I had the opportunity to watch the Restful Teaching seminar by Andrew Kern and Matt Bianco with a friend via download replays and it was fabulous! The seminar had five sessions, including:
- Restful Teaching: Why restful teaching rises when teaching is oriented toward perceiving truth and Truth
- Restful Planning: There are three modes of teaching/learning (the three columns) that enable us to plan restfully
- The Restful Curriculum: The arts of truth-fishing
- Restful Pedagogy: Teaching truth
- Restful Assessment: Evaluating truth perception
Today, I thought I would share my notes in the hope of easing some anxiety you may have as we gear up to begin the 2016-2017 academic year. I've highlighted some key points in pink that stuck out to me. If you've watched or were able to attend the Restful Teaching seminar, I'd love to chat in the comments section below.
Restful Teaching
Restful
teaching is not dumbing down
We
should ask ourselves, "Is it philosophy if it can't be put into
practice?"
Principles
govern practices, practices are individual
Andrew
Kern suggested 5 principles
- Principles set you free
- Practices not derived from principles enslave you - a person who is not thinking for himself is not a free person
- Bad caricatures lead to bad thinking, bad thinking leads to bad actions
- Therefore, we need to align our thinking and actions - thinking guides actions (this is wisdom)
- Everything begins with a caricature
Caricature
-
noun
- a picture, description, etc., ludicrously exaggerating the peculiarities or defects of persons or things:
His caricature of the mayor in this morning's
paper is the best he's ever drawn.
- the art or process of producing such pictures, descriptions, etc.
- any imitation or copy so distorted or inferior as to be ludicrous.
Pasted from <http://www.dictionary.com/browse/caricature>
What
we are is more important than what we do
Saying
"yeah, but" is Socratic discussion
Restful Planning
Matt
Bianco began with Where is the Lord? - we see this in the Gospel of John,
chapter 1
The
object of education is to train our children to perceive truth, so when truth
is the Lord, they recognize Him.
There
are two truths - upper case "T" truth and lower case "t"
truth
Truth
is God. Everything else is truth.
We
need restfulness in rigor and diligence
Content
|
Truth
(Logos Incarnate)
|
Skills
(art of truth perception)
|
Tell
|
Discuss an artifact
or phrase
|
Model
|
Recall
|
Contemplation of
artifact or phrase
|
Imitate
|
Reproduce
(assessment)
|
Joy incarnate
|
Feedback on mastery
of the given skill or art
|
incarnate
adj (usually immediately postpositive)
1. possessing bodily form, esp the human form: a devil incarnate.
2. personified or typified: stupidity incarnate.
3. (Botany) (esp of plant parts) flesh-coloured or pink
vb (tr)
4. to give a bodily or concrete form to
5. to be representative or typical of
[C14: from Late Latin incarnāre to make flesh, from Latin in-2 + carō flesh]
Pasted from <http://www.thefreedictionary.com/incarnate>
To incarnate means to become flesh. The incarnation of Jesus
is when the human nature (Jesus the man) was added to the nature of God the
second person of the Trinity. It is where God became a man (John 1:1, 14, Phil. 2:5-8). It was the voluntary act of Jesus to humble Himself so
that He might die for our sins (1 Pet. 3:18). Thus, Jesus has two natures: Divine and human. This is
known as the Hypostatic Union.
Pasted from <https://carm.org/dictionary-incarnation>
Every
piece of information orders the soul towards Truth if you use it to do so
Curriculum
makes you a slave
How
to implement chart above:
Choose
any subject (ex. History)
Make
list of truths/principles regarding that subject
Make
list of desired skills you want your child to attain while studying that
subject
Make
list of content to study about that subject - should be smallest and most
insignificant list
"Succession
is difficult." - Andrew Kern
It's
totally OK to learn as we teach.
- Identify the goal or desired outcome of teaching each subject
- What column on the chart does that goal come from?
- Teach accordingly/appropriately
- Having taught based on the column, assess them, give specific feedback
Constantly
reorient, repent, and take your time
Content
is less important than Truth. Truth
exalts content to its honorable place as a servant, but when content raises
itself to the position of master it renders everything meaningless.
Truth
is way more important than skills.
Restful Curriculum
7
Liberal Arts - grammar, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, geometry, harmonics,
astronomy
Mathematics
is a place of rest. It's orderly and
ends with an answer.
Restful Pedagogy
Don't
try to justify the reason for teaching - don't reduce to utilitarian (ex. You
will need this math because some day your going to be a ….) - in line with Charlotte Mason
Restful Assessment
Goal
is to point students toward Logos - orient towards Truth
We
want to perceive and embody Truth.
Curriculum:
learn to perceive Truth
Pedagogy:
Incarnate the Logos when we teach so that the student having perceived the
Truth has incarnated.
Students
will learn what I embody, not what I intend to teach. (modeling for imitation)
More than any other lesson, we must teach how to have
faith in a world that doesn't have it!
Ephesians
5:1
We
have to demonstrate faith in discord.
Assessment:
Able to perceive and therefore incarnate Truth/Logos of the lesson
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