My title is borrowed from Zechariah 4:10, a reference to the attitudes of certain Jews concerning the rebuilding of the temple. What was the source of their attitude? The rebuilding process was arduous at best and life-threatening at worst. And from where they stood, it didn’t look like it was ever going to be completed. Or, if completed, it would never measure up to the presumed goal of the enterprise, namely, replication of the original temple.

There is a similar undercurrent I sense when communicating with parents struggling to teach their students at home. The smallness of any single day’s work can seem insignificant when made to stand against the enormity of the grand task. Worse, at those points of real struggle – when the pace slows to barely a crawl and frustration is the primary theme of the day – the entire academic enterprise can seem in danger of capsizing. Do not despair!

During my early years of homeschooling I would attempt various errands during midday, and frequently tuned in to a syndicated radio station that would broadcast a solid 15 minutes of Scripture reading. The narrator read through the Bible consecutively four times daily during short 15-minute slots. Each time I started my weekly errands, I was amazed at how much further along the reading had progressed. He read book after book until he had completed the entire Old Testament and was moving on to the New Testament. How could he get through so much when he made such small steps on this long journey? It was his consistency, his faithfulness in taking small steps and simply reporting each and every day for the next fifteen minutes of reading. And after awhile verses, chapters, books had been covered. Do not “despise the day of small things.”

Homeschooling is much like that. Or at least my own homeschooling experiences reflect that process. On any given day, I may not necessarily have felt that we scaled mountains or achieved great victories in the name of education. Yet, at year’s end, I would go over all my weekly lesson plans and notes to compile summaries of the work we had done. Every time I looked over the accumulated work of a year of small steps, of simply and faithfully “showing up” to do the next thing, I was amazed at the mountain of accomplishment: the reading of literature aloud and independently; the memorizing of facts, vocabulary, Bible verses, poetry, historical documents; the writing of letters, summaries, paragraphs, reports; the successful completion of various textbooks; the field trips and outdoor explorations for science. Even though I had participated actively in each part of that enterprise, the immensity of it was staggering when seen as a whole. Do not “despise the day of small things.”

I believe that much of the frustration and disillusionment experienced in homeschooling has to do with inaccurate expectations of what the learning process is supposed to look like. It can get pretty black down there in the trenches, and the enemy is always ready to employ his most insidious weapon: despair. So I want to ask you to begin thinking differently about the process of learning. Frankly, as aggravating as these times of intense struggle may be, they offer the richest opportunities for the deepest learning – on all levels.

Within this crucible of frustration and confusion are opportunities

• To develop humility by asking for and accepting help
• To exercise courage to face the fear of failure
• To speak the truth to one’s soul against any lies of self-condemnation and hopelessness
• To practice patience with one’s self, with the process, with the Lord’s promises.
• To learn new techniques of addressing the difficulties
• To enlarge faith in one’s self and in God
• To witness the faithfulness of our Lord

Once again, I want to urge parent-teachers and their students to take the long view. Each concept conquered, each confusion clarified, each error carefully studied and corrected, are all slowly building a beautiful edifice. Parts of that edifice will go up quickly, and at other times it will feel as though you are building with grains of sand rather than whole bricks. Learning is all about getting stuck and getting unstuck. I submit to you that it is precisely in those moments of being stuck that the greatest learning opportunities are present. It is a place encountered by many true students at all ages and in all subjects. It is not a place of failure. It is not a place of surrender. It is not a place of losing ground, falling back, getting behind. The truth is that it is a place of serious and substantial advancement. But you must enter into that place with your student and search out whatever caused your student to get stuck in the first place, clearing out the debris and making the necessary adjustments to your study methods.

At the end of this accumulation of all these grains of sand adding to the bricks is a monument of perseverance and mastery that will only be visible on the other side of the struggle. Do not despise the day of “small” things. Each seemingly tiny victory, each slow success is supplying the crucial mortar to hold that monument together.

All of this has particular application to the study of high school mathematics. One of the subjects in which homeschooling parents particularly experience discouragement or frustration is in the teaching of algebra. In my next article I will look more closely at that specific challenge. Visit us again as we continue this discussion!