#156: I Tried to Recreate School at Home… Everyone Cried (This Fixed It)

A former public school teacher never planned to homeschool — until COVID forced a hard reset. In this episode, Cheryl talks with Janae Daniels from the School to Homeschool Podcast about the moment everything changed: the “magical” 2020 shutdown, the surprising nudge to homeschool, and the first day that completely fell apart… until a piano tuner accidentally delivered the best real-life science lesson her kids had ever experienced.

Janae shares what deschooling actually looks like (and why it’s harder for parents than kids), how she stopped trying to replicate school at home, and what happened when her children finally had room for boredom, curiosity, and real learning: guitar skills built through YouTube lessons, reading for meaning (not grades), embroidery that turned into paid work, early jobs, business books, conferences, and a senior year centered on debate, confidence, and entrepreneurship.

If you’re thinking, “I’m not smart enough,” “My kids will fight me,” or “Is it too late to start homeschooling — especially for middle and high school?” this conversation will give you clarity, encouragement, and a new definition of education.

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Mentioned in today’s episode:

 🎹  Have your kiddos learn piano from this amazing resource, check out: Simply Piano. We love it!  🎶 

• Cheryl's ebook: https://thehomeschoolhowto.com/ebook
  
  

🎁 Free resource: Grab my free 30-day homeschool quick start guide at thehomeschoolhowto.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

I didn't plan to homeschool. I started asking hard questions, realized how little control parents actually have, and made the hard decision to leave a government job to homeschool my kids. Now I interview other homeschooling parents to learn how this all works. I'm Cheryl, and this is the Homeschool How to Podcast. Let's learn this together. Welcome, and with us today, I have Janae Daniels from the School to Homeschool Podcast. Welcome, Janae. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. So I just recorded an episode for your podcast, and I wanted to have you on because I want to learn about your story now. So have you always wanted to be a homeschooler? Hard no, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

I was actually a middle school teacher in public school. And then I got married and took on two stepkids and quit teaching for a very long time. And like continued to have more kids, and they all went through public school. And I actually was like, I this is gonna sound terrible, but the only homeschoolers that I like knew growing up became polygamists and moved to a compound. And that was my introduction to homeschooling. And I'm not kidding, like I'm it's not hyperbole, legitimately became polygamists and took their family. And so that was my that was my initial introduction to homeschoolers was that one family. Very nice family, don't get me wrong, but that that was it.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Okay, so how many kids do you have now altogether?

SPEAKER_02 1:32

So I have six altogether. My oldest two went all the way through public school, graduated from public school, and then so I have a 27-year-old now, a 24-year-old, an almost 19-year-old, an almost 18-year-old, an almost 14-year-old, and an almost 10-year-old. Okay. So we started homeschooling during COVID. But again, it was it hit was never on my radar having been a public school teacher. Like, not ever.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

So, okay, so that's interesting. So during COVID, what was it that made you say, like, all right, this online school isn't working? They were kind of doing like school online with the teachers. What made you pull them then?

SPEAKER_02 2:11

So it was interesting because once COVID hit, for me, I was like, I don't really, you know, like for my son was a senior, and the teachers literally just said, you know what, we're just gonna graduate everybody. Um, and so we were fine with that, you know, like, and he was like, great, you know, because I'm not learning anything. My other kids, I felt really bad for their teachers. Like I was the um, I was heavily involved in my younger kids. My daughter was in preschool, and then my I had one child that was in second grade at the time, and I was the room mom and and I knew all of the teachers, and I went to all the teachers' conferences, and I and I was I knew most of the teachers really, really, really well. I knew the principals well, I was very integrated in the school, very informed. Um, didn't do PTA because I was against the parent where money went for the parent teacher association. So I would say I will volunteer for you, but not a dime is going to the parent teacher association because I know where it goes. So, but I was really involved. And so when COVID hit and I saw my kids' teachers like scrambling, I remember my son's second grade teacher, who is amazing and I adored her. And she was trying to teach the kids about counting money, and then her three-year-old came in, you know, and she's like, just a minute, kids. And I watched just her struggle and I'm like, I see you, I hear you, you're good. And then my other kids' teachers would try to do stuff, and I was like, Well, whatever, you know, they'll be fine. If they missed a few weeks, you know, at the end of the year, it's fine. And we started cooking a lot and we started doing puzzles and we started listening to audiobooks, and we started illegally going to parks, not that it was against the law, but it was mandated you couldn't go to parks, and we live right next to a regional park that's miles long, kind of like Central Park, except for it's in the forest. And I'm in Colorado, and so we would go to the parks regularly, and we all had gotten ukuleles for Christmas, so we were learning ukulele. And for me, that that last few months of the school year in 2020, it was magical. And I I loved it. I loved the time with my kids, and I would talk to friends on the phone, and they're like, Oh, it's so hard because you know, I've got my one or two kids, and we were going stir crazy, and I had all of these kids, and they started becoming friends and we were having a great time. And then the summer hit, and we finished out the school year, and my son graduated, and my husband, it was actually kind of great. I loved graduation because it was like 30 minutes long, and instead of almost three hours, like my oldest son, and they're like, Okay, only you three can come and nobody else can come, and you're six feet apart, and we have to keep it short. And I was like, that's awesome. But then July, July hit, and I ran, I was at Target and I ran into my middle school kids principal, and I was like, I haven't heard anything from the school district. So, are we going back to school? Or I mean, because usually by now it's like July 10th or something. And I said, usually by now we start getting something from the district. And he's like, I have no idea. I haven't heard anything. They don't know, we don't know what we're doing. And I'm like, okay. So fast forward a couple weeks, and I'm a I'm a religious person, I consider myself a spiritual person, and I'm sitting in church minding my own business, and all of a sudden, this thought comes to me. I want you to homeschool the kids. And for those of you who are not religious, that might sound odd. But for those of you who are, like I believed it was the Holy Spirit speaking to me. And and I initially went hard no. Like in my head, I was like, uh, not doing that. No way. And again, the thought came after a few minutes, I want you to homeschool the kids. And I I stopped dead in my tracks and I'm like, so I go home and I call everybody I know who had homeschooled, all three people. And and I'm like, why do you homeschool? And they're like, because our relationship is so much better and I don't like what's going on with the public school system. And honestly, I didn't have a lot of concerns as far as like what was being taught in the school system because I was so involved. I was seeing a lot, I knew the teachers, I knew political beliefs, like I I knew that most of the teachers were aligned with our beliefs. I did have some regrets with a coup with some of my older kids' teachers with with the things that they would present as truth that was opinion. But and I did have some concern about legislation that was coming down the pipeline for schools. But overall, that was a really a non-issue for the most part. So I I call all these the three people and I talk and and I'm still working. I was recruiting and hiring for small businesses, and I thought, well, what am I gonna do with this if I if I'm homeschooling the kids? And my husband was deemed an essential worker, so he was still working. And I decided, well, I'm I'm just gonna have to stop hiring if if I decide that I'm gonna homeschool. But you know, what is this all gonna look like? And I kind of freaked out. Like that day, I was like, what do I do? And I went to my husband and I said, What would you think if we homeschooled? And I was fully expecting him to say, that's a terrible idea. And that's not what he said. Instead, what he said was, I actually have always thought that would be kind of a cool thing. And I'm like, wait, why have you never mentioned this to me? And he's like, Because you you love the public school system. I mean, you were a teacher and you loved teaching. And I did, I loved teaching. I loved my kids, I loved the parents, I loved my coworkers, you know. And so I felt really strongly like I need to make this happen. So that week, it was actually two days later, I I studied up on what are the laws here, and I went in and I submitted the paperwork. I was expecting to get a lot of pushback from the district, and the lady said, Thank you, have a good one. And that was it. Like that was it. I'm like, okay. And and so at that point, that was like July 20th, July 19th, 20th, 21st. And then I was like, okay, now I'm gonna plan. And so I started buying curriculums, spent way too much money. I bought a microscope because I thought we need a microscope and we also need a telescope because that's important for homeschooling. And, you know, I just started buying curriculums for all of the kids. At the time, I had a a 13-year-old, a 12-year-old, uh, an eight-year-old, and a four-year-old at home. And and part of me was terrified because I couldn't, I couldn't find anyone who pulled their kids right before high school. And and that's what I was doing. And so, yeah, so I bought, I got all the curriculums and prepared for August. I think it was the 24th. I was like, we're gonna, we're gonna start on this day.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

And it's gonna be awesome. And and we started, and it was not awesome.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

It was not awesome.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

You were it was terrible. You were replicating the school system, weren't you? I was replicating the school system.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

So all right, so walk me through that. Were your kids excited to homeschool or did they have pushback?

SPEAKER_02 8:54

They they dealt with my my 13-year-old son at the time, who's now almost 19, was not excited. But at the same time, the alternative was because by the time we started, school was starting at the same time and they were doing a hybrid. And if somebody in the class got sick, then the whole class was home for two weeks in any of the seven classes that they went to, and same with the elementary. And so, and I was worried about like what about their friendships? Because homeschoolers are so weird, you know, and and what you know, will they will they lose their friends? But what we found is like my daughter's very best friend had a really hard time with my daughter being pulled because then suddenly she had no friends left at school, and they were I would get calls from the moms and they're like, it's terrible. Somebody came with a cough, they sent everyone home. Now we're home for two weeks, and when they were there, they were isolated and they weren't allowed to interact with other kids. And so my kids were like, Well, I mean, this is better than that. Because they still hung out with their with their friends and or well, like they still communicated with their friends. There wasn't much hanging out yet in Colorado. But um, but my my 13-year-old was like, this isn't gonna be permanent, is it? And I'm like, I I don't, I don't, I don't know. We will see. And he's like, because you know, I like high school. Now that particular child was really, really good at school. Like he knew the school game, he had straight A's, school came really easy to him. My daughter, school did not come easy to her, and so she was worried, like, well, what about math? I'm already behind in math, so what is that gonna look like? But she's more go with the flow, so so they they dealt with it. And my younger kids didn't care because they're like, yay, we're at home.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

But the first day that we started was like, I was like, this is how we're gonna do things, we're gonna set it up. It's not, it's not gonna be like school, but it is, but it's not, but it is, and I had all the curriculums. I was really concerned about math and science. For some reason, I was mostly concerned about science, which is funny.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

So they're all gonna be scientists, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:52

Right, right. Not that any of them have shown interest in science, but I was worried about that. And so we start the day, and uh, and I had like I had it all laid out and I had planned so carefully. And by we started like at 8:30, and I had a strict schedule. And by 9:45, everyone was crying, and I was crying and yelling at my kids, and the doorbell rang, and I forgot that the piano tuner was supposed to be coming.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Quick pause to share something that's been a great fit for our homeschool. My son, he's seven, and we butt heads if I am teaching him directly. So his reading and math are done mostly independently, and I'm just there to support and correct when needed. I really wanted him to learn music too, especially knowing how closely music and reading are connected in the brain. That's why we started using Simply Piano. He's learning to read music and play piano on his own using songs he already knows and loves, and it feels more like a game than a lesson. It's been amazing to watch his confidence and skills grow. If you want to check it out, grab the link in the show description.

SPEAKER_02 12:00

And my son was like, I hate this, and I just want to go back to school. Like anything would be better than this. And I'm like, you're right, I'm I'm just gonna send you back this week. I don't even care. Like, we're not, I'm not doing this for the next forever. I'm not going to. And this is not what was in my head, and this is not what it looked like at the end of last year. You know, like last year was magical and now I have this. And so I go upstairs, I let the piano tuner in, I show them to the piano, I go back downstairs. I'm still like ugly crying, and there's snot on my face, and the kids are still crying and fighting. And one by one they go upstairs and it it's it's really quiet. And I'm by myself, and I notice that I'm all alone as they've all left. And I go upstairs, and lo and behold, the piano tuner, and I thought they were like playing video games, right? I'm not one of those homeschoolers that's like, yes, we're gonna homeschool in utero, and I'm gonna wear linen and frolic, you know, like that. My kids had screens, and my older two sons, we gave cell phones way too young, which that's a whole nother ball of wax. But I get up there and the kids are surrounding the piano tuner, and he is has a tuning fork, and he's explaining to them about frequency and sound waves, and how when the mallet hits the strings and the thickness of the string and how it changes the tone and and explaining to them geometry and all these things, and they are totally mesmerized by everything he's saying, including the four-year-old. And my daughter has a dumb phone, and so because I learned the hard way with the older kids, not to give them smartphones when they're young, and he she could record on it and text my husband and I and call. My husband and I, and that's it. So she's recording the piano tuner the whole time, totally mesmerized. And I sit there, and at first, Cheryl, I kid you not, my thought, my initial thought was, oh no, they need to be downstairs learning stuff. Like that was my initial thought. And I'm like, and then all of a sudden I just stop myself and I'm like, wait a minute. No one is crying here. He's explaining science in a way that I cannot. He's explaining about music in a way that I cannot. The kids are watching in real time a piano get tuned. Maybe I need to rethink how I see education. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

And and that was that was our first day.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

Like that with that.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Yeah, somebody put that piano tuner in your life at that time for that reason. I mean, that's amazing. Yeah, a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_02 14:27

And he, I've never told him the effect that he had on my kids.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Maybe you should. I think I should. I probably should.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

So I love that. And I think so many parents can relate to that. I know I can. When I was on your podcast, we talked about my experience homeschooling. Like, you're learning phonics, we're gonna just repeat after me. And I can't imagine why he's crying. Isn't this fun? It's like if I dread doing it, so will the child. So and there's just so many more beautiful ways to learn. And even after doing it for a couple years, I still find myself like, well, we have to be here and you have to know this much, or we have to be doing XYZ, and then going, all right. No, we don't. That's my own preconceived notion. That's my own insecurity. So, yeah. So, how what happened next?

SPEAKER_02 15:12

So I decided that, well, I didn't know what de schooling was. I I have to say that first. Like, I didn't know that you're supposed to deschool. So I called my friend and I said, You've been doing this for 20 years. I think I did something wrong. And and she said, Yeah, you need to de-school. And I'm like, Well, I I don't I don't know what that what that means. And she's like, Well, you have to unlearn everything that that you've come to know is true. And I'm like, Okay, like what? And then the moon landing. Like the moon landing. And so, and well, and that's what I'm like, I don't, I don't, I'm not following. And she's like, you know, like testing matters, that grades matter, that grade levels matter, that uh this teaching standards matter. And I'm like, and my head was like, and I was like, well then I mean, what do you do to to do this de-schooling thing? And she's like, you do nothing, just just play. And I'm like, what? I'm not just gonna do nothing. And so she's like, Well, it's on you then. Good luck, you know. But I finally went, okay, so and and I see I find this too with a lot of people leaving the school system. A lot of my listen like my my listeners, probably people leaving the school system, is I found that those of us, especially if we have middle or high school kids, they can't just not do nothing. And I couldn't just, you know, do nothing. Sorry, not do nothing. I could do not right. You get what I'm saying. I got it. And so we decided what we would just do was we would focus on we'd use a curriculum for reading, for writing, and for math. And we would do that every day because we couldn't just do nothing. Like that was not an option with my public school brain or with my middle school kids' public school brains. And so we focused on that, and then I let them have the rest of the day free. Except for I did, we're not an anti-screen family. We do have screens, my kids do have video games. Again, I I wish that in utero we had said, oh, we'll never have video, but we didn't, you know. And so, but I did put limits on it. I said, okay, we're gonna limit the screen time, you know. Once your work is done and 3, 330 hits, then you can, then you can get on screens for a couple hours, but we're not gonna spend our lives on screens. And so there was a lot of time. They'd get done with their work pretty, pretty quickly. Um, I did use the curriculums for it, and which we've changed over the years since. And and an interesting thing started to happen. And I and I was I started reading, that's when I was introduced to John Taylor Gatto. I started reading the history of the education system, and having come from education, I was rather disgusted, like it resonated, everything that he was saying. I'm like, oh yeah, no, that's true. Also true. Yep, I saw that in the classroom. Okay, now I'm feeling sick. And I felt angry that I wasn't taught that in my post-black baccalaureate work to become a teacher because I got my degree in something else and then went back and became a teacher. And I was pretty angry about that. Um, I started, I read Julie Bogart's Brave Learner, which was a fabulous, fabulous book. I started reading Dr. Peter. Well, later I read Dr. Peter Gray's book, which led us into unschooling. But so I'm just I'm starting to drink in everything I can about the education system. I started studying Horace Mann and John Dewey and Elwood Coverly and all these other names in education. Um, in the meantime, which helped shift my brain and how I saw education is when I when I started seeing the system for what it was, that was a great help to me. But then watching my kids, because they got so bored and they weren't allowed to have screen time until a certain time, they started coming up with things to do. So my now almost 19-year-old, my now 18-year-old, had purchased his brother's guitar and he would ask me, He's like, Can I watch some YouTube videos to learn how to play the guitar? And I'm like, that is acceptable. Yes, you can. And so he started playing the guitar. And about three months in, things had started opening up as far as COVID went. And I found a guitar teacher, and his guitar teacher's like, wow, he's really good for being a brand new guitar player. I'm only gonna be able to take him so far because he's already at an intermediate level. How did he get that way? And I'm like, he's had eight hours a day for the last three months to do nothing but play guitar. Oh, and my daughter started reading. She liked books, but she started really reading. Like, we're talking anything she could get her hands on. She was particularly interested, became interested in World War II. So she started drinking in every possible historical fiction book about World War II. And she's 12 at the time. And by and so I they've got all this free time, and so I'm seeing them like blossom in areas that I wouldn't have suspected. She also started picking up embroidery and and now she gets paid for her embroidery. Wow. So they started picking things up. Um, by the time my son turns 14, he's like, I want a job. And so I'm like, kiddo, and this is we're about eight months into homeschooling at this point. And I was like, kiddo, no one's gonna hire you at 14. He's like, Oh, they will. I'm a good worker. And so he puts on a suit and goes to local restaurants and and lands a job. And so he's per Colorado law, he can only work so many hours. And and I went ahead and signed him off to be able to work some days. And so he worked so many hours and then he would do his basic schoolwork. And then he started, um, he would just focus on the guitar. He also learned improvisational piano and jazz piano and started reading business books and personal development books, and then we started taking them to conferences when things opened up and he just drank and everything at the conferences. So all of a sudden, these these things, and I at the time I didn't know what unschooling was. Like I knew what de-schooling was. I thought, I guess I thought they were the same thing. I didn't know there was a difference. But by the by that March, uh, my daughter had a conversation with a girl at church, and and she said she had just finished reading Diary of An Frank and she had come downstairs and she was sobbing. And I'm like, Why are you why are you crying? And she's like, Have you ever read the Diary of Anne Frank? Mom, this changed my soul. You know, and I'm like, oh wow. So she goes to church and she's talking to one of her former public school friends at church who see she sees every week, and she mentions to the girl, she's like, Have you ever read Diary of Van Frank? And the girl goes, Oh yeah, we just read that for class. It is so boring. But have you read Wings of Fire? And my daughter, who had indeed read Wings of Fire, went, So the Wings of Fire is fiction, and the Diary of Anne Frank is not. Like she died. And and the girl's like, Yeah, and and my daughter was emotionally like, like moved by Anne Frank, and this this she was like, Mom, I don't understand how she could not see what I saw.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

I I mean, thinking back to some of the books that I read in school or didn't read in school, but should have read in school, I I'm sure I didn't take in what I would have had I read them for pleasure at home. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:57

And I I think it makes a difference. So About a month later, she says to me, and at this point she's just turned 13, and she's like, Mom, I'm really concerned about how much censoring is going on with social media. And she's not the funny thing is, she's not on social media, like, still is not on social media, and she's almost nine, uh almost 18. And at her choice at this point. And so I said, What what are you concerned with? She goes, the censoring. She goes, it is the exact out of the exact same playbook as what the Nazis did.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

And I'm sitting here, I'm like, Wow, that she can make that connection.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

Right. And I, and so my mind was being blown, and it wasn't because like I'm this great mom, it's because she had all of and I here this whole time I'm like, I am failing my kids because all we are doing is reading, writing, and math. And then Josh can play the guitar and Katie can embroider. Yeah. You know, so by the end of the year, we uh I started reading about unschooling. I read Free to Learn and I read Unschooled by Carrie McDonald, and I was like, oh, that's what we're doing. Okay, all right, okay, I got it. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

So that's how moved us into the unschooling. That's so cool. It it makes me think about every book in school. Like, would I've actually I mean, like Lord of the Flies and you know, To Kill a Mockingbird. Like, had I just read these for pleas because I'm sure I didn't actually read them. I read like the page that you had to read that to memorize for the test, maybe the last page of the chapter. I listened to Yeah, the Cliff Note version. I'm sure I didn't take in at all. What the hot zone. I remember like that would suck if if a disease took over the world. But I probably would have really enjoyed those. I I'm surprised that some of the books they actually had us read, but they were probably meant it was a mental mind game even then, though, too. But that I never really thought about that. Like learning in school versus like just reading it in school, making it so like, I don't know, suck all the fun or the emotion out of it versus reading it for pleasure at home. That makes a huge difference. And I have just learned so much from the children's books I've read with my kids. Like I'll get them off of book lists, like the read aloud revival. And I'm like, this is an amazing story, or I never knew that about the Hudson River and you know, or anything. I didn't know that's how candy canes were made or why they're made that way. And everything, every children's book I read is like, wow. But isn't that funny too? How like you say, I'm only doing reading, writing, and math, and he can only play guitar and she can only embroider, and like you didn't feel that was enough. And I definitely feel the same too, because like even when we get together, even after talking to all the homeschooling families I've talked to, I'll still talk to like one homeschooling family, and they're like, Well, we do hockey in the winter and we just started skiing. My friend Justine, she might be listening. And then, um, and we do, you know, downhill mountain bike racing in the spring and summer, and then we do wilderness classes and they're they do a nature school two days a week. What else they do? I know they do something else. And I'm like, oh my God, my son isn't, he isn't into any sports at all. We have tried everything, right? He doesn't want to do taekwondo. He didn't like soccer, he didn't like t ball, he didn't but yet he does love his wilderness class. And like today, I said, Oh, you have some we can go meet up with some friends, they're sleigh riding, but it was a holiday for Martin Luther King. And so the neighbor was home. He wasn't in school, and they built a fire in the woods and they were out there all day. You know, yeah. I went out there and he's trying to light a match with his glove on, and I'm like, Well, there's a hazard. And then I look at him and he's is all his hair on the top of his head is like singed off, like his bangs. Like, what did you stick your head in? But he's okay. And I'm like, what is he learning? Like he learned something during that. Like, I here I am feeling like we should have gotten together with the other homeschoolers today to go sledding because your socialization and the yada yada. But he was doing something else that he really enjoyed. And, you know, why isn't he in involved in this sport or this activity? Well, because he wants to be out in the woods making fires. That's just what he wants to do, or down in the garage with his dad when his dad's home working on cars and vehicles. Love that. How do we fix that about ourselves? That's part of the deschooling process, right? Why don't you talk about deschooling a little bit more? I and I love that you said it was the history of the education system that really was that switch for you because it was the same for me. It was like, oh, your intention is what? Oh, not with my kid. And that's really what gave me the push. So talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

Well, as I started to study like Elwood Coverly, for example. Elward Elward Cubberly is the dean of the education department at Stanford, is named after Elwood Cubberly, which I think is interesting. He was a eugenicist.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 26:38

He was a big um democratic socialist, except for I don't think he called himself that, but he was. And he had said, and I don't have the quote in front of me, I wish I did. Um, he had said, you know, plans are underway to make the children become more and more wards of the state, to the point that parents will not have the ability to fight. And and as I've read his books, you can you can find his books in archives. They would make you vomit, they will make you vomit if you read them. Um, Elwood Coverly for one, um, Edward Ross is another one. He was a professor at five different universities, and another one that's a eugenicist as well. And this is this is our plan to to separate children from parents so that we can control the minds of kids, you know, and they they weren't secret about it either.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

They were Were these people making decisions for the school system?

SPEAKER_02 27:28

So they were influential in influencing people like Woodrow Wilson who would be making the laws. And they were the ones running the teachers' colleges. They were the ones influencing what would be taught in the teachers' colleges, what politics would be taught, which the teachers' colleges were based off a model. The Frankfurt School model was again another Prussian model, but also very Marxist, um, Marxist roots. And Columbia University just adopted that model for their teachers' colleges. So as I'm as I'm reading, John Taylor Gatto was kind of my springboard to Charlotte Isabeth's work, who wrote uh the deliberate dumbing down of America. She preceded John Taylor Gatto. She was she was called a conspiracy theorist. The funny thing about her is that she was um a senior policymaker for the Department of Education under the Reagan administration. And she knew what she was talking about, but yet she was deemed a conspiracy theorist when she was like, no, this is like I'm watching it. Like I and I'm looking at the laws that were made. I like I'm reading all of these things verbatim. And so reading her stuff, um, Samuel Blumenberg, who kind of looked at what was going on when when phonics was taken out of schools. Phonics has been taught historically since the Mayflower and with the New England Primer and some of the other primers, and we see a shift happen where whole language is taught instead. That's pushed heavily by John Dewey. Uh, and so Samuel Blumenberg, and I hope I'm not totally butchering his name. Anyway, he wrote several books about crime, the crimes of the educators, and his focus was like, this is what's happening historically like with phonics versus whole language learning. This is why kids can't read. I mean, even now we're at a 19% of high school graduates, not dropouts. 19% of high school graduates are functionally illiterate, cannot read at a fifth grade level. And so that became his life's work. So I'm reading all of these, all of these books, and the deeper that I get, the sicker I get, but the more that I it's almost like a reassurance like, oh, you made the right choice for your kids to choose to homeschool.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

After three years of interviewing homeschooling families, I realized how overwhelming it can be to piece everything together. So I took the best advice, tips, questions, and resources that I've learned along the way and put them into one practical ebook. If you're looking for a clear starting point, you'll find the link in this show's description.

SPEAKER_02 30:03

And I still, I mean, I'm still in in the middle of that rabbit hole. I'm still looking at archives, I'm still on a regular basis. This is my reading for enjoyment. Um, and still like the days that I the because I still I'm in, you know, here I am going on five and a half years homeschooling, and there's still those days of, my gosh, what if I'm not doing enough? And then I just pick up one of the books and I go, oh no, we're fine. Because because yeah, could could do worse. I could let them be molded. And then I talk to my my 24-year-old son's friends who are floundering, you know, they've got college degrees going, I don't know what I want to do with my life. I guess I'll go into medicine now. I guess I'll, you know, I guess I'll I'll do this. And they're floundering in college and have spent all this money and have all this debt. And so I I look at all of that. I look at the long term and I go, nah, I think we're good. We're fine. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 30:58

So I do, I find it so intriguing the history of it and how we got here and who decides what is put in front of our children as truth. And like, how do we know any of it? And that's been the hardest part, I think, for homeschooling is I find myself saying more often or not, well, allegedly, or well, this is what they tell us. I mean, I don't know. And then I'm like, this kid, if when he's around family, they're just gonna think he's the nuttiest thing ever.

SPEAKER_02 31:25

I loved a reel that you did that. You're like, these are things that you cannot say around family. I was laughing so hard. I'm like, that is true.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

Not that, not that, not that.

SPEAKER_02 31:35

Don't say that.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

Oh, the chemtrails, the moon, the what yeah. My mother-in-law was like, I remember when they landed on the moon when I was saying I was just like, cut, cut, all right, Colin, don't say anything. Um, I was like, later, I was like, well, grandma, yeah, like she maybe they did. I wasn't there. I don't know, but it sounds unlikely. Yeah, I mean, the fact we can't do it again. We lost all the tools, but growing up in New York where 9-11 happened, I remember back then, even I guess not initially, but some my I came across the documentary Loose Change 9-11 from just, I think it was some kids that went to Oniana, SUNY Oniana, which is very close by. I believe that they wrote it. And the one is a podcaster now. Yeah, and they were like made this movie about like, this is weird, this is weird. Should you find a passport completely unharmed in the rubble of a building? Like, that is weird. But a lot of that stuff they didn't tell you on the news either. Or, like, you know, they just said, we found the evidence, and okay, but if your evidence is flawed, like they the public doesn't know. And yeah, you really go down some dark rabbit holes learning about because with with the learning about the history of the education system, you're like, oh my God, that can spiral out of control real quick. You could have been lying to us about all of this stuff. And so you've got the component there where they're learning things that somebody with an agenda wants them to learn. And then you've got the component where it's like, now they're in front of screens, even in the classroom. Yeah. There's a lot of all the time. Yes. And then the health, the health part, the food that they're serving in schools, on top of like you're taking all these people with like a lot of kids probably have messed up childhoods now, like messed up homes lives, right? And they're just putting them all in this classroom with one teacher, and everybody's labeled something. Because I was talking to a school psychologist uh the other day. I just released this episode, and she was like, I so badly want to suggest things but that I'm not allowed to suggest. I have to just give a label. She goes, I would love to say, let's try 30 days screen-free and see how that affects your behavior. Let's try taking sugar out of your diet and let's see how that affects the behavior. She goes, but I'm not allowed to even say that. I just have to say this is what you're labeled with. And here's the medicine or the specialist that you're gonna go to next. And I'm like, wow, that's that's so sad. That's just not setting people up for success.

SPEAKER_02 34:09

Well, I I even look at so my now 24-year-old son was labeled ADHD as a kid. And in first grade, I remember in first grade, his teacher's like, well, he can't, he can't be part of the continent. He always has to be an island because he's so chatty, meaning his desk has to be away from everybody else. And by the time he was in uh, let me think, fifth grade, they were the, you know, the experts were like, he needs to go on meds. And he would sob and fight us taking the the different medications that we were giving him to slow his brain down. And it wasn't until like eighth grade that he's like, I can't do this anymore. I'm not, I refuse to take this medication anymore. I feel like it I can't think straight. I feel like I'm in molasses. And and then he signed up for football and was running and running and running and running and running and running and running and running, getting all this exercise, not taking the medication, and he started doing better in school. And I remember thinking like maybe all he needed to do was get more exercise. And now I'm like, like, I feel terrible because I'm like, oh, they were we were telling him to shut up and sit down and take his medication because he was wiggly. They took away his teacher would take away his recess if he was too wiggly. And you know, in elementary school, except for this one blessed teacher who was like, she would send him to the PE teacher, and the PE teacher would play football with him. She wouldn't take away his recess, she'd actually give him more. And again, she's retired, which makes me so sad. But all the other teachers were like, Oh yeah, he was too wiggly or he forgot this or he forgot that. So we went ahead and took away his recess. And I, as a parent, was like, well, I guess that's the the consequence. Not realizing or thinking like little boys are meant to move, little boys are meant to be outside, little boys think differently and work differently and behave differently than girls, and their bodies are different. You know, now I'm like, no, we are punishing these little boys for being boys, and that's not okay. So that's shifted for me too.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Yes, that's huge. That is huge. So, what do you think has been the biggest surprise? Because you kind of stepped into homeschooling like, hey, I felt the Holy Spirit, and now we're doing this. You stuck with it. Did all of your kids stick with it? And what was the biggest surprise to you and them?

SPEAKER_02 36:26

Yes. So I did have my son that was in second grade, really, really in fourth grade. There's a special program in Colorado Springs. That's where I'm at, where you can apply to go to school, this one school in the woods for for fourth grade. They only take so many kids. And he's like, I really, really want to go to the school. His his older brother had gotten in, and it's a lottery system, so like it doesn't cost extra money. You just put your name in the hat, and if your name gets drawn, great. He really wanted to do that. So I let him do that for fourth grade, and his name got he was one of the first names to be drawn. So we did that for fourth grade while the rest were continuing to homeschool. And halfway through, and this program is touted as amazing, and I've always thought it was amazing, you know. Um, I had another child who went through it. Halfway through, he goes, Mom, how about I have an idea? Instead of me going to the school, how about you just drop me off in the woods every day? And I just stopped going to the school. And I'm like, Yeah, no. So he did go for that year, but beyond that, um, by my kids' second or third, I mean third year homeschooling, they didn't want to go back ever. Wow. Ever. Okay. My youngest has never been to public school. We do different enrichment programs. My daughter maintained her public school friends, kind of sort of, especially that that one friend, but then made really close friends homeschooling through one of the enrichment programs. And they are her best friends. My son, who graduated this past year, he maintained his public school friendships and then expanded his his friends. We got to the point in high school that I got to the point that I didn't care about physics. I didn't really care anymore about do they have to take biology. I'm like, per our state law, they have to do some science. And so they would do stuff for science and you know, and and say, okay, well, we can check that box now. But by the time my son was, and they both my daughter and my son did concurrent enrollment. My daughter still does concurrent enrollment and she'll she'll finish her degree next year. She graduates this year. She took a year and a half gap year in high school, but she only took a couple classes at per year. But my son, um, at 15 said, Mom, I just took a business class from a professor who's never run a business. Yeah. So I I kind of feel like, what's the point? And and and he made the president's list. It's not like he was failing the class, like he got straight A's in state college. And he's 15 at the time. So he tells me, and again, I'm I struggle because I'm like, okay, all of the kids in at church and the kids in public school are required to take physics and they're required to do this and they're required to do that. Am I handicapping him in his education by giving him as much freedom as I am giving him? Because he's working. Uh, he tells me he wants to work for a YouTuber. He ends up contacting this YouTuber, getting a hold of which was a miracle how it all happened. It's a major YouTuber, um, working for the YouTuber as an intern. And his curriculum in the meantime is our business books. And and he's starting to take initiative, meeting with entrepreneurs, taking people out to lunch, you know, and saying, Hey, can I take you, can I pay for you to go out to lunch with me? I have plenty of money because I work a job and ask you questions. You know, what what is an ROI? What is this? What is that? And he's reading personal development books and he's and he's working for this YouTuber, and and he thought he wanted to be a YouTuber. And by it, so it's he's 16, 15, 16 when he's working with the YouTuber. And by the time his internship is done, he's like, I don't, I don't, I don't think I want that. They they had a strict filming schedule. The YouTuber put a lot of trust in him, gave him a credit card and said, You are to write as an example, you are to write a proposal to NASA. Uh, you are to negotiate the contract, we want to do this video, you know, you're to get it all set up and and whatnot. Here's these other shoots that we want to do, and we want you to write these proposals and you negotiate everything, you've got the credit card, make it happen. You know, you set up travel, you set up this, you do this. And so here he is at 16 doing real work. But he came out of that experience saying, I I don't want to do YouTube. Um interesting. I understand the analytics, I understand the production behind it, you know, I understand the they made him do everything from editing to production. But then his senior year, we said, here's the stack of books that we want you to read. Here's some novels, and then all these business books, personal development, and this is your senior year. So you're gonna read them and then you're gonna report back, and then we're gonna, we're gonna debate. And in the meantime, sorry, this is going long. I apologize. That's okay. In the meantime, his best friend, so he's got this close group of friends, and they all go to different schools. He's the only homeschooled one. Some another friend is uh going to a hybrid school. Another one ends up being, I think, the Valavictorian of his high school, but they all go to different, you know, they all have different little educational paths. And so he's reading these business books, he's still working, he ends up taking a couple other jobs in the meantime because he's like, I want to see what sales is like, so I'm gonna take this job at sales. So he's getting all this experience. And once a week, this little group of friends gets together and they make food together. Like they go to the grocery store, usually they make chicken, fried chicken, they come back to somebody's house, they'll make chicken. They're all different political persuasions, they're all different religious backgrounds. Some of them have similar religious backgrounds, but they're, you know, you've got everything from evangelicals to LDS to uh Catholic to an atheist, and they get together, they eat, they play a board game, and then they debate and they debate and they debate. And and my son, you know, the times that they'd have it at our house, they were yelling, you know, and they're just like, no, da-da-da-da. Like, okay, that now you know play another one. Hi, Mrs. Daniels, can I come over and talk to you and your husband? I'm like, sure. So he's like, you know, with all this debating we've been doing, I've been thinking, I only know what my parents believe, and I want to get what all my friends' parents believe, and I want to make an informed decision about who I'm gonna vote for, specifically with local elections, because that's where it makes a difference because our little friend group realized this is where, this is where the real rubber hits the road. So I'm sitting here like, yeah, I mean, sure. So that was, and he comes over and we we talk to him and he goes to all the other parents and he makes his decisions and and votes. But that became my son's senior year was debating with his group of friends, very and they reminded me of like the inklings with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, like brilliant boys. Sometimes girls would come, usually not. It was just this this one little group. Anyone was invited. They would debate, they would debate everything from religion to politics to policies, and and then he would read these books and then he would argue the books with me. Uh, and again, I'm really concerned this whole time like, what if what if I'm failing him? He even goes to school with a couple of the friends, which the school district put a kibosh on that and sent on an email after he had snuck into the school twice. Went to went to class. One day he went all day with a friend and nobody said anything. Another day he went to a different school, went to a physics class with a friend, and teacher said nothing. And and he said, he's like, Mom, I sat there in that physics class. He's like, I was following, I've never taken a science class in high school. He's like, I was following everything the teacher said. He goes, but I looked in the eyes of the students and there was they were dead in their eyes. And he and he goes, and the teacher looked equally as unamused teaching this class. And he said, and and I thought to myself, they're losing all this time to think about what they really believe. And instead they are doing these tests. So anyway. Wow. So what profound. So that that became his senior year. And I worried that what if what if we made a mistake? You know, as far as college goes, he's got college transcripts. So I'm not concerned. He if he wanted to go to specific universities, we'll have we'd have to jump through the hoops if he decided to go there, he decided he didn't want to. But what if what if I failed him? But by the end of the year, as I looked at his counterparts, I was like, no, he's just fine. Because he knows who he is. He knows who he is. He's confident in who he is. He was offered multiple jobs by lots of people. And so now he's he's um he's got doing service work for a couple years in California. So that's what he's doing right now. Anyway.

SPEAKER_00 44:40

I love that we started this podcast out with you talking about your first day of homeschooling with the kids and then ending it on graduating your son and like what a success that was. That's totally beautiful. Um, I I I would love just to get your last input of what would your advice be to new homeschooling parents or parents that are maybe just thinking about homeschooling, but having the job, do I quit my job? Can I work and do it? What my kids are gonna be fighting? How am I gonna handle it? I'm not smart enough to homeschool them. What would be your advice?

SPEAKER_02 45:14

The first thing is that you don't get the time back with your kids. That 13,000, 16,000 hours, you don't get back. And right now, while they're in school, you get the worst part of their days. I realize that the hard way. You get the worst part of them. Um, you don't get to see when the light lights up in their eyes as they discover something new. Instead, you get them after school when they're tired and they're about to go be shuffled off to the next thing. That's the first thing, is you don't you don't get that time back. And when you homeschool, that's how you get it back. Um and I and I I ask parents like, what do you most want for your kids? And for most parents, it's a strong relationship. And I feel like the relationship with my last four kids was significantly different after we started homeschooling and it was different for the better. And so for parents that are scared, there is more to life than sheer and mere academics. Raising kids with character and courage requires something, it requires more from us. Not that public school kids can't develop character or courage. It's just a lot harder when they're not in your greenhouse. It's a lot harder. So I would say take the hard road, take the road less traveled. You won't regret it.

SPEAKER_00 46:31

I love that. I love that. Janae, thank you so much for being here. Check out her podcast, the School to Homeschool Podcast, and where can people find you? And I will put I'll link it all in the description to the show. So check that out. You don't have to memorize it, but go ahead and let them know.

SPEAKER_02 46:44

Uh, you can find me on Instagram, School to Homeschool Podcast. Facebook is the same School to Homeschool Podcast. And then uh my website is www.schooltohomeschool.com. And it's T O, not the number two. It's the spelled out. So thank you so much for the video.

SPEAKER_00 46:58

Thank the description for that. Janae, thank you so much for being here. This has been beautiful. Thank you. Thank you, Cheryl. I appreciate it so much. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Homeschool How Two Podcast. If today's episode helped you, please be sure to follow the show and leave a review. It's the best way to support the podcast. And if you're just getting started or need a reset, head to thehomeschoolhowtu.com and grab my free 30-day homeschool quick start guide. Until next time, keep learning, keep questioning, and thank you for your love of the next generation.