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I don’t know about you, but I always start off the year thinking that this year will be more awesome than last because this year I’m committed to really being, well, awesome.

This school year will be different because I will be different.

So, a decade into homeschooling and having rounded the bend of my thirties, maybe that idealism and optimism is tempered a bit, but I still feel it even if I try to suppress it.

Maybe we won’t wake up whole new people on Monday morning, transformed into mothers who do the right thing every time, yet each year – depending on the year – we should try to take the next step in growing, maturing, and increasing.

Rather than start the school year with strong but unrealistic goals to be 100% consistent, to never yell, or to always follow the plan, we should go into the year with concrete strategies for exactly how we will improve our teaching and leading skills this year.

Be a better homeschool teacher by controlling our tone
Having taught classes to homeschool kids before teaching my own, it didn’t take me long into teaching my own to notice that for a class of other children, my tone immediately changes and I go into “teacher mode.” With my own children, I just stay in “me mode” which seems like it should be better, but isn’t. Maybe it’s “authentic” but it isn’t as helpful.

I admit that one reason I still teach classes with other students mixed in with my own is to make it easier for me to enter “teacher zone” and give my kids the benefit of more conscious, purposeful, self-controlled teaching style.

Mom’s tone matters. We don’t want our children to feel alone in their troubles and challenges even while they’re sitting next to us. To accomplish that, we can take a positive step and a negative step.
Be a better homeschool teacher by controlling our words
This could be counted as controlling our tone, but I’m thinking of a more specific situation. In a homeschool day, we have to communicate many things to several people. Have you ever felt frustratingly incapable of that? Have you ever blamed the child for your lack of ability to communicate with him? I know I have (and do).

Maybe I’m right and maybe I’m blame-shifting, but what I need is a strategy of communication that lets me cut through the blame and move our day forward.

Classical education to the rescue. There’s this thing called Socratic teaching, and it applies in helping with math as much as it applies in literary discussions.

Steven Covey made it a principle, a habit, of highly effective people, and highly effective people is exactly what we’re trying to be. He wrote:

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Usually I’m seeking to be finished. That’s where the trouble arises.

Be a better homeschool teacher by controlling our thoughts
Our words and our tone are merely overflows of our heart, and we are commanded to take every thought captive. That means it’s possible.

We might need to understand and direct our kids’ thought-trains, but we also need to be aware of our own and redirect our own as needed as well.

Our thoughts are not inevitable, but our words and tone will flow inevitably from them.

So if we want to control our tone and control our words, we need to also control our thoughts.

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