‘The Domestic Church’

ROCKAWAY  Faith Rose of Sacred Heart Parish here enjoys holding court for several hours each weekday around her dining-room table — the center of her ad-hoc classroom where she teaches her children, Michael, 8, Jeremy, 6, and Caeli, 4, academic subjects, as well as about their Catholic faith. All the while, she tries to fill them with a sense of wonder about God and the goodness of his creation in the warmth, comfort and love of what St. John Paul II has called “the domestic Church.”

Welcome to the Rose household in Rockaway, which has been home-schooling its children by using a curriculum from Virginia-based Aquinas Learning — part of a local learning cooperative that the family formed with six other families in the Paterson Diocese and Newark Archdiocese. The faith- and fact-based curriculum has given the more than 20 local students enrolled a “classically Catholic” approach to education — the way culture, tradition and truths have been transmitted down through the generations by great minds, such as Aristotle, Plato, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Paul, and William Shakespeare. The also learn about faith: the liturgical year, the saints, the Catechism and Catholic values.

“With home-schooling, the kids connect the information they are learning in one subject in other subjects because a central idea unifies each lesson. Each of my kids learns at his or her pace. Also, they learn from each other. They are inspired to learn,” said Rose, who also has two younger children: Benjamin, 2, and Kateri, six months. “Home-schooling is a calling for me. The benefits outweigh the challenges. I get to spend more time with them than if they were in school. I get to watch them grow, learn and flourish into the person God created them to be and to teach the values we want to teach them,” she said.

So far, the two-year-old licensed center, operated by Rose, has formed a co-op of seven families from Rockaway, Denville, Verona, Jersey City and Mahwah. Each family sets up school in their households, but they get together on Tuesdays in the former Sacred Heart School, Rockaway, for a Meet-Up Day, which starts the first day of their curriculum each week. They gather in a classroom setting and attend classes taught by a mentor with lessons on geography, history, science, philosophy, the Catechism, “Good Books,” civics, music, art, Latin and Greek.

Parents teach the curriculum, divided into three cycles of content, at the same time to three different ages levels: Schola Parva, pre-k to kindergarten; Schola Prima, grades 1 to 6; and Schola Alta, grades 7 to 12. All students study the same topics each week. Parents “teach ideas, so that the students can learn to discern truth and “facts in order to pass on information and practice skills, so that they will be able to apprehend and re-present the ideas they’ve learned,” according to Aquinas Learning on its website, aquinaslearning.org.

At home, Rose and her three oldest children work at the dining-room table, where she instructs them with guidance from workbooks in subjects, such as science, geography, history, Greek, civics and language arts. They learn math and writing every day. These lessons can involve completing workbook pages, discussion, researching, conducting hands-on projects, giving oral reports, reading great books aloud or learning catchy songs and chants to help remember important ideas, including the goodness of God and his creation, Rose said.

“Our schedule is flexible. I start early with the kids. We try to get to noon Mass at St. Mary Church in Denville. We might do other things together, like visit my grandmother, finish chores or run errands,” said Rose, who also noted that her children are able to take their schoolwork in the car and on vacations. “My children each have age-appropriate lessons, but they learn from each other. Caeli picked up information about cumulus clouds, the Ancient Egyptians and Emperor Justinian from the older boys. Sometimes, one child will become a distraction but it will be a good time to talk to him or her about Catholic virtues, Fruits of the Spirit and character,” she said.

An enthusiastic Michael Rose, a, fourth-grader, got excited, while telling an editor from The Beacon about his class schedule. “We are learning Greek, how to diagram sentences and divide numbers and about St. Leo, the U.S. Constitution and the planets and gravitational pull,” he said. “I like being home to learn. I like to learn about God. Learning about him brings me close to him,” he said.

Also, the Rose family brings the learning outside the home with field trips such as visiting cloistered religious sisters, said Rose.

At the Meet-Up Day, students engage in different types of activities together, such as playing, conducting science projects, reading aloud and learning various aspects of their subjects and faith. The day includes an optional opening rosary and noon Mass in the parish church. Many Aquinas members belong to another co-op, The Little Way, which offers drama, orchestra, gym, Theology of the Body, forensics and science instruction and meets on Fridays at St. Rose of Lima Parish in East Hanover.

Another mother, Elizabeth Hadi of Holy Rosary Parish, Jersey City, home-schools her children — Benjamin, 9, Jacob, 6, Oliver, 5, and Henry, 3 — at the dining-room table of the family’s two-bedroom apartment. “I love that I have the ability to tailor the lessons to the strengths and weaknesses of each child. Here, the family is the source of their values, not their peers [if they attended public school],” said Hadi, a mentor at Aquinas Learning Center, who noted that her kids enjoy learning about the liturgical year and the saint of the day. “This [Catholic home-schooling] is natural, because we as parents are teaching our kids information and values all the time to mold and guide them. We also are learning along with them. As role models, we are showing them that learning is lifelong process,” she said.