Mahomet families seeking information about a home-centered education movement called Classical Conversations will have their opportunity to learn more about the organization during an informational presentation on March 27 and April 10 at 7 p.m. at Grace Church.
Classical Conversations was developed in 1997 by Leigh Bortins.
Bortins, who homeschooled her four sons after leaving her career as an aerospace engineer, invited 11 high school-aged students to her home once a week to meet with her oldest sons so they could discuss American literature, Latin, science, algebra, American government and economics.
Once Bortins saw the benefits of the accountability group, she developed a program at the grammar level for her younger two. The Classical Conversations curriculum now covers a curriculum for students ages 4 through high school.
Today, nearly 104,000 homeschool students participate in the program.
Students study at home under a parent’s guidance four days a week, then come together to learn and discuss as a group one day a week.
The Mahomet Classical Conversation group meets at Grace Church on Tuesdays.
A homeschool parent, Vara Burton, who began the Classical Conversations program with her children two years ago said that the curriculum has helped guide her instruction.
“As a homeschool parent, I was scared to death of middle school and high school,” Vara Burton said. “This makes my life so much easier. It’s all put together in a way that makes it very doable, and to me, that takes a weight off my shoulders.”
Julie Baker, who initiated the idea implementing Classical Conversations into the Mahomet homeschool community, said, “I did not know how to teach writing or grammar to my children. I also knew that I wanted to teach them facts, but I didn’t know what to teach them.
“There aren’t a lot of curriculums out there where you teach a child a subject then you let them take a test to see what they remember. That’s not a classical approach at all.
“This gives you the support to easily do a classical education. And it gives you accountability where you can easily get lost and bogged down.”
A classical education includes three learning processes: grammar, where the student learns facts and terms; dialectic, where the student learns how to connect the facts and terms to real life experiences; and rhetoric, where the student is able to discuss and teach the facts, terms and processes.
“In anything you learn you go through those three stages,” Baker said.
With Classical Conversations, students go through three stages of the program: Foundations, Essentials and Challenge.
Students ages four to sixth grade begin in the Foundations or Grammar stage where they learn facts about science, math, English grammar, historical timeline, history fact, geography and Latin.
Each year the program rotates between teaching children about Creation to the Middle Ages, Middle Ages to Present Day and U.S. History. Students who begin the program at age 4 will rotate through the program at least two times.
By the end of one year, students have concrete exposure to 24 major concepts.
“I think this is a pretty amazing curriculum,” Burton said. “My kids are learning things that I never learned. That makes me feel good about what I’m providing for them.
“I never learned geography to the level they are learning it. I never learned writing to the level they are learning it. The things that they are getting introduced to, it’s just amazing. I couldn’t be more thrilled with this program.”
Burton has been taken by the knowledge her children know about geography, particularly. She has watched them take a blank sheet of paper and draw a map of the United States, then move to North America, South America and Asia.
“At the end of this year she’ll be able to draw the entire world,” she said. “And label, lakes, rivers and mountain ranges. That’s just amazing to me.”
As children move into a naturally argumentative stage by the time they reach adolescence, the Classical Conversations program encourages parents to use those facts students learned when they were younger to develop logic in the Essentials or Dialectic stage.
“This model is geared towards a child’s development,” Burton said. “I think that Classical Conversations is set up in a way that brings together the natural inclinations of children. Because kids at a very young age are sponges. Then as they reach 9,10, 11 and 12, they start questioning a lot of things.”
Once students reach the Challenge or Rhetoric stage in high school, they begin to produce materials, which reflect their thoughts on the information they learned during the previous years.
The 2017-2018 school year is the first time Mahomet Classical Conversations has offered the Challenge program.
“That is where this program shines,” Baker said. “This is what we’ve been waiting for and working towards.”
Cindy Porter, who will be trained as the Challenge Program Instructor this summer, will take over for Sara DeYoung, the current Challenge Instructor, who is moving to Colorado in May.
“Really, the challenge program is all about bringing everything together, then stepping it up a notch for these kids to be responsible to learn on their own and to just discuss ideas they have about the things they’ve learned,” Porter said.
Porter likened the program to a college-learning atmosphere where students prepare their material, then are ready to share, discuss or present within the classroom.
“Communication is a focus of Classical Conversations,” she said. “We start at 4 years old. (The students) start giving presentations to their class, every week. At that age, they can be “Show and tell”, but they get up in front of their peers and they talk.
“By the time they are in fifth or sixth grade, the other students start giving feedback and try to improve the skills” good eye contact, voice control, don’t fidget.
“That all comes together when they get in Challenge. We aren’t reminding them of the skills anymore, but they are able to communicate clearly because they have so many years of doing that over and over again. They can speak clearly, loudly and well.”
Porter also said that the Classical Conversations curriculum is different than a traditional education because it is not focused on retention of information for a test, but rather, a recitation of learned information.
“It’s just a different way of learning and really mastering information,” she said.
Within each segment of education, the group of students is lead by a tutor, which is usually one of the mothers in the homeschool co-op.
Each week, students are also given a fine arts lesson and are required to give a speech to the class. As students reach the Challenge level, they come into the classroom prepared to teach.
“My oldest in Challenge this year,” Burton said. “She has just blossomed. Watching her take accountability for her education and she’s planning her day. It’s been amazing watching her come into her own. Her education is important enough for her to take the reigns. It’s amazing watching their growth in this time period.”
Foundations students only meet in the morning, while older students work on sharpening grammar and writing skills during the afternoon. Essentials students also play math games to sharpen their recall skills.
Baker said the Classical Conversations program is a base for the homeschooling education but should be supplemented with additional materials at home throughout the week.
“This is not a full curriculum, she said. “You do math outside of this, you teach your child how to read. You choose the level of math your child can complete.”
The Classical Conversations curriculum also focuses on a Christian education.
“We want to see how every subject connects to God and how God informs every subject, and thus how every subject is connected,” Baker said.
“And so science is related to history, so God informs us about both of those, and both of those subjects teach us about Him.”
Porter said that whether a parent is unsatisfied with the private, public or homeschool environment their child is in, the Classical Conversations program is a great alternative.
“This is something that is completely different that is proven,” she said. “Students are involved in their community, in their churches, and in jobs and most kids get into whatever college they want to. They are very prepared for college, even Ivy League schools, because this is such a rigorous program and the kids know how to learn so when they get to college, they are very successful.”
Interested parties are also welcome to observe the Classical Conversations class at Grace Church on April 3. To register for the informational meeting or to observe a class, go to https://members.classicalconversations.com/events-near-you.
