Learning Without Going to School
Filed under: Being a Stay at Home Mom, Furthering our Education
There are times and seasons for everything, and sometimes it’s not our time to go back to school. This is especially true for mothers of young children. This doesn’t, however, mean we have to turn off our brain until we have the time and money to continue our formal education.
One thing I learned from homeschooling my children was that education doesn’t have to happen in a classroom. If you have young children, you can use the principles of homeschooling to educate yourself. Children don’t just learn from workbooks and textbooks. Their best learning comes out of their own passions, and happens in a variety of ways.
While educating my children, I learned the subjects I taught them myself. If they were interested in dinosaurs, we read books on the subject and watched videos. We traveled to museums to look at bones, and had pretend digs in the sandbox. We decorated bedrooms with dinosaur pictures and quizzed each other on their identities. We even pretended to be dinosaurs. In order to answer their questions, I often found myself reading more grown-up material on the subject.
As your children develop passions, learn right alongside them. Learning with your children is fun. You’ll share a common knowledge that can be talked about over dinner or in the car and the time you spend together on activities related to the new hobby will bring you closer together and create memories. While they subjects they’re passionate about may not be what you’d choose, you’ll find it easier to justify the time when it’s for the children.
When you have time to study something on your own, choose a subject you’re passionate about. Whether it’s something practical, like French cooking, or something strictly academic, you’ll be refreshed by your personal learning time and find yourself looking forward to each day. If you go back to school someday, you may find you’re able to test out of some classes because of your personal studies.
Right now, I’m learning Portuguese. There are Brazilians in my congregation who help me out and answer my questions. I started by tracking down free lessons on the Internet and now have an actual college textbook to study. In addition, I’m reading the Book of Mormon in Portuguese. I only have a few minutes each day to put into the project, but little by little, my knowledge is growing. Because languages are very hard for me, I’d be too afraid to take a class, but working at home with the help of friends makes me feel safe about tackling something that has always seemed impossible. I can work at my own pace each day.
To begin your personal university, decide what to study. Choose something you think you’ll stick to and have the resources to learn. Next, find out what help is available. Search for books, websites, field trips, and knowledgeable friends. Make a list to use when you lay out your plan.
Next, decide how you like to learn. I prefer to learn most subjects by reading and writing about them. However, with the Portuguese, I soon learned I needed a formal curriculum, with actual grammar. The trend today is to learn naturally from context, and this is how the courses I tried worked. It didn’t work for me. I tried several courses before choosing a textbook instead. If you find you aren’t learning fast enough, it probably isn’t the subject, but the method you’ve chosen. Experiment until you know how you learn best.
Schedule your study time. If you don’t schedule it, it probably won’t get done. I study for an hour before I go to bed at night and carry flashcards in my purse for those moments when I find myself waiting in the car or a doctor’s office for someone.
Know where to go for help when you are stuck. Today, you can find someone who knows almost anything on the Internet. Your church or clubs may also have resources. When my children were homeschooling, they contacted Ask-a-Scientist websites for their questions that were over my head. Having experts to turn to give you confidence and make the study more fun.
Don’t wait until your children are grown to start learning something new. If you have just fifteen minutes a day, you can start to learn new skills. You can write a novel by writing just one page every single day. You can learn a new subject by reading about it for fifteen minutes a day.
Make a plan and get started!
We Are Women Who Dedicate Ourselves to Strengthening Marriages, Families, and Homes.
Filed under: Childcare, Discussion of General Relief Society Meetings, Discussion of Relief Society Lessons, Furthering our Education, Home and Family, Homemaking Skills, Marriage, Mother-Daughter Relationships, Provident Living, Running a Household, Service
As women of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), we are dedicated to “strengthening marriages, families, and homes.” We live in a day when more than 50% of marriages in our country fail, dividing families, and wrecking homes. Latter-day Saint women are not left to their own devices, or the offerings of a crumbling culture, to fortify the marriage, family, and home. We have a prophet and God uses him to help us strengthen our marriages, families, and homes. We also have the Holy Ghost to help us apply this general counsel to our specific family’s needs.
I have been working on my Master’s Degree in Education. A few days ago, a friend asked about my thesis/project. I shared that as a society, parents have pushed their children into education, with little thought of teaching them how to build a happy marriage, manage family, and home. Education is important, but not to the exclusion of home and family. The result has been high divorce rates, broken homes, and dysfunctional families. Many fathers do not seem to know how to be fathers, many mothers do not seem to know how to be mothers, most struggle with debt, and few know how to maintain a home. I became LDS when I was a senior in high school, and had been raised in a home broken by divorce. The woman I was talking to is a divorcee. She said that her son needed a man in his life to help teach him how to be a man. Then she asked, “Donna, what is the solution?” Though my thesis deals primarily with the lost arts and relationships that were once nurtured in the home, I feel the best solution is found in gospel living.
Where can a person learn what they need to be a better spouse and parent, especially if they were never taught? Some of the resources the Lord has blessed us with are:
The Scriptures teach about healthy family relationships and standards of gospel living, and when the counsel found in scriptures are heeded, bring happiness into our lives.
The Family: A Proclamation to the World teaches us principles of happy families.
General, Stake, and Ward Conferences are where we are taught standards of gospel living and we receive counsel for families, marriages, and relationships.
Relief Society and Young Women’s organizations help women strengthen testimonies through gospel teaching and teach women how to be good daughters, sisters, wives, mothers, and neighbors, as well as, skills that can help us with home, family, personal enrichment, and with provident living.
Visiting Teaching is a way to strengthen each other as women and give encouragement to women in their roles as sisters, daughters, wives, mothers, and neighbors.
The Priesthood and Young Men’s organizations teach men how to administer the temporal affairs of the God’s Kingdom on earth, and how to be good sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, and neighbors.
Home Teachers can be a great blessing to single mothers, widows, families, and individual women. They teach, assist, and bless.
The Primary organization reinforces the teachings of the home and helps children be better, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, and neighbors.
The home is the schoolroom and laboratory where these core values and skills are learned and refined. The Lord has provided families with additional helps:
The Family Guidebook teaches parents principles of establishing a happy home.
A Parent’s Guide helps parents understand good parenting practices.
The Family Home Evening Resource Manual is an excellent resource for families to use to teach gospel principles in the home, in weekly family home evenings.
With all of these wonderful examples and resources, I feel God’s love and guidance in my life and I feel strengthened and guided to be a better mother.
What Type of Education is Best?
When I was in college, about half-way done with my degree, I met a girl whose boyfriend was then serving a Mormon mission. She was young, just 18. And she was just positive that when he came home in about a year, they were going to get married. It didn’t matter that the rest of us told her she should go ahead and use this time to date other boys. She was sure about what the future would hold for her. Because she believed firmly that they would begin their family as soon they were married and she would be a stay-at-home mom, she didn’t feel any urgency about going to college or beginning a career.
I have to admit that most of us other young women thought she was crazy. We were driven to further our education as the prophet has admonished. Frankly, we thought she was being foolish to put all of her eggs in one basket with the hope that a year later, she and her boyfriend would still be in love with each other after being separated for a total of two years.
Nevertheless, in the time that she had she took cooking classes and learned how to be an excellent chef. She took sewing classes and began sewing her own clothing. She learned how to knit and how to crochet. She took an interior design class. She went to seminars on budgeting and read up on child development. All these things seemed beneath the rest of us upward-bound college scholars. After all, we were getting a real education!
Sure enough, though, about a year later her boyfriend returned from serving his two years for the Lord and proposed to her almost immediately. And just as she had planned they soon had a baby join their little family. After that, I lost track of her.
But it wasn’t too much longer until I had my own husband and my own little baby with my college degree safely tucked away. I envied this other woman and the preparations that she had made for being a mother and a wife. At the time, I thought the education she was getting was a waste. But suddenly that exact type of education would have been priceless to me! They were both valuable. I am reminded of Sister Julie B. Beck’s words, “Nurturing mothers are knowledgeable, but all the education women attain will avail them nothing if they do not have the skill to make a home that creates a climate for spiritual growth.” I did not know how to cook. Because I didn’t know how to cook, our grocery budget was larger than it needed to be because the foods I bought were mostly prepared. I really didn’t have any homemaking skills at all! I was unprepared for having a baby (not that anyone is really prepared for that) and felt like the first 7 years of being a mother I needed remedial help and tutoring to make up for all that I was missing .
I realized that there aren’t really conditions on the type of education that is preferable. In my youth, I firmly believed that if it wasn’t a college education, it wasn’t really an education at all. But now I see so much the value of all types of learning and preparations. We are each different people, with different learning styles, different priorities and different paths in life. James E. Faust has said, “I do not care what vocation you choose to follow in life so long as it is honorable.” (James E. Faust, “Message to My Grandsons,” Liahona, May 2007, 54–56) The important thing is to prayerfully seek for Heavenly Father’s guidance as we pursue our educational goals, whatever they may be. Certainly, He will lead us down the path that will be of most importance to us in this life and in the life to come because we know that “whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection.” (D&C 130:18).
Going to College
If you’re thinking about furthering your education, I recently discovered a website that compares Mormon schools. Whether you are LDS or not, planning on going back to college full-time or not, you can get a lot of information at www.besmart.com.
“Be Smart” is one of President Hinckley’s 6 B’s.
1. Be grateful.
2. Be smart.
3. Be clean.
4. Be true.
5. Be humble.
6. Be prayerful.
“Be smart” refrences the prophet’s desire for each member of the church to gain as much education as possible. “Be smart. The Lord wants you to educate your minds and hands, whatever your chosen field. Whether it be repairing refrigerators, or the work of a skilled surgeon, you must train yourselves. Seek for the best schooling available. Become a workman of integrity in the world that lies ahead of you. I repeat, you will bring honor to the Church and you will be generously blessed because of that training.”
As I was looking around the site thinking of my own daughter who will be leaving home for college in 4 years, I was surprised at how affordable the tuitions were at the LDS schools–ranging from just $2600/year to $7600/year. There is also admissions information and options for financing college, among other helpful preparation tools.
One of the things that I found most interesting was the section on Independent Study. Independent Study is available at the high school and college level to people all around the world. You don’t have to be a BYU student to enroll. The personal enrichment courses start at only $28, although the college and high school courses are a little more pricey. There are a wide variety of classes offered.
The great thing about the Independent Study courses is that it’s something that you can do at your own pace. So if money is an issue, and you can’t go to school full-time, maybe you could still go slowly just one class at a time. Or maybe you are a stay-at-home-mom and aren’t ready to leave the kids to pursue your education, this is something you could do during naptimes and after the kids went to bed. Or maybe you just don’t live close to a school that offers these classes.
Suddenly I’ve got myself thinking that after last summer’s garden failure, maybe the gardening class is something I should look into after Christmas…
Furthering Your Education: Where There’s a Will, There’s A Way
This past summer I was visiting one of my best friends from junior high and high school as we briefly passed through Los Angeles on a summer vacation. We got to talking and catching up on each other’s lives. Her husband is a script-writer in Hollywood. That was neat and we provided lots of conversation. She now also has a son and so we talked about motherhood. Eventually, the conversation turned towards what we are doing currently. That’s when she told me that she was almost done getting her helicopter pilot’s license! She wasn’t sure exactly what she would do with it, but it was fulfilling a dream for her.
Over time I’ve thought about my own dreams and what I’ve wanted to do. Our prophet has counseled the women of the church to continue their education—whether that is to help out with the economic needs of the family now or to provide stimulation and enrichment that will bless her and her children for generations to come. He said, “It is the obligation of every woman of this Church to get all the education she can. It will enlarge her life and increase her opportunities. It will provide her with marketable skills in case she needs them” (Gordon B. Hinckley, “In the Arms of His Love,” Liahona, Nov 2006, 115–18). Sometimes it can be difficult and challenging. I thought I might share some of my own struggles to further my education.
When I first got married, I was only 20 years old and three semesters away from graduation. We discussed starting our family immediately but it seemed impossible to be able to do that, have enough money to live on, and for me to finish college. Fortunately, because of inspiration received as a direct result of a priesthood blessing, we figured out a way for me to graduate in only two semesters and work to save money for our family all without further delay in our plans for a family. Finishing three semesters of school in only two semesters was difficult, but do-able.
Several years later, with my husband in law school and our third baby on the way, I felt like it was time to further my education again. After prayer and fasting, we made the decision that I should go ahead and apply to graduate school. I was committed to being a stay-at-home-mom, however, and it was important to us that my education not override the counsel that mothers should be in the home. Again, it took some imaginative scheduling at times. And it meant that I went through the two year program much slower than my classmates. But we never hired a babysitter in that time. My husband and I arranged our schedules so that one of us would always be with the children. Usually, this meant that while one of us was in class, the other was home. But sometimes, it meant that I would take the children to campus with me and they would eat lunch and play with their daddy for an hour or two while I was in class. Then I would take them home again.
Other times, the difficulties in furthering my education have been financial. Several years ago we went through a very hard and trying time on our family because of tight finances. I can’t emphasize enough how desperately hard it was and how many tearful prayers for help we offered. Nevertheless, I had it in my head that I wanted to certify as a doula and a childbirth educator. There seemed no possible way for me to fulfill those dreams. Even though it didn’t cost nearly as much as a college education, the price at the time was completely and utterly out of reach.
But “necessity is the mother of invention”. Or better yet, “the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them” (1 Nephi 3:7). As it turns out, I found a certifying organization who offered need-based scholarships. I applied and was denied. But the next quarter I applied again and was accepted into the scholarship program. Eventually I was certified as a childbirth educator and it hadn’t cost me anything.
Still, what could I do about certifying as a doula? I wasn’t sure. But I joined an on-line group of birth professionals and began learning from them, participating in discussions and making friends. As it turns out, it wasn’t long after I joined that another woman joined the group. She was moving from the east coast to my city. She didn’t know a soul here. I offered to go around looking at some of the places she was considering renting and telling her my opinions on the living arrangements and the area. I did this over a period of two weeks for her. In the meantime, we became friends. And when she and her family finally arrived her, my family and I were there to help them unload their moving van. And guess what? She was a doula trainer from my childbirth organization. She was so grateful to me for my help during her move that she offered to give me the training for free! I still had to cover other costs, but we were able to scrape that together somehow.
Most of the education I am doing right now isn’t formal. I just like studying topics out on online. I particularly like to research women and children’s health issues. The great thing about this type of education is that it is essentially free. And with public libraries and the internet, there’s almost no limit to what you can learn or when you can learn it.
So what do you want to do? What are your dreams? What would you like to know or be good at? Will it require a degree? Maybe you started college, but never finished. Classes? Maybe you want to take that community photography class or attend the sewing class at your local craft store. Certification? An apprentice program? Can you gain this knowledge by reading and researching on your own or talking to more experienced women? Now once you’ve decided what it is that you need to do, find out what’s stopping you for accomplishing that? Is it time? Finances? Scheduling difficulties? Needing a babysitter?
I am sure that if we keep these needs in our minds and are prayerful about it, the Lord will open up a pathway for us to follow to pursue the dream. It may take time and it might not be a direct path. But we know that the Lord needs educated women and he will provide a way for us.
For me, my education has meant that I’ve been able to make a little money here or there. But more importantly, it has expanded my mind. For instance, although I am currently not doing anything with my college degrees, the critical eye and questioning attitude that I learned in my master’s program has helped me to evaluate many decisions I am faced with. Reading research and understanding research design that was necessary for my thesis has helped me as I’m reviewing literature on childbirth studies. So although some might see me and say that I’m not “doing” anything with my education, I know that it has greatly enriched my life and blessed me in my daily work as a mother and homemaker. It has blessed my children as they see their mother studying and learning and struggling to accomplish something just like they are.