents every year who'll say I'm not sure if my kid is ready for high school writing. And I say can they write a paragraph, and they'll say, well yeah, they can write a paragraph and I said, then they're ready for high school writing. Because an essay is is more than one paragraph put together.

J -

Right.

S -

So, if you can write a paragraph, you can write an essay. Just take it one paragraph at a time.

J -

Yeah yeah, yeah. So good.

S -

So don't get overwhelmed with that start and I like to start with those kinds of paragraphs in like ninth grade, maybe eighth grade if you have a kid that's ready for more. Watch your child. You can even start as late as tenth grade by doing that if you have a kid that's really struggled. In all honesty, you could teach every type of essay their junior and senior year and that would be plenty of time. You don't have to feel like they're in ninth grade, we've gotta write essays. No, you don't. If your kid's not ready for essays, please don't try to make them write them because it's not going to end well.

So, I start with the paragraph and so we write a persuasive paragraph. We write compare/ contrast paragraphs, and we start talking about the structure of that. Well, if I'm trying to persuade, how would I want to persuade somebody? Talk through it with your kids. I see this a lot too as parents will say go do this with writing and then they expect their kid just to magically...

J -

Understand what that means, yeah. Like writing fairies come down and just whoo. The Muse muse inspires.

S -

Writing is a collaborative process, and I think that's true for anybody. I mean, Julie herself here has written a curriculum. Did you just sit down and do that alone, or did you talk to people about what you wanted?

J -

Well, I'm amazing. No, I'm just kidding. Oh yeah, no I I talked to a lot of people. Right, right, yeah. For sure.

S -

And writing's a collaborative process, so you need to be the collaborator for your child.

J -

Yes, which is so good, it's what I talk about when especially when they're moving from the oral to the written. You kind of have to be that bridge and do that partner writing and talking it through with them. You can't just be like okay, now go write a written narration on that page. Like they can't do it.

S -

Exactly. And the high school's no different. This is another one of those jobs, you're gonna from written narration now to you're wanting them to learn some form and structure, right? They're gonna need you or somebody. I mean, if you feel like they aren't going to listen to you, that's the time to step in and say, okay, I need a home school friend that is good at this that can help my kid or an online class or whatever. That and that's why I tell parents, if you cannot, if you and your child cannot talk about this, then you need to outsource it. There's nothing wrong with that. That doesn't mean you're a failure, it just means you...

J -

Yep, but when you do have that though and you have that collaboration, it is really sweet, and I've appreciated my kids. They're now in college calling me, of course, I wish they would call me earlier in the evening with papers due the next day, but whatever I'm working on that. They go, Mom, can you help me out with this paper? What do you think about this? And they want to collaborate still, and they want my opinion and I think that's because I've earned that relationship. I'm not going to do their stuff for them. Oh no, no-no. But they know I can point things out that they respect my opinion, I guess. And you're right with a teenager, you gotta earn like the question is like how do I help them edit and rewrite? You gotta earn that right to speak into the...that's right.

S -

And that, and honestly, that foundation is laid as you said earlier when they make that transition to the written narration. If you're too tough on them, and if you're too if you expect too much. If you horrifically decide to edit...??? ... You're gonna destroy them. I'm not even kidding.

J -

No, I understand. I agree.

S -

On some level, I understand it because I myself have written things and I've had a book published and so I get it on some level. That's like you...

J -

But you're an adult.

S -

It's like you're written baby. When somebody comes along and says this isn't good. You missed messed up on this. You didn't do this. I mean, even as an adult I'm kind of like oh. That kind of hurts a little, you know. Imagine if you're a fourth-grader and mom comes along and says, did you notice that you messed up on this? This isn't even in the story you read, like, I mean, your mother comes in and starts, right? So, you have to build that relationship early with writing. Your kids need to know that they can show you something, but it might be the worst written, it might be the worst written narration that has ever come across your desk. But you have to fake it that it's you know the best thing you've ever read. Because you want to be encouraging in this process, and the same goes for high school. When you sit down to collaborate with your high schooler you need to be encouraging. If they fail, you don't, you know, berate them about it. Don't grade it. Oh, my goodness, please don't grade it. You know, just it's a process. It's all a process, and so when you're doing this, you need to be encouraging. You need to be with them every step of the way. Talk it out, talk it out. How am I going to persuade in this paragraph? Imitation, by the way, is fabulous. So, one of the things I really like to do, especially with literature books where maybe there's a very, or even a speech where there's a very beautifully written paragraph. Tell your kids to take the way that that author structured the paragraph and turn it into a description of something else from their own life but follow the pattern. That's a great way to learn.

J -

Yes, it's just what Charlotte Mason did if you look at her exam questions, she would say write in the style of Dickens. Like she would tell them to purposely model their narration after the person that they were writing about. And I think another point we were talking about these different styles of paragraphs is Charlotte Mason would do that. She would assign different kinds of narration. It's not always just give me a summary of what happened in those chapters. She would say you know, I'm trying to think of an example off the top of my head. My head's not working, but you know, compare and contrast, you know? Compare that character to another book you've read or something like that.

So, she was teaching them those styles of writing in their narration by varying them. And so, I think that's another key thing is like parents in those kinds of junior high years, start changing the narration apparently. Well, help us do that. I've never read the book. I get that question. I'm sure you have too right, but it's not hard to say persuade me that this was the best book you've ever read. I mean, you don't have to read the book implicitly out of the book to give them a kind of different topic. What do you think about that?

S -

Right. And if they have been doing oral narrations and written narrations while they're reading the book, you should have enough information just from those that you can say I really noticed...recently one of my classes read The Bronze Bow, which is a great book. I'd never read it till this year. It's a great book for middle grades kids and the whole book is set in Palestine at the time of Christ and one of the main characters is obviously Christ. He's not the main character, he's in the book, but another character is this guy named Rosh who is a zealot. He wants to overthrow the Roman government. Well, one of the things I asked my class did was compare contrast those two characters because Jesus is telling his followers to love your enemy. Pray for your enemy and this other character is saying we need to kill them all and take our country back. So what is going on with those two guys? You should be able to pick up if your child's narrating to you or writing narrations. You should be able to pick up from a book enough that you could assign something like that. This Rosh character, man. He sounds kind of out of control. And then you know Jesus well, we know how Jesus acted about enemies and the people that were cruel to Him. What do you think about these two guys? Why don't you take this narration and maybe compare these guys and what they believed? Okay? If your kid's narrating and doing everything else they're supposed to, usually you can pick up enough to make writing assignments like that.

J -

Yeah, that's perfect. That is so good. It comes intuitively, it's not like you have to come up with this ahead of time from some like a formal thing that like yeah your kid. What did your kid notice in the story?

S -

Exactly.

J -

Well, they talk about the setting constantly, and they're describing this or that. Okay, well, let's write about that. Like, yeah, for sure.

S -

If they're doing what they should be doing as far as oral and written narrations, your job as far as taking one of those, taking some of those ideas that they're sharing with you, and then crafting something they can do with that, it shouldn't be that difficult. You shouldn't have to read everything they read. Does it help? Sure. Is it realistic? No. So you know, I mean you...

J -

??? to high school and you're like, oh my goodness.

S -

Oh yeah, by the time they get to high school and there are so many books that they're reading, and the books are in-depth and probably stuff that you didn't read till college.

But I'm glad that you pointed that out because I do think it is a myth that Charlotte Mason always just said, just tell me what you read. Like that, that's always what a written narration or an oral narration was. It's just, okay, just tell me what you read. What is it you remember? That's not what she did. You're exactly right. By the time she got to seventh, eighth, and up, she starts more guiding those narrations. Getting kids ready for exactly what we're talking about, which is a fitting form on top of the voice you've already developed. So, she's...

J -

And like for example, and that can also be an intuitive way to teach kind of some of these harder writing formats. So, for example, my daughter, her written narrations about World War Two, I notice she talked about Hitler and Stalin a lot and I just thought it was like, okay, let's write a compare and contrast narration on these two guys. Then it's like okay, well now let's take that and add some research to it. Here's how to cite your sources, you know. And so, we took that compare and contrast essay and made it into a research paper. Like it was very, it's not, it just flowed.

S -

Right. And that's the thing about writing is if you ever find yourself having to say okay, we've covered all this other stuff, you really need to write a compare contrast essay, so I'm just going to make one up. That's probably gonna fall pretty flat. Your kid's not engaged. And by the way, current, if you're doing your current events as you should, current events is a great place to cover compare, contrast. Persuasive for sure. You know you've watched this current event. Maybe you don't agree with something that happened in the current event. Okay, write a letter to the editor about this. Maybe your kid's talking about it cause it got him all fired up. You know how teenagers can fashion it. Use that passion, channel that passion into a great writing assignment.

J -

Yes, and then that's not something necessarily you can plan for, which I think stresses people outright? Because that you have to keep that relationship and you have to keep reading their things to be on top of it to know you know, kind of how to adapt. But you raise a good point. It doesn't always have to be with the literature book. It doesn't always have to be, this is the writing assignment. You write those narrations and all those different subjects Charlotte Mason is having you do. So, you can teach them those writing styles with those narrations on any given subject. It could be science. I mean they love science. They're writing passionate narrations about chemistry. Teach them how to write a research paper. Like all of that, yeah.

S -

Absolutely and one thing I wanted to point out for those that do have that little bit of planning gene in them, which I do. I'm very type A. But as Julie pointing out you want this to kind of organically sprout from what they're already doing. So, for people that type A and really wanna plan for some of us...me...that's really hard to do. So, what I did because I have to have some way to kind of get my planning fix is I made a list of the types of essays I wanted them to be familiar with the form before they left before they graduated. So, what that did for me was it allowed me to just kind of write down, I wanna make sure that at some point we cover the compare contrast form. I want to make sure we cover a persuasive form. I want to make sure we cover a literary analysis form, a research paper form. All of those forms, and what I did is I just keep that little running list in my planner, and then when those spontaneous moments come, I can look at my list real quick and say, okay, does this moment fit anything we haven't covered yet? And so that way in the back of your mind you make sure that you give a nice round representation of various forms because you don't want to just do it once. It's going to take multiple attempts to be very familiar with the form. And to do it well, I should say. And so, I just keep a little list and I'm just like, okay, we've done one of those, we've done one of those. Oh, we haven't done one of those. Oh, this topic is perfect for that. So, for those that like to plan, just have a little list of things, forms that you want to cover, and then those spontaneous moments can happen, but you still feel like you at least have some direction of what you want to do with those moments.

J -

Yeah, that's great, yeah. No, that makes sense. And then you know the guides for Gentle Feast, you know I do kind of sign those things ahead of time through the different books. So, you're not saying as you can never do that right? But if you're going from scratch and you don't have something like that, you kind of have to intuitively do it. But I like the idea of having that checklist there. That's great.

Today's episode is brought to you by A Gentle Feast. A Gentle Feast is a complete curriculum for grades one through twelve that is family-centered, inspired by Miss Mason's programs and philosophy, and rooted in books, beauty, and Biblical truth. You can find out how smooth and easy days are closer than you think at agentlefeast.com.

So now that we have them, you know, writing this paragraph, the question we get all the time is how do I revise and edit without killing their left-right.

S -

You throw away your red pen. And again, we're back at the collaboration. You don't, I find that revision works best if I don't mark it up if I have a conversation.

J -

Yep, that's what we do too. In front of the computer, we have a conversation.

S -

You sit together and I know that there are parents out there who like, oh, this is so parent involved. Yes, you're...that's what you signed up for. I'm sorry.

J -

Get someone else to teach math and science. Yeah, exactly. ???

S -

...science off to somebody else and focus on the good stuff.

J -

Yeah, exactly.

S -

But yeah, that's one of the things that people are always amazed when I talk about this is that, man, I thought that by the time I got to high school, I really wouldn't, that could be hands-off. And I'm like, maybe with some things. If you have a kid that's really gifted. But with writing, even natural writers can be better.

J -

Yes, right exactly.

S -

Everybody can be better.

J -

And I think that's a great thing to tell your kids too, is like, yeah.

S -

And I always compare writing to golf. You can be the best golfer in the world and still you need to get better. Cause you're never going to be perfect.

J -

Well, for me, if you're not growing, you're dying. So even though I'm trying to be a better person like there's always something to grow and learn about. ??? ...like even public. JK Rowling, right? You know she had a team of editors. She revised Harry Potter multiple times, right? It didn't just come out looking like the books that you have, right? And I think kids in their minds think, if I don't, if it doesn't come out perfect right, then I'm doing something wrong or I'm a failure and so they get so stressed out they can't even start writing. And it's like this is again that process.

S -

Exactly, and I tell my kids all the time there's one book that came out perfect and that was the Bible, and so with no revisions. So, until you're inspired by God, this is what we got to do. So yeah, but this is another moment where you have this collaborative process. Don't make it stressful. And what I like to start with is that now I'm gonna define some terms here because I think people get them mixed up about exactly what this is. Editing your work is where you fix grammar issues, punctuation issues, a subject-verb agreement. Editing is where you use all those grammar skills that your child has been learning through copy work and all those other methods. Okay, that's the editing side of this process. Editing is very cut and dried. It's either right or it's not. Okay? So, the editing part is that side of things. The revision part of writing is the subjective part of writing. That's where you read it and you're like, mm, that might that sentence could sound better. Let's rewrite it. right. Or maybe that wasn't the best word choice. Let's try to think of something else. The revision part of writing, in my opinion, is where they really need a second voice. Now, not that they don't with the editing, but the editing is more like, here's a list of grammar rules, punctuation rules. Look over it, see what you can catch. That kind of thing. So that's why I start with editing. That is where I start when it starts, I do not start with words and I don't do both at the same time, to begin with.

J -

OK, that's good.

S -

Start with editing. And the reason why I say to start with editing is because, remember how I was talking earlier about writing is a very personal thing?

J -

Yes.

S -

When you begin this process, editing is the least personal of the two. Editing is just hey, you have a run-on sentence. That's just the facts. I mean like, you know it's not, it's not me saying you did a bad job, it's just you need a period here or whatever. Well, I start with editing because it's very black and white. Okay, there's very little subjective in editing. So, I start there and you walk through that with your kids. Teach them. Just go sentence by sentence. We wrote one paragraph. We're trying to do this one paragraph at a time, so don't take a whole written narration to do this. Just one paragraph. So, you know and just edit it together. Give them a little editor's checklist. Say, okay, the next time you write a written narration, use this little checklist to look over your paragraph and don't give them everything they can do wrong. Like, don't give them a whole five-page PDF file of here's all the possible grammar and punctuation mistakes you can make. Pick some, for example, that maybe you've noticed consistently in their written narrations. If you know they have a tendency to write run-on sentences, then maybe the first thing you cover is let's find the subject and verb in every sentence. Oh look, there are two in this sentence. Do we have a conjunction? We don't. You know, like, and I know that sounds like you're talking to a three-year-old, but you know and...

J -

Sometimes teenagers act like three-year-old’s, so.

S -

But just get them to, and as I said, this checklist, you not only start with three or four things you want them to check for in their editing. And as they become very aware of those three or four things, and they begin fixing those three or four things, then maybe there are three or four other things you want to add to the checklists. It's a slow build. I think lots of times we're like, okay, I'm supposed to be editing now and you begin to just slide...that paper. It should be a slow build, just like everything else in this process, you know.

So, I start with editing. Once that they've pretty much got their editing skills and that they're doing a good job of that, then we began revision and revision is where it's much more personal because it feels like when somebody says this sentence is a little hard to understand. We need to rewrite it. There is some level of that where it's like, oh, you don't like my sentence. Like does that mean there's something wrong with me? Am I not a good writer? I mean, it just kind of spirals into this thing. That's why I never, ever, ever ever ever do revise or even editing with a kid younger than about seventh or eighth grade. Do not do it before that because kids, at that age, kids are starting to realize oh mom can look over this and make suggestions and it doesn't mean I'm bad at it. Especially if you've spent the previous years just being nothing but encouraging. Okay, you've built up that trust of wow, this was great. I love your word choice here. Like, look at how much you're writing more on your written narrations than you were last year. Like if you've been nothing but their cheerleader in the writing department, then by the time you get to these upper grades where you need to start doing editing and revising, they trust you. And they're going to know that Mom's not trying to be mean to me. She doesn't think I'm bad at this. She's trying to help me be better, okay?

J -

Yeah, that's good.

S -

Yeah, so and then, once you get the editing, now we move to revise. And again, just a paragraph at a time to start. Go sentence by sentence. Have a conversation about it. Don't tell them what to do. Let them work with you to figure out how to make it better because you want to teach them the skill of doing that on their own because Julie said one day they're going to go off and do you wanna be their hired editor and reviser for all future time. You need to teach them how to do it now in a very safe, collaborative way.

J -

Yeah, for sure. I mean one of the things I've noticed that really helped my kids is having them read it out loud. So, when they read out loud they often catch stuff on their own. They're like, wait a minute that made no sense. I'm like, yeah, made no sense to me too, but like they caught it. Or I'll be like, wow, so that sentence right there, I'm a little confused. And I just let that kind of hang for a while and then they're like, oh, yeah, maybe I should... You know it's not like me telling them what to do like you said, it's just kind of like having that discussion and questioning things. And we're like, oh yeah, you know you started every sentence in that paragraph with her, so kind of, you know, wow. I mean, you some great thoughts here but as a reader, I'd be way more interested if it started with some, a different subject. How can we fix it? You know? Yeah.

S -

That's it, that's exactly the process. Over and over and over and...And I think parents.

And yes, reading out loud is a huge step. In fact, in my online classes, I give them a process and the first thing I say is when it comes to the editing part, it's good to have your kids learn how to do that themselves, but I'll be honest with you, there is so much technology out now that will do that for you...

J -

Praise the Lord for Grammarly, that's all I can say. I use that for myself.

S -

Oh, I use Grammarly too. Teach your kids to use the tech available. You don't get extra badges of honor because your kid can edit their own work. Man, fire up Microsoft Word, have them type it, and let that catch the errors or run it through Grammarly. I mean use the tech available. I cannot imagine Charlotte Mason saying okay children, we have this amazing tool at our fingertips. But we're going to do it with an old-school grammar book and...

J -

I joke around with my kids cause I was like man you guys got it made. I would have been like valedictorian, not valedictorian. Like sum cum laude in college. If I would have had something that corrected my papers for me. If I didn't have to like scroll through like microfilm to find my research for papers. You know, I sound like I'm a dinosaur but I'm like oh, you know I had to like have a word processor with a whiteout if I made a mistake to go back and fix it and I know that I need to go use a dictionary to figure out how to spell it.

You guys have it made.

S -

I know, I know, and then the fact that when it comes to writing research papers or anything with citations, they have whole websites you can just put the info in and it spits out the citation in the form you need it.

J -

Or finds the quote with Google Books. You'll find the quote in the book on the subject. You didn't even have to read the whole book.

S -

I know. It's just not fair. I tell ‘em all the time that. I'm like you need a good card catalog and a dictionary. Try to find research with that.

J -

Yes. I think it really is beneficial though to teach ‘em those technology skills because that's what they're going to have...they're going to use it on their job. So, you know, they don't have to use a word processor with white out. You know that's not going to serve them in life.

S -

Well, I know for a fact that college professors will tell their students to run this through Grammarly before they turn it in. I mean they do. And the fact of the matter is, is if your kid has no clue what they're talking about or how to do that, well, guess who they're going to call? So, it might as well teach ‘em. You know, in high school I have my classes do that, so that's the first thing I tell him is, I say, let tech work for you. Let the tech do the editing and now the reason that the second step is important, which is what Julie just talked about. Read it out loud. After you run it through some kind of editing program, read it out loud. The reason for that is that those editing programs don't catch everything. They never have.

J -

Or they auto-correct stuff.

S -

Yeah. They fix things that are not correct. After you use the technology, don't depend on it a hundred percent, and read it out loud. And even to this day, if I write something, I read it out loud because I'm just amazed at how much stuff I catch. I mean, I might have read it silently to myself twenty times. And then I'll be like, okay, this is good. And then I'll read it out loud, and I'm like, oh my goodness, how did I miss all this? So yeah, have them read it out loud, and when I'm beginning the editing and revising process, I do this with them. I say, okay, I'm gonna read this out loud. And so, I read it out loud. And then after I read it out loud, we go back and we go line by line. Okay, so reading it out loud will catch quite a few things. Going line by line we'll find all those little things that may be reading it out loud didn't catch. Like I said maybe, maybe the word isn't bad, but it's just not the best or something like that.

J -

Right. And often I find kids pick easy words because they know how to spell them, but they actually, especially if they've been doing a Charlotte Mason education and they've been reading living books, they have a wide vocabulary, you know, but they kind of like take the easy road sometimes when they're writing a paper cause they don't want to have to like figure out how to spell that word. And so, you know, saying, okay, well, you know you've used good three times here. Can we come up with a different word for good? And my kid knows it off the top of their head, yeah.

S -

They know the word they should have used immediately because that was probably the word they wanted to use anyway. But and I tell, I was just telling my online students just the other day, I said getting your thoughts on paper is just the beginning. It's just the beginning of the writing process. Really going through and revising and all of that is the work. That's the hard part. You know all my students, they'll finish writing, and so they'll just go and done. And I'm like, no. It's time to begin. You know, like now we've got it out of your head. Now it's time to begin turning it into a true piece of writing. You've got your thoughts on paper. Now we gotta turn it into actual writing. So yeah, it's just a process. Take it slow. Do not panic. Taking step by step. Start with paragraphs, workup, do it together. Collaborate.

J -

Yeah, when you describe it like that it doesn't sound like torture.

S -

It's not torture. ??? ...my teenagers are when we are collaborating over their writing. And I'll say things like I really love this argument. I've never thought of it this way. They just being. Because when you collaborate with your teenagers, I don't want to say, ‘well, it's… there's an equality there’. There's an exchange of ideas. Your child is presenting their ideas. You're reading those over, you're commenting. Don't just comment on the bad stuff. I hope everybody knows that. If they write something that is really a beautiful senate or maybe a wonderful, beautiful thought, tell them that. Say this is amazing, like this is beautiful, the way you wrote this. Or wow this argument is rock solid. I never would have thought of that. The logic you used here to prove your point is spot on. Bring those things out. And when you do those kinds of things, you become equals in this sharing of ideas and I don't know, it's just really good for your relationship with your teens, period. I mean, whether you're talking about school or not school. Just that sharing of mutual thoughts and ideas is just a beautiful thing. That's it's what makes the teen years better.

J -

That's what Charlotte Mason said, too, that the teaching of the composition should be like that of kind of this equal level. You know it's not, I am the fountain of all writing knowledge, and that report onto you, my little child, you know. It really is that coming alongside that she talked about and on multiple things right? Especially on the high school rating part.

So, a question we've also thought is about keeping records then. So, if we're doing this collaborating with them, how do I give them a grade?

S -

Oh grades, I'm not gonna watch this one. This one took me a while, this one took me a while to figure out how I wanted to do this. Because you're, when you're doing a Charlotte Mason education most English, like if you were using a textbook, an English textbook, they're going to give you a very specific rubric. They're going to give you a very specific, we're going to learn this skill and this is the skill we're going to focus on. And when I grade your paper, you know this is...I grade on growth. I grade on growth. And what that looks like is at the beginning of the year I keep a sample of maybe their first attempt at a persuasive paragraph, and then by the end of the year, I keep a sample of their last attempt at a persuasive paragraph. Well, I'm going to look at those side by side. And every time, every time I've done that it is so obvious the growth that my child has had from first attempts to final attempt, that I, it has been so obvious. Well, they've earned an A this year in writing. Like their growth has been phenomenal in that aspect.

Now if you want some kind of specific algorithm like you know, well if they only look like they've done this well, I don't like grades for that reason because every kid's different and you might have a kid that's dyslexic. My son is dyslexic. He's only, he's about to turn eleven. When he gets to high school, I have a feeling his growth is going to look much different than his sisters. And what I mean by that is because he actually has this struggle with words on paper and all of that, he's, I have, I fully expect that he is going to start behind and I hate to use that word, but he's going to start below where his sisters started and he's probably going to end the year below where they ended the year. So should I give him less of a grade? Because he's not churning out the work that they did at the same age? Absolutely not. It doesn't mean his work is less. I'm looking at his growth, keeping in mind his struggles. And so, what that means is his A work might look very different from theirs, so that's why I don't like grades.

Yeah, I'm not going to tell you that, you know if your kid doesn't reach this certain level by the end of the year, well then, they've earned a B or they've earned a C. If you're doing the collaborating as you should be, you know what they...You don't even have to second guess it. You know your kids worked hard, you know that they've struggled through some things. You know that they figured things out. You know how well they've improved. Give them the A. Just give them the A. Don't nitpick him, don't...now, if you have a kid that absolutely you know I don't know, there are those kids that will dig their heels in and they're like I'm not going to do it and blah blah blah. Well, that's a whole other issue.

J -

I was gonna say that's a whole bunch... ??? ... that's more of a character issue.

S -

Yeah, that goes into parenting and a whole host of other issues. So, what I'm saying is when you're looking at this because it is odd. A Charlotte Mason education is hard to grade. I mean, these kids are riding narrations for history, they're not filling out worksheets. They're not, you know, filling in the blank line...

J -

Nine out of ten right. Yeah.

S -

Yeah, they're writing narration, so you know, and I did struggle with that. Even my daughter did. She said, how do I know what a good grade would be on this? You know it's not like fill in the blank where there's an obvious right answer. There's not. So, we had a whole conversation about it, I said here's what I want from your written narrations. If you want a good grade on a written narration for history, this is what I want to see. So, you know you, and Julie, in her program, she actually has that listed in the language arts packets. Like this is what you know, you know this is a good narration. So, you know there helps out there. But yeah, it is odd. It's odd...

J -

But it's not impossible, and I think that's the key is it's, it's all, but it's not impossible. And having you know, if they take outside classes somewhere or they've taken college classes, or they've taken their standardized testing, having those back up the grades that you have, I mean, I have yet to experience or my friends or college was like, well, how did they get that A in tenth-grade writing, you know? This doesn't happen, so yes, find a way that works for you for sure. That's great.

S -

And grade the growth. Grade the growth.

J -

I like that idea, that's great.

S -

Don't use some arbitrary standard. You know your kid, you know what they've done.

J -

And then the last question here before we wrap up is talking about poetry. Well, we were talking earlier and both laughing because it's either like you're good at writing poetry or you're not good at writing poetry and but most of the way it's taught in school is where you dissect it and Charlotte Mason said that that was not, I mean she has some very colorful language about how she felt about doing that to poetry. And she was a poet herself and I think that's why because she loved reading it. She loved writing it, and she lived at a time where there were these amazing romantic poets in Lake District in England, right? And for her to take a Wordsworth poem and dissect it, was just cruel.

S -

Yeah yeah, we, this question is kind of, I'm not sure if they're wanting to know about should I have my kids write poetry? Should I, should I, how should we treat reading poet, like I'm not sure so I'm just going to answer both of those.

J -

Okay.

S -

We're going to start with reading though because that's kind of the foundational level. I will firmly confess I'm not a huge poetry fan. I can appreciate the art form. I know that it's difficult to do. Like I understand all of that. It's just not my natural, it's not my natural bit to just really read poetry. So for that reason, I make myself read it. I, you know, if we always just did what we liked, then...

J -

Yeah, it's kind of like eating your vegetables right sometimes?

S -

And I can say that I have really learned, especially as I've gotten older, I've really learned to just love certain poets. I have my favorites. All that to say this, I was just the other day, reading an essay, well, actually it was the first chapter of a book that this guy wrote about poetry education, and he is very much in agreement with Charlotte Mason that we in the US especially we do not know what to do with poetry. And for that reason, we do it poorly, and example, one of the examples he gives in this first chapter is he says in Italy, you don't have to teach Italians how to enjoy opera. It's such a fabric of their society in their history that Italians can enjoy opera. They don't have to sit and dissect it. They don't have to talk about the meaning of the song or the way that the music is played. They can just go sit in an Opera House and just immerse themselves in opera and enjoy it. And he said the problem in the US is we don't let ourselves immerse in poetry. We want to dissect it. So, the first thing I would say about poetry is if you don't enjoy it or your kids don't enjoy it, then you need to read some of it every week. Immerse yourself in it. There are podcasts out there where people just read poems. So...

J -

Patrick Stewart reads Shakespeare's sonnets on YouTube and they are fantastic. If you don't like Shakespeare, just listen to him and that'll totally change.

S -

Yeah, exactly and it, you know if you're like man because here's the thing. Kids are smart and to a point, you can fake that you're interested in something, but at some point, they're going to figure you out. And if you're one of those people like me who's like reading poetry, not my thing.

J -

Then let someone else do it.

S -

It's all over the Internet. It's all over podcasts, you know, just do that. So the first thing I would say about poetry is just enjoying it. Do not dissect it. Do not try to find rhyme schemes and meter and you know don't pull it apart. In that same book, I was talking about, which I probably need to actually, here just a second, I've got it open. I'm gonna... okay, so the name of the book I'm referring to about poetry is called How Does a Poem Mean.

J -

How does a poem mean?

S -

Yes, and it's by John Ciardi. And then that last name is spelled C-I-A-R-D-I and it is an out-of-print book. It's not easy to find. I think copies right now are running about thirty bucks apiece. And it's not a book that you would give to your kids. But the first chapter is available for free online, so I was just scrolling through and found that, and I really, really enjoyed what he had to say. And one of the anecdotes he gives is Robert Frost, his famous poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, which I actually memorized in eighth grade, so those of you who are like, oh, don't make your kids memorize stuff. Still got it, y'all.

J -

I memorized Sick, by Shel Silverstein, so that's almost at the level of Robert Frost.

S -

Right. There you go. ??? those two guys. But the last two lines of that poem go “and miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep”. And Robert Frost used to get asked in interviews quite often, what does that mean? What do those lines mean? Because people have argued about this...

J -

Oh yes. But you know that's a question on the standardized test somewhere that some kids get right.

S -

Yeah, some people argue that the person speaking the poem is contemplating suicide and then at the last minute decides not to kill themselves. Some people argue that I mean like it's just nuts like the stuff that comes out of these two lines at the end of the poem. So, people used to ask Robert Frost, okay so what does it really mean? And he used to joke and give weird stupid answers because ultimately what Robert Frost said was, well, what does it mean to you? Because that's what poetry should be. Cause it's not what the author meant. And maybe Frost himself didn't even know what it meant. Like he wrote it because at that moment he was feeling a certain way, and so that's why poetry should be immersive, not deconstructed. How does this poem make you feel? What does it make you think about?

J -

And I get that question all the time too, there are people like, so I'm reading Shakespeare to my kids, and we don't know what it's about or there's this, you know, there's this controversy it might mean these things, and that would be very offensive. And why did you include it? And I'm like we're having that discussion about what it means like we're just listening to the words and like I'm like if you get anything if you can if this makes you feel something right? That's the goal of poetry is. How does this make you feel? Not can we decipher the 25 different ways this could be interpreted right?

S -

I mean and our American school system has done such a disservice for generations of students not only with poetry but with literature as well.

J -

Yeah, that's true... now it's gonna be another podcast.

S -

All that to say, just immerse yourself in poetry.

J -

Now, what about writing poetry? Since this is, I'm assuming a writing question, since we're talking about writing.

S -

Yeah, okay, so writing poetry. I never make my students write poetry just because I myself, I'm a good writer, but I cannot write poetry. Like I feel like that is a gift that you either have it or you don't. And I firmly believe that some people have that ability to just take things and put them into some kind of poetical form and that that is just something that they have. So, I don't, and the reason I don't force it is that if you say okay we need to write poetry. Well, one of two things is going to happen. One, you have a naturally great poet and they're going to be amazing at it. Or two, you're going to have someone like me who's sitting over there going, well, I followed the rules to write a sonnet, but this is the dumbest thing I've ever read in my life. Okay, so there's no, there's usually no in between. So, I think when it comes to writing poetry like it might be a good exercise to say, okay, here's a sonnet. It has iambic pentameter. Tell them what that means, even if, if you don't know, look it up. There's a great YouTube video out there to tell you, I'm sure. So, and then it has so many lines, you know that kind of thing. Teach em, again, like with writing, the form. There are different forms of poetry. So, teach them the form. And then say, okay, so let's read this Shakespeare sonnet and, or let's try to write something like a sonnet, but take something that they already are familiar with to do that. And it can be silly. Maybe write silly sonnets on purpose. That way if somebody doesn't do a great job, nobody cares because it's just for fun anyway. Don't make it so, I don't know, serious, I guess. Oh my goodness, we have to be the next Shakespeare right now.

J -

I think, yeah, that was like when you look at Charlotte Mason, she did have them write poetry in high school. But she would always say right in the style of Wordsworth or something like that or whatever they have been learning about. So that kind of gives them a context too, they can kind of take, okay, what was the rhythm of his poems? What were some of the words he used? And make them their own. Or another thing she had them do is take a poem and turn it into prose. Or take a prose passage like a description of nature and turn it into a poem. And so that is a really easy way to start. And I think that's brilliant the way she did it like that because they're giving them a model. It's not, come up with a poem out of thin air.

S -

So horrible. I remember we had poetry writing assignments when I was in school, and I remember every time that we started. Well, this is how it always went. In your literature book you would hit the poetry section, right? And so we knew what the assignment was going to be...

J -

Right at the end of the year too, right?

S -

...poetry section your teacher is gonna say, now class, we're all gonna write a poem. I would just be like oh here we go.

J -

See I was the exact opposite. I love writing poetry. I still write poems. Yes! Poetry time! We got to it! Yes!

S -

We had that kid in class too and we always took them out after class and just stoned them in the back. We're like, why do you have to be excited? She's gonna think we're all excited.

J -

Actually, in college for one of my education classes, we had to write like a personal kind of like biography, almost like a memoir. And I asked my teacher if I could write a collection of poetry instead. So, I think yeah, but I think as you said, some kids love it. And those are the kids that you want, you can allow them to do some of their narrations as poems if they love it. Great, you know.

S -

Exactly the same for creative writing. You have some cats that are just naturally creative writers. Let them tap into that. There is, don't, you know, don't tell ‘em, I'm sorry we're not going to do any creative writing because we need to do whatever. I mean, now I will give this caveat and I think this is important. You know I'm talking here about how I don't like to write poetry, so I don't make my students write poetry. Poetry and creative writing are very different than learning to write. I want to make that clear. Poetry and creative writing are what I call more artistic forms of writing. And those are optional, always in my opinion. If you have a creative writer that wants to creative write, let them. If you have a poet that once wrote poetry, let them. But I'm not going to necessarily assign those things on purpose when I'm teaching writing, because, and this is why, 90% of the time in real life, what we have to write are more formulaic, nonfiction things. Okay? So, I don't make those and I don't force those. However, if you have a kid that is a poet and a creative writer, most likely, they're not going to want to have to. So, at that point you just have to be kind of like, well, I understand. Well, and here's the thing. If they're good at creative writing, they should very easily be able to jump into a form. Will they like it? No, it kind of constrains well, and it shouldn't constrain if you have a good voice, it doesn't...

J -

That's what I'm saying. Like me, mine is an extremely creative writer as well and poet. But in her formal writing, once she got the form down, she was, and confident, she was able to bring her voice back into it, and oh my, it's amazing.

S -

Oh yeah. I mean, well, think of C.S. Lewis. He writes beautiful, wonderful fiction books that we enjoy. But if you ever read his nonfiction writing. It's beautiful, too. Like it's just...sometimes I think even more so because he can take topics that you know normally might be kind of boring, but he brings a voice to it and opens it up. So, I honestly I think creative writers once you can get them to attempt the form, master the form, they can actually be better nonfiction writers than almost anything.

J -

But it's much harder to teach someone how to be a creative writer.

S -

Exactly.

J -

That just is natural, and then you can put that into the form, but you want them to get that form and I think you know, and Charlotte Mason people, well, Charlotte Mason never assigned creative writing. I'm like that's not true when you look at her essays that she assigned her high schoolers like one of the ones I'm thinking of is write a scene with the characters from, I can't remember the book, let's say, Tale of Two Cities, taking place today. That's creative writing, you know. And for some kids, that's extremely difficult. Like an assignment like that would be, way harder than writing a research paper. That has that creativity, that's not really a skill. It's that creative art that can't always be taught, you know, but you can teach me how to write a research paper. I follow these steps. I get this. Here's my outcome, you know, but like taking the scene and making it beautiful, that's a lot more challenging. And I think that's why she had them using those models, write in the style of this author. And because they're reading so much of that wonderful language then they, I feel like the Charlotte Mason, cause I know like that ability and that command of the English language is just there because they're immersed in it all the time. Yeah.

S -

Yes, and so I wanted to bring up that caveat about poetry and creative writing and the other thing I would say is I will inevitably hear parents say, well, I can't get my kid to write. They just won't do it. They don't like it, so I don't make them.

I'm a very nonviolent non-confrontational but when I have somebody stand in front of me and say my kid doesn't like to write so I don't make them, it really makes me want to be like, YAA! Because honestly, if your kid said I don't wanna eat my vegetables or I'm just going to sit here and eat Cheetos all day.

J -

Well, that's like I said like I don't want to wear my seat belt. Would you be like, okay? That's fine. No.

S -

Like, writing is too important and I...usually it's boys and I get that. Boys are not as verbal as girls, so writing is really...

J -

Let them talk to you.

S -

Yeah. Writing is really, so this is what I, this is, and this is what I tell my boys, cause sometimes they'll say, well, I'm not going to go to college. Well, I'm not gonna, and I'm not going to need to learn how to do this cause I'm not going to go to college. And this is the example I always give. Yeah, but you're going to have a job, and you're going to have to apply for a job and you're gonna, and let's say you're a plumber, right? You're going to have to give job bids. And you might be the best plumber in five counties, but if you can't write a coherent, well-written, grammatically correct job bid, they're not going to hire you. Because in the United States, whether it's fair or not fair, your ability to write well is considered an example of how well you can do a job.

J -

Or how intelligent you are.

S -

Exactly. So, you might be the best person at your job, but if you were never made to write, and because this is the truth, if you don't make your kids write, they're never going to be good writers.

J -

It's like even like if you listen to like the best writers out there, they say I write five hundred words every day. I throw them out. You know they are always practicing their skill. Yeah.

S -

And so, these parents are like it's not worth the fight. It's not worth the, you know, the arguing. My kid doesn't like it. Well sorry. Welcome to real life, kids. And I'm not, and again remember how we started this. It doesn't mean that you have to sit your kid down and say you're going to write this five-paragraph essay or else.

J -

Exactly, and I think that's why kids don't like it. They're getting assigned something. They don't feel like they're good at it. We all move away from pain, and so they associate pain with writing. They don't want to do it right? But if it's just like, oh, I get to express myself and then I get to sit down with mom and we work on it and make it better, there's no pain associated with that. And if you don't write this five-paragraph paper and they have no clue what to do, that's painful.

S -

Oh yeah, and again it goes back to that foundation in a Charlotte Mason education that you've been building through oral narration. I think a lot of times kids don't realize, oh, you mean that oral narrating's writing? Yes, I mean in human history, we've only been mostly literate for what? The past 200 years maybe have been a majority of the populations even been literate? So how do you think all those stories got told? It was the oral narration, and so I think that helps them, and so if you've built that foundation of oral and written narration, you're not going to have a kid that says I can't write.

J -

Yes, I agree.

S -

They know they can write.

J -

They know they can do it.

S -

But what usually happens is parents don't make them write or do any of that. Then they get to high school and say now you have to write. Well of course the kids not going to do it, they don't want to.

J -

Well, this has been so helpful and so practical. Like I really, I feel like this is really going to it kind of dispel all that angst around writing because it's just super simple and really breaks it down. So, thank you so much for taking the time.

S -

Well, thank you. I had a good time, and this is my passion. I seriously could talk about this for hours.

J -

You and me and ??? Yeah. Forever. Do you have a favorite quote or quote that relates to this that you would want to share with us?

S -

It's from volume three. I can get the gist of it. It's where Charlotte Mason says that at the end of education, at the end of education, we shouldn't be asking how much the child knows...

J -

Oh, that one. Yeah, yeah.

S -

...but how much that what the child has learned has influenced their lives. And I, it doesn't directly relate to writing, but in a way, I think it does in the sense of what we talked about at the very beginning. It doesn't matter if your kid knows all the different types of essays. What matters is does your kid have a voice and something to say?

J -

Yes. You can't give anybody that.

S -

That's right, and that's really the whole point of writing is you have a voice, and you have something to say.

J -

That's great. No, thank you so much, I really appreciate it, Shelly.

S -

All right, I had a blast, thanks.

J -

Yeah, and I will put in those show notes some of the resources you mentioned, but also how people can connect with you if they feel like they need more help with this, which I'm sure a lot of people do. They can get on your Facebook group too, so that would be great.

S -

Yeah, that would be great, and I do give, in fact, I have a video up on my Facebook group right now of me walking through some of those beginning writing steps with an elementary student with my son so. There's stuff there about writing.

J -

Okay, yeah, I'll definitely link to that, alright?

Thank you for joining us today on the Charlotte Mason Show. I'm your host, Julie Ross, and I would love to meet you in person. All of the Great Homeschool Conventions have been rescheduled to 2021. Go to greathomeschoolconventions.com to find a convention near you. But you don't have to wait until 2021 to experience the amazing speakers and vendors at the Great Homeschool Conventions. They now offer an online convention that you can find on greathomeschoolconventions.com.

Also, if you would like the show notes for today's episode, go to homeschooling.mom. If you would take a moment to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and leave a review, I would greatly appreciate it. It helps get the word out about this podcast to our audience.

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