27 - BENEFITS OF HOMESCHOOLING

When you live in complete educational freedom, the learning never stops! Couple that with the continually growing, vast amount of resources, and you'll find yourself on a life-long family adventure. Listen in for some tips on some things that will make your parent-educator life easier as you lead your kids to thrive!


Show Notes:

Episode 27
Published: July 14, 2024

Links to things discussed:

Home Education Foundation:
https://www.flhef.org/tellyourstory

The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
https://jonathanhaidt.com/

Are You Weird, Home Is Where the Truth Is, Ep. 8  https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2306441/14542774-8-are-you-weird

Humility and Wisdom, Home Is Where the Truth Is, Ep. 26
https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2306441/15363930-26-humility-and-wisdom

Chapter Markers
00:00 Introduction to Homeschooling Benefits

00:42 The Cliché Debate

05:07 Homeschooling Resources and Conferences

09:34 Homeschooling vs Traditional Schooling

18:03 Freedom and Flexibility in Homeschooling

21:27 The Worthlessness of My Degree

21:52 The Company of Fools

23:02 The Impact of Social Media on Teens

27:08 Homeschooling Legalities and Lobbying

32:58 New Resources for Homeschooling

35:59 Unexpected Lessons from Camping

39:38 Apology to Denver Listeners

40:38 Conclusion and Book Promotion

https://maevejemison.com/

https://www.instagram.com/maevejemison/

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550933369945

Purchase Home Is Where The Truth Is:
https://www.amazon.com/Home-Where-Truth-Should-Homeschool/dp/B0CSWJ2QXC/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1705863918&sr=8-1

Transcript

  Hey friends! In today's episode, we talk about the many benefits of homeschooling and the exponentially growing amount of resources. Also, it's so fun because while living in complete educational freedom, you'll be inundated with teaching moments.

Aren't you curious about what God's lesson plans are for your family?  Thanks for coming over    to  Home is Where  📍 the Truth is. 

 .  Welcome back, and thanks for being here.

here. Oh, I'm grateful to be here. Okay. Thanks for having me.

Yes, and we're grateful to , have you guys listening, and super grateful because if you're still listening, then it means a couple things.

things. That you've got nothing better to do.

to do. Or that you don't mind Matt's use of cliches. Love them. Okay.  And let me tell you, it's like we're a house divided.

Have you seen those shirts where one person's

one university and the other, yes.

because  Matt loves, he speaks cliches to the point that he doesn't make up his own words anymore. You guys.

And, I don't think I should.

Okay. And I'm going to let Matt tell his side of the story, but I am a journalism major. I taught journalism in high school and one of the first things, the very first things we teach our writers.

is do not use cliches, because

is sad, I think that's really  You're you're leaving some greatness to be held to  I don't know why I don't know why you just  cliches I

I was gonna say before you interrupted,

said

it  signals to the reader that you can't think your own words up. Because every cliche has a meaning, yes it does, but you can say that meaning in your own words. So,

so But why would I want to do that?

It's like why? ruin perfection  They've already hit the nail on the head  Nope unintended 

But  cliche intended. So they, if it

why if it's if it ain't broke don't fix it mave

Oh my

There's another one.

don't port, see, exactly. He, and he'll throw out, this is things I can't edit.

I will sling them.

sleep.  Okay.  That's what I can't, I've edited a lot. I, I edit out our ums, our andsos, our you knows, but I can't edit out cliches because then it would just be blank.

Better it's just because they're so good.  That you just don't want to.



So my side of the story is Essentially, yeah, I don't want to have to think up of my own words Because that takes time and effort and I don't have either one of those to give So I might as well use the good hard earned Good hard earned  Work that someone else put in place up teen years ago  and just keep

already figured it out. The

they've already

tears

They've already figured it out

sweat

and so i'm just giving props to those people who Put the tears and hard work and sweat and effort and coming up with some really great cliches

Right, and it was probably your ancestors who did it because I mean you your whole You know your whole family lineage speaks in cliches. So probably somewhere back there It was a Jemisin who thought it up and I will say  It does help sometimes  so use an extreme moderation is okay or  With your own twist.

And so I do have to say this.  Matt is the one that came up with the title of our book and our podcast. Home is where the truth is. And that derives from the cliche, home is where the heart is.  You guys, I, 

Perseverated 

for years on what I was gonna name the book. I could not think of a name. It's something like truth school or

came up with it literally 10 minutes.

Yeah, so I mean we used a I to try to help us and then here comes Matt with his cliche and Just as soon as he said it was like perfect.

That's it. So 

You're welcome.

Yes,   but there are times when you can't even think of a cliché. When you're, we were talking about  the Edison Kids Inc. Homeschool Convention,  and you're saying, well, it's a good way for you to, something about your feet, you know, dabble your feet, or, and you couldn't  even think of the cliché.

And that's when I'm like, well, just say what your own words are then, Matt.

to say cut your teeth.

Okay.

good one to cut your teeth on.

Yeah, and it couldn't come to me,

Okay. Okay. Well, and  speaking of the Edison Kids Inc  we're going to talk a little bit more about that because we want to tell you guys some stuff we learned about  this out there for homeschoolers  that we learn new stuff practically every day at every conference.

And  well, speaking of that conference, , 

in our episodes, one of our most,

I think our most downloaded episode is, Are You Weird? And since I learned how to do show notes, I will put a link in the show notes to Are You Weird?  And, and you know what is, here's the cool thing about God. He's going to use.  are, he's going to use this because that podcast has the worst audio of all our podcasts.

We had some major trouble with that, but it's the most downloaded one. So that just shows right there. You guys that the results are the Lords. The duty is ours. The results are the Lord

Is that a cliche?

Because

no, no, no, no, no, no. That's

I've heard that before.

do say that a

a lot. Okay.

but I guess it could be a cliche.  But it's like, okay,

It's a

You got me

damn. Okay,

Okay. Well  I'm glad you guys found us because Matt and I have our pulse on the homeschool. 

I, Pulse.

Pulse. We, we know the homeschoolers pulse. Like for example. FPEA, you know what I put out at my booth

And if

bbs, and if you don't know what a gbbt is, that means you don't have a middle school to teen teenager.

Matt, do you know what a gbbt is?

is? Of course. 

It's the thing that go, it's the charm for your Crocs. And I don't know what it is about homeschoolers and Crocs, but they are inseparable. They love their crocs in, in fact, it's so bad.

bad. 

At our co op for PE,  we had to tell them, you cannot play this basketball game or this kickball game in Crocs.

You must wear tennis shoes. Literally every week  so that was one of the things that just attracted all these kids. We had all these gibbets and they would just flock to the gibbets.  The other thing is,  we told you guys about.

I don't

And I don't know what episode it is, but I'll recall it for the notes.

Our battle bots arena. We had a little battle bots arena that was turned into the bane of my existence because  here's a big battle bots arena on my back porch, which I got to put away and store, , it's stood out there for like a year. Well, the last conference we went to was about robotics and all that.

So

Instead of gibbets, we had battle

Yeah, we had the little BattleBots arena and we had four BattleBots and the kids just kind of swarmed,  stayed hovering at our booth for those BattleBots. So that was cool. And it showed me this. You guys, here's something about me. Now I taught high school. I have five kids, but I don't necessarily like kids that much.

They kind of make me nervous, especially groups of teenagers.

mean other people's kids?  Obviously you like your kids.

I mean, well, I don't want to make that distinction. It's like, of course I like my kids. And it's not just because it's other people's kids. I think it's like  their behavior yet. Just that age group, the age group of kids is

kids. Maybe it's strangers kids that you don't know. Their parents. Well, yeah.

But my point is.

do like,

I do like, homeschool kids are awesome. Cause I think being around high schoolers and seeing all levels of disrespect, disobedience, not caring,  and then there are good kids out there in, in, in high schools that are, but, but seeing from the best to the worst, I'm always nervous about a group of kids.

They just kind of set me  ill at ease. But, right, but, I was so pleasantly surprised these kids with the BattleBots, they took turns, , they showed deference, they were kind, they were obedient, they were just so good, well behaved, they're just a set, they are set apart, homeschool kids are set apart with their behavior, their respectfulness.

 They didn't try to destroy the battle bots and throw them across the

the room. Exactly. Yeah. That, yes. That. So,  if you are listening to this podcast, we hope that you already are homeschooling or are thinking about homeschooling. And , with that in mind about how wonderful homeschool kids behave,  I want to talk to you guys about.

Some things that you're going to be putting off that you're going to have to really basically never worry about again. If you're a homeschooler, because

the hardest part about homeschooling is making the decision to homeschool because shoot before all you had to do was decide what district to live in for the best schools.

And then everyone else did all the work, right?  But now it's too dangerous to send your kids to school. Okay. too serious to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the sexualization of our children and to the woke agenda which the, progressive educrats, administrators and even some teachers are willfully poisoning the minds of our youth.

We don't want to condemn our kids to the conveyor belt of the mass education system, right? stuffing them with.  Facts they don't care about, and removing family loyalty and their ability to think for themselves, that's not what we want for our kids or our nation.  however, once you come to the decision to homeschool, you are going to yearn for guidance as you realize,  I'm supposed to do what  I'm supposed to homeschool

whom? Because, for real,

Because, for real, any parent who removes their child from government or private schools languishes in the fear that they won't be up to that monstrous undertaking and they might even ruin their little progeny.

But,  Just wait. Once you get over the hump of the difficult decision to homeschool, it's not long after those glories of homeschool start thriving in your life. It's gonna feel like the Lord is chasing you down the street, beating you over the head with blessings. Because a whole new world opens up. You got lots of time for family bonding, bonding, bonding.

You're going to grow as a parent and you're going to have the joy of leading your child as she seeks out her passions. And  to pave the way for a paradigm shift,  one of the first things I want you guys to do is divorce yourself from everything that brings to mind government. Institutional or private schools, hard desks, force fed facts, strict schedules standardized tests, eight hour school days, large course loads, and especially state standards or benchmarks.

We're going to just throw those out the window and never be oppressed by them again. 

state, state standards are

standards are benchmarks. I'm in Florida, and  our homeschool laws say that we have complete autonomy over our children's education. So, So, one thing I did used to do when I was a new homeschooler is I would go on the Sunshine State Standards and I would look up, okay, what does a third grader need to know about science?

And I would say, okay, does my kid know this, this? And I only did that for maybe half a year because I realized, wow, they're actually really learning so much. They're discovering with passion. So I just kind of kicked those to the curb. But the thing about. state standards or benchmarks is, they're basically the bane of every teacher's existence because it's these. 

Standards, a set of standards that kids have to know to say that they can pass this class. And so that sounds like maybe not such a bad idea, but it's the arbitrary way with which they come up with them. Like even teachers are like, who came up with these standards? The standards have blind spots, they don't cover everything.

I was talking to one teacher that I interviewed for my book and he said one of the standards for writing like completely. It didn't have any poetry in it at all, and on top of that, Florida has had five different sets of standards in the last 30 years. So they're changing regularly, okay? So that's what you're going to put off.

You don't have to go look at some standards list checking that off the box. What else you're gonna put off cranky your kids are right now if they're in school I mean, it's a summer if you're listening to this now, but think of a typical school year you're putting off crankiness

because

because they're over scheduled they have anxiety and peer pressure all school year long

What you're gonna be putting on is A child who's calm  They're more in control of their own learning  And they're a little bit more passionate about it because they're probably choosing their courses and choosing what they want to learn. 

I would say the calmness doesn't derive from being inside the house all day.  Sitting on a screen or just doing an hour's worth of work.

, there actually is a little bit of work involved in that by getting them out of the house, , going to things like library or field trips, things like that, where there isn't that pressure of, I got to do good on this test, or I got to finish my homework on this time, or I've got four classes I've got to get done today. 

It's the relief of not having that pressure on top of you. But still allowing your kid to live a life  outside of that. Oh,

at night, you know?

the  

 in third grade and she told me,  they can't think for themselves.

They had to be spoon fed ,

 was dumbfounded because it was her first year of homeschooling, how they just, that the, in those two or three years that they had been in school, it just sucks out. The, ability to think critically and think for yourself to learn something. So that's another thing you're going to be putting, taking off is your kids are going to have to start thinking for themselves  because they're going to be in charge of their education.

They're the ones guiding it.  So I'll say something to that. So obviously , we don't make it to sound like our kids have everything mastered, right?

Because. There's plenty of times where I ask one of our children to do something and they had that deer in headlights look like, how do I do that?

And I

And I have the choice of either showing them  or having them figure it out. And unfortunately in school, teachers don't have time to do that with every child, right?

They're not getting the one on one assistance or available time to, bring that to a student's attention, have them think critically. We can do that at home, right? and obviously you've yelled at me before sometimes because I make the kids go straight to the critical thinking and don't show them and i'm like, if you can't figure it out well

tell me when

Tell me when you're done and we'll see what happens  but it's still a work in progress even with us you would think as much time as we spend our kids or try to make them think

trying to make

It's still a work in progress, but we have the time to do it.

You know, we have the time to put into them You  How to do it and to show them the correct way. 

Yes.

they're not going to get that in a school.

No, they're, they're just being spoon fed here. Read this, answer these questions.

So they don't even have to half the time comprehend what they're doing. They just find, oh, here's in the text where it says , a Mollusk has a whatever, so yeah, that's a good point.  another thing you're going to be putting off is that stringent schedule, Monday through Friday, eight hours a day, bus ride, that all equals up over 18 years, that equals up to 25, 000 hours that your children are being taught, raised, , indoctrinated and influenced by someone you barely know.

the

Plus the fact you can't take a vacation except three weeks a year. Spring break, fall break, or Christmas break. So what you're putting on then,

on then,

you're taking off that stringent schedule, you're putting on complete freedom over your family calendar, which is especially helpful when both parents work and you're trying to homeschool, which is especially helpful when you're a family who might like to travel  it's especially helpful in so many ways.

I think that's the thing about homeschooling, that you can't put a price on.  It's invaluable to be able to do whatever you want, whenever you want.

Without a doubt, a hundred percent. That's what makes life so enjoyable. Yeah. Because we can, hey. What about this weekend? Let's, or this weekday, what do you want to do?

Yeah, or a  a field trip in the middle of the week, anything. And here's the, here's a really cool thing.  John Taylor Gatto  he wrote

 Us Down. He wrote  he was an education reformer.

reformer.

 He wrote, he also wrote

also wrote, New York

of Mass Instruction.  Yeah, he was the New York State Teacher of the Year.

He was in the classroom for 30 years. He just has so much wisdom on what education should be. And he said, It takes a child about 50 hours

it takes

learn reading, writing, and arithmetic.

learn reading, writing, and

hours, let that sink in.

that sink in.

And then, They can teach themselves from then on out because they're reading. So  what they're doing in schools  over years and years and years ,  what are they doing besides wasting time when they can learn reading, writing, and arithmetic in 50 hours, 

so think about

So,

how much exponential freedom you're going to have now. Not only do you not have to follow the school calendar,  but



They're going to be passionately learning about whatever they want to learn about



 putting themselves ahead of all those counterparts that are trudging through the institutions and stuck on that conveyor belt. 

you have to take in homeschool. Just a fill.

and right, and life is an elected, like, for example, yeah,  I have a college bound kid, so she's going to need electives on her transcript. Well, guess what? Nutrition because she is really into, , she wants to add muscle,  so she's, , learned about how to  build muscle. 

What else? Her sport. Yeah. Yeah. Guess what? That's going down as an elective. Driver's Ed, you think we're not teaching her how to drive? So, we can make our own electives, you know, and life is, life is constantly throwing electives at you. You know, constantly. 

I had to take, I had to take, so you're forced,  even in college, you're forced to take electives  even it has nothing to do with what your major is or anything, right? I took volleyball.

take something and I'm like,

I had to take something and , okay, this sounds like

hours?

Was it a waste of three credit hours that I had to pay for?

Yes.

have to be

Was volleyball fun? Sure. I mean, that's three hours. I didn't have to be in a classroom, , looking at books, but it's like, okay, I'm being forced to take volleyball because it's an elective and there's nothing else I want to take.

of

So it's like total waste, total waste of time. 

Okay.

the overall benefit of me and my degree,  no, it was completely worthless. 

Yeah, because you don't want to see Matt try to spike a volleyball. It's

can I play volleyball? Yes. Okay. I did get an A in that class. I will say so.

of fools. And I mean that for your children, if they go to a school every day, they are going to be in the company of fools because those people, you know, everybody out there has their own worldview.

own

And  the Bible talks a lot about the foolish.

Don't get caught up with the foolish, the foolish. Don't listen to rebuke, , and.

foolish means without God. People

Fools have no fear of God, yeah, because wisdom  is the beginning, what is it? The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God, right? And if you're not wise, what are you? You're a fool. Yeah. So, It has a couple of deep meanings there. You don't want them around foolish nonbelievers or foolish fools that are just going to get them in trouble.

Man, I was so good. I don't know how

how, I had

I had a, such a good knack for finding that crowd of fools when I was in high school. I mean, I've everybody I hung out with was a complete fool and I was a fool because I was with them, , show me your friends. I'll show you your future. So.

When you bring them home, you know what, you get to be their main influencer.  

, I'm reading this book and it's called The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. And it's fascinating. , and the, the premise of it is since the iPhones

 Anxiety

and depression has just skyrocketed in teens and he shows all this data and he brings up this point that there's attunement and conformist bias and prestige bias.



, kids

are, 

as

 The evolutionary brain patterns, we're attracted to.

and  We

people who, prestigious people, because we want to be like that. That's how you're going to survive better in society. And what's happening now is a kid can go through, say they're scrolling through Instagram. They can get thousands and thousands of data points within an hour of likes.

 

There are all these data points of what's acceptable, quote, acceptable behavior and what I should be doing, but that's on social media. So that actually doesn't translate over into real life, like relationships family, keeping a job. This is just stuff that is blowing up on social media.

So our poor kids are just inundated with all this. False information

Just

through these kind of ways. Through seeing, you know, kids , in schools or kids on Instagram. 

But they're also  comparing themselves to all these kids. And when you do that and you see what these kids are doing online , you know, it's all about status and people showing off and things like that.

likes.

Do

you know, do you know what that does to kids mentally and  just their confidence?

It just, Down, down in the dumps. It's like, I'll never be as good as these people. Cause that's all they see.

And that's why they're so depressed and anxious. Yeah. And, and, and the facts are in that book. It just is such a strong correlation. And as a side note is your, your kids should not be on social media if they have not gone through puberty. This is what the experts are saying they, if they're not 16 or older.

They should not be on there looking at all these girls who are, , fake,  filtered and all that and it's just, it's wreaking havoc on this generation and

that's something that you're going to take that, a lot of that out of the picture as a homeschool family. Are you going to be able to get away from it completely?

No. No.  You can't really get away from it. The influence of what screens do, but you have so much more control and you are so much better to influence your children when they don't have all that. Because like I said, they can look through thousands of data points with a few scrolls thinking my parents don't know anything.

No, but if they don't have that, then they do think you know stuff.  They do think you're wise, 

Yeah, my kids think I'm a genius. I don't know why, but they do.

I'm

Because I hide them in the, I keep them in the dark.

I

They don't know any better.

know why, but they did it. them in the 

 And 

very hard. The institution is psychopathic. It has no conscious. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derived from a common ancestor. 



when is the kid ever going to get in flow with something they're passionate about if they have a bell ringing in their ear every 45  minutes? So that's another thing you're going to put off is  that whole notion that nothing's really that important, nothing's really worth.

Getting lost in and getting passionate about so that's exciting now

 There's so much this is only a tip of the iceberg of the benefits of homeschooling and We were talking to lobbyist Jason Crawford  he's a Florida lobbyist with HEF which is  

 So, in basically four years, homeschooling has doubled in Florida. , it was interesting to talk to a lobbyist because as somebody who always has known homeschooling to be completely legal, you guys don't, might not know this, but it didn't become legal until the 1980s and 90s and lots of, , parents were under the radar homeschooling their kids because they knew it was best for them, but it was illegal.

Well, okay, praise the Lord, we have the liberty in all 50 states you can homeschool  But he was telling us there's always laws or things coming down the , legislative current that can either be good for homeschooling or bad for 

homeschooling. And 

job as a lobbyist is to make sure that homeschooling is protected.

And he was saying that

legislatures

have no idea what homeschooling is. He said like out of 60 legislatures in Florida.

Only three.

Only three homeschool. And so they, have this new homeschooling, they, what is it called? The step up scholarship where , the state will give you 7, 000 per child if you qualify for the scholarship for whatever you want to use educationally for your kid, you're going to get reimbursed.

And so he was telling us all about that and saying  that, they don't really understand. What homeschooling is. And so  he wants families to go on and

Oh, give

yeah, it was called tell your story and it's F L H E F. org. And he said, just give like a minute

and it gives you the whole framework.

Give us a minute of what homeschooling is like so that these legislature, like I keep

that 

these 

let legislators

Legislatures. legislators

Yes. Can understand what's, what our life is like.

because we're going to take that money and go buy a kayak and do, and and do like a microbe,

Culture. Yeah. , we're going to actually go out in the world and really learn what this stuff with this money.

so if you're one of those families that. Said, Oh, I'd love to make a little video about what our homeschooling is like go to  FLHEF. org and then click on tell your story and It'll help our legislators really understand  the broad spectrum of what homeschooling can be because it's literally can be whatever you want it to be and We have way more rights than then

Government school kids.

Did you guys know that? FLHEF. org

know 

homeschool kids don't have a work curfew,  but public school kids do.

you know

Did you know that there's some places, I mean, a homeschooler can go anywhere they want any day, but there's places where government school kids or school kids cannot go, they cannot be there

because they

because they would be truant.

So when you think about that. It's like, wow, how could anyone think that being locked in a school day, a school building all day with all your same age mates, learning the exact same thing? How can anyone say? Eating the same thing probably every day, sitting by the same person, how could anyone think that that is actual socialization over a kid that can work when they want to, wake up when they want to, go anywhere they want to, be out in the world, talking to every age, race, and socioeconomic demographic that your community offers?

But what I thought was interesting is even though Florida is obviously pro homeschool  

What 

the legislators don't know is that they can pass bills that cause collateral damage to homeschool And I'll give you an example one of the bills that one of them was passing had to do with caretakers Because there's so much abuse with caretakers and whether that's elderly or day school home,  Daycare things like that.

They're like shouldn't they have a federal background check Before these people can be put in charge of other people

and okay generalization Of of just looking at that sure but then

the point, The collateral damage was, well then, what about teachers and homeschooling parents?

Shouldn't they

Shouldn't they be background checked too because they're in charge of someone else, right?



Through. Right. A federal background check. And then the lobbyists have to say, Whoa, hang on a second. You're going to get some backlash and some lawsuits of this because now you're telling me that you're going to do a federal background check on a parent.  Of their own child and something might come up and now you're gonna say you're not allowed to homeschool your own kid Even though you live in that house and you raise that kid that just doesn't make sense.

So the lobbyist job is to

Educate these senators To say hey we don't want to trample on rights of  homeschoolers. We need to word things better Because we don't want to trample on their rights

Because stuff like that comes across all the time

right. And it's a God given right that you can homeschool your own kid. Yeah, it's a way to go.

Lobbyists. 

recently.

so another thing we learned that we didn't know

school

Here's a couple of things I learned recently. There's a, there's a thing called out school. Now, listen, I've been homeschooling 15 years. I just heard about this. It's a, it's a online platform. You can go and find basically any teacher, any subject to hire, to teach,  whatever. 

It's called out

Say that again? You can have them do whatever, like clean your car, wash your house?

it's anything you want to learn American sign language or anything your kid wants to learn, or you don't want to teach, or you think I can't teach that it's called out school. And it's all these people making a career.

a database of teachers that will homeschool your child on a specific curriculum.

Yes. Gotcha.

Okay. So that's, that could be very helpful for people.. 



another thing, you know, the metaverse goggles. Is that what that's called? The metaverse, those, the   alternate reality. What's it called? Not 

Virtual reality.

Virtual. There's even virtual reality homeschool classes, homeschool courses, and you wear those, those virtual reality

in a classroom. 

I don't know. No, you're not sitting. I mean, you

Your avatar is in a 

classroom. 

right. And I mean, that could be very helpful for people that are immobile  maybe they're in a wheelchair, . But I don't know if I would do that for my kid who's  super addicted, would be super addicted to video games so quick.

I don't know. 

He'd be like walking around the room with his avatar, just like not sitting still, not listening. 

Right.  You know, and here's something that I, I found that still exists.  I thought, observing kids nowadays, you think this is a dead art form, but we were at the convention, and We had been talking to a lot of parents, and a teenage kid came up to our booth, and she goes, Hey, my dad said I should come over here.

You guys have a teenager. And she directed it to my two teen girls.

And she directed 

That is a dead and dying art form amongst kids. To have,



to introduce themselves, and have embodied, synchronous, one to one, Conversations, because



they're usually

disembodied, meaning they're online, and they're synchronous is meaning it's happening right then and there, because online is not, it's asynchronous, right?

It could have happened whenever. So this young lady came up

with confidence, she just wanted to make a friend.

and 

I thought that art form was dead in kids nowadays, because what are they doing when you see them? When you drive by the bus stop, are they talking to each other?

Their head is cranked down staring at a screen.

yep.  And it's not like that in the homeschool world.

As much. I mean, you'll still see that. But these kids actually will invest in a relationship and come up and put themselves out there like that. That was just so cute. I thought, wow, I have so much hope now for kids, for children, for kids  we want to end on this. We talked about life is always going to throw.

What do we call them? Electives at you. And life is going to throw teachable moments at you all the time. So, one of those teachable moments for us,  we, we camp, and we're camping in Jacksonville,  and the very next camp site over from us, literally our next door neighbor,  an old school bus pulls

Oh, yeah.

Now this is a school bus that has been gutted.

The person is living in it. Okay, but that's not the crazy thing about it. Oh, yeah, this was like a 1970s. Yeah,

Bluebird special. Yes. Yeah.

but this one had been painted neon green  And on the whole big side of it had it Alien toking on a spliff, and other very trippy drawings that glow in black light mushrooms, what else?

Oh, well, I mean, this lady was, you think she was the national promoter of cannabis

that 

for the East Coast

right, it was, it was called the Cannabis. Okay, weed leaves all over it, the C A N N A  Bus, B U S, 

Oh, it's crazy 

you could probably, you can look it up, I believe it has a Facebook with a few hundred followers, and, 

Right next door literally 10 feet from our campsite we had to stare at this cannabis for three days straight

and it's freaky too, and I can tell our youngest is kind of scared of the gigantic alien, and and it had all this, these posters of,  it was raising awareness for people who are doing hard time because of marijuana charges. And

free, to free them because they shouldn't have gone to prison for

Right, and it says, oh, this father of four is doing ten years.

So we're sitting, because we're sitting around our campfire, we can read these dudes laminated story in mugshot. You know, father of three from Maryland is doing ten years. Well, yeah, probably because he got caught with like 50 pounds of it, okay? If you're doing that much time, well, that, that was a teaching moment, as they say.  

I did explain, you know, marijuana has medicinal benefits. For some people, it's very helpful. But I said other people abuse it. , so I, we, we did. We just had to basically say, here, this

why this person has this bus and what the history of it is

Yeah, and   We also realized it was a learning moment for Matt and I. We realized you don't come to a city run campground in Duval County, Florida, people. 

you will see anything and everything

Yeah. And it didn't used to be like that because we had been there about 10 years before and it was great. But then I think the, the city took over the campground and it had turned into the Winn Dixie of campgrounds, bro. It was bad.

Trash overflowing. 

Walmart, campground. I mean, anything pulls up and they'll allow anything on two wheels to camp

The 

Yeah, there's no, 

Yeah. 

,

sometimes the lesson plan arrives before it's actually put in the lesson plan. 

In the lesson planner.

Planner. Yeah, and that's when you just go with God's lesson plan, which I'd rather use His than mine anyways.

Anyways, just say roll with it

Yep, roll with it in the cannabis.

in the cannabis. 

Right. Oh, and you know what , before  we get out of here, I do have to say, I wanted to apologize to all of our Denver, Colorado listeners who are not familiar with the  Liberal and Woke because when my son heard that episode, , it was the last episode. You can go back and check it out.

But I said, , liberals live in Denver.  And he was like, well, isn't that kind of rude? And I thought, you know what? You're right. That was probably offensive to any conservative or God, God fear in person in Denver, Colorado. So I do apologize. I know you guys are out there. Okay. So I just wanted to make sure and not offend any of our listeners.

Okay.

but not sorry. 

Well, thanks for listening.

Alright.

Carlo Acoutis. 

Saint Jose Sanchez Del Rio.

pray  📍 for us.    We  

 

hope you've enjoyed home is where the truth is. Would you like some more parenting pro tips and homeschool help? Well, then you should grab my book. Home is where the truth is. Why you can and should homeschool your child. Grab it for yourself or for a loved one who's thinking about homeschooling.

Together we can smash the misconceptions that are holding parents back from the greatest family adventure. Homeschooling. It's available in audio, ebook, and paperback at all major book retailers. Also, can we ask a big favor? Will you please share our podcast or  leave us a five star review so that more people can find us.

You can find out more about us at Maeve Jemison. com.