During my management theory classes I undertook while working as a manager in retail. We were repeatedly told that the “crucial” characteristic of any successful manager was being clear on the complexities  encountered when arriving at the intersection between procedure and implementation.

The intersection has the universal reputation of being fraught with snares and frustration.

A procedure, therefore, should be informed by how it is to work on the field. Not just passed across from those personnel detached from the actual hands-on personnel.

Unfortunately even the best laid out procedure can hit pot-holes. This is because the delivery of any procedure when it hits the implementation stage can be limited by resources, circumstance, environment and time.

Simply put: what reads great on paper can become a nightmare in practice.

To resolve the issues encountered here managers will generally apply the axiom “review, review, review”.

Reviewing looks for limitations and strengths; taking a step back to refocus application, direction and timing.

Reviewing gives priority to the limitations in order to reform the procedure whilst seeing whether the strengths could be improved upon or simplified to free up resources for improving areas of delivery or achievement that need improvement.

One of the great things we enjoy about home-schooling is being able to apply and develop life skills learnt in the professional arena.

Today we had a parent-teacher conference and looked for limitations in our approach to home-schooling.

The outcomes included a list of new material to research and purchase. In addition to a simple timetable drafted to empower flexibility in our routine. A quick discussion followed in which we both talked about the progress of our kids, and the resources we are using to improve their education.

For example: creating more light in a room by replacing dark  and heavy bookshelves with white ones. Carefully putting new things in place to improve our environment can potentially improve the way in which their home education is delivered.

Stumbling along this “road less travelled” and feeling as though you’re walking through mud sometimes is a seasonal challenge for home-schoolers.

These seasons will come, they do in the business world as well. Some skills are transferable. The importance of reviewing and improving how we do things as home educators is that it advances the home-school team and can safeguard our parenting by minimise exhaustion closer to end of term.

Bringing your talents, gifts, work experience, knowledge, faith and skills into your approach towards homeschooling has serious potential. It can uplift the process by energising how children are taught in the way they should, could and ought to go.

In theological terms, reviewing is like confession. It recognises our humanity through our limitations and calls us back to life, out of self-condemnation and complacency. Back into the why and the how we got started on this journey in the first place. We are reminded of the One who schools us and grants us the privilege of the burden of responsibility in serving our children in such a special way.

‘Education is the point at which we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, not to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new – but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world’

(Hannah Arendt, 1961 Between Past & Future, Penguin Classics p.193)

Image: mine via instagram.