OUR HISTORY & FORMAT
Charlotte Mason Elementary Tutorial was founded by Rob & Cyndy Shearer in 2012 to be the K-7 wing of The Francis Schaeffer Study Center’s high school tutorial after being approached by parents who desired a tutorial hybrid program that would combine classroom and home instruction for their younger children.
CMET is a tutorial program for homeschooling families which offers classes for Kindergarten to 7th grade. A partnership between our tutors and parents, CMET combines classroom and home instruction. Tutors provide a weekly syllabus. Two days each week students work with their class and tutor and on the remaining three with their parents at home. Tutors are paid by the parents.
Although parents are not expected to attend classes with their students, they do commit to teach their children three days a week in cooperation with the CMET tutors.
Because CMET is not a school and because CMET parents continue to educate their children at home, families will need to enroll with a supervising agency, either a Church Related School umbrella program or their local public school system.
(It is important to note that the those enrolled in the CRS are typically considered to be privately educated students of a distance education program, and the CRS will keep records and provide support. The public school system provides neither service. Families registered with the public schools are considered Independent Homeschoolers and are expected to maintain all their own records.]
The Charlotte Mason philosophy of education’s first principle states that all “children are born persons,” persons worthy of respect. Mason educational methods rely on “three educational instruments — the atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the presentation of living ideas.”
A Mason education respects the personhood of children, understanding that the mind of the child is hungry for ideas. Our goal is not, as the saying goes, to stuff the mind of a child with a bucketful of facts, but to light a fire, a life-long passion for learning. Mason understood the roles that imagination and curiosity and wonder play in the growth of all persons and the importance of fostering an atmosphere that supports these things. Seeing education as a discipline, a CM education supports the development of good habits — habits of attention, of accuracy and excellence, of self-discipline, and the habit of taking pride in a thing well-done.
[For more details, refer to Sonya Shafer’s excellent eBook “Education Is an Atmosphere, a Discipline, a Life” from https://simplycharlottemason.com/store/education-is/]
Our goal at CMET is to present our students with a “full and generous curriculum” that is rich in ideas and living books. CMET provides a comprehensive curriculum that covers reading, math, language arts , history, science, literature, Bible, and the arts. Students study artists, composers, poets, Shakespeare and nature study topics each year. As a part of their nature study work, they will also be taught dry brush water color. Students will be assigned copy work, prepared dictation, oral and eventually, written narration, across all subjects.
CMET and Francis Schaeffer Study Center are members of the ChildLight Schools: A Community of Charlotte Mason Schools, and have greatly benefited from opportunities CLS has provided for ongoing teacher training and encouragement. Both programs are also members of the Hybrid Schools Society.
“A Charlotte Mason view of education . . . is a balanced understanding of education as the provision of possibilities for a person to build relationships with a vast number of things and thoughts. We must take steps to provide a diet which opens the doors for a child to build a relationship with God, other persons, and the universe.”
For the Children’s Sake, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay
