Becoming More Fully Ourselves

Dear Parents,

I was speaking recently to a parent with children enrolled at a local, private school when she asked me about how we do homework at Ambleside. I was prepared with a ready response, as I get this question quite a bit from people considering our school. 

As you well know, in all of our grades, children are required to read, or be read to, for 30 minutes each evening. In the younger grades, students have their weekly home narration assignment and may be asked to work on math facts if they are not mastering them at school. Beginning in 6th grade, students can expect 30-60 minutes of math homework each evening.  

“We do our work at school,” I told her, as she flipped through an 8th grader’s science journal and then looked at a 2nd grader’s cursive practice book. Her quick and sincere reply was, “I do like the sound of that.”

When you re-enroll your children at Ambleside this month, you are signing them up for training in diligent and excellent work. 

Consider the foundations of our Charlotte Mason philosophy: children are born persons, bearers of God’s image. And the educational tools to which Mason directs us: the curiosity-inspiring atmosphere of a life-giving environment, the discipline that leads to good lifelong habits, and inspirational ideas from a banquet of original thought.

Ginnie Wilcox, former head of school here at Ambleside, wrote in 2015, “The written and oral work of the Ambleside curriculum stems from this philosophy, employs these educational tools, and builds on the idea that work is most human when it is not a task to check off or a grade to earn, but a process through which we might become more fully ourselves, respond to knowledge, and co-create with our Creator.”  

Students at Ambleside are asked to write, discuss, consider, illustrate, compute, listen, paint, and diagram — as a response to their learning rather than as a task to complete. They work alongside classmates, under the guidance of a teacher, and are not asked to figure it out on their own at home. At times, there is collaboration among the students and they lean on one another for help.

But what is ultimately the result of this thoughtful assignment and execution of work?

Returning to that 2015 Ambleside Notes entry from Ginnie:

“Students breathing in such an atmosphere develop a growth-oriented mindset and are intrinsically motivated to learn and work. When students are treated as persons, they desire to know and delight in responding to this knowledge. They begin to focus on the process of work, asking: “What do I need to do to complete the work well? What skills will I use? What do I need to know that I don’t know? How should I approach the work as a whole, and in its parts?” As the students give to their work the skills and knowledge they have acquired, they receive from the process of working, new insights and knowledge in the sphere that they are exploring. They grow to engage in the process of working well, regardless of variables like grades, feelings, and teachers.”

What do you want out of school for your children? To check boxes? 1st grade, check.

Of course you want something more.

You want work that is intentional and worthy. 

As I mentioned during the Parent-Teacher Fellowship last week, each Wednesday evening, beginning in the second semester, a journal will be coming home with your child for you to look through. 

I encourage you to flip through the pages, delighting together in these works of their minds and hands, whether it’s a map of the U.S., a diagram of the internal workings of a volcano, a transcription of a poem by Longfellow, or an illustration of the Tale of the Fir Tree.

This isn’t idle or busy work. It’s worthy work that connects us with the One who made us to delight in work, and to delight in Him.

Ginnie said it so well: “Work is essential to personhood. It is not a consequence of the Fall, but a gift given by our Creator so that we can co-create in, with, and through Him, receiving the great inheritance He offers us. We, and our students, are in communion with the Almighty when we work well.”

Affectionately,

Krise Nowak, M.Ed.
Head of School