[Music]
“Well, thanks for joining us for this video where we’ll be talking with Donna Ferguson, who I’ll let her introduce herself, but she is the Canadian representative for Classical Conversations. So, we’ll start with our introduction and if you would just introduce yourself to our audience.”
“Hi, thanks for joining us. So, I’m Donna Ferguson. I live in Calgary. I have seven children, one husband, one dog, and we have six grandchildren. And so, this has been a long, a long journey that we’ve been on, of this homeschool life. We started with Classical Conversations—we’re heading into our seventh year—and we meet in Calgary, of course. So, we have groups all over the country. And so, why, why make the change after all of those years, and graduating some? My older daughters graduated without Classical Conversations, and for me, it was looking ahead, knowing I had four more children to go, and how tiresome it can be to have all of the different programs and all the different material, all the different resources again. And of course, I’m not in my 20s, so it looks a little different. And so, when I was introduced to this program, I could come into complete agreement with what I saw on the reading list. It made sense; we already owned most of those books. Um, knowing that I could provide a program that was consistent with all of my children and just work through it with them, same, same guide, same books until they get older, it looks a little bit different. And that just, I thought, ‘I can do this. I can breathe. I can educate them well, and I can actually not feel the stress that I have felt in the past.’ So, so, right now, I am the Country Coordinator. So, what I do is oversee all things Classical Conversations Canada. Wow! This is big! It’s exciting! That’s where we are.”
“All right, well, before we go into a lot of the nuts and bolts of Classical Conversations itself, would you give our audience a definition, a working definition of classical education, and compare it, contrast it, to other forms of education, just briefly, to let them know what makes classical education, well, what makes classical education, then what makes Classical Conversations a great resource for pursuing a classical education? That’s really good. I actually wrote it down; it looks longer than what it is. I’m going to read it, and I don’t normally read, but I think it just says it so well. So, classical education, just in general, consists of the seven liberal arts. These arts are the tools necessary for all people to obtain and keep liberty, thus the liberal arts. Latin for libera artis—my pronunciation isn’t perfect.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Not just academic subjects, but tools for all of life. In fact, these arts can serve us well in our personal and professional lives. The first of these seven liberal arts, collectively, we call them the trivium, or Latin for three roads, three paths. These focus, these are the focus of Classical Conversations. We focus on the trivium, and the names of the three arts: grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. And so, because we’re focusing with Classical Conversations on the three, we know that the others exist and we’re aware of that. As students get a little bit older, we are able to expose them to some of the other roads, I guess for lack of a better term, that we can do. And so, focusing on that, knowing that with the grammar level is memorization, it’s a lot of rote memory. We’re asked often, ‘Why are our four-year-olds memorizing these history sentences or these facts from history?’ Because it becomes part of who they are. It becomes a foundation of their education so that later, when they’re reading a book that talks about one of those geographical places, they already, it’s familiar to them, right? It’s familiar, so they can just, they’re already one step up because they’re familiar with some of the terms. And of course, as the children get a little bit older, they move into the dialectic stage where they’re starting to process, ‘I’m learning about these things, but what does that mean? And how does that apply to me?’ I want to know more. That’s where the question really starts to expand with the students, and with the parents too, we can have really beautiful conversations. The ‘why’ is no longer a tiresome word. You know, when they’re little, everything is ‘Why? Why? Why?’ Well, they actually need to know, but the ‘why’ changes because they want to learn, ‘Why is that fact important to me, and how does that pertain to me?’ But they don’t really understand until they get into their rhetorical stage. So, you know, rhetorical, when we’re having the conversation about, ‘I have the information. I have some little bit more information than what I had in that grammar stage, but then how does it actually work?’ And having my son just graduated this last year, he, when they’re teens, they don’t always understand what they have their hands on. He came home one day and he’s telling about a conversation and about how he was able to look at the information that was being discussed at a different level and say, ‘Oh, so there’s a fallacy here, and this means that,’ and he was able to take the step back and view the conversation, the disagreement that had occurred, from a different perspective because he had a foundation of the grammar. He knew some of the information. He was able to think it through in a way that I’m not sure that, um, that most of us learned to do. I certainly didn’t. Public education, I did not learn to think things through until I got a little bit older.”
“All right, well, thanks for that information. So, going back to the name of Classical Conversations, um, what kind of conversations are we talking about that would make up a classical education and specifically from your organization? Like, and also, explain if you would to our audience what it is your organization provides. Why, why would they, if they once have chosen classical education, why would choosing your, being part of your organization, be a really good next step? That’s good. So, let me go all the way back to the history. Lee Bortins founded Classical Conversations over 20 years ago. She did it with her to, four boys, two little guys and two older ones. And she did it with the, started this little group of other moms, other parents getting together with their, I think they were junior high-ish age, and they were reading some really great books, but she wanted more for them. And so, she would gather these families together, the children and the parents would read the books and then they would discuss the books: socratic dialogue. The ‘how’ and the ‘why.’ ‘Why would that character do what they did?’ ‘What else was happening in the world when that, you know, the setting of that book?’ And they were able to expand on some of those classics together. After a couple of years, they discovered, ‘Well, wait, we have all these tiny children. What can we do to equip them so that the conversations when they’re older are a little bit easier and easier for them to, maybe we get more fruit from that?’ And so, that’s where our Foundations and Essentials program came. And it’s really important to know, I think when we, looking at homeschooling, we start with our little tiny children, right? ‘I’m going to homeschool them.’ But what if you have older kids, how do we start there? And I love that I can go back and say, ‘Actually, Classical Conversations did not start with your four-year-old. It started with our teens.’ And so, knowing that it’s a place for our teens, even if they don’t have a fabulous start, we still are able to plug them in and learn and grow. So, a conversation is just like this: you have some information, I have some information, and we’re going to talk about that information, and we’re going to learn from one another, and really lift one another up in that conversation.”
“Okay, does that make sense? Yeah, it does. So, a lot of dialogue back and forth. You mentioned the term ‘Socratic,’ what do you call it? A ‘Socratic dialogue?’ And I’ve heard that term before; it sounded very intimidating. So, but you kind of break it down, if you would, like, what exactly, what is Socratic dialogue? Yeah, okay, so this is where you’re going to figure out that I’m not an expert, okay? So, I’m not sure if I can give you a really great definition on Socratic dialogue, but my understanding—that’s all I can go on—is exactly what we discussed. We’re reading a book that comes from Socrates, where they would gather together and they would just, um, what’s the, uh, not the ‘Door in the Wall.’ ‘Detectives in Togas,’ if anybody’s read that book. It’s a great book. It’s actually on one of our book lists. And so, I go back to, I read it years and years ago with my older girls, and so these boys are part of their school and they have a tutor or a lead learner or an older person who’s leading them in life. And so, they would get together, they would do some research, do some studying, do some learning together, and then they would discuss it. Okay? And so, we’re having, it’s just about having that discussion. It sounds like a really daunting term. It’s not. It’s about talking. So, we talk a lot, and we know when we talk a lot with our tiny children, it’s more important, I think, to be talking to our older children. They need us to be engaged in what they’re doing and what they’re reading. Sometimes we can, this is not a time to step back and let somebody else take over. This is the time for us as parents to step in in that role. It’s not hard. I don’t have to know everything that they’re reading. I actually have not read ‘Canterbury Tales.’ My daughter’s reading ‘Canterbury Tales,’ but I know how to ask good questions. And so, that’s what I’ve learned as a parent with Classical Conversations, being equipped in this with the program, being very intentional, okay? With equipping parents, asking really good questions. And we’ve got a whole, whole document that really outlines how to ask questions. There’s books that tell us how to ask good questions.”
“Okay. So, getting back to Classical Conversations as an organization, would you then say to our audience that, uh, your organization not only focuses on the teaching side for the students, but also equipping the parents to step into a classical education, where oftentimes a parent has no, like in myself, I have no background in classical education? So, there’s a, there’s a training portion built into Classical Conversations. Yes, it is. It’s, it’s at the forefront and we continually keep it at the forefront, that the parent is the teacher, okay, right? Not the school. I, I know our schools, our facilitators, they’re wonderful, but they’re not the teacher. I am, I am the teacher of my children. You’re the teacher of your children, teacher. Um, that’s, and that role stays very purposefully in, in position with the parent. They’re the one who’s responsible for the raising of these, of these students, these children. And so, we’re very intentional. So, how do we do that though? We need to make sure that the parents actually have the tools that they need to be able to provide this program or any program, any program, to their children. So, weekly we meet. So, the program is designed to have the three C’s: Classical, Christian, and Community. So, community is the part where we get together once a week. And so, we have our children in the program together. They will be learning together some new material and doing some memorizing, and we’re learning it right alongside them. So, really what we’re doing is reclaiming our own education. And so, whatever I didn’t get, which was a lot that I did not get, the more I know, the more I don’t know, right? It’s very humbling. So, I’m being equipped and I’m reclaiming my education, but I’m doing it right alongside my kids. So, I don’t need to sit at the table with them and teach them, although that happens too. I’m going to sit at the table with them and I’m going to learn with them. And so, that is really the, I think that’s really, uh, for me, it was one of the key parts because I don’t want to just hand my children’s education off to somebody else. I want to keep a handle on that. I want to be a part of that. I want to be engaged with them. I want to actually like my kids. I want them to like me when they’re adults.”
“Sure. That was a goal of mine, one of my goals in life. So, we do that. We also have, um, Parent Practicums that run through the summer all over the country. It looked a little different in the last couple years, but we’ve learned to adapt to the digital world. So, that’s really exciting, where you can, um, equip more people. And so, a Parent Practicum, you would come, you would attend. Um, in the past, we’ve had camps for the children. The last couple years, this last two summers, we’ve not been able to do that for obvious reasons. Um, so it’s took a little bit of a turn and it’s been really exciting. So, the parents will come, attend a Parent Practicum, learn about the classical model, learn about the trivium, the quadrivium. This last year, we were focused on writing. Last year, the year before was reading and ‘How to Read a Book.’ It’s actually the title of a book, that’s a good one. ‘How to Write’ and how to write well, and how to teach our children how to write. So, also the focus is, but I was equipped as a parent from the speakers, who are brilliant at what they do, are able to communicate really well. And so, then I can go home and, and implement what I’ve learned. The other way we have to equip parents regularly is podcasts. And so, there’s a free podcast channel, Classical Conversations Podcast Channel, and they’re short little blurbs, maybe 20 to 30 minutes at the most, of just how to do this and how to do that. So, some of the ones in the summer were, ‘How to Learn Latin Together,’ ‘How to Read a Book Together,’ ‘How to Explore the Outdoors Together,’ and she was, the presenters were giving some little tidbits for the parents then to take home.”
“Okay, yeah. Well, you speak, you spoke of Latin, and I know for me, um, I don’t know Latin. So, if I’m a little nervous about jumping into classical education, that might be a stumbling block for me. So, would you talk about, uh, those things that might sound more intimidating than they really are? I think it all sounds intimidating at first. Okay. Latin definitely still intimidates me, not going to, I’m not going to gloss that over. My kids are way smarter than me. But remember that the, the goal is to equip the parent, who then equips the children. I mean, we have, we have lead learners that help with that. And so, if you remember, I don’t have to know all of the declensions and have them all memorized in order to translate something. I don’t have to know how to do that. I need to have the tools in my hands to be able to do those things. And so, one of the shifts that’s come in our Latin program for the, for the older children, for the junior high, senior high, is moving to translating the Vulgate. And so, we’re going to shift away from what we’ve been using, using what we’ve been using as a, so Henley Latin as a tool to help us to be able to translate the Word. So, our kids are learning to translate the Bible, and I mean, how much better does it get than that? You know, they can read it in the original and then they can read it and, and translate. And really, the more you dig in and you look at, so here’s another word that scared me: parsing and diagramming. What in the world? So, red, I say it easy because I actually know what it is now, that’s right, reclaiming education. And so, when we’re parsing, taking apart a sentence, figuring out what part of speech that word has in that sentence, we’re learning to do that in English, we’re learning to do that in Latin, then we have a better understanding of our words and how important words are. And so, uh, what else would be, it’s all intimidating if you don’t know. That’s a, that’s the neat thing about it is if we’re just learning something new. So, let me talk about this grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric, and how, put it, this is a really good example that I like to use: when I’m learning something new, I’m in, I have to go all the way back to the grammar stage. So, I always thought I would be one of those knitting grandmas. I don’t know what I was thinking. I am not. But I always thought I would be, so I want my grandma, I’ll be a knitter. And I, so my mom was living with us and I thought she said, ‘I need to teach you how to knit.’ Okay, fine. So, she got the books. We have the all of the tools necessary. I don’t even know what these things are called: knitting needles and then those crochet hooks. I had to learn the grammar, how to read the book, how to read the instructions in order to be able to even begin. That’s my grammar stage. Then, in mind, that in, in the dialectic stage, I’m putting some stitches onto that needle and adding to them, knitting, purling, I don’t even know if that’s knitting, that’s knitting, knitting and purling. See, I’m really not there. I’ve figured this out yet, um, putting it together and I’m telling you, my first pieces were terrible. They were like, I was losing stitches and gaining stitches and it was like this warbled up mess. And so, I pulled it all apart, but kept at it. But okay, I’m going to at least learn how to do some squares. So, I kept at it and I got to the place where I could actually make some pretty decent squares. Now, the trick is, when did I get to the rhetorical stage? It’s when I could actually show my daughter how to put stitches on, how to begin and then how to continue and how to grow. And when she loses a stitch, I sometimes couldn’t even help her figure that out. So, it’s not just about our children, when they’re tiny, being in the grammar stage, it’s about all of us being in all of these stages at all times. And then we’re always learning and we’re always growing, and that’s truly classical, to know that we don’t ever attain, but we’re always moving through, always moving.”
“Okay, all right. Excellent. Uh, carrying on, in terms of the description of classical education, um, most people, like myself, who don’t have a home, uh, classical education background, think in terms of very discrete subjects. And you’ve got your math, science, the four core, plus options. Um, so, and that’s what I’m comfortable with. So, for someone who’s, you know, like myself and, uh, and even yourself when you started, didn’t have that classical background, and we have this comfort level with, you know, the, the core subjects and, and then the, quote, options, electives, how, how is the classical education approach structured around subjects? I mean, do you have the, the subjects like you would find in the classroom, or are they more integrated, or is it up to the parent, you know, kind of mix and match? Can you talk to that? Yeah, that’s good. And I really believe that depending on of, on a family’s direction with their classic, classical education, it could look different. Okay? So, um, now I’ve traditionally homeschooled all of my kids, and so we’ve been, and even a little bit of that unschooly. I’ve always got this undercurrent of unschooler in me. Like, ‘Nah, we’re not going to do school today.’ Okay, good, let’s go to the beach. Not the beach, let’s go to the park. Um, so, so, for me, to be able to define clearly a subject is not something I’m actually even comfortable with. I know, I know many are though, and I know that’s really the, no, that’s the way I was raised. That’s the way most of us are comfortable teaching because it’s, you can quantify it really well, right? In the classical education, we definitely have subjects, but with Classical Conversations in particular, because that’s what I’m familiar with, we are really intentional to integrate, to integrate. And so, one of my daughters says, ‘Oh, her, her tutor is Miss Jen,’ it’s just, almost ended again today. Every time somebody said, ‘Wait, that happened in that book!’ and they pull from their history into their science, she says, ‘Yay, integration!’ and then do this little celebration because it’s really important for our kids, for us, to know that life is not in boxes, and we have to be very careful to not put it in boxes. I know we’re filling up forms to keep our supervisors happy, we have to do that, but I have a hard time pulling that out of, I think what we’re learning is so big. But we definitely have some subjects. We’re talking about our little guys, we have the Foundations program. So, the subjects that are in boxes is English Grammar, Math facts, Latin, Science facts, Geography, Timeline, and History facts. So, we’re very purposeful, memorizing little bits of information, something that’s really easy to manage. Some of our sentences get kind of long, like, ‘How can a five-year-old learn that?’ They do it to a song and they’ve got it, right? Now, it’s over. It’s done. They’re running circles around us as adults whose brains are a little bit slower. And so, we’re learning about that, but we need to remember that there is math in science, and that there’s science in history. And so, when they’re little, it’s up to the parents, really. It’s on them to bring those integrations in. When they get into the Challenge level, so junior high, 12 and up, basically, um, again, the little boxes are, I’ll just redraw my notes, is Logic, which is the art of math, Grammar, which is the art of Latin, I know you would think logic is in logic, but it’s not. Logic is, is math, uh, Grammar is Latin, Research, we’re learning about life sciences, astronomers, biology, chemistry, physics, all that good stuff, Reasoning, we’re reading some of the great works, um, a lot. That’s our logic, so we’re actually doing, we actually do formal logic, uh, we’re talking about the square of opposition and all of that. See, I don’t actually have it all part of me, but you asked my daughter who’s sitting out there, she’ll tell you exactly what it is. Exposition, we’re reading really great books. There’s some fabulous books out there, we cannot read them all. And so, we are asked often, ‘Well, why isn’t this book in your reading list?’ Read it at home anyway, right? If it’s a great book. So, one of the books that moved off of our list this year is ‘Carry On, Mr. Bowditch,’ about it, how everyone say it. We’re still going to read that in our house because it’s amazing. It talks all about, he taught himself how to read and write Latin with a dictionary and a Bible. Wow.”
“Kind of the way we’re doing it.”
“Interesting. Yeah, yeah. And then of course, debate. When they’re in their first in Challenge A, they’re learning debate through cartography. So, why is mapping part of debate? Because we’re learning about the world. They learn to draw the entire world: countries, provinces, states, capitals, all of it in one year. It’s really intense. Why? We’re reading later about a war or something in history that happens in different parts of the world. Those students who have done a little bit of work know where that is and how it relates to how our borders have changed over the years, how it changes all the time. Yeah. So, so, how do we, how do I then take this my classical program and put it into the boxes? I, I don’t do it very well personally. I’m not really good at it, but it’s easy enough to do. We know that history of social studies and so to define what we’re learning, knowing that we’re learning this in a classical education instead of social studies, right? And science and math, we’re integrating really purposefully.”
“Okay. So, let’s say a family decides to, to pursue Classical Conversations. Is there a set of resources that they buy from Classical Conversations, and if so, then if you would explain or describe what it is that a family would be buying from Classical Conversations? So, in order to become part of a program, you need to understand that we have, um, communities. So, there’s a community in Edmonton, there’s a number of communities in Calgary, in Whitecourt, um, all across the country, quite a few on, so we’re all the way across from city to sea, which is really exciting. Um, but to be part of that group, you need to find and we help you, right? So, they’ll send us messages and who’s the leader of that area, and we help connect them to local, close to them, families that we’re doing community with. So, we’ve been part of a community event, so that means you’re meeting once a week. The other days of the week, you’re working on your own at home. Lots of different ways to attack that. As many as there are families, that’s how many ways. My approach is very different than what your approach would be. Resources though, we work really hard at making sure that our resource list is not exhaustive. It’s not really long. So, we have for the Foundations program, so age four to twelve, we have one guide, has all three cycles. We do a three-year cycle and it’s one book for all of your children. It’s not a consumable. We have access to printing all kinds of worksheets and whatever you would want to do, but then again, that’s going to suit your flavor. We’re not a workbook family. We do some, little girls like to fill in blanks. I don’t know, my son did not. Um, so whatever suits your family. But really the foundational books that you need for Foundations is the Foundation’s Guide and a tin whistle. I know some of them, some people like me hide them when tin whistle season is over. Not now, they’re big when they were little because, wow. So, they’re learning about basic music theory and they have to have their own because we can’t share those even in the pre-COVID world we weren’t sharing those things, right? There’s lots of book lists to, to be able to add to your program. You need to have a math program as well. Students need to learn a separate math program. We have math in it, but it’s not a full complete program. Okay. And then when they hit age nine, they can do the afternoon part of the day, which is called Essentials. Love Essentials. It is a full complete English language arts program. So, there’s ‘Essentials of the English Language.’ We have a guide for that one per family. We just got a new guide this year, but I had the previous guide for five years, right? So, I used it for all of my kids coming up through. I only have one more left to go through the Essentials program. Um, so we have a guide. We follow through, we’re following through that guide in, in community, right? So, you’re not just all on your own, you’re being coached, that’s a great word, coached along the way on what to do and how to present and then of course, take your own family flair on that. So, the other part of our Essentials program is the ‘Essentials of the English Language.’ We use IEW source text for our writing, so they’re going to learn the ‘Institute of Excellence in Writing,’ so they’re going to learn to do keyword outlines and write all of the different types of essays that come with them. So, we don’t use the whole program, we just use the source text. Cycle 3 is country specific, so we did Canadian this last year. It was great. We learned all the Canadian history about some of the, uh, great Canadian artists and composers and it was a good year. And then the other part would build in this math review game. And so, when we first started, I thought, ‘Who in the world is going to want to play math games?’ Clearly not me. The children start right from the beginning, ‘When’s math games? When’s math games?’ Because they’re just, they’re building their skills. They’re practicing what they know, learning a little bit here and there. It’s not their math program, but they’re playing this, sometimes competitive, sometimes not, depends on the students, if they’re gonna cry, we don’t let them cry, yeah.”
“Okay, so that’s, so that’s, um, so yes, Foundations, the guide and the tin whistle. For Essentials, the guide, the source text, that’s it. Okay. So, Donna, would you list out some of the, the advantages for, for classical education? Advantages?”
“So many.”
“Or to add to that, not only advantages, but what, what’s something that makes classical education unique? Like, how is it different from other methods that are out there? I love it. That’s a great question. So, we understand how children develop and that they develop very similarly, right? There’s a natural bent in children, a curiosity to learn. And so, that’s why they start with questions. ‘But what is this?’ and ‘Name this’ and ‘Describe this’ and ‘What is that?’ and ‘What is this?’ So, we’re talking about naming as one of the key, of the key tools. There’s 15 tools that we use and naming being one of them, especially with our little ones. I talked about that with the learning to knit. I had to learn to name those materials that I needed to be able to do that before I could actually do it. And so, we know that they naturally are curious and they naturally want to learn and so all we’re doing, the classical approach is really going on with the way that we naturally learn. So, we begin by filling them full of all of that information, the grammar. And then, okay, if you’ve had some children or you’ve been around kids for any length of time, you know that when they hit that 11-year, 12-year mark, they, Dorothy Sayers wrote an essay, ‘Lost Tools of Learning.’ If you want to look that up, it’s brilliant, you can get it online. But she talks about three different stages. One is the ‘poll parrot’ when they’re in the grammar stage. They’re just repeating, they repeat, repeat, sometimes things you don’t really want them to repeat, right? So, we can, what’s on the radio, or that comes out of them. Then they move into that, into the dialectic stage or we, that’s what we call it, or the ‘pert’ stage. So, you know that little preteen that is like, ‘I know all that. You can’t tell me what to do.’ They’re that way on purpose. God made them that way. They aren’t really naughty little children, um, I say this with my, my, I have three, I have two batches of children, so I have my, my older girls and then my younger ones with 11-year gap between number three and four. That’s how I have so many. That’s why I cannot be 20 anymore. And so, I know with my one of my older ones, oh that girl, she challenged me every step of the way. She’s the one who’s most like me, and I thought it was disrespect or lack of compliance. No, she was just genuinely more verbally curious than the others. And so, I had this chance for a redo with these four younger ones that aren’t that young anymore, um, and so now when that, that push came, that pert stage came, I was like, ‘Oh, you want to know more. I’m going to tell you more.’ I’m not just going to send you for the information. I’m going to go with you and we’re going to learn together. So, at pert stage, we’re going through that together. And then as I get a little bit older and you can see the shift come, you’ve got kids are a little bit older, you know they start to like, ‘Oh, I get it, and I’m going to take that on for me.’ And so, it’s ‘poetic.’ They’re able to verbalize beautifully. They’re able to recite information that they’ve learned and inspire others, and that’s how you know they’ve come through all those stages. They’re already wired for that. This program is nothing magical. It just follows the way that they already learn and that any classical model should do the same.”
“Okay. That’s fine. Well, speaking of classical model, you brought some resources here. So, you can tell us what, what it is that you brought? Yeah. So, I just pulled out the one. This is the Foundations Guide for our four to twelve-year-olds. All three cycles in here, all kinds of helps and resources. And I don’t know if you’ll be able to see it, but really one week, one page, memory work. Simple, easy to find, easy to read, easy to navigate for the parent and for the student as well. But here, I’ve got these extra resources I brought. So, this one here, ‘Classical Education Made Approachable.’ You can buy these on the bookstore if you go to the website canadacc.ca. I’ve got lots of copies of this. This is the one that I call this the ‘Dad Book’ because this is the one I gave my husband. ‘Here, you don’t know what I’m doing, but here, you need to learn.’ And so, he read it, lots of dots. Me too. It goes through all of the program, so everything that we’ve talked about, this book outlines it in a really clear manner, something you can go back to. You can write, mark it up, you can write in it. Rewriting books, right? I know, that’s a good thing, right? It’s classical. So, write in this book. But this is a great one to give if you have anybody who’s trying to figure out, ‘You’re going to do CC, but you just need a elevator speech. What is this all about?’ This talk today was not an elevator speech. This book is good for that. Then we talk about our grammar stage, the core. Lee Bortins wrote these books. This is not a new book, it’s been around for a long time, talking about the grammar stage, how our children learn, why they learn the way they do, and how to help them and how to help ourselves as we learn alongside them. The question, I just finished reading this one again, it’s so good. All about all of the different types of questions, right? We’re talking about conversations, but we need to learn to ask really good questions of ourselves and of our students, of everybody, but have our children learn to ask good questions so that they are wondering, ‘Why is the world the way it is right now? And what got us here? And how do we get through this?’ And there’s lots of answers and that’s brilliant. And then the conversation because we’re moving on grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, right? So, the conversation, ‘How to have those beautiful conversations with our teens, with our older kiddos?’ I mean, it’s not necessarily, it’s good for the little guys, but really the little guys are still down here. But if you’ve got anybody that’s a little bit older, read this. It’s, if you only read these books and you never do CC, you’re going to be so much further ahead, even from a parenting perspective. Really helpful.”
“Okay. So, initially, you know, the viewer is seeing lots of paper here, so obviously they’re not going to have to do everything, read all of this all at once. So, a little bit, a little bit by bite, they’re going to eventually go through this. So, uh, as a word of encouragement to anyone who’s watching, it sounds like the Foundations Workbook really is a handbook as it were for the parents. There’s a Monday to Friday type scheduling exactly for the whole school year. Monday to Friday. Okay. So, Monday to Friday scheduling. It’s mapped out. You’re not having to reinvent the wheel. Others have gone before you and written it down, so you can follow. So, that’s really encouraging. And then in addition to this, the parent would be reading, um, maybe one book a semester or like, how often? You’d start with like, like this one here perhaps. Yeah, I would start, yes, this would be a great one to start with, yes, right? Just to get an overview of everything. But then really, it depends on where you’re at with your students. Okay, right? If you’re jumping in with a high schooler, you’re going to want to get right into the conversation, like, ‘Where are we going to get caught up?’ But then go backwards again. Yeah, yeah. So, the encouraging part is, it’s mapped out for you Monday to Friday for the whole school year, but then you’re not, again, you’re not left alone even with that. You’ve got a wealth of training resources for the parent so that you’re equipped and you’re not felt, you don’t feel like you’re adrift, right? Like you bought a workbook, but now what, right? Great workbook, lots of information, but then you have the bigger picture as well to learn. So, uh, I would say this is a, an upfront investment of your time, but then the, the dividends pay out over a lifetime of your children. So, there’s a, there’s a, there is some homework for the parent to do, um, and it is a, a foundational type homework. So, once you have that foundation, then of course, which takes always takes the longest time for anything, laying that foundation, but once you’ve got the foundation, you build on it, um, very soundly and, and I’m not quickly, but, um, you’re not having to to relearn stuff every single day, every single time you look at something. So, yeah. So, I would definitely encourage all the families to at least reach out to the Classical Conversation website and then to you with specific questions and then take advantage of those, um, open houses that you mentioned as well. So, yeah.”
“Coming to a community near you. Yes, that’s right. Thank you, I appreciate your time.”
