What Now?

I recently read a wonderful article by Rachel DeMille, entitled, "What Now?" She discusses how the "rules" for our society have changed- the ideas that have been driving our society in recent times: spend, spend, spend! Someone else will bail you out. Don't worry, someone else will take care of you. Someone else is responsible for you.

When we experience crisis, we also experience the new reality: one must be responsible for oneself.

However, Rachel points out that though we live in perilous times, she is hearing many express feelings of peace, purpose and resolve. She discusses three of the "old rules" and then the new reality, and why that new reality will bring good things.

Let me quote her here, and then encourage you to go read the article for yourself:

Old Rule: 2. No-risk guarantee!
Failure is unacceptable in our society. We’ll take care of you. Your deposits are protected, your child will not be left behind, a chicken in every pot.

The New Reality: The old American virtues of getting up off the mat and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps will gain new ascendancy as people’s expectation of rescue is diminished and the necessary societal values of self-reliance and interdependence within a local community, including caring for our own, are re-awakened in the cultural psyche. The government’s ultimate failure (and the public’s acknowledgement of it) to be everything to everybody will put pressure on government to incentivize private and grass-roots ventures that seek to fill the gap. Read more!

TJEd-Intro Conference Call #1

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Prairie Mentors Fall Offerings

This fall, Prairie Mentors is pleased to offer the community a number of exciting opportunities for students and parents. These opportunities are open to all families, and we invite parents to join us as mentors. Please email us for more information.

Liberty Belles
An American History Club for Girls 6-9 years
Era: Victorian

Liberty Belles meets twice a month for games, book discussions, narrations, activities, crafts from the era and lots of fun!

Knights of Liberty
Young Statesmanship Club for boys 8-12 years

Knights of Liberty meets twice a month for colloquia, presentations, boy-led activities and projects, and also, lots of fun!

Champaign Area Young Stateswoman Society
Leadership Education Club for girls 9-12+

CAYSS is an exciting opportunity for girls to learn leadership skills and practice public speaking with their friends as they study the lives of great stateswomen from history. The girls will participate in colloquia and writing workshops, as well as plan and carry out activities and service projects.

Key of Liberty
Scholar Project for Youth 12+

A study of the American Revolutionary War period, the United States Constitution, and other founding documents. This class offers an inspiring environment in which students are challenged to learn about many principles of government and read biographies of the founders.

5 Pillar Parent Mentor Class
Weekly Class for Parents-- The kids aren't the only ones who get to have fun!

Set an inspiring example for learning and improve your own education. Included in the semester plan are lecture, writing workshops, colloquia and public speaking opportunities. We will have lots of fun with this as we learn and grow together! Read more!

TJEd Chapter One

The new edition of "A Thomas Jefferson Education" has a new first chapter, and rightly so, as the first edition was published before the attacks of 9/11 occurred, after which we complacent Americans were forced to take a close hard look at ourselves and our country. And our future: our children. Are our children perpared for the challenges of the future? Are they prepared for the leadership roles they will take up in their lives- in their homes, communities, churches, employment and government? Even more importantly, have they been prepared to be leaders of themselves? Or will they be blind followers, waiting for someone else to tell them what to do and what to think? Answers to these questions may very well be answered by asking these things of ourselves.

In the first chapter of TJEd, Dr. DeMille addresses these questions. On September 11, 2001, when the news of the attacks on the twin towers was reported, Dr. DeMille led the student body at George Wythe College into action. At GWC, they did all they could to learn from the events of the day-- simulations, discussions, research. Throughout the chapter, Dr.DeMille outlines the seven very important lessons that they learned from this experience.

1) Every generation faces its challenges. 9/11 was a wake up call for many Americans. We will never be the same, and we are forever painfully aware of the fragility of our comfortable lifestyles. We have adopted a more serious attitude toward life.

2) When crisis comes, we naturally turn to God. How many people found their faith on 9/11? That day reminded our nation to remember God, acknowledge his hand in our lives and seek after his assistance.

3) When crisis comes, we naturally turn to leadership. Are our leaders prepared to lead? Crisis is not the time to prepare- by then, the time to prepare has run out. We must prepare before the crisis hits or we will fail. Interestingly, that education that will prepare leaders goes out of style during times of peace and prosperity. Recent generations in America have rejected again and again the need for liberal arts education. Finally, after 9/11, people are coming to realize how vital this type of education truly is for a nation that wishes to remain free.

4) We must learn from history, or else it will repeat itself, again and again.

5) While wisdom is usually found in the older generations, leadership is usually found in the young. The older generation is eager to get back to normal, back to the good old days of peace and prosperity, to forget all this bad stuff ever happened. But the younger generation believes that it is not possible to go back.

6) The younger generation wants to make the world a better place.

7) Great change happens in two waves of generations: a generation of great teachers followed by a generation of great leaders.

But the big question is this: Is the education our children are recieving on par with their genius potential?

Genius lies within each one of us. Is our education excellent enough to cultivate that genius? Or just mediocre enough to be "practical?"

This book is a call for a revolution of education if this country is to remain free. Read more!

What is a Thomas Jefferson Education?

To tell you what TJEd is, I should start by telling you what it isn't. It isn't a curriculum or a method or an approach. It is a set of principles that have a certain goal. When applied correctly to proper developmental phases of life, the principles will result in a quality leadership education.

You can apply the principles, because they are simply principles, to most approaches- Charlotte Mason, Waldorf, Unschooling, a boxed curricula, or go eclectic and just build your homeschool around the principles. The approach gives you the how-to, the principles gives you the WHY. Education becomes no longer a question of "how will my child get a good job," but "what is my child's mission in life, what will they contribute to the world and how can I help them get the best education to accomplish that?" It's more encompassing, an overarching idea.

The goal of the principles is Leadership Education. A leadership Education is characterized by mentorship on the classics, self-directed learning and education as a life-long pursuit. Leadership Education enables the student to identify problems, find creative out-of-the-box solutions, and to be able to anticipate the needs and actions of others. Basically, so they will be good leaders, and our world today desperately needs better leaders in EVERY part of society, from the home to the federal government.

Briefly, here are the phases:

1. Mentors not professors. Professors are experts and require the student to come into their field of expertise. This is a good thing for the older student who has a self-chosen specific direction for their education, but damaging for young children. Mentors, on the
other hand, enlarge their area of expertise to encompass that of the student, to forge a bond of trust with the student and to build upon the student’s interests and strengths.

2. Classics not textbooks. The classics are an integral part of a leadership education. The classics preserve the best history has to offer in many forms, including art, music and books. The classics teach us human nature, an understanding of which is crucial for
leaders of all types. The classics bring us face-to-face with greatness, whereby we may learn directly from the great thinkers and leaders of history. The classics take us to frontier to be conquered- the last frontier: ourselves. Classics force us to think and connect us to stories of our past, culture and community. The classics we love and study over and over become the plot of our lives.

3. Inspire not require. This is the crux of TJEd. The myth of education today is that one person can educate another. The truth is that teachers teach, but students educate. The student is solely responsible for their education, and the more another person seeks to control that education, the less the student really learns. To inspire, the student needs an example, they need to know their options, and they need to be free to choose. Freedom works. It really does.

4. Structure time, not content. Mentors help their students establish rhythms and routines, but they don't micromanage the student's studies. This way, the student is free to follow their interests and take as much time as needed to learn and think.

5. Quality not conformity. Mentors accept only quality work. Education today require conformity above quality, and this does not encourage out-of-the-box thinking.

6. Simplicity, not complexity. Read. Write. Discuss. That's it. None of these expensive complicated curricula that require us to rely on experts and conformity.

7. You not them. The little engine that makes TJEd go. Mentors lead the way by setting the example.

How these principles are applied will depend on the natural phase of learning the student is in. So, to really understand the principles, we need to understand these phases. The phases are based childhood development, thus are very individual with regards to ages. Children progress to the next phase when they are ready, but the phases build on each other like a pyramid, so really, none of us really ever leave Core phase.

Phases of learning (ages VERY approximate!)
Core phase (0-8 years): The foundation phase of learning. Focus of learning is on core values: right and wrong, good and bad, true and false, relationships, family values, family routines and responsibilities, accountability, the value of love and of work.

Love of learning (LOL) phase (8-12 years): When a good core phase is established, children naturally progress to LOL phase in love with learning. They are ready to explore academic subjects and begin dabbling in interests as they learn their strengths and weaknesses, learn to be self-directed, learn the skills and tools they will need for their later scholar phase, and begin to set goals for learning. Learning is often project oriented. The goal of this phase is LOVE OF LEARNING!

Scholar phase (12-16+ years): Students begin a rigorous study of the classics driven by their hunger to learn, with encouragement and direction from a mentor. Read more!

Why TJEd?

I hadn't planned to homeschool my children. In fact, it was all my husband's fault. When my oldest child was turning two, all my friends were frantically searching for the *perfect* preschool for their little ones. So, I began looking at preschools too-- until my husband gently interrupted my search and asked, "What will they teach her in preschool that you can't teach her at home?" He had strong reservations about sending our children away from the nurturing environment of home so soon.

So, I began looking into ways to educate my toddler myself. I wanted her to have an edge in life, and it seemed a logical step to hurry her up and push her into learning to read and write. If I taught her how to learn as early as possible, how much smarter she would end up being! I learned to read early, and I thought I was pretty dang smart.

About that time, the TV broke, and we never replaced it. So, I started to read.

I read John Holt and learned that children already know how to learn. I realized I already knew this from watching my babies as they grew. They learned so much on their own. They were learning all the time!

I read Charlotte Mason and learned that children belong in the natural world and should spend as much time there as possible. This is a part of a sturdy foundation- to be in touch with the earth and the environment and world around oneself. I learned how to gently teach a child academics when they were ready. I learned the joy that comes from living books and the empowerment of narration.

Yet, my aspirations of education were still focused on making my kids smarter faster so they could get better jobs someday. I still had a conveyor belt mentality about education. I still viewed it as a race and I wanted my kids to get ahead.

Then I read "A Thomas Jefferson Education," and experienced a paradigm shift. Education isn't learning to read and write. Those are just skills. Education isn't about getting a good job. It's about so much more than that. TJEd is about helping our children discover their unique missions in life, and helping them get the unique individualized educations they need to accomplish those mission.

So I started to read and study for myself. I found I wasn't as smart and educated as I thought I was. I was pretty much illiterate when it came to cultural literacy beyond current pop culture. I had huge gaps in my understanding of history, ancient and modern, and I had very little understanding about current events. I was basically uneducated. I was without a specific mission for my life, let alone the education to attend to that mission. I had to get off the conveyor belt of modern living, embrace education as a life-long process, and go through the phases of learning myself.

TJEd provided an overarching philosophy for the whole idea of education. Holt and Mason offered me lots of great ideas and how-to's, but TJEd gave me the WHY. Read more!

Five Pillar Mentor Class in Champaign, IL

Five Pillar Mentor Class
Would you like to mentor your children in the classics?
Do you need a vision for your homeschool?
Are you ready to meet the challenge of furthering your own education?
Would you like to be part of a dynamic, supportive community of homeschoolers?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this is the class for you!
In this class, you will be:

• mentored in the art of mentorship
• trained in leadership education
• edified as a student of the classics

The class pace is set to fit a busy homeschooling or working parent’s schedule that will require only 1-2 hours per day of study. This class will meet once per week over four semesters (2 years) for book discussion, writing workshop, lecture, and public speaking.
The fee for the class will be $50 per semester.

Prepay early, and receive a discount (details below.) We will begin meeting in the fall at a location in Champaign, IL.

Books discussed include:
· Potok, The Chosen
· Bronte, Jane Eyre
· Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
· Austen, Pride and Prejudice
· Dickens, Great Expectations
· Frank, Alas Babylon
· Holt, How Children Learn
· Hugo, Les Miserables
· Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
· Thoreau, Walden

Lecture topics include:
· Character and Statesmanship
· Thomas Jefferson education
· Scholarship Ladder
· 7 Keys of teaching
· How to study Shakespeare and why
· 6 keys of personal influence
· Power v. Force
· Seasons (time management)
· Characteristics of a scientist

Sign up, contact or prepay info:

We need your help. Please consider sponsoring us to attend the training required to offer this class by prepaying a portion of your class fee. Sponsors who prepay $40 or more by July 23rd will be entitled to a discounted price of $40 for each semester. Print and return this slip with your sponsorship or contact us with any questions:

Andrea Rice
1406 N Harris
Champaign, IL 61820
(217) 366-2963
andrealeerice@yahoo.com

or

Ann McDavitt
1108 N. Market St.
Monticello, IL 61856
(217) 762-2153
mcdavitt6@yahoo.com

Name

Address

Email

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Sponsor amt:___________

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