Adjusting Expectations

It happened while I was riding to my in-laws with my wife, Emily, after church: the Lit/Comp conversation. We had only been married for a short while, but had just found out that we were expecting our first child. I expressed how excited I was that someday I would be teaching high school literature and composition to my son or daughter. There was a small pause then Emily said, “Well, our child is going to be taught using the Charlotte Mason Method, remember? So you are going to have to change your approach. It’s different from what your used too.”

I was a little affronted.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I have taught a few classes now and feel pretty good about my approach.”

“I know you have had good classes with good results and the students have learned a great deal. This isn’t an indictment on your teaching. But you don’t teach using Miss Mason’s Method.” My wife could sense me becoming nettled.

“Ok.” I huffed. “What do I do that is different from Charlotte Mason?”

“Well” she answered, choosing her words carefully. “One thing you do is a little too much lecturing in your classes and you have the student’s read too much too quickly.”

There it was, clear and to the point.  Ah, I thought, so I need to basically change the way I teach. This irked me even more. Thus began a conversation that lasted until we got to my in-laws and beyond. It culminated with Emily gently charging me to read Charlotte Mason’s works and to begin applying her principals to my classes and my own approach to reading.

So I did. I read intermittingly from her volumes until I signed up for the Idyll Challenge, a two year challenge started by Art Middlekauff to get fathers reading Miss Mason’s six volumes. Then I started slowly implementing different aspects of the Method in my literature and composition courses, such as limiting my lecture time in classes to keep from being the “showman to the universe” and kept myself from “the paralyzing and stupefying effect” of a “flood of talk” (3/188, 3/229). I began eschewing teacher directed questions that looked for one right answer, and instead presented assignments that sought to encourage the student’s creativity and own personal take on a work of prose or poetry or drama. My goals shifted from how much we could cover, to how much we cared about what we covered. In my own reading, I began applying the habit of reading “with a view to narration” for the first time (1/233).

It has been five years since our conversation. And now I realize that, Yes, I needed to change the way I taught. My ultimate goals did not need to change. I always wanted to do what was best for the student first, and I wanted their personhood to not be infringed upon. I didn’t even need to change all of my pedagogical tools; I had picked up habits from a number of college professors that aligned nicely with Miss Mason’s Method.

But I needed to hear and read and ponder Charlotte Mason’s words, to appreciate her care and love and attention. I needed to see how deftly this Method is woven together. And in my own life and in the life of my students, I have.  I have seen how “literature has become a living power” by applying Miss Mason’s Method, and how this literature has wonderfully formed the composition style and skill of students (6/185). Their works often do have “literary and sometimes poetic value” (6/194).

So now, when my wife and I have a conversation about teaching our high school children literature and composition, there is no frustration or sighing or confusion. We are in harmony and feel no tension. There is joyful expectation.