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The Homeschool How To
I don't claim to know anything about homeschooling, so I set out on a journey to ask the people who do! Join me as I chat with homeschoolers to discuss; "why are people homeschooling," "what are all the ways people are using to homeschool today," and ultimately, "should I homeschool my kids?"
The Homeschool How To
#94: Thirty-Year Homeschooling Veteran, Lisa Nehring, Gives Us Her Best Advice
Imagine reimagining education for your family and finding a path that aligns with your unique values and lifestyle. Join us as Lisa Nehring shares her remarkable 30-year journey of homeschooling, beginning in an era when the concept was still uncharted territory for many. Lisa's story is a testament to the courage it takes to forge a path less traveled, while shedding light on the evolving landscape of education and the impact of those brave enough to think differently.
We explore the rich tapestry of homeschooling experiences, from classical education approaches that prioritize autodidactic learning to the creation of vibrant communities that nurture diverse talents. We challenge conventional education systems and envision innovative pathways that prioritize creativity and critical thinking. Our discussion extends to the revolutionary impact of online learning platforms like True North Online Academy, which break down traditional barriers and offer tailored educational experiences that inspire and challenge.
This episode encourages parents and educators to intentionally invest in the future of the next generation. By envisioning education as a crucial investment, we aim to empower our children to thrive and carry forward family values. Join us in creating a more fulfilling life beyond traditional molds and exploring the possibilities that await in the ever-evolving educational landscape.
Lisa is the founder of True North Online Academy, offering 2nd- 12th grade live online and self paced classes as well as a cutting edge Dual Degree program, (students can earn a high school diploma and an accredited Bachelor’s Degree concurrently)! At TNOA you can find ebooks, testing, advising, workshops and more!
Lisa also owns It’s Not That Hard to Homeschool where she podcasts, blogs reviews curriculum, provides community and offers parents the encouragement and support they need to navigate homeschooling.
WriteStories by Scriptive- use code THSHT33 for 33% OFF! Encourage reluctant writers and emerging storytellers to write their own stories using illustrations from children's books.
Enter to WIN a FREE 1 YEAR SUBSCRIPTION by emailing me your name @ TheHomeschoolHowTo@gmail.com
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Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool How-To. I'm Cheryl and I invite you to join me on my quest to find out why are people homeschooling, how do you do it, how does it differ from region to region, and should I homeschool my kids? Stick with me as I interview homeschooling families across the country to unfold the answers to each of these questions week by week. Welcome, and with us today I have Lisa Neering here with me. Lisa, thank you so much for being on the show.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. It's delightful to be here.
Speaker 1:So were you a homeschooling mother?
Speaker 2:I was I homeschooled for 30 years.
Speaker 1:So way before it became popular with COVID, and there was even a time that it was illegal, at least in some states. It was.
Speaker 2:We were kind of on the tail end of that. We started homeschooling in 1991. And our park day leader there was no co-ops or class days or anything at that point She'd actually gone to jail for homeschooling because her kids were considered truant. So yeah, and what state are you in? Well, I'm in South Dakota now, but we were in California at that point.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, wow, it's just amazing. And there are like in Germany it's illegal to homeschool. Yes, so what made you decide how many kids do you have and what made you decide that you wanted to homeschool?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have five kids. They're now between the ages of 21 and 38. So we have like three to five years between every child, which is not you know. You plan and then you have your life. So that's kind of what we did.
Speaker 2:But we started homeschooling in 1991 in California and I was finishing up a master's degree at that point and I started writing my master's thesis on why parents decided to homeschool their children and so I did a lit review on the history of education in America. Well, at that same time our oldest daughter was five and so we started touring the public schools in the area and in California at least. At that same time our oldest daughter was five and so we started touring the public schools in the area and in California at least. At that time it was open enrollment so we could go to any of the public schools in our area, and we went to open houses and we talked to teachers and we just found some issues in every school. There were drugs, there were pregnancies and these are like elementary, junior, high school schools. So these are young kids. There was severe bullying. We went to an open house and it was Great Americans Week and there was not one white male American represented at all and we're white. So it just it felt a little out of balance and skewed.
Speaker 2:And we knew that my husband was in a graduate program, as was I. We knew that we only had two more years, probably in California, and at that point it was legal to homeschool until your kids were seven. And so we just decided to homeschool. And I was writing this master's thesis and the more I got into the history of education and what the government schools were set up to do, the more we just decided it was a good plan for our kids and so we started homeschooling. My husband got a military internship after graduate school. We knew we're going to move several times to the military and we just kept adding a few kids here and there and it became a great, a great way to live and a great way to raise our kids.
Speaker 1:Now you were going through schooling. I mean you're writing a thesis, so you're up there getting. Is it your doctorate? I was getting my master's degree.
Speaker 2:My husband was getting his doctorate.
Speaker 1:So did you walk away from the career that you were planning on having after you graduated to homeschool, and how did that feel?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when we were in California I was I was working on a marriage and family therapy degree to become a licensed therapist and my husband got a military internship and we had to move with the military and I could either stay in California with two young kids pregnant with my third alone and get an internship there, or go with my husband and I decided that it would be better to go with him and then, because of the way the school was set up, they granted me a master's in human development because I had enough credits for that.
Speaker 2:So I didn't finish with my MFT. And then, years later, when my husband was working at a seminary, oddly enough they had an MFT program and they accepted all my credits and I did finish my master's in marriage and family therapy. So after we went into the military, we knew we were making several moves. I'd had my third child, who really had some physical issues that first year, and so I stayed home for 20 years after that and ended up not working professionally although I did a lot of blogging and product and curriculum reviews and ended up going back to work in 2013.
Speaker 1:So my career took this odd turn, yeah, and that reminds me of an interview I had with a woman, Rosemary Larrabee, that said you know, as women we can have it all. We just can't have it all at once.
Speaker 1:And that really stuck with me because we are kind of in this society where I think a lot of it's by design to put the women in the workforce, you know, making us think that that's for our own. You know freedom, and really it just doubles the tax base and it takes us away from the family and, you know, makes us more dependent on fast food and that sort of thing. But there's also this element of debt that they push us into college and you know men to push us into college and make us think that that's really the only way you'll be successful.
Speaker 1:And now we see, everybody's got a college degree, so it kind of doesn't mean anything. And now we just come out with $200,000, $300,000 in debt and you have to work to pay that back because your spouse also has the same debt and then, if God forbid, you want a house. So they make it so hard for women today, and I really try to be like like open people's eyes to that. That like maybe like, is college the goal for your kids and if so, why? Because could they? Could they achieve what they want to achieve without getting the debt? And I think it all has been done by design for that reason. And so it is nice that you can have this time where, if you did get an education, then you took time off to be a mother, a homeschooler, and then you went on to have that career that you had worked so hard for in the beginning. You know, later on in life there's time.
Speaker 2:Well, I did become a therapist, I'll be honest, and I want to speak to what you just said because I do own True North Online Academy and I own it's Not that Hard to Homeschool two companies really dedicated to people, helping people understand how to educate their kids and how to do it in a way that's manageable for them, and we just stood up a degree program where students can earn a bachelor's degree while they're earning their high school diploma. This last fall we stood it up and it's very innovative and it's actually a real thing. Like both of these degrees are accredited by national international accrediting boards, so it sounds too good to be true but it's not. And I would really encourage parents to take a hard look at the college dilemma, because it is a real deal and you do not want to burden your kids with debt over college.
Speaker 2:The college for all mentality, which was actually by design, it did a lot for upper education, the same way that no Child Left Behind did for elementary and high school, where it's so watered down it's practically meaningless anymore. Your kids need skills for this modern, very highly technological age that we're going into and, if your goal is college, because you want them to have the experience that you had, really do some research, parents. That world is over. We're in the fourth industrial revolution and we need, as parents, we need to really be on top of this, because even $10,000 of debt for your kids because of the deregulation of student loans can literally financially enslave your children for life, and I am not being hyperbolic when I say that that is actually a real thing. So, absolutely, I'm totally in what you're saying. I am cheering behind you for all of that.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah. And I wasn't always like that. I, when my sister, you know, was talking about her three that you know, oh, he might not go to college or he might just do two, I was like no, they need that four year experience. And you know, now that I see through a different lens, it's like no, don't do it, especially if you don't know what you want to be or you don't need it. For that Can you start your own business. You can take a course on business without having to get the degree. You know you can still get the education. And you can learn a course on business without having to get the degree.
Speaker 1:You know you can still get the education and you can learn a lot just from reading a book or watching some documentaries, or you know, there's just so many other ways without that debt, yeah Well, and certification programs are so important too.
Speaker 2:You can get certified in places like Udemy and you might be more valuable than with a college degree in certain like IT areas. So really it's it's like open waters in education right now. There's so many great, great opportunities for our kids.
Speaker 1:So let's back up to as you were raising your girls homeschooling, I know, or I'm sorry, as you were raising your girls homeschooling I know, or I'm sorry I'm saying girls, you have boys too. I take it, you have five, I do. Okay, oh, I only care about the girls. No, I'm kidding, okay. So, as you're raising your kids, I'm sure a lot of people are thinking well, how do you homeschool with that many? Did you do a lot of family style curriculums where you're doing a science and everybody's learning the science, but maybe just a little bit different involvement for their level?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we know we didn't. We have five kids, but we only had like one toddler at a time and one preschooler at a time, because, again, there's three to five years between all my kids. On the other hand, by the time I had a high schooler, I also had a nursing baby, a preschooler in elementary. So I have all these stages and ages at every time. It felt like for many years and we did a lot of. We were a kind of a great books approach, family and then kind of moved over to classical education. But we always had certain things that we did. We always did read alouds together, we did Bible together, we did geography and history together and that's kind of my family's passion is history, theology, all this kind of thing. So we really enjoyed doing that work together. We would always meet collectively in the morning. We'd eat breakfast and then read or do a morning basket, whatever you want to call it, and then read or do you know a morning basket, whatever you want to call it, and then our kids would. Basically we had the day divided up into skill-based learning in the morning and content-based in the afternoon. So then in the morning we'd work on things like math or Latin grammar, more sequential skill building type of you know subject matter, and then the afternoon it would be more content-based. So history, theology, stuff like that, and we tried to make sure that there was plenty of time for our kids to be able to play.
Speaker 2:We live on an acreage so they had a lot of outside time. We had farm animals, which is like not my strength, so that was a whole era, but we just my kids had tons of crafts and activities and we did, you know, all the usual things like scouts and Iwanas and horseback riding for quite a while, et cetera, et cetera. So there were some really busy times and I will say most of my kids are pretty studious. They really do enjoy learning and I really feel, for listeners, the number one gift you can give your kids through homeschooling is teaching them to be an autodidact. In other words, how can they learn for themselves? That's the number one skill they need going forward in this fourth industrial revolution.
Speaker 2:And so we really we were very pretty academic family. My kids enjoyed learning and reading together. We did all the field trips. We traveled, partly because of my husband's job, and so every place we traveled we'd went on field trips and went to museums and reenactments and things like that. So we tried to have a very educationally rich environment and we always had like table time. I guess you know where we'd sit around the table and everybody would work on their individual subjects. But I'll be honest, having a big family and homeschooling them all, it is challenging, like everybody's. Like homeschool. It'll be bliss and, honestly, homeschooling is a job.
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Speaker 2:I mean, it's work and you're feeding everybody all day long, so you've got that too. But they were good days. I loved him schooling my kids. It was a blessing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I find that the people that are having the hardest time are really trying to replicate the school system and what that school day looks like. So I really tried to. I don't know that I do enough. My kid is six, though, so after I mean I've I've been doing this podcast interviewing homeschooling families for over a year and a half now.
Speaker 1:So I'm really at the point where I'm like I literally just need to keep him alive all day and he's still making out better than in the public school system. Because you know what I know he's not getting. He's not getting the free school breakfast and lunch that's filled with high fructose, corn syrup and red dye 40 and all the chemicals that are going to cause cancers and make him go crazy. Inside that he can't even sit and concentrate, and I know he's not having active shooter drills. So those two things right there. I'm like he is outside out better and I like I really try to bring that level down to parents that are like I can't homeschool because we're just not this family that's going to sit around and everybody in their own chair and read books or listen to classical music together.
Speaker 1:But like it doesn't have to look like that. But what is not going to work is when you're trying to replicate school at home, because that's all we know. So there is like a de-schooling process. Now your kids kind of went through homeschool their whole times. They, um, you know what you presented to them, but you kind of had to de-school yourself, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll be honest, I literally hated school.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I begged my mom to let me graduate at 16, but my parents were they, they were like unschoolers while we were all in school and that sounds so weird. But my mom my mom led our scout group. We went camping literally every month, our family vacations, we went to every factory that was open and field trips galore, and we just had this incredibly rich, educational life growing up. That was very non-traditional. Now we did go to school. Both my parents worked and I have to say like I just yeah, I don't think I had to de-school too much, because we read thousands of books and my parents were like, were on the tail end of hippiedom. We read thousands of books and my parents were like, were on the tail end of hippiedom, and so they just had this like really live and let live kind of attitude where you grab a hold of life and run, and so that was just part of how I wanted to raise my kids. That's why I wanted to get out of school. It felt so constraining All the things I love to do. School took away from that In high school. I was to get out of school. It felt so constraining all the things I love to do. School took away from that In high school I was on a squash team, tennis, I swam, I was in choir and band, I threw pottery, I did photography and I was making money at both the photography and the pottery.
Speaker 2:So school just felt like such a distraction to me and my parents supported all those things. So I mean, I kind of probably have a different history than a lot of people, but yeah, that's what it was and it was, honestly, my parents I didn't know this till right before my mom died she said to me well, you probably know, we did not agree with your decision to homeschool at all and honestly, I was shocked. I was like, seriously, I did not know that. Because my mom because this is just my mom she sent my kids books every holiday, every birthday, every Christmas. She took them to movies, she took them hiking, she took them on field trips, she took them on trips. She would pay for us to go RVing in Utah. You know what I mean. She just did all these crazy wild grab hold of life kind of things and my dad and we all went along with it. You know, my dad paid for it and we all did it and it was just how we were raised.
Speaker 1:You know my mom was a complicated. She didn't want you homeschooling.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it had to do with her history and her background. She was, she was adopted and she was pretty much a motherless orphan until she was eight. My grandpa adopted her, got divorced and they had a housekeeper, but he was a tool and dye worker that worked at night. So when he was eight he married my grandma. My mom was illiterate at the time. She could not read. She looked like this abused, neglected, homeless waif, which she pretty much was.
Speaker 2:And that summer my grandma decided she was going to teach her to read. So she read Shakespeare Tour every day for an hour and at the end of the week, if my mom could read a little bit back, they went to the Five and Dime and bought a Mother West Wind book and I actually still have those books with the 65 cent, you know, written in the cover of them. And my mom decided because of that she wanted to be a teacher. I think she just felt like education kind of saved her and it was so important to her. So she just really valued education. And there was. This was like in the late seventies like we'd never heard of homeschooling, it wasn't a thing. So I think she was just going off the model that made sense.
Speaker 1:Homeschooling. Back before it was kind of like the thing because now, you know, through COVID, parents kind of saw yeah, this is what you're learning and maybe that wasn't what I had kind of thought was going on in the classroom. And now that I see it on the screen through COVID and whatnot a lot, you know it's just become bigger lately, especially with the social media. You know you have Facebook groups of families that homeschool us. You can find local communities. You can reach out to people who homeschool, whether it's the Waldorf style or the Montessori style or game schooling or world schooling, you can find anything. But I mean back in the days, that had to be really hard. How did you find your community and different resources to use as your curriculums or how you educated your kids?
Speaker 2:Well, that's a great question. You know, we I don't. I was thinking about that, I'm not even sure, but I found a park day this is before co-ops and class days so we would meet in the park I think it was once a week and we would talk and it was California, so it was always nice we would. We had a Scholastic book club that we all could order Scholastic from, and we did. There were some conferences so we did that.
Speaker 2:But we started homeschooling the year after Sunlight first came out, so pre-Sunlight it was just basically, like you know, textbooks, abeka, bob Jones, and then Sunlight was like this whole huge new universe that opened up with literature-based learning. And so the group that I was in, we were all part of, you know, we were Sunlight groupies and actually Becky Lewis, who was a co-author of Sunlight, was in my Bible study in Southern California, and then they went back on the mission field. So we used Sunlight for several years and then my husband got a military internship. So we moved and we knew we were going to make three moves in just a matter of, you know, a short amount of time. So we just stuck with homeschooling and it was a great lifestyle. We got to travel a lot with the military. Our kids went coast to coast a couple of times in a few years and we did all the field trips and tours and just had such an amazing, fun lifestyle of learning and growing together.
Speaker 1:Now, a big fear of mine in the very beginning and I know it's a fear of a lot of people's is like my child's going to miss out on the things like the homecoming, the football games, the prom stuff like that. And I know once you get in it you can. You can see how big the homeschooling community is so that if you really, if, like, prom was something important, you can recreate that or there somebody already did and you can attend a homeschooling prom. But in the back of the nineties I'm sure it was not as big. Did those thoughts ever cross your mind, like am I going to have them miss out? Or now that I'm kind of in it, I'm looking back on like well, of course you can't give your child every experience in the world. You, you take some and you leave some.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, when we first started we didn't think we were going to homeschool all the way through. So I wasn't even thinking about high school. I loved, I loved the extracurricular activities of high school. I was in band and choir and homecoming and all the kind of things and I thought it was fun. But I just never thought that far ahead as far as educating our kids. And the other thing too I interviewed a family for my master's thesis before we even started homeschooling. I wrote a thesis on why parents homeschool their kids.
Speaker 2:Way back in the nineties I wrote this thesis and I interviewed a number of families regarding that and I did a lit review on the history of education in America. It was very interesting and fascinating. But I met this one family and they had two kids and they started homeschooling even before the nineties and the eighties. Like they were two pioneers because their second daughter was profoundly dyslexic 80s. Like they were true pioneers because their second daughter was profoundly dyslexic and like she couldn't read and the mom was an educational reading expert and just was really struggling. So they pulled her out of homes, out of public school, and she started homeschooling her. Now, she couldn't read, but she was really gifted with music and physically, so she was doing horseback trick riding, she was composing, she was traveling across the country raising money, doing volunteer things. She was living this amazing, rich, robust life and I wanted that for my kids. That's what I wanted for my kids. So, while I wasn't necessarily thinking like they're going to miss out on prom, what I was thinking is they can travel, and all of our kids well, four out of five of them have traveled internationally, some of them while they were still in high school, without us, independently. They've been traveling. I mean, it's a different world from when our older kids were younger. So, you know, you have to be wise as parents and those kinds of things. But they did a lot of community service. They were really involved in politics and so they did horseback lessons and scouts and awanas and all the things you know. So we had this really robust, rich life that went way beyond academics, because we had the time to do these things.
Speaker 2:Now, as our kids, you know, as we, our kids grew up with the homeschool movement. In a way, we either found people who were developing things like proms or we started them ourselves. And that's one thing I want to say to anybody who's listening right now and wants to do an alternative educational route for your kids. If you're worried your kids are going to miss out on something, start it. There's no reason why you can't start it, why you can't host the prom, why you can't host the group horseback riding lessons or the homeschool choir. You know the marching band. You could do all those things. There's no reason why you can't. And yeah, it takes time and money and energy and all those kinds of things it really does. But if it's something that's a high value to you, then go for it.
Speaker 2:And you know I I've read a zillion books on education. One of the books I read was Tiger Mom by Shua, and that book is really controversial. But one thing I was so fascinated by with this mom is that her kids went to school and then they were all. Both of her girls were super phenomenal musicians and they both played in Carnegie Hall. But what that mom did is she learned every piece of music her kids played. She coached her kids in every piece of music they played, and so her kids were really accepted at this like really professional, poised, polished level at a very young age, because the mom was their personal coach and mentor, and that's one thing I think, regardless of what educational opportunities we provide for our kids, we need to take really seriously as parenting, as parents. What are we putting in front of our kids? How are we mentoring and coaching them through it?
Speaker 2:Because, whether you're homeschooling or public or private schooling, you can create those opportunities for your kids. You just need to have a goal and a vision for them and for and for what God's calling your family too. So yeah, I mean that was a long answer, but I wasn't really too worried about prom and, as it was, most of my kids went to prom anyway because there was homeschool proms by the time they got to that age and they did Shakespeare camps and drama camps and politics, and one of my sons went to the National Bible Bee. As a competitor is that there's just so many opportunities. Like the world is rich. It's. It's a huge smorgasbord. As a parent, our big goal it's like writing a master's thesis. It's not can you find a topic? It's what topics won't you write about? And parenting is like that too. It's not that there's not opportunities, it's which ones are you choosing to invest in for your family?
Speaker 1:Right, yes, and when you really step back and look at it, I mean your child was just happened to be born in this country at this time. But had they been born in you know, Zimbabwe or you know anywhere else, like they don't have the standards that we do in our schools. As far as, like, my friend is from Poland, I said to him do you guys trick or treat in Poland? He goes, no, we don't. Like, it's not a thing. Cemeteries are meant for, like dead people in respect. And it's no, we don't recreate a cemetery all over your house and then in a knock on stranger's door and ask for free food, Like that's really weird. So I'm like, yeah, so what you think your kid is missing out on? They're not. It's just that happens to be the construct of society today.
Speaker 1:And you can choose to have them be part of it or not, but there are millions and millions of kids not participating in those little things that we coin as traditional schooling, like the prom or homecoming. Now you mentioned that you did your thesis on the education, of our education system, the history of it.
Speaker 1:And I love that. I love learning about that stuff. I wonder if I've come across the same things that you came across when you were writing that, because, as I've researched it, it looks to me like there were people like Horace Mann and John Dewey that brought this Prussian model of, yes, let's, let's, get all these kids together and whether it be maybe that came later on down the line but get all these kids together and teach them the same thing, and a lot of that was to, so that they learn to honor their country and not necessarily in a good way, though, but take order and and you know, understand that they have rules to follow. And then we add in some fluff so that parents think it's a really good thing. And they brought that over to Massachusetts, where then you get, you know, the women's movement that came in a few decades later, and it was like, well, we, we do need somebody to watch our kids while we're all free and liberated at work all day.
Speaker 1:And we need somebody to watch our kids. You know cause now the women are at work. So I wonder if that's kind of the same idea that you took away from your research or if if that's maybe just a skewed vision.
Speaker 2:No, I think that's pretty accurate. I mean, you know, we did have social influencers Horace Mann and John Dewey who did import the Prussian model of education. In the same way American importer imported that Prussian model of the military, which was very sequential and logical. Now you also have rich industrialists who really wanted factory workers, industrialists who really wanted factory workers, and so the public school system created an automatic producing factory workers. But there's another side of that too, and I just want to present that too because I think it's an important side. You did kind of touch on this briefly.
Speaker 2:Before public education, education in America was provided by the community or the churches and we had a really high literacy rate. So bear that in mind. Then, when we imported this Prussian model, that kind of changed. But before we had standardized education, there was a lot of drugs, a lot of teen pregnancies, a lot of promiscuity on the streets with our kids, because it was the Industrial Revolution, right, the second one and the parents were at the factories 10 to 15 hours a day. The kids were running wild on the streets. They were underclothed, underfed, they didn't really have anything to do during that time. So public education came in and standardized. Look, we're going to take all these immigrants that are coming over for the Industrial Revolution. We're going to give them a common language. We're going to give them a common frame of reference ie the Constitution and help them understand how this country runs and that they can actually have freedom and liberty here if they follow these rules. So it was a both and kind of thing. It was very systematized, but it was systematized in a way that gave everybody a common language and understanding of how this new country was going to work, at least in an industrial kind of area like New England was. So there were some benefits.
Speaker 2:However, you know, the literacy rate has definitely been dropping and we're really for a first world country. Our academic rates are just in the tank. So we definitely need to redo what's going on with the public school system. I always say it's not failing. It's doing exactly what it was created to do, which is to churn out factory workers and to be a good factory worker. You don't want to be too good of a critical thinker, you don't want to be too creative, you don't want to be able to really like think on your own and start your own business, because that doesn't really make a great factory worker right Now.
Speaker 2:We're in the fourth industrial revolution right now, so we're kind of in the same thing. Take two like it is public education 2.0, where we need people who can work for rich globalists and be the factory workers in a more high tech kind of situation. So all that to say like there's nothing new under the sun, right, including with public education. But as parents and as consumers of education, we don't really think of ourselves that way. But we really are consumers of public education. We pay for it through our tax dollars and it's time to regroup, it's time to change things up, which I think is happening right now with charter and ESA dollars.
Speaker 2:My concern with that is that there's like millions, maybe billions of dollars just floating around the stratosphere and there's going to be more regulations on that for better or worse.
Speaker 2:But education right now is really kind of in crisis.
Speaker 2:And, parents, this is your opportunity, because whenever there's an industrial revolution or any revolution, like the old ways are falling away and that can be really tragic, it can be really sad, it can be bloody, it can be horrible. On the other hand, it can be all the opportunities. So right now we're in this land of educational opportunity where you've got public, private, micro. I mean there's all so many kinds of schools going on right now and you can really take advantage of it to provide a world-class education for your kids for so inexpensively, like I think there's never been a better time to really think about educating your kids as a parent, because you have so much talent at your fingertips for really pennies on the dollar of what it costs when I was going to school, even you know. So, yes, I think you're like how you're thinking about the history of education in America is right on, with a few nuances, and we're in another industrial revolution which, of course, is going to really radically impact education revolution, which of course, is going to really radically impact education.
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Speaker 2:But parents, wow, you've got this amazing buffet in front of you. So what do you want for?
Speaker 1:your kids. You've touched on a lot of great things that I hope I remember to talk about, because the reason that the Rockefellers invested the amount of money that they did in the early 19th century was exactly that they wanted to pump out factory workers that were smart enough to do the job but not smart enough to question it or become competitors to their oil industry. Yes, yes, and it's funny because after I read the books that I did about our education system, which I had Alex Newman on my show and he wrote man, is it going to? He wrote I'll have to pull that in, but it was all about our um, let me just pull it up, because then I can just edit this part out. Now I'm doing him a disservice.
Speaker 1:Alex Newman oh, apparently he wrote more than one. Okay, he wrote indoctrinating our children to death.
Speaker 1:And so okay. So then I said, well, this can't be what they're just telling people, though, right, because then you talk to, you know, some of my friends who are teachers or just very, you know, liberal in that, and that like like really love the idea of school and what it offers children, and I get that too, like I was that person. So I'm like, well, what are they? What are they taking away from this message? If you have one side taking away this factory worker, like we want you to be obedient worker bees, but that it also comes across as, like you were saying, there was things going on promiscuity, children running amok and not, you know, really having any sort of supervision through the day. So there is, and let's give Johnny in the Bronx the same opportunity as Billy, and you know country, town and Wyoming, you know, let's give them the same opportunity. So it is so nuanced. You're completely right.
Speaker 1:And it's funny, though, because, as you were talking about the factory worker, and I've always, you know, I, I've, I've heard that too and I get it, and I'm thinking about my 16 years being a government worker, and it wasn't that I was in a factory per se. I wasn't, you know, making aluminum, but I was a factory worker in the essence of sit here, just do your job, which is very minimal because the way our government works, especially with civil service exams, and that's kind of how you get your job and how promotions work it's not based on how well you do and what sort of asset you are to the company. You know, slash agency that you work for it's more sit there and be a warm body and we're going to collect tax dollars. We're going to. You know, give you some as your pay and some for a pension and then we're probably going to you know, do a whole lot of other things with the other tax dollars.
Speaker 1:But we'll say it goes to our state. And yeah, I was just a glorified factory worker, is what I was. You know, I said anytime I had an idea, hey, we can do this a better way. It was okay, that's cute. Now go back to your desk and shut up. You know, that's essentially what you know for 16 years. Nothing was ever. Hey, we could do it a better way. Nope, the contract goes to the governor's golf buddy. Sorry, no, but they can't do the job. Yeah, but we'll just pay you guys overtime to.
Speaker 1:You know, fix what the contractor can't do and it's like all this wasted tax dollars, and that's just like a small portion of what I saw. It's extrapolate that. And yes, these are the factory workers, like you said. You know, working for the Facebook, the Google, the Apple. You know it's the same thing. Do your job, but don't become smart enough to be a competitor or smart enough to question what I'm doing. Just be smart enough to do what I ask. And it is. It's so true.
Speaker 1:There was one more thing that you touched on that was really cool, but I'll I'll turn it back over to you. I probably forgot by this point, but, um, so, okay, I have a lot of questions. I feel like you're such a wealth of knowledge in this. How, so when, when you look back on on your years of homeschooling, your kids are older now, what would you say? Like, I feel like my life is super chaotic because there's like no real rhythm. I'm still trying to figure out. I have a first grader and a two-year-old, so I'm still trying to figure out, like where our groove is. Like, what is your advice to the parents, starting out that you?
Speaker 1:like want to do it all, but doing it all is kind of chaotic and like where, how important is having a rhythm, how important is trying new things, how important is the group activities so that they get you know friends and stuff like that, versus you know. Okay, this is going to be our time to sit down and read or do a hands-on curriculum. What do you recommend?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and I do think it depends on the parent and it depends on the kids. One of the things I really try to say to parents is find a curriculum and a rhythm that works for you, because if it doesn't work for you you're not going to do it. And we went more by rhythm than like a really tight schedule. I tried to do a tight schedule. I'm not a tight schedule kind of girl, but what we finally came up to was skills in the morning and content in the afternoon, and then your kids need sleep, so make sure that they get plenty of good sleep. Good sleep meaning they have no light in their room, they're not doing screens an hour before bedtime and they don't have the Wi-Fi available to them while they're supposed to be sleeping, because that disrupts their circadian cycles. So when it's time to sleep, turn off everything and have them sleep, and then, if they need naps, have them do naps. Now we had a couple of kids. They didn't do naps after like 0.7 months, right? So if you have kids who are just not, they're going to tear the room around. You don't have to do that. But once they were up, we ate breakfast together and then we did a morning basket or some kind of thing that we just read together or did memory work together. And then we did skills-based learning in the morning, and by skills I mean things that build on each other, like math or like Latin or like grammar. So it's skills based, where if you don't have a concept you can't get to D concept, and we did that pretty much for years. And then we would have lunch together, really simple food, then simple food, because that is like a whole deal. You have to prep it, you have to serve it and eat it and clean it up. So simple, simple is better. And then we would do content-based stuff in the afternoon, like Bible, theology, literature, things that didn't build on each other, that you could just pick up and go.
Speaker 2:The other thing I love open and go curriculum. I have really simplified curriculum by the end of our like by the last 10 years of our homeschooling career, I got three catalogs from curriculum companies and I, even though I was professionally doing product and curriculum reviews sometimes we would utilize those in our homeschool, but a lot of times we didn't, because I knew what worked for me. I didn't want to relearn it every year, I didn't want it to be complicated. I knew how to bring in all the extra things we wanted, and so I just focused on the three things that I liked that I knew were good curriculum. Right now, homeschooling is a billion dollar industry, so consider this. There's some really garbage curriculum out there. So find stuff that's actually effective and works and does what it says it's going to do. The other thing, too I didn't like curriculum that said it was math with Bible verses thrown on or whatever you know like we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about a literary analysis, but, by the way, let's work some math problems while we're doing it. I liked I liked curriculum that was simple and did what it said it was going to do, because I knew enough about the world, I knew enough about education and learning that I could add in all that stuff and parents you are too. You don't need somebody telling you everything, probably and so we really did a simple approach.
Speaker 2:I do think when your kids are younger, they need routine more than they need a lot of activities, but as your kids get older, they probably have more need for social activities and things like that. I will say over the years of homeschooling my kids are three and a half to five years apart, each one of them 16 year spread between our oldest and youngest, and, like I didn't have two toddlers at a time or you know whatever, but I did have this huge age range. So when my youngest was born I had a baby, a preschooler, an elementary student, a junior higher in high school, and then it just kind of went up from there. So the needs of my high schoolers were more in the world than the needs of my little kids. And it sounds kind of like you have that situation in your home too, where you have an elementary aged kiddo and you have a little one, and so that can be really tricky. But you just have to decide what are the most pressing needs for this season, and the seasons change by year or maybe literally even seasons, and so what is the needs, what is the most pressing need of your kids, and who's going to win out during that season? It doesn't mean that you have a favorite, necessarily. It means that maybe this one kiddo has this one thing that they really need.
Speaker 2:We had a one of our kids was really good at math and at some point he just he needed a math tutor because he was way beyond where I was at with math and it was going to really hold him back to just kind of do it on his own. You know, he was in, he was in calc, and so we got a math tutor. That meant we were driving to go take him to this math tutor, but that's okay, we just worked it out. We were going to do some shopping, we're going to go to the park for the little kids and we, you know, we try to hit up story time at the library or whatever. So as parents, we're kind of the mentors, we are the leaders of our home and we're also the. You know, I just did this podcast on we're really the healers of our home.
Speaker 2:So where, where do your kids need, where do they need focus, where do they need minister to? How are you, as the parent, going to really provide that for your kids? And it can be daunting with one kid or two kids or five kids or 10 kids, however many kids you have, because the needs of our kids are so different and the needs of our home and even us personally are different. I had kids in my 20s, thirties and forties. So in my twenties I was jogging and playing tennis and then I had some, some injuries and things like that. So I don't think my older, my younger kids have ever seen me like even skip. You know what I mean. So we have different abilities, depending on the ages of our kids too, and so you have to take all that into account.
Speaker 2:One of the things I think as homeschool parents, we get so caught up in this frenzy of making this perfect, idyllic life for our kids, and we had a house fire years ago. My big takeaway from the house fire is that setup is every bit as important as the doing of the task. So we painted our whole house from top to bottom and it took hours to prep it. We plastic the window. It's this old, hundred year old house, so there's a zillion windows. We had to plastic all the windows and the floorboard. We had to, you know, cover the wood floors and we had to get the paint and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It took like four to six hours to do one floor of prep work, and then it took an hour and a half to spray the house. So you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:It's like that with homeschooling too. We get so worked up about making this great thing, but we don't put the prep work in. And a lot of times, if we just do the prep work, that takes into account what does everybody need, including me how we're going to make that happen with our time and our resources not Susie's or Joe's, but what do we have? How's that going to work out? And then we can set it up so that we can just like walk into it and flow. And the other thing too don't be afraid to get rid of what's not working. If it's not working, no matter how much you paid for it, no matter how great it is for somebody else, move on, because it's not worth it. It's just not worth it to waste your time on something.
Speaker 1:So agreed I might steal you at 10 minutes to for the end, because I have a curriculum series where I just ask people like what was your favorite curriculum? And then kind of, what does the day to day look like in that? And I'm like, ooh, why didn't I think to message Lisa earlier about this, because I would love to hear your ideas on that. Yeah, I love what you said and like right now for me, I've been homeschooling for about, you know, a little over a year and a half because we did do his kindergarten year, even though we didn't have to report it. But I guess in a lot of states people don't have to report, so I don't have to measure homeschooling by reporting requirements. Of that. That's the school in me, the school system in me, telling me that it doesn't count unless you have to report it to somebody. But I'm still really trying to find a rhythm. So for parents who are like, oh my gosh, we're a month or two in and we're all still fighting and it's, you know, we don't have a day to day rhythm and we don't have, you know, we haven't figured it out yet Like that is OK, that's not you failing, that's you trying to.
Speaker 1:But, like you said, I need to do a better job prepping, because, as I'm running, or even just before I came on this podcast, it's like, okay, I, you know I'm doing a podcast today because our previous episode cut out, so like I'm throwing in something that I don't normally have today, and then I'm thinking, oh man, I cooked a chicken the other day. I wanted to make broth with the carcass and now it's too old. It's been in the fridge for like seven days. I got it out there and I'm like, why don't I have a rhythm for things? Like, like, I usually make my sourdough on Thursdays. Right, I know, thursday comes, let's make our sourdough, because we're going to want it for the weekend and that really should be that way for everything all week long.
Speaker 1:I think I must just be kind of adding one day of organization to my life. But you know, it's finding what's important to you and then, yeah, making that work, because right now it's just like, okay, there's a play group on this day and oh, now there's other homeschoolers to get together on Mondays, and that used to be our day that we're just in the house. But now, you know, we're so afraid of socialization and not having our kids socialize that. It's like I was putting that at the forefront of everything while he's still young. Let's make friends, let's make friends. But it really isn't about that. It's more when you said it's more important to have a routine than actually what you're doing in that routine, that really resonated with me, because that's where we lack and I wonder if my son's behavior or just sheer attitude in life no, no, he just he's got like a teenage girl attitude with me, but I wonder if that would subside if I gave him a little bit more rhythm and what to expect each day.
Speaker 1:Because when you add in sports and like there's the sports for the spring which are different than sports for winter, and these poor kids don't know if they're coming or going sometimes, and even if you're homeschooling, where we're supposed to have this laid back life there's not. In the area that I live in there's homeschoolers to get together every single day of the week and I was thinking that's most important. But now that I'm listening to you, I think I really will readjust what's going on in our life and kind of make it a little bit more mellow and routine. Do your kids know what to do in an emergency? Do they know how to call 911 from a locked cell phone? Well, if you've been listening to my podcast for any length of time, you know that I have been working for the last year on a book that talks about exactly this.
Speaker 1:I was going through homeschooling curriculum with my son and realized that, although they would brush over certain things that my son would need to know in an emergency, nothing really delved into it, and definitely not on a repetitive basis. I started reaching out to teachers and asking them what schools do to prepare kids for emergencies, and, other than skimming the surface, they said that they really feel that this information is the parent's responsibility to teach. But do parents know that? It's not like there's a handbook where we talk about who is responsible for what? So I set out on a journey to write a book about exactly this, and it is finally published.
Speaker 1:My illustrator, cheryl Krauthamel, is a retired NYPD officer, so she was the perfect fit for this book. We have hidden a 9, a 1, and a 1 in each illustration so that you and your kids can have fun searching for these numbers. While solidifying for your kids what these numbers look like, I've put the steps for how to reach 9-1-1 on various cell phones, even if they're locked, and what that call will go like and what information they will be looking for. My book will help your child practice their first and last name, mom and dad's first and last names, their address, what to do if there is a fire it goes over stranger danger, internet water and gun safety, and I have paired an activity book to go right along with it.
Speaker 1:To solidify these concepts, give yourself peace of mind and give your kids the confidence to handle the unexpected by grabbing your copy of let's Talk Emergencies today. You can head on over to the link in my show's description or thehomeschoolhowtocom, and, if you do purchase the copy, please, please, please, leave me a review on Amazon. The more reviews I have, the more the algorithm will push this book out there, so I would really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening and for all of your support of the show.
Speaker 2:Well, and I do think too, some of us are really social and we have non-social kids or vice versa. And that's a hard balance too, because, like for me, we're going to meet five days a week. I'm there, I'm there, let's, let's have that party, but I had a couple of kids that were like an other thing to do. I mean it just like shorted them out. So you, you know, you've got all these personalities to consider in your home too, like including yours, and so how do you balance that so that everybody feels like they're, they're getting taken care of and heard? And the other thing too, I just want to say, like, don't homeschool out of a spirit of fear, because, no, I I'm not saying that you're doing this, but I think the socialization issue, it was the question 30 years ago. It's still the question today Will my kids get socialized?
Speaker 2:Listen, if your kid is raised in a social group, be it a Wolfpack, public school, your home, that's a social group. They're being socialized. I think the real question behind that concern is will my kids be social? We're socializing them to a different group than a, than a huge government system. They'll be socialized, but they'll be socialized differently and just being at peace with how we've determined to socialize them is going to just help us calm down and just kind of like have peace with whatever we decide. You know what I mean? Because you're, you're not going, you're not gonna like overly socialize your kids or underly socialize your kids, unless they're in a closet, which you know. We're not those parents. And so just what kind of socialization do you want? You can pick and choose. You don't have to come at it from oh my gosh, we missed this. We've got to go do 27 more things. So they're socialized because they're already socialized. They're just socialized in your family.
Speaker 1:So yeah, absolutely, and I had. I had made a Instagram post last week, um, about all the different homeschooling groups that there are. So when you find one and you're like, oh my God, this isn't what I thought homeschooling was going to be, that's not the end, all be all. There are so so many other ones to try. I have been to ones with kids that I am like, oh, we're not hanging out with them. No, no, this is not what I signed up for. So just because they're homeschooled doesn't mean they are wonderful people either.
Speaker 1:Everybody has their own reasons for homeschooling and discipline. Everyone has their own ideas on how to discipline, and so that affects how their children act, and you know. But okay, if that group doesn't work, try to find another one or start another one. The hard part with starting them is that you can't really kick them out once you figure out that you aren't into these people, or that people that that's the hard part.
Speaker 1:But yeah, there's groups that just bent to that, are like, oh, these are the religious ones, and you have the religious ones that like, but we don't celebrate any of the, you know, traditional holidays, and that I find that stuff really interesting. I love learning about it and, if anything, it's been just so eyeopening to me and how people think and what you know. Like, wow, I've never been exposed to that. That's so cool, you know. And then you get the people that are like you know, prepping for you know, well, we, just we, we want to spend our time teaching our kid how to be self-sufficient. We don't want that to them to be dependent on grocery stores, and and it's like, wow, that's a really good point too. Yeah, it doesn't have to be that. You know we were.
Speaker 1:The government is just, you know, going to shut off all our power. It can be a hurricane that really just wiped out all the power and they can't turn it back on for whatever reason. So little things like this is like, yeah, that is important to know. Our grandparents knew it. Why is it just all that knowledge gone in two generations? And you know so there's just all different reasons. People homeschool and these groups form out of that, and you know. So. If you found one that you're like, well, these people are crazy, or I don't agree with this or that there. Don't throw away homeschooling, it's just that you know there might be a different group that suits you better, but I find them all entertaining.
Speaker 1:I love learning about this stuff. It's been eye opening.
Speaker 2:Yes, Well, and it does seem like there's. You're either a Charlotte Mason or a classical or an unschooler, like people. I and I think it's people search for tribe, Like where are my people, when are we going to hang out and feel accepted, and like we get what's going on and we know the language and all those kinds of things. But you're right, it is, there's. There's so many different flavors. There's like 31 flavors of homeschooling, I think you know. So, yeah, if you don't find a group that fits right away, go looking, because you're going to find one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you touched on one more thing earlier and I'd like to kind of close out with this before I steal you for the 10 minutes on the curriculum, but intention on educating our children. I feel like this is so important and it is so missed in the conversation. Whether you send your kids to traditional school or a private school or a micro school or a home, you home educate in your kitchen. The intention behind why we educate our children. We don't ever talk about it. How important is that and why? What are your thoughts on this? Why do we do it all? Why are we teaching them anything?
Speaker 2:I think it's. I think you touched on it with the last thing about the groups. You know there's, you've got some preppers, you've got like, look, our kids are our legacy. That is why, if a child dies before a parent, it's the ultimate tragedy, right? Because our kids are supposed to outlive us. We are investing in the future when we educate our kids. They're going to take that investment and they're going to somehow educate their kids, whether they do it the same way we did or not. It is going to be part of our kids, their kids and even our grandkids, our great grandkids. I mean, and you see that, with epigenetics too, I mean it's just it's, it's just one of those laws of nature that what you do with your kids is going to have some trickle-down effect through your grandkids. So we are investing in our legacy when we educate our kids. And one of the things I think we intuitively know, even if we haven't named it, is that education is so important because we're preparing our kids for their future as we educate. How are they going to be able to provide for themselves? Are they going to choose family, and if so, what kind of family? Education matters because it addresses all of those questions. So I mean that's like if you've worked with Ivy League kids or I've worked with Ivy League kids, kids who've gone into the military academy and Olympic athletes, and one thing that is very interesting to me about those kids is that their parents are incredibly intentional with them. They have a plan and they're working the plan, especially Olympic athletes, because Olympic athletes in training they're in the gym. I've worked with gymnasts mostly, but some swimmers and actually some other sports, but mostly gymnastics. They're in the gym 40 plus hours a week just to do their physical training and then they usually get up early and they do some weight training and then they have an academic coach and they have a nutritional coach. They have all these coaches. So it's incredibly intentional for this one outcome and that is to get to the Olympics to win a medal, because if you do that you can write your own ticket for the rest of your life, financially, vocationally, et cetera, et cetera. And so it's this really intensive, intentional training of their kids to get to this goal, so that their kids have all this freedom forevermore.
Speaker 2:Do we all have Olympic athlete potential with our kids? Probably not. You know, genetics plays a big part of it too. However, if we take that concept and apply it to our kids. Do we know that we want them to have a family or to value family? Do we know that we want them to value education? Do we know we want them to be an autodidact so that they can grow up and decide to learn how to be a sourdough baker or to prep, or to travel the world, or to learn five languages, or to create a film or to do some other great, amazing work in the world? Yeah, I think we do.
Speaker 2:But as parents we have to really think and determine how are we going to create that environment to get our kids to that point?
Speaker 2:And I think the best thing we can do for our kids right now is to teach them to become an autodidact.
Speaker 2:And that means how can they learn for themselves?
Speaker 2:That means they have to have curiosity.
Speaker 2:So turn off the cell phones, turn off the television, let them be bored, get them outside, have them do physical activity to the point of sweating, teach them what hard work means, because if you don't do any of those things, they're not going to learn how to learn on their own, and then they'll just be an automatron. And I mean if you want your kids to be a government worker whatever you define that, as you know, a factory worker then you don't need to be intentional. But if you want your kids to change the world, if you want your kids to have true freedom in life, if you want your kids to have actual values that go beyond serving other people in a not in a philanthropic way but in a kind of a brain dead way, then you don't have to be intentional. But if you want that for your kids, probably you need to be a little intentional because it's going to be the rare kid who grows up in a factory mentality kind of environment that can break out of that mold. Do you know what I mean? I hope I.
Speaker 1:I hope that made sense I. I kind of felt like I rambled a little bit. That's how I felt like I was I. You know my parents.
Speaker 1:they both worked, they were both government workers, in fact, and it was you go to school cause we're going to work, and you know my the evenings were not. It was not my mother like reading books. To me it was like you know, you do the kid thing. Go play in your room. I'm going down into the basement to watch. You know law and order and smoke my cigarettes, you know. And it was like I was just always like God, there's gotta be more than this.
Speaker 1:You know, like I felt like my whole life in school, I'm not learning things that are interesting. It seems to me there's a lot to know in the world and I always felt like I just couldn't grasp it. You know, but it took, you know, till I was about 35, 40 to be like all right, we actually can break this mold.
Speaker 2:Yeah and Cheryl, now literally you've got this podcast. You are making such an incredible difference by telling people like your life can be more than just putting in 40 hours of work a week, watching Law and Order and smoking cigarettes. Like you can have this robust, rich, full life where you feel fed and you're nurturing and serving others too. I mean, I love your. I love your living it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I never thought I'd leave the state work.
Speaker 2:Never, never, never in a million years. That was a big step. I mean seriously.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it was All right, lisa. What else would did you want to talk about while we still have you on the podcast? I know you're doing big things.
Speaker 2:Well, I, I just think parents need to be super aware that education is changing very quickly. We're in the fourth industrial revolution, so college is really different than what it was when I went to college for sure, probably, when you went and we're in the fourth industrial revolution, so it's really super high tech. But along with those high tech fields, the economy, the empath economy, is also growing and so there's amazing opportunities for your kids. I would really caution parents to think very carefully about where they want their kids to go after high school and how they're going to prepare them to have freedom, financial freedom, vocational freedom, familial freedom after high school and the games afoot. I mean, like I said, we're in this crazy time of real social disruption and so some things we've really counted on they're just they're just failing and that's so disappointing and discouraging.
Speaker 2:However, there's all this opportunity, like like, I own an online company. I grew up without computers. I'm this old right Like nobody had computers in their home till I was after I graduated from college, right, and yet I own an online company. Am I a tech person? Not really, but there's all this amazing opportunity for you to walk into things that didn't even exist 10 or 15 years ago. So, parents, just do your due diligence. Do your reading. Be intentional about educating your kids and discover and grow together. Be curious, because the world is a pretty exciting place. I love it.
Speaker 1:You touched on True North. Is that something that you've created? What is that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so True North Online Academy is a second through 12th grade online program, so we offer live online and self-paced classes. You can choose a la carte or you can take a whole program with us and self-paced classes. You can choose a la carte or you can take a whole program with us. We just stood up a new dual degree program so you can earn an accredited well we're soon to be accredited high school diploma at the same time you earn an accredited bachelor's degree. So it's not dual credit where you're earning a couple credits for college at the same time you're earning a high school diploma. You're earning a bachelor's degree from accredited institutions while you're going through your high school program. It is unique. There's nothing like it that I've found anywhere else. We've been doing True North since 2018. And so we utilize gamification, the SAMR model of online learning. Our classes are dynamic and interactive and we have students from around the world. So it's an it's an amazing program. It's a lot of fun. So if you're looking for online classes, check out True North.
Speaker 1:Yes, and what grades are that? Is that for just high school?
Speaker 2:Second yeah, it's second through 12th grade.
Speaker 2:So we do have an elementary program. Yep, we have an a middle school program in high school and we're really trying to do things that are a little like we're using tech to really create unique situations for our kids. So we're not it's not just like we're picking up a textbook and delivering it online. So, for example, our German class we've actually partnered with a school in Germany. The kids actually meet with each other once a month. So the German kids are meeting with English speakers and English speakers are meeting with German speakers online to practice their foreign languages together. And then I mean, it's just such a cool thing, like our ASL program, they actually meet with a deaf interpreter once a month. We do digital escape rooms, we do web challenges. So, again, we're really utilizing tech in unique ways. I like to call it re-imagining education. So the tech actually supports really solid learning and it's it's been a really fun process to figure out how to really use use tech in unique ways.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness, yes, well, I'll add that portion into the main podcast so that people can check that out and and put a link to that in the show's description, but that is so cool.
Speaker 1:So for the parents that yeah, as you, especially as your kids get older, like you said, you'd brought your son to a tutor knowing that there was stuff beyond you didn't want to, which I love that too, because in school, just because they're getting great, you know really good grades, you're like way to go, buddy, and you never really stop and think, hey, do you need more? You need more, more than that, you need to be challenged more and then go seek it. You can do that in homeschooling. So this is great because it sounds like you could do that with your program as well.
Speaker 2:It's not like okay, you're in ninth grade you have to be with all the ninth graders. Yeah, yeah, no, we, I mean we do. We have found that placement makes all the difference. We try to place the kids really well based on their skills, not their grade level. So if we have some kids who are taking calculus and they're taking ninth grade English because they don't have the actual writing skills that are really going to be necessary to take them where they need to go, but in math they're just rocking and rolling. So that's one of the beautiful things about parents being intentional about your kid's education you can really see where your kids are at, what are their actual academic needs and how do you manage that.
Speaker 1:All right, I will link all that below so people can check that out. All right, lisa, thank you so much. What a wealth of knowledge and just inspiration that you've given us today. Thank you, you're welcome. It's been so fun. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for tuning into this week's episode of the homeschool how to. If you've enjoyed what you heard and you'd like to contribute to the show, please consider leaving a small tip using the link in my show's description. Or, if you'd rather, please use the link in the description to share this podcast with a friend or on your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. Any effort to help us keep the podcast going is greatly appreciated. Thank you for tuning in and for your love of the next generation.