Welcome to the Feast Life, where we empower you, the modern homeschool mom, to create a life and homeschool you love, one founded on faith, family, freedom, and fun. I'm your host, Julie Ross, creator of the award winning homeschool curriculum, A Gentle Feast, and a certified Christian life coach. For more information on today's episode and to access my free gift for you, check out thefeastlife. me. Charlotte Mason once said, life should be all living, not a mere tedious passing of time. So on this show, we seek to help you to savor the feast of life. Girl, grab your favorite beverage and pull up a chair. You are welcome at this table.
Julie Ross: Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Feast Life. I'm your host, Julie Ross. And today I'm so excited to introduce you to a dear new friend that I met, Callie Birch. Hey, Callie.
Calli Birch: Hello. I'm so excited to be here.
Julie Ross: Yes. I'm so excited to have you because I get asked all the time about teaching high school English.
I think I don't know. I think sometimes homeschool parents are more intimidated by high school English than they are high school math and science. I don't know why that is, because I'm intimidated by high school math and science.
Calli Birch: Me too!
Julie Ross: I think a lot of other people do too, but high school English, it's I feel like I should be able to teach this.
But I'm really scared to teach this. Have you had that experience with parents at all?
Calli Birch: I have definitely with my current students that I'm teaching that are homeschool students. But even back when I was in the traditional classroom in a private school, I often heard that from parents whenever I would discuss with them something about, I don't know, their students progress or a text that we were reading together or something specific about a paper that they'd written.
They would just say something like, oh, I was horrible in English or I'm scared of English, or I don't know anything about that book and just write it off. And that always made me curious because then I'm thinking like what kind of English education did you have that you would feel like you're bad at it or that you don't like it because, it's human nature to love stories.
Julie Ross: Yes. Yes. Yes. But I think a lot of us got that taught out of us by having to, at least from my experience, dissect poetry or read Shakespeare and analyze it to death. Killed all the joy of it. So I think a lot of that, or maybe they were like me in the dark ages when we had to use typewriters and, I would pour my heart and soul into some paper and then my teacher would take a red pen to it.
And I've always been horrible at spelling. And so they would just mark that whole thing up. And yeah, I think a lot of us maybe have some English trauma, but I hope...
Calli Birch: but bleed all over the paper is the thing they used to say, right? There's a reason I've never used red when I'm marking on papers.
Julie Ross: Yeah, yeah, that's smart. I, Help some parents work through that and yeah, know that they can help teach their kid high school English, but they can also develop a love for it for themselves as well, which is really..
Calli Birch: Absolutely. Yes. Yeah.
Julie Ross: So before we get started, can you tell everyone just a little bit about yourself and your background?
Calli Birch: Oh, yeah, sure. Okay. So I fell in love with books at a young age. I think the first earliest memories I have with just an independent reading as far as being immersed in a book was with Anna Green Gables. And that was when my family had moved from Tennessee to Texas, and I was in a new town in sixth grade and didn't know anybody.
And it was really a little bit out of loneliness that I fell in love with Anne, and I devoured the entire series. And I remember that experience showing me that books can be friends and that books can help us through hard things. And I have this sweet little journal entry from that year where I said something to the effect of is it weird that I think and is my friend.
I know she's a girl. Yeah, I was like, I know she's a fictional character, but I just feel like we're so much to like and that was the first time that I really experienced the concept of a book being a mirror and giving me a glimpse into my own life and my own identity formation as Anne was also very lonely and isolated at the beginning of the story.
And then when I saw her navigate friendships, I too wanted to try to go out into the world to make friends. And I just looking back, I see that series is so formative as it made me it gave me courage is what it really did. And then moving forward, I was a voracious reader from that point on.
I'm grateful we were in a good, I was at a public school educated. I did have one year of homeschooling when my family lived in Guatemala. I'll talk about that in a minute. But I had some really good English teachers. I will say that the little school system we were in a small town had some just lovely people who were there, the reading language arts and English teachers.
And I, they always were my favorite teacher. And so moving forward, I, my 10th grade year my family my dad is a doctor and my family went and did medical missions in Guatemala and we lived in a very remote village. And I homeschooled for that year. And so I got a taste of home education that way.
I also my best friend in high school was a homeschooler. So I had all these really positive associations with homeschooling because of that. And it's that is part of the reason that I have chosen home education as a part of my children's educational journey. But that year I really self educated a lot.
I was a bit of an autodidact but I did correspondence Home School with Rebecca and like a private school out of Florida, because back then you had to actually mail in paperwork. Yes. And I my mom had really good advice from an uncle who was a voracious reader himself and was a teacher. And he said, just pack a suitcase of classic novels and just let Callie read all year long.
That will be the best education she can have. And so while I did do the correspondence school. It was geometry that year for math, and that, that was not fun for, to do it all by myself with no teacher. I was quite lost. But everything else went really well. And but I read through all of these classic novels he had given her a book list and my mom just went and bought them all and packed them, brought them, and then I read them that year and so I came back my junior year, we were only there for one year, and I came back my junior year with this appetite for great books for just really wonderful high quality literature and thank goodness my junior and senior year, AP English teachers were some of the best teachers of my highest definitely of high school experience.
And so when I finished my senior year after AP English, having a really inspiring teacher and experience, I knew I wanted to be an English major. And that I wanted to be able to continue this exploration of great literature and then helping, I wanted to do, I saw what she did, and I wanted to do something like that.
I also watched Dead Poets Society at some point in that, and that really lit a fire in me. It gave me so much inspiration I'm going to be him.
Julie Ross: I love that movie.
Calli Birch: It's the most inspiring, heart wrenching movie. So well done. And I fast forward several years later, and I'm. I actually was teaching in a an independent all girls school that was basically the female version of Dead Poets Society in Dallas, Texas.
Is this the one in England? No, this is the one in Dallas. Okay. I did teach in England I taught in England in the British education system for a year and that was amazing. And I learned so much because they do things quite differently than we do. And that was actually my first year of formally in as a contract employee in the classroom.
I had done student teaching before that. And then I taught in this a girl preparatory school in Dallas. That's a pretty elite institution with a low acceptance rate. And it was a trial by fire through that experience. And I learned very quickly. I was doing my master's degree at the same time, and I learned very quickly that these girls were so bright and so well educated and knew a lot of the answers really quickly that and easily that I had to engage them differently.
And so within about a year of being there, I completely overhauled my educational philosophy from a teacher centric kind of sage on the stage. Stage kind of concept of I must know all the answers, I am, they are the vessel and I am pouring truth into their minds. To something that was very different, that was more student led and about lighting a fire and fanning that fire.
Or as Charlotte Mason would say, laying a feast before them and us gazing upon the feast together. . Yeah. Yeah. So a lot changed then. And since then, I I moved to Arkansas into a very small town that did not have good schools. And that was when I chose to home educate my daughters when they were young.
It was a wonderful experience. We did use the Charlotte Mason philosophy. We loved it so much. And then in 2020, at the height of COVID, I got an email, an invitation from a former colleague who was the department chair of an English department at One of the top private schools in Little Rock to come teach English there.
And so I went back to the classroom with my daughter's blessing, they wanted to try out private school and we were there for three years and I got to teach junior and senior level English there and also was very involved in creating new curriculum for semester seminar courses at the junior and senior level.
And I, I loved it. It was a wonderful experience. But as my daughter reached high school and through just a lot of just things that she was Just contemplating with what her life goals she came to me as an eighth grader and said mom I want to homeschool again. Would you be willing to homeschool? And I was blindsided by it, but whenever she came to me with that proposal and she and there was more to it than that. She explained to me her vision for her life and her goals. It was really beautiful and it made me very proud of her.
And so it was not just a naive perspective. And so I tried to dream up a way to make that happen. And so I started StoryWeaver Co. this last summer, which is a way that I can bring my English teaching expertise, but also just love for great books and love for discussing great books. with teenagers to other homeschool families while I'm teaching my own kids.
So I hope that wasn't too long winded.
Julie Ross: No, that's great. I think, it definitely shows like your passion for the subject and just the way that God has weaved using your term for your brand weave your story together and brought you to this point. And so now you can share some of that experience with.
The students that you taught and with your own children and bring that to other people, which is really cool. So I really want to focus today on helping parents kind of work through some of the roadblocks that they have when it comes to teaching English. We all say I want my kids to love great books.
I want my kids to love great books. And then I feel this pressure in high school to give them this kind of curriculum where we can check off all the boxes and go, okay, there's one class high school credit now, and don't realize that the methods that we're going about it are actually counterproductive to the results that we want to get.
How do you go about in teaching your classes instilling this love for literature and your students?
Calli Birch: Thank you for asking that. I think the first part is to start with where teens are at and what there's many places you can start, but teens ah, they're just so wonderful. They are the most wonderful, I love teenagers so much.
They're, they are not children anymore. And they can think these higher level thoughts. That prefrontal cortex is really developing and working hard, but they're not adults either and they crave authenticity and meaning, but they can also sniff out an agenda and manipulation a mile away and they hate being forced to do things.
So they, they have to have buy in. Yeah. And I'm not saying that everything we're always going to do is going to have their buy in. Sometimes we do have to encourage them and prod them along. But when we can get buy in it's a game changer. And so when we can show them that classic literature gives them a safe place to ask big questions and to explore the universal qualities of the human experience and contemplate these big things that they are already contemplating, that they are already thinking about in their lives.
But it gives them a little bit of distance from their lives. So that they feel safe, they it gives them the perfect opportunity to do this and literature, especially when you take a thematic approach, which is, that's my main way that I look at teaching literature is looking at it through the lens of theme and character.
Then that gives them a way to discuss, give you an example. So just this last semester, I worked through sometimes I don't even like to say the word taught, even though I do teach a lot of things Yeah. About the text that we're reading. But but I also see myself as a guide, so I'm guiding my students through. We worked through Frankenstein, Macbeth, and both of these texts have as one of their core central themes isolation, the isolation of the individual.
And sure, I could have given them a a slideshow at the beginning, or given them some notes they had to take, that's here is one of the themes of Frankenstein, and then they just jot it down, and that is my list. Yeah, and that means so little to them, but I question I get them to probe the text and I have them discover the theme as it's emerging.
And then once they discover the theme, then we're really into talking about Victor Frankenstein and how he isolates himself in his studies. And what does that mean when he cuts himself off from his family or about Macbeth when he pushes away everyone, especially Banquo, who is his moral compass in the story.
And then we start talking about what does it mean when people push away family and friends. Why do people isolate and you know what, that is a topic that is super relevant in their life. The current teenagers all have vivid memories of COVID. And so isolation is also just relevant for that reason.
Yeah. But anyway, so that, that's my my probably my biggest tip is to not teach English as content mastery. Okay. Now of course, we want them to have a grasp on grammatical skills and and I'll, I can mention that later with the writing having mastery of language and structure is going to make them a stronger writer.
But specifically when we're talking about classic books and literature. If we treat it more like an invitation for experience and and to discuss meaningful things instead of content to be memorized or content to learn, such as when they go on to college, sure, it's wonderful if they know the.. What a tragic hero is or the essential plot points in Macbeth or Frankenstein.
Yeah, that's nice. I would like that, but it is not essential. What is essential is that they've learned how to read deeply, to think critically and ask good questions. As they're doing that in the process, to develop empathy and compassion by literature also being, I talked about it being a mirror earlier when I was reading Anna Green Gables, but it's also a window
I'm about to start reading "Night" Elie Wiesel's Holocaust memoir with my students. It's 1 of my favorite things I've ever taught. Now, of course, it's not fiction.
Julie Ross: Yes, it's a hard read,
Calli Birch: but. It's a very hard read, but it's poignant. It's powerful. And I dare someone to come out on the other In antisemitic it's, it is so empathy building and, Elie Wiesel is a teenager in the story and he's this, he's about the same age as the kids who are reading it when you read it with teens.
And it's that whole idea of walking a mile in someone else's shoes and being able to see the world through their own lens. It's really hard to other. It's really hard to to hold and carry prejudice whenever you have seen the world through someone else's story. And that's that, that empathy building, compassion is something that's so unique to story.
And and I think one of the greatest blessings that literature has, gives us and something I like to lean into.
Julie Ross: Yeah, those are such great points. And I think, when parents are asking that question of like, how can I make my child love classic literature? It's you can't actually make anybody love anything, but you can do your part, which is, laying out the feast, making it inviting, right?
Taking stories that can, where they have characters that they can build those connections to and build that empathy. But I hear from parents a lot of. What if I haven't read the book? Like, how can we discuss the theme of Frankenstein or Macbeth? That sounds really great, but I don't know Macbeth or Frankenstein.
So do I. And I don't really have the time because I'm also homeschooling, all these other children. And I'm trying to teach this kid how to read and make sure we all eat dinner. How do I do that? And then have this discussion with my high schooler so that they can find this theme in Macbeth.
Calli Birch: Yeah, that's a good question. Okay. First I'll start with I agree that we can't always read with our kids are reading. And I know that last year when I was still in the classroom and my daughter was reading some other things. With her English teacher when we were still in the private school.
I wasn't reading everything alongside her. I didn't have the capacity to do that and prepare for all my lessons and everything else that I was reading. And now I will say a few of the texts I'd already read. So I knew that I was able to talk to her about it. That is helpful. But I do think. Learning to ask open ended questions about the text that students are reading and of my favorite things I've done in the past to try to avoid having to give a reading quizzes when I had taught over 100 students is to ask students their favorite passage from their moment of the reading they had done the homework the night before. Now it takes, it took some time to get around the room or sometimes I would just say, let's do that just two people today. And then they would read the passage for me and then they knew that basically then they were to share why that stood out to them, why that was important.
It was such a great thing, way for me to gauge whether people read, it was a great way for me to gauge. Kind of where their minds were in the story and what they were focusing on, but it really showed me what stood out to them as valuable in the story that maybe it's not the thing I was planning on focusing on that day, and sometimes that would actually completely pivot our class discussion.
I'll talk in a minute about students creating their own discussion questions instead of giving a list of discussions questions to answer, something I strongly believe in. But first to answer your question about homeschool moms or parents who are not able to read the book with them, I do want to encourage them to try to.
I think we have some of the best audio books now. I think that you can get audio books for free through library memberships. And if you try to commit to a reading, and usually they're reading at a relatively slow pace, maybe one book a month, something like that is not typically hard to absorb an audio book.
And so I do want to try to encourage them because it will be better. It will be improved if they can then say, Oh, I just got to this part. And then you have a shared discussion. That's something I have loved so much with my teenager is she read The Hobbit last year for her independent reading just on her own.
Actually, this is funny the 8th grade curriculum had changed and it had been, Hobbit had been part of the curriculum for a decade. And then they changed it to something that was a lot simpler. And my daughter was frustrated by that and she she read the other book, but it was just something that was very, she felt was just easy and not what she wanted to read.
She was so excited about reading The Hobbit. And so she read it as her independent reading and we had so many, and actually continue to have so many great conversations about The Hobbit because. It just it lit up her imagination and because I've read it as well, I was able to share that with her, so I think that you can also ask the student your child, what is standing out to them or what they love just basic open ended questions that get them to think and get and encourage them to share, what is your, who is your favorite character?
And they can always answer that question. That's an easy one.
Julie Ross: Or if you were that character, how would you have done things differently? Yes. That's exactly right. That builds that empathy too, is getting them the questions. Opening questions, I think, are so important. And I tell parents too, sometimes you can cheat.
There are spark notes. There are YouTube summaries out there now. There are. There are YouTube summaries. If you really press You know, yes, I think it's ideal to be able to read them if you can, like you said, it's a book a month, you can listen to it while you're doing dishes or for a walk or whatever.
But there are resources too, so that you're not completely like clueless of what it is that they're talking about. But I love those discussions. I think it's so fun. Just having this discussion with you, I, I miss my two adult children. We've just had the best time going to coffee shops and talking about books and, or.
My daughter was just going downstairs. We're like, mom, I cannot believe that Mr. Darcy said, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like whatever. And it wasn't just a read this and then come or when my kids were teenagers, let them answer my questions about it. Yeah. I wonder if the question, but they can record their on the phone or they could write their narration, but the discussion is so key, especially at this age.
Asking big questions. They're thinking big ideas. And so if you're only creating, you're missing out on this. So you don't have to discuss every day with them. They're old. They can wait till they're halfway through the book or at the end of the book and have a big meeting coffee chat or something.
Calli Birch: Yeah. Yeah. I, it's one of my favorite things is to invite my teenage daughter on a coffee date. She loves coffee shops, coffee houses.
Julie Ross: It's very much vibes, like it makes you want to talk about books.
Calli Birch: It does. And we can each get a little special drink. We sit in a cozy spot. We've already scattered out our favorite places here around where we live and then just start asking her some questions about what she's reading and we've had some of the most wonderful discussions she enjoyed frankenstein because of course she's in my class now, she enjoyed frankenstein way more than she thought she would and we had so many conversations.
She was very, she's a very compassionate. And she did not like that the creature was never named. Of course, that's important to the story that he's never named. And so she started calling him Bob because she wanted to give him a name. Because we established in our household that Frankenstein's creature, Dr. Frankenstein's creature, because of course Frankenstein is not the monster, it's the doctor. His name was Bob. And so we talked about Bob. The bulk of the month of November, she was very consumed with conversations about Bob. It was so much fun. I loved it. And and also just it's love to feel like you have set aside your phone and your other things and your time and all the things that, that vie for our attention, all of us.
Every single one of us and then just give them special focus and time. And I will say that it's hard to put a team on that spot and be like, how is your life? That's not something that teens are usually going to respond to. They're just like, Oh too personal,
Julie Ross: that's the worst for all of my family.
Calli Birch: Back off. Yeah. But so literature just gives us this entry point. That's a great point. And
Julie Ross: Yeah. Great point. Yeah. Breaks the ice. And then you can relay that back to. Oh, he seemed really isolated. Do you ever struggle with that?
Calli Birch: Yeah. Yeah. Often they'll start once they feel safe.
Once they feel like comfortable. Yeah. Oh my goodness. They'll just start telling you why I felt this before way before. That's what happens. Great literature. We read it, but it also reads us and it informs us so much about who we are, even when we disagree with it. And that's, what's so interesting is that we can read about Dr. Frankenstein's, Victor's horrible decisions. And then we can come back and it's because he made such horrible decisions that we can reflect on ourselves and be like, I don't want to isolate like that. I need my community. I need my people to help point me towards true North and to make good ethical decisions.
It was in the isolation that he made so many poor decisions and became obsessed.
Julie Ross: Yeah. No, that's great. I love that. I hope this encourages parents. Yes. It doesn't have to be scary because it really is focusing on the relationship and that's what our teams can be more than anything else.
Calli Birch: The Charlotte Mason feast metaphor is perfect for that because you said earlier like they may not like every book, of course, if you had a feast laid out before you, that's just, think about a grand table full of even like a Thanksgiving feast or a Christmas feast that has all these different varieties of amazing food and every one of them, let's say it is baked perfectly according to the recipe, what it's supposed to be, it is exactly what a green bean casserole is supposed to be.
I'm showing my Southern ness here. What a sweet potato casserole is supposed to be. It is perfect. It is the most perfect recipe for that thing that it's supposed to be. And I'm not actually saying that every classic book is perfection, but it is very high quality. quality. That's why it's stood the test of time.
And it's engaging with these big topics and big questions. But you know what? They all have style. They all have form. They all have specific cultural context. And there are some things that our students are and we ourselves are going to gravitate more towards and fall in love with. We may love green bean casserole but just not really like the texture of sweet potato casserole.
We might have a little bit of on our plate and we may acknowledge This is the best sweet potato casserole that's ever existed in the history of sweet potato casserole, but that doesn't mean we're gonna love it. I love the Victorians. I love the way that I love rich descriptive language. I love the kinds of ideas that they were dealing with.
I love the deep symbolism. And that's partly because they were so strict in their what they were allowed to express and to contemplate. And so there's all of this. Symbolism. That's what throughout it that I think it's so fun to decode. Some people can't stand the victorious. Some people think they were so repressed and too wordy and to people, the word you'll hear a lot is flowery, and they
Julie Ross: I feel like that with the romantic, that's why I like the flowery.
Calli Birch: Yes. And they may love the more modernist style because it's more to the point and they were, the rebellion from the Victorian parents, you see these pendulum swings of culture and style and so modernist in so many ways are the opposite set of, but the children of the Victorians. And so you see connections, but a super different style. And they may love that may be their jam. I know people who just just love. Give them some TS Elliot or give them Virginia Wolf or, whatever. But they're not gonna wanna read any dickens.
Or the Bronte. But at the same time, they've tasted all of it, and so they have a feel for what the preference is,
Julie Ross: yeah, and I think that's key to I think, so you do you focus more on classics, or do you balance that with modern or what's your approach towards. Selecting some of these books.
Calli Birch: Good question. I will say with the high school course, I do emphasize the classics and that includes more contemporary. I'm not going to say contemporary. I think the most recent thing I've taught was written in like the 1980s or something like that and it was a short story, but some might throw in some short stories that are there to more recent.
But and I think it's important for them and we'll read like news articles and things like that, that are more contemporary, but I am looking at and considering and weighing there's only so much time we have together. And there's only this short period we have them as high school students.
And this may be one of their last opportunities to read some of these books. And if they don't have a little bit of a fire lit and a love for them developed in these years that it may never happen. And so I, I just believe That this is an important season. I read contemporary books. I try to force myself to look at what are the current Pulitzer Prize winners?
What are the books that are in our zeitgeist, in our current culture that are, like, really igniting people's minds and conversations and causing people to think and, because those are the books that will ultimately be the classics of our period. Because they're the writers who are engaged with the big ideas in the culture now.
But it's not what I teach. They're too new. I feel like classics have,
Julie Ross: Why do you think we should put them on the classic time? Just because they're timeless? What's the value?
Calli Birch: They've stood the test of time. Yeah. I will say in the middle school class I might include, I am doing a more contemporary book with them.
I just feel like it's a little bit different. I want them to just love reading. I want really high quality. You just lovely middle grade fiction, and there's so much good stuff out there right now. So the middle, I will say middle school is different.
Julie Ross: Yeah, no, I totally agree that, that the high school should include these books that have stood the test of time.
They have references that you're going to see, no matter what your child studies. And I think that's really because some people are like my child wants to be an engineer. So do we really have to read some of these harder Yeah type books and these classical books, if they don't really like them in high school, and it's like a Charlotte Mason says, this is what and what you said as well.
It's these stories that shape a person's character. Doesn't matter what people go into it. The big ideas of humanity are timeless and they're bound in every field. People are everywhere. So yeah, that's a really great point. So let's shift gears a little bit from literature to the other part of English that makes us all want to crawl under the table, which is writing.
Calli Birch: Writing! I love talking about that.
Julie Ross: Especially if you have red pen trauma. To us as parents who may not feel that we are good writers, How are children as high schoolers to develop the writing skills they need in high school?
Calli Birch: I have grown over the years to strongly believe that we should start with personal narrative.
And so I actually start with personal narrative pretty much. There may be an exception at some point, but in my curriculum that I've developed throughout the years and what I'm doing now is story weaver. I start with personal narrative with very open ended prompts that allow students to engage with the prompt kind of at the place that they can have all this variety of responses because they can engage with it in the way that they are capable of engaging with it and teens typically love to write about themselves.
So that's already a win. It's something they know and understand. They're not confused by, tell me about a moment in your life when you were brave. Yeah. That's going to take some reflection. That's going to take a time and some some contemplation and brainstorming. What does it really mean to be brave?
I had a prompt last year, that was about the name of the paper. I'd like to name them. It was sense of place. We were really exploring how writers use place and setting to, and to informing and the meaning of the story and and help. No, it was actually my southern literature class.
Oh gosh, Jane Eyre is massive. Like every setting is huge to her character development. Yeah, it's essential. But no, it was the southern literature class. And so obviously it was southern lit. So it was literally, the literature of a place, right? And so it was, their prompt was something about writing, telling me a story about a time when place was central to the moment that, and why it was significant, and I can't remember the exact wording of the prompt or something like that, and man, my, the stories were Literally all over the place, all over the globe.
Yeah, exactly. Something was it was some important place in their home, and we talked about it could be something as simple as your bed, or a little chair, or a nook in your home where you feel at peace, or it could be a location, like it could be your grandmother's house, your grandmother's garden.
And we talked about what would you constitute a good story and it took them some time and brainstorming to figure out their place But the ones who figured it out and wrote with so much heart and so much passion and There's one in particular i'm thinking about her grandmother had recently died and she was really still grieving the death of the grandmother, who had been very important to her life. And she wrote about her grandmother's kitchen and about them cooking together and it was absolutely beautiful and so it also gives students an opportunity to really probe their hearts and explore things they really care about.
Yeah. But then writing in first person also helps them develop their voice and then that will ultimately translate into their analytical and persuasive writing, I promise you. Yes. When they can start hearing their own voice in their writing. And saying, Oh that's me. That's my cadence. That's the way that I say things and express things and then learn how to structure writing to be able to do that.
It's huge and to not feel like that there is a right or wrong way of doing things because that's what AI does, right? Like we are in an age. Of Chad GPT. Yeah. Voice is the most, that is what is going to make our writing stand out. Yes. Is that it's human. And the punctuation may not be perfect. Yeah.
And there may be spelling errors. Although now in the age of computers, it catches the majority of them.
Julie Ross: I tell my kids, I'm like, you guys don't realize how lucky you are. And I tell them my typewriter story. That's so different.
Calli Birch: I write out things. I wasn't a great speller either. Actually, my lowest grades in elementary school were typically spelling.
So I, I get that. I've improved. I will say teaching my kids phonics and learning the phonetic approach actually. And that was as an adult years later. I had a master's degree at that point. My own spelling improved. I was like, Oh, phonics, the thing I didn't learn. The thing we didn't learn in the 70s.
Yeah, this is really helpful. The 80s did not, we did not learn phonics. And then I will say the practical thing about narrative, and I'll talk about analytical writing as well. But narrative, it is the form of writing that is the college application essay the huge, massive thing that is ahead that is part of the application process.
So if you're a college, if your student's college bound college application essay is one of the most crucial aspects of the application process because it's the only thing you have complete control over. Nothing else. Do you have, you don't know what questions you're going to get on the ACT or SAT.
You don't know what your references are going to write in the recommendation letters. You can, have some, you have a lot of influence. And you have a lot of agency in these things. But the only thing you have complete control over is your voice. And your topic choice in the college application essay.
So learning how to write a strong personal narrative is very practically important if you're college bound.
Julie Ross: No yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Before we go to the analytical, I just want to say one thing that you brought up that I think is really key. Yeah. Is because I really do believe that GBT are going to be like what the internet was to us when we went to college.
Cause it was so revolutionary. It was like, oh, I don't have to go to the library and get out 75 books and read through them all and highlight things. And I can just type a thing into a little box that gives me answers. Like it was like, whoa, it changed everything about how I study. Cause I was in college when I was a freshman or my senior, everything looked totally different. For our kids papers and things that we had to write that they can now get in literally 30 seconds, they could get an essay on McBeth. And so if all I have to do is have an essay and I want to be everything to be spelled right, and I want to make sure I read. Answer these four key questions, and I have, all my capitalization, everything correct, you 30 seconds.
And I agree with you 100 percent that the thing that is going to make or break our children is the ability to use our voice. But a lot of writing curriculums kill our children's voice. And that's why I love Charlotte Mason's approach of she didn't start composition lessons to high school. They had composition lessons.
So they're learning these different writing genres and talking about in high school. But until then, using their voice, this is what I thought of the story. This is what's important. This is the thing that mattered. And they're talking. But I do think, often we can focus on narrating the story and we miss that personal narrative.
So I'm glad that you brought that up because that is super helpful.
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Calli Birch: One can go into the other really easily. You can leave. From narrative sorry, narrating or doing a narration to a personal narrative. I think that'd be really easy to do even just verbally with younger kids.
Julie Ross: What did you think? Or how is that related to you? Is that what you are referring to? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's great. Okay. So let's move more into this. Now, it's the big deal and it's high school and it counts and we got to get them ready for college. So how do we learn some of these writing genres and styles that are more analytical?
Calli Birch: Yeah. Okay, so the 1st thing is, if you do have control over the curriculum, or some agency over what they do, I know some people sign up for online curriculum or do different kinds of things, but if you have. Some ability to change things up, shake things up, or you're just creating it yourself. Let's just say you're just reading through great books together and you're doing it yourself.
And I know a lot of homeschool moms do that. I say moms, I should say parents, because I know there's some school dads out there too. But we need to be, this is just piggybacking off of what you just said. We need to be creative with our writing prompts. I think prompts are really important as far as students want to write about with the care about.
And so when I for example, I keep on using Frankenstein as an example, because that's just what I finished up with students last semester, but in they did do, we learned about persuasive writing with Frankenstein because he, there's this wonderful scene where the creature comes to his creator and he uses the three Aristotle's three rhetorical appeals.
And so we learned about Ethos Pathos Logos, we learned how it's used in our world now, we we did analyze, but together in discussion, not as in this is the right answer, but looked for and broke down the creature's arguments and looked at how we used them. And then they wrote their own paper using persuasive techniques and the rhetorical appeals.
I gave them six no, actually. I think it was seven prompts. It was somewhere around six or seven prompts that were all quite different from each other. One of them, which is, it probably was the more generic of them, but students still, students love this topic was just who is the monster in Frankenstein, argue for who is the real monster in Frankenstein.
And of course, that is something that they would be able to go find on chat GPT. Some of them were more interesting and I'm sorry, that is interesting, but more unique, I should say more unique. And, but I think giving them prompts that they care about and then I also typically invite them to create a prompt.
And sometimes we do that together as a class. Sometimes I give them the option. I do this with creative projects as well. I give them the option to propose a prompt for me. This is the thing I really care about. Can I write about this? And then you are giving them the agency to explore and argue or defend an idea that is something that means something to them.
And therefore, they care about it and they don't want to cheat. They don't want to go type it in chat, GBT, because they care about it. Again, it's buy in and I'm saying the same thing in a different way, same song, second verse. So that's the first thing is as much much creativity and that you can have and just open ended types of prompts that give them a lot of freedom.
They still make, they make them think, but they allow them to write about something they care about the second thing that I think is incredibly important is to emphasize the stages of strong and a little writing and really strong writing in general. And that you're not, it is very rare that you're going to have this beautifully well crafted, defended logically structured with a logical progression of ideas paper.
The first time you sit down at a computer. That's not how that happens. And I typically tell my students that fuzzy thinking creates fuzzy writing and that we have to crystallize and clarify our own ideas and then really think about how to defend them to be able to then get that down. Or type that out on paper or on the screen.
And so brainstorming, outline, draft, revision. And for some people, this may be like because it might have been really formulaic, or really pounded on them to do it just this exact way. And I will say that a lot of English teachers historically will take off points if you don't do it the exact same way I told you to do it.
I have heard of English teachers who take off points, they'll check they'll have students annotate their reading and then they'll check their annotations. And if it's not annotated in the exact style. That they have taught their students how to annotate, that they'll take off points. Annotation is a personal experience with the text.
There is not a formulaic approach to this. There are some best practices, but this is not something we take off points for, if you don't do it exactly the way that teacher told you to do it. Think about whenever you have some big project that you're excited about, let's say you are going to renovate a space in your home that you're really excited about, like something that you, that is just for you.
Actually, Julie and I were just talking before we came on air about, I started recording, about my wallpaper behind me, because this little nook space right here was a really small space. essentially designed almost after thought, whenever we were doing some construction on this new place that we moved to this last summer and whenever you get real jazzed about something that you want to do, you get excited about the research stage.
You Google it and you go down, grab it. You want to brainstorm. You care. You are. Sometimes we get a lot. Sucked into it a little bit too far. We come up for air and Whoa, I've seen students do that with paper topics. And then ultimately it's changed what they want to major in, in college. Because they care that much about that topic because it was something that was driven by their own interest.
And then the outline stage is just organizing that. And figuring out a logical structure and a progression of ideas and and it does take some strong critical thinking skills, but, and there's all these different right ways to outline. Ultimately you'll have the outline up in front of you, but some people, I've known people who start with post it notes and put it up in front of them because they're very tactile and that's helpful for them.
And then they can, instead of having to erase, they'll move it. Oh, that point doesn't go under that paragraph that really needs to be right here that goes in the second paragraph. That's the right evidence for that idea. And don't care the way you go about it.
There's a lot of different right ways. And that's something you could easily Google and find, strategies for outlining, persuasive essay or analytical essay or whatever. But it's also pretty intrinsic that we know how to build ideas. Ask a kid to defend a point for why something that they really care about, something that they want, something that they desire, and they'll start outlining reasons.
They're not too bad at it when it's something they really care about. And then drafting. And that the first draft will not be perfect. It'll be messy. And and be okay with that. Be okay with imperfection. And that realize that we learn in stage, that we develop it in stages. And that sometimes you might need to move something.
Sometimes, this is one of the things I've seen the most with students. They get real committed to an idea, I see this a lot in narrative, but definitely some in analytical as well, and once the whole paper is developed, that one point, or that one idea, or sometimes an entire body paragraph, it just doesn't work, it's not fitting anymore, it's not jiving with the whole progression of ideas and the whole, vibe, I'm not really using that word, but they say that, of the whole piece and so you gotta cut it.
And that's part of the drafting stage is knowing what to cut, what, what's left on the cutting floor. Yes. And then revising and revise. I'm sorry. That's part of the revision stage. And then so drafting and revising and knowing that it often takes two or three revisions to get something to a point of excellence.
And that it's not perfection we're aiming for. It's I like to say excellence because I believe that everyone is capable of achieving their own individual excellence and what is best for them.
Julie Ross: I love what you said so much. I just want to highlight it on a few things because I feel like that is such a great way to approach it.
And hopefully this will give parents some okay, I love the concept of them coming up with some of their own writing prompts or having something so open ended that they could pick from multiple different things about how they're going to narrow it in. One because it gives the teens ownership, which they have at this age because they're trying to differentiate from you as a parent and if you don't allow them ownership over some things they're going to push back on everything.
Yep. That is so key. And then Charlotte Mason even says that, allow them to create their own questions because it's when in the creating the questions that their minds already creating the answers. And so you don't have to be the, you don't have to have read the book to come up with 25 questions to ask chapter seven, like they can come up with things like that.
Calli Birch: Goodness. She was so brilliant.
Julie Ross: I know. And then being able to allow them the time to make something excellent. I'm working on a chapter in a book. And I have written about 25 crummy things that I've thrown into the trash can at this point, and I realized that's the process, that if I sit down and I have this expectation, I'm going to type up this chapter, and it's going to be perfect on the first trial, I will just sit and stare at the computer screen, and so our kids get that too, of that fear of oh, I have to write this five paragraph essay, it has to come out of my brain right now.
And every week I'm supposed to be churning out a new paper. Yep. There's no time. And that's one of the gifts we have as homeschoolers is we can give them a couple of weeks to focus on that or let's change that or have a discussion. Don't take a red pen to it and hand it back to him and tell him to go fix it.
But actually talk through it. Oh, I was a little confused by what you meant in this paragraph about this. Or I don't know if this point is really substantial. Do you have any more evidence to support what you're saying here? Work and have those talks with them and allow them..
Calli Birch: What you just modeled is perfect feedback. Like you said, I think when you first asked the question is that some parents feel like they're not good writers and so they can't give good feedback, but you read. And you know what good writing looks like, and you've read good stories, and you know what makes a good argument.
It's not about you having the knowledge to be able to get everything right. We've got to get out of our mind that there is a right, one right way to do this, one right way. There's not, there are so many right ways. Actually, English is one of the only, if not the only core subject matter that's like that.
Where with science and with math, there are, there's right and there's wrong. It is black and it is white. And it is not this way with English. There's a wealth of rightness. And that's so exciting And so I like to I take the Socratic approach with both the way that I lead class discussions, but also the way that I try to encourage students in their writing.
So I try really hard not to bleed over their writing. And sometimes I do show point out to them repeated grammatical errors and things like that. But I tell them I'm not going to emphasize that with when I give them feedback. I ask questions. I said, and you just did that when you were giving an example that I say tell me a little bit more about what you meant right here.
This I was a bit confused. Can you explain? Can you ask the time? I use a lot of impact. Can you unpack this idea? And or I point out what they're doing. Great. They need to know that every. Student draft has something strong about it. So you find it, you find what is good and you lead with that.
You're like, Oh, I love that sentence. There have been papers that I've seen that are, they are weak. They're weak in the rough draft stage, but that doesn't not mean that they're going to end up weak. And I'll say, I love that word choice. That word is awesome right there. And Oh, I picked a good word.
Julie Ross: Yeah, so is there anything else you can think of in terms of getting a child ready for college English that he wanted to focus on in high school that we might not have discussed?
Calli Birch: Try to keep the curiosity alive, I in preparation for our discussion today, I actually messaged two of my good friends who are college professors. And I asked them a question similar to that and they, and they were not speaking to just homeschoolers. They were speaking to the freshmen that they saw come into their classes and the the amount of students that they've seen over the years and they both spoke to actually something we already talked about drafting, like being comfortable with the messy drafting stages and the fact that every that your first version of your paper will not be perfect. It sounds like a lot of students are coming into college thinking that it's one and done essentially. And these good teachers are teaching process and and that forces us to slow down and our world is moving so fast and so good thinking in good reading and good writing often requires for us to slow down.
Yeah, how to ask good questions. It's not about having all the right answers, it's about being curious and learning how to ask questions. And there are questions that are better than some questions. All questions are valuable if sincerely asked, of course. But at the same time, there are questions that are, and we've been talking a lot about open ended questions.
Those tend to be the higher level ones that cause us to think. How questions, why questions. To what effect questions that cause us to compare things one text to another one character to another, for example, or a character to our own lives. And how to listen to other perspectives and to be a respectful citizen of the classroom, how to listen.
And I think this is so important in our current culture that you can listen and respect someone without agreeing with them. You can give them the dignity of their own voice and the dignity of their own perspective while acknowledging that yours is different. And this is something so many in so many spaces, it's not being modeled well right now by adults in their lives.
And in a safe and nurtured college classroom. I would hope class in general, I hope this happens in my class that is something that's really important.
Julie Ross: It's so important in the homeschool too, right? Especially as they're teenagers, they're gonna say stuff that you don't agree with. And it is not your job to convince them to think how you think. And it's so scary sometimes to let them go and sit in their opinions and in their thoughts go, like you were saying, just, I just try to be curious huh, that's an interesting perspective on that. That's an interesting..
Calli Birch: Tell me more about that.
Julie Ross: And inside of my stomach's..
Calli Birch: Yeah..
Julie Ross: But if you shut that down. Oh, wait, no, that's not right. Let me tell you why that's wrong. And here's the 5 points of why that doesn't make any sense. It will no longer share their thoughts and opinions.
Calli Birch: No, and they're not going to feel safe with you. It'll affect the entire class dynamic. To be honest, you have 1 student like that in the class, and that will change the dynamic. But then we just. If we're only capable of having discussions with people who think exactly like us, we're going to have a pretty narrow view of the world.
Julie Ross: About narration too. If you're doing well, your child has learned to articulate their opinion. Yes. It's evidence for why they're saying what they're saying orally. And so by the time they have to get to like a college class, yes. Good at that. But you modeling, listening to them every day, Share what they're saying without interrupting correcting. Yeah, they can. I really do feel like they develop that skill, which like you're saying, these college professors are looking for to be able to hold space to listen to other people as well.
Calli Birch: Yes. And then, like you said, be able to voice. Of course, we want them to be able to confidently voice their own opinions and perspectives and interpretations. And of course, we want that and to have the confidence to do that, but to do it in a way that definitely has evidence supporting it and has substance behind it isn't just these rusty goosey opinions all over the place, being able to support it and to assert it while confidently, kindly. I think that's super important. The other thing I will say my professor friends told me is to, at that level, once they become, once they're moving to the collegiate level to move beyond summarizing text and start learning how to synthesize.
And that's something that, especially if you're having discussions about literature that is going to, that's going to start coming more naturally to them. And that's whenever they're pulling in ideas from all the things that they've read and learned and start synthesizing them together. And not just parroting one opinion. But that is high level thinking.
Julie Ross: Education is the science of relations.
Calli Birch: Yes, that's exactly right. And and it's starting to really form their own ideas and start learning how to synthesize those ideas that have come before them and with their own thinking. And..
Julie Ross: That's why they need those ideas, right? Because I think a lot of people are just like you're saying, they're just taking the things that they hear out in the world. And they're just repeating and they're not able to think critically for themselves. They've been so spoofed at everything their whole lives. In our modern education system that they're just regurgitating all of that back out, and they can't actually form their own opinions, but in order to form your own ideas and opinions, you have to be filled with lots of different good ideas and opinions and different perspectives.
Calli Birch: Beautiful things, right? Good, beautiful, and true things. Exactly. That's right. The feast.
Julie Ross: That's a great note to end on. But before we end tell us about your programs, what you offer so people can check you out.
Calli Birch: Oh, awesome. Thank you. So I've got several things in the works that I'm so excited about. Right now I'm about to launch into the next semester.
So I teach students in my home and online. So I have online and those are live classes that we meet weekly. And then I have I do semester by semester curriculum, knowing that homeschool families need some flexibility. You only have to commit to one semester at a time. Those this semester, spring semester is starting next week.
It's so excited. I'm working on that curriculum right now. And then coming in this spring, I am working on an e course, a digital course that is going to be really helping students in the process of learning how to, and exploring how to read literature well and how to love it. And so this is something I'm really thinking on a lot is so much of what we talked about today, but also actual really practical nuanced.
Let me walk you through. Let me show you and guide you the process of this. And then tools that can be in their tool belt so that they can pick up any great book and be able to read it well. And I, I'm excited about working on that. And then I'm planning on having some summer camps this summer and some courses that are short form courses that are just like one week or two weeks.
And then also really for anyone who has a junior or senior, I am going to offer a senior college application essay boot camp this summer probably in July. The prompts for the Common App aren't released till August 1, but we typically know there's typically know the majority of what's coming and can work with previous year's prompts.
And I am really excited about that. I've worked with a lot of students for their college application essays. It's one of my favorite things to do, actually, because they're, it's such an important transitional season of life and making big decisions. Yeah, where can they, that's where so many of these things we've talked about comes together and it's just really, it's really a beautiful moment, but they're also very nervous about it and that I'm just, I'm having fun on Instagram.
I have a lot of things I plan as far as just sharing ideas and tips. If you want to follow along there @storyweaverco
Julie Ross: yeah. Yeah. So we'll link that storyweaverco if they want to go check out your class offerings, because I know you are such a great teacher and knowledgeable, but also able to put things in really practical terms and display your love in a way that is engaging and inviting for students and adults as well.
So I did one of your adult classes, so that was fun. So thank you so much, Calli, for taking the time to talk to us. I really hope that this, I really feel like this will give and a much breath of fresh air and a different perspective of English. So thank you for that.
Calli Birch: Oh, you're so welcome, Julie. I've loved getting to know you and I've loved this time together.
Thank you. You're welcome.
Hey there, Julie Ross here. I just wanted to say thank you for listening to today's episode. If you like this show, it would mean the world to me. If you would leave a positive review in iTunes, this really does help people learn about the podcast and each month I will pick a winner to receive a free gift. Don't forget to check out all the free resources we created for you at thefeastlife. me. Thank you.
