GUEST POST: Written in his own words, my husband, Efrain Alicea, shares a bit about his process of becoming a "CM Dad".
Becoming a "CM" Dad
by Efrain Alicea
"Girls often fare well when their fathers
have a hand in their education." (Vol 5)
~Charlotte Mason
Home education was what I wanted for my daughter from the moment we became a family. I didn’t know much about it but my wife, Erika, was already a teacher so it was a no-brainer for me. Yet, what was a no-brainer for me was a “no-go” for my wife. As a professional educator, she wasn’t ready for such a radical change as homeschooling. So we enrolled our daughter in public school and while she was in one of the top charter schools in NYC, I felt some things were lacking.
Things like familial love. Very kind and professional strangers spent more time with our child than we did, her own parents. They were good people, but they weren’t family.
Things like family time. Her school gave her so much homework that we couldn’t even interact with our daughter much at home. To top it off, every night was an early night because she’d have to be up at the crack of dawn to get to school on time.
Finally, and probably what I should have said first, I really felt from the Holy Spirit that God wanted homeschooling for our family too.
Eventually, God spoke directly to my wife’s heart and after 3 years of traditional schooling, she finally began homeschooling our daughter. Some time later, my wife found Charlotte Mason.
Since I’d never heard of Charlotte Mason, I thought it was just another curriculum. I trusted my wife and knew that she would do her research, dig in and get to the heart of it all. And she did.
Little did I know it would come to dominate part of our lives. In a good way of course. LOL
However, I didn’t fully understand my wife’s excitement over Charlotte Mason until I went to the “Gospel Vision for Children” conference. I didn’t go as a parent. Rather, I attended as the lead pastor of our church with our Sunday School team and thought it would be a nice day out of the city with people I love spending time with…and it was all that. But it was also so much more.
I gained a deeper understanding of the heart of Ms. Mason. I heard from a group of home educators who expounded on how this philosophy not only taught kids, but positively affected the lives of children and parents. I was moved by the recognition of the move of the Holy Spirit in this area. That was surprising to me and supremely welcome! This connection of the Gospel to the Charlotte Mason philosophy was very important to me.
As a side activity on another day, I was able to spend quality time with a few Charlotte Mason Dads. No, it’s not a secret group or anything. It was just a group of dads who got to spend a little quality time together with Art Middlecauff.
I remember coming home from that gathering with my spirit edified. I even bought a couple of books Art recommended and read some things he suggested in the area of connecting the Gospel with the CM philosophy. I’ve been a proponent of it ever since. The theological connection is really what got me and I told my wife, “Now I get why you get excited about this stuff!” So much so, it’s been trickling over into other areas of our lives. Let me give you 2 examples.
So, I’m not an educator. I’ve never worked in any school system. I say that because I don’t know the first thing about starting a school. But once I began to understand the CM philosophy, all I could think about was the children of the Bronx, one of the 5 boroughs of New York City, where we live. Children who are underserved, in a congressional district that is under resourced, in a school system that sometimes fails them. I could easily envision what the Holy Spirit could do with our amazing children. Then I was reminded of the vision of a school of arts God gave me years ago and how our church is blessed with teachers, administrators, and counselors. It started me thinking maybe the school of arts God placed on my heart had always been a Charlotte Mason school. I mean, why not? We’re not ready for this right now but I’m holding on to those dreams and visions.
In terms of homeschooling, one of the things I LOVE about CM is that you can pull lessons from just about any life experience. For instance, over the last few years, I’ve been teaching myself to play guitar. I play at church and have a lot of fun learning. One of my contributions to our daughter’s CM education is teaching her guitar chords. She had already taken classical guitar, so the instrument is not a stranger to her, but now I get to teach her once a week and it’s been a beautiful time of bonding for the both of us.
I would also often fill in when Erika had to take her dad to treatment. Her father was living with cancer for 6 years before he recently passed, so the appointments were often. I can’t lie and say that this was something I 100% enjoyed. It often took me away from my own work. However, I pushed through all these years and we’d get it done. The truth is that every one of those times left me with a feeling of satisfaction and joy that I was able to do this with my daughter. She’s almost at the age that she thinks she knows everything already (and she is almost right), so I have to impress her now while I still can.
Although I’m not always as enthusiastic about doing my part in homeschooling our daughter, I have to keep doing these lessons with her. I want to keep doing these lessons with her. She recently told me that her favorite part of homeschooling is her guitar lessons with me. Now being a skeptic, my first thought was, “Is she buttering me up for something? Is she running game on me?” Regardless, it sure was nice to hear.
Just for your enjoyment, here’s a little impromptu session with my daughter on Father’s Day 2020:
Before I end, I’d like to leave parents with some “fatherly” advice.
For all you moms who want your husbands to be more active in your homeschool, my very honest advice is:
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- Don’t push too hard. You know your husband so you’ll know the exact amount of pressure needed…Erika sure does!
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- Extol the benefits of the education for your child. Meaning, let dads know just how amazing your child is doing, just how brilliant they are and, of course, that all those good things come from dad…LOL
- Create a class or lesson around something dad loves or can get involved in. Erika created a weekly guitar class as well as “Devo with Daddy” time. I haven’t told Erika or our daughter yet but I’m thinking of creating something around comic book history / or stories / or characters for next year. Who knows…maybe all of the above. Comic books have always been a passion of mine so why not? In the same way, tap into your hubby’s passion and make that one of his roles: to share his passion in a learning environment with your child.
To the dads out there who might have their eyes on this paragraph way down below, bravo! Thanks for reading! You probably already know what I’m about to say…but sometimes we need reminding.
You only have your children at their current age once. Time flies. My firstborn is in his 30’s. While I spent many hours going over sports and strategy and drills, I never shared my love of comics, science fiction, reading or history. I never learned what he was into beyond sports. I never knew he loved to cook until he was already starting a business.
So now we talk sports, I ask about the restaurant, he asks about super hero movies and we’re playing catch up. It’s not a horrible thing, but I would have much rather been involved more in his passions and helping to influence him with some of my own at an early age. I mean seriously, I almost cried when he said he’d never seen a Star Wars movie!!! Oh, how I’ve failed!
But he does remember how much I love him. How much I sacrificed to care and provide for him. And now, as a father himself, he’s appreciating more and more the work I put in during those early days.
So take it from me, the time you invest now will always pay off later and you don’t want a 6 year old to turn into a 25 year old without investing time in their lives. Time passes in the blink of an eye. And the Bible teaches us that the work we put in now is never in vain.
Proverbs 22:6 says,
“Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.”
You and your family will be blessed by it.
About the Author
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