Introductions Thread (Come say hi.)

Education Forum
95

Hello,

Today is our first homeschool day for our daughter’s seventh grade year. Our three older kids were homeschooled half-day/half public school, (unusual, but it worked very well in our situation). They eventually graduated from public high school. I anticipate that our youngest will continue with homeschool full time.

We are in a Classical Conversations group. Like others have expressed, we are happy with the classical method, and we love our CC families, but are not supportive of the anti-evolution portion of the curriculum. I’ve seen and heard of much worse amongst Christian homeschools, tho. At least It Couldn’t Just Happen is not hostile towards EC. Still, integrating a certain position on the topic of Origins seems to me counter to the CC ideal of teaching “HOW to think, not WHAT to think.” We have primarily emphasized with our daughter that the differences of belief about creation should not be divisive, but sadly it is. I’ve already read the book with her. I am thankful for this forum, and for my scientist husband to guide us thoughtfully and lovingly through these topics.

4 Likes
96

Hi,

My name is Tim and I am a just starting my homeschooling journey.

I have 2 boys, one 4, one 17 months, and one more on the way.

My wife and I read a paper that really impacted the way we thought about family, called refamily, before having our first son and it talked about the Biblical idea of family being a multi-generation team on a mission. After reading it, homeschool just seemed like a natural way for our family to try to move towards that vision of being a unified team. We looked into homeschooling and liked a lot of other aspects about it too.

As far as finding Biologos and “converting” to EC. I was raised in a conservative/fundamentalist Christian private school and taught a lot of the AIG material in middle school. During college I went to a church that taught that it was okay to not believe the earth was 6000 years old and I proceeded to debate one the pastors and point out his “errant ways” on his blog…thankfully he and the other friends I met at the church were super patients with me :slight_smile:

After a while though I experienced what seemed to me to be a more genuine feeling of Christian love from my new friends and community and couldn’t deny that my new friends I made were more genuine of Christians than I was even though they were "so far off in there liberal non-YEC views :slight_smile: " and this experience softened me from making the YEC views so central even though I still mostly held to them.

After a bit though I got more interested in study of Scripture myself and I began to see the theological errors of YEC and became an agnostic in the area of origins and took the approach that the Bible and evolution aren’t in conflict but still didn’t accept evolution myself.

Then about 6-9 months ago my current church did an apologetic sermon series and one week they covered evolution vs creation, they showed us clips of a Lee Strobel documentary pointing out the errors of evolution. I felt several of his arguments were not giving the other side a fair hearing and I also realized I had never actually studied evolution from someone who wasn’t trying to disprove it, so decided to spend some time studying evolution from someone who actually wasn’t teaching it with an agenda to disprove it.

I eventually came across Biologs and found the evidence overwhelming for evolution and actually have found it to even resolve some theological difficulties in my Christian faith.

I was excited to find this forum as I am a bit out from where it would really make a difference in homeschool curriculum (except that I don’t skip over the references when reading dinosaur books to my son now :wink: ) but from what I’ve found so far the Christian homeschool curriculum seems to start teaching anti-evolutionary/pro-YEC agenda pretty early on.

I’ve been able to sit down with my wife and explain why I now believe in evolution, she’s not opposed to it, but just still processing it all.

I look forward to connecting and giving/receiving mutual support from other like-minded homeschool parents on this forum.

-Tim

6 Likes
97

Hi Tim, and welcome! (I’m not a homeschooling parent, actually, but I cheat and drop in here too – our two boys both went to a Christian K-12 school where I teach, and are just out of college now.)

But in any case, I’m sure you’ll make good connections here, and while I may not be up on all the latest homeschooling curricula I do fellowship with and respect a lot of home schoolers through my associations at school. Patience is indeed a virtue! Thanks for sharing a bit of your story.

1 Like
98

Welcome, Tim. Glad you found us.

You would be surprised how soon the indoctrination starts, depending on which curriculum you use. Hope you and your wife can get on the same page (at least somewhat) about how to approach the issue with your kids, but you are right that you can avoid the really sticky stuff for a while yet. Feel free to come vent a little when/if your homeschooling community drives you a little batty on the topic-that’s what most of us find. Though it sounds like your church is really open about discussing these things, which is more than most of us can say.

1 Like
99

Mr Holt, I hope you and your family are well and adjusting to Germany well. Best wishes on learning two languages!

100

A post was split to a new topic: Sample of errors in It Couldn’t Just Happen

101

Hi,

I couldn’t believe such a forum ever exists. :grinning:
I have no kids but decided to homeschool my children if I had any years ago.

2 Likes
102

Welcome! There’s lots of good info around here for people who don’t have kids. We can all be lifelong learners, right?

1 Like
103

Hello!

I’m a homeschooling mom of four, ages 10, 8, 7, and 5, so 4th, 2nd, 1st, and pre-K. I’m so thankful for this forum and looking forward to learning from those who are MUCH wiser than myself! :slight_smile:

Homeschooling was a decision I made after realizing the public school choices were not ideal for my kiddos. We are halfway into our fifth year homeschooling. Our homeschooling community is gracious and wonderful.

I came to BioLogos because I’m reading more into the possibility of evolution and I’m not really sure what to teach my kids. We’ve been going along with the literal translation of Genesis (because it’s included in our catechism), but I’ve dropped any education concerning a seven-day creation. They’re still very young, but my oldest is a science buff, and I know the question will arise eventually. We’re also part of a Bible study community that teaches seven-day creation and I’m not sure how to address that. Hopefully, this forum can give some answers.

Thanks for reading my introduction. Looking forward to connecting and communicating!

3 Likes
104

Welcome to the forum! I will let more experienced voices address your concerns with homeschooling and parent groups, but certainly many here can relate to your discomfort in church and bible studies. I try to just focus on the things I share and have in common, but it is a bit sad when we feel we cannot feel safe to openly and lovingly discuss issues among those people who we should feel safest in their midst.

1 Like
105

Welcome, @astephens! I can relate to your predicament, as I’m also still in the midst of trying to figure out what and how to teach my kids (oldest is 1st grade so I like to think I have time, but it seems we never have as much as we think…). It’s a process, so it’s good to know that others are wrestling with some of the same questions. Feel free to post questions or observations you have on faith and science, or about curriculum or other homeschoolish things. :slight_smile:

1 Like
106

Hi Ariel, glad you found your way here. I wrote up some thoughts on teaching Genesis to my kids here, so because I’m too lazy to type out similar ideas, I’m just going to link it. I think it is safe to say that many of us have been pushed to clarify our thinking on these issues by the fact that we have to have something coherent to say to our kids. You are in good company there.

3 Likes
107

Hello, everyone. I have four kiddos (8, 7, 3, and 9 months). We live in East Africa, where we work in Bible translation. I’m an ESL teacher by training and am involved in training our national co-translators. We work on a team here that consists of 22 missionaries and 21 kids, and most of us who are based in the headquarters city have kind of a one-room schoolhouse situation going on, where our children are basically homeschooled cooperatively by MK teachers who are a part of our team. I do the homeschooling myself during some seasons, when we are on furlough or when there is no teacher present here, and I love those times. I also love the times when they are able to learn alongside their best friends, right across the street.
We have used Sonlight as our main curriculum and are generally very happy with it. I was cruising around the Sonlight facebook forum surreptitiously looking for ways to adapt or switch curriculum to fit with our family’s approach to science (which is different from most of our team members whose kids are also in the co-op), and I saw someone mention that Biologos (who I’ve followed by email for a while) now has a homeschool forum and I was excited to come and see it!

5 Likes
108

Welcome, Erin! I’m also a Sonlight user and really like their approach to history especially. This part of the forum isn’t as active as the open forum, but feel free to start a topic on something if you don’t see it addressed elsewhere. :slight_smile:

109

Hi Erin! Glad you found us. That was probably me trying to get Sonlight forum people to come check us out. I’m a former ESL teacher too, and now I work on a Bible translation project in Mexico. Like Laura said, there isn’t a whole lot of daily action on the HS forum, but feel free to come share resources or commiserate about the social pitfalls of cooperative homeschooling in a conservative missionary community (if your experience is anything like mine… :wink: )

110

Hi, i have 4 kids in grades 9, 6, 4, and PreK. I started homeschooling when my oldest was in 1st grade. He was attending a private Christian school and was bored. My local public schools aren’t great, so I homeschooled him. We loved it and kept going. At that time, I was teaching from a YEC perspective, and I have several Apologia books and AiG books and such.

A few years back, I started to question YEC. I also questioned just about everything else in my life, including belief in God at all. Last year i ended up an atheist for about half the year. I have come back from that and, with the help of the wonderful elders at my church, I’m doing really well spiritually. I am very firmly NOT YEC though, and my entire church is. YEC actually was a big roadblock to my finding God again. The Language of God and John Walton’s explanation of Genesis 1-11 helped a ton. So I’m good with science and the inerrant Bible. It’s a bit lonely being the only person at church that believes in evolution, but I’m working through that. A small amount of people there know about it, but most don’t.

My kids currently believe YEC, but I have switched to using secular science materials. One of my kids is autistic and a bit confused by the switch. For the other two it hasn’t come up much yet, as they both are doing chemistry. My high schooler will do Biology next year, and I plan to add in the aforementioned books along with the Miller-Levine biology textbook we’ll be using. I want him to at least know that the Bible and evolution don’t have to be mutually exclusive. So if he ever decides that he believes evolution, he won’t throw the whole Bible out (that isn’t what happened to me, but I’ve seen it happen to many atheists that were raised YEC).

I’m thrilled to find this forum!

6 Likes
111

Welcome Boscopup! While Christy is our resident homeschool guru, I have grandkids your kids general age, and am sympathetic to your concerns. At least for me, your goal of growing your kids to understand that Christianity is not dependent on holding a particular position on science and origins is important.

I think for many of us, the local church is not a very welcome environment to discuss these issues which is unfortunate, but hope you find some sense of community here and join in the discussion. It will never replace a local community of faith, but can provide a way to express and share with others without fear of belittlement.

1 Like
112

Welcome! Glad you found us and you are working through your questions.

Have you talked with @Kathryn_Applegate about the possibility of piloting the BioLogos resource that is in development for high school biology? It goes along side your chosen biology curriculum to work through various faith and science issues like ways of knowing, evolution, ancient earth, climate change, bioethics, conservation, reproductive technology… If you PM her through the system (click on your avatar at the upper right of the screen and then click on the envelope icon, and it works like e-mail.) she could get you more info. :slight_smile:

113

Welcome! I’m so glad to hear that your faith has survived a rough patch – BioLogos has helped me a lot in figuring out some answers to some things but also which things I don’t need exact answers for. Best wishes as you navigate that journey, especially as you try to discern the best way to address the topic with your children. :slight_smile:

1 Like
114

Thanks for the welcome!

@jpm, I am definitely happy to be able to discuss things freely here. My church family has been great, and so far I haven’t had anyone belittle me. But they do teach YEC throughout, and often a false dichotomy is presented - YEC or naturalism. Some people are probably treading more carefully when discussing with me due to the faith journey I’ve had to take the last several months. I’ve had extensive back and forth with one elder, and he hasn’t pushed YEC on me, but I also told him before we started talking (while I was an atheist) that YEC makes me want to run the other way. I’m still struggling with that. It’s a pretty emotional thing for me. Hopefully that will get better over time.

@Christy, I’ve messaged Kathryn. Thanks!

3 Likes