The Risk of Wrong Expectations as You Begin Your Homeschool Journey [Show]

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Gretchen Roe: 00:00:05.445
Hi, everyone. Welcome. I’m so delighted to welcome you all to this episode of The Demme Learning Show. This is Gretchen Roe. And I am joined by three of my most esteemed colleagues today to have a conversation about the risk of wrong expectations as you begin your homeschooling journey. I think we could have probably written 1,000 questions about this. But we’ve narrowed it down to a couple dozen. We’ve got lots of things to talk to you about and some things that perhaps you haven’t thought about before. So I think you will find a tremendous amount of benefit in the conversation we are going to have today. By way of introduction, my name is Gretchen Roe. I am the host of The Demme Learning Show. I am delighted to welcome you all today. And I’d like my guests to introduce themselves. We will start with Amanda. And we will go around Amanda, Kathleen, and then Lisa. So, ladies.

Amanda Capps: 00:01:03.723
Hi, I’m Amanda Capps. And I’m a second generation homeschooler, current mother of eight. I have graduated my oldest. I have a senior this year. And I go all the way down to three years old. And I have been in customer service with Demme Learning for the last 13 years and supporting customers on many different topics. And I feel January is kind of the time of year where we have a lot of those discussions around people pulling kids out of school after the holidays. And then they’re trying to get started. And so I feel like this is a really appropriate conversation to have this time of year.

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:01:44.401
Hi, my name is Kathleen Calabrese. I work in customer service here. I’ve been here for about two-and-a-half years. I homeschooled my two boys for 21 years. They’re both now graduated. They homeschooled all the way through. My oldest son is in the financial field. My youngest son is in college and doing very well in college.

Lisa Chimento: 00:02:05.957
My name is Lisa Chimento. I am the homeschooling mother of four children who are all graduated, adults, grown and flown. My husband and I raised them in various states and lots of moving around. So we have lots of interesting things to share just from personal experience today. I’ve been with Demme Learning since 2008 as a fair contractor and then most recently is customer success consultant and placement specialist. I’ve been here for about seven years. And I’m really looking forward today’s conversation.

Gretchen Roe: 00:02:44.079
I am delighted. You all have the best of the best to hear from these ladies. And so, when we sat down to brainstorm this conversation, we talked about a lot of things. Collectively, I think we realized that we have somewhere close to 50 years of conversational experience with homeschooling families. So I think we’re going to bring you a lot of maybe insight. Maybe we’ll give you the opportunity to think differently about your homeschooling journey. If you’re on the journey, this will be a wonderful retool for you. If you’re considering the journey, I hope that you will be able to take some information away from what we say and be able to incorporate it into your homeschool and maybe find yourself a little bit further along the path because many of the things we’re going to talk about today are misapprehensions that we, ourselves, had as we began that journey. And so let’s see. Lisa, I’m going to start with you, “Everything will be lovely. Our children will be obedient, cheerful. And we will recreate Little House on the Prairie.”

Lisa Chimento: 00:03:51.087
I was that mom. I read Laura Ingalls Wilder. I read Anne of Green Gables. I had visions of being Miss Stacy having my children gathered outside around the oak tree and teaching science lessons on the lawn. Yeah [laughter], it didn’t happen. I have three boys and a girl and the two– the first one was– I can describe him as bombastic. So your children are children. They all have different personalities. They might very well have different personalities from you and they most likely have not read those books [laughter]. And they can’t read your mind, either. So they don’t know that this is what you’re expecting. And they’re children. They will be appropriately immature many times. And we need to expect that and not think that it’s a wrong thing. They’re going to be growing, going through different stages. They react to different things. They get hungry, they get tired, they get fidgety. And sometimes, they get excited about things and it’s hard to focus on what you’re supposed to be doing. This is an opportunity for you to learn, observe, and listen and become a student of your children and take things in and find out what works for you and what doesn’t. And you’re going to need to make some changes to some of those kinds of expectations. There will be times that your children will behave foolishly. They are growing. They are learning. This is the time for that to happen and your home is the safe place where that can happen. So if I could say one thing in this, it is don’t forfeit your relationship with your children for the sake of those expectations. They can be laid aside and things will change over the years as you’re going through. You’ll get used to things, they’ll get used to things. Expectations can be better communicated as you go. And then, they will know what is expected. And you can set appropriate limits.

Gretchen Roe: 00:05:57.128
And one of the things my husband said is, “I want our children to have character. I don’t want them to be characters.” On any given day, that could have been both of those things were true at the same time. So [laughter] I think it’s important that you recognize that if you can hold your expectations loosely about what you envision your homeschool to be, that will be so much better. Let’s see. I want Amanda to answer this one because this one is really interesting. And Amanda, it’s, “I can work full time, homeschool my children, have a clean house, dinner on the table nightly.”

Amanda Capps: 00:06:39.598
I mean, there are some days that that happens [laughter]. There are some days that I am able to pull that off. I will say it is possible. It is challenging. But if you will approach your week and have a plan, meal plans are essential, being organized. That doesn’t mean that I just get to– just freewill into my week and be like, “All right, let’s see what happens.” I mean, I have to be really disciplined and really structured. But it is possible. It’s totally possible to work part-time, to homeschool. It cannot look like a traditional school situation. That is 100% accurate. And so if you go into it with that expectation, everybody’s going to be disappointed and there’s going to be a lot of stress [laughter] happening. But if you can be super unconventional, super flexible, work around a work schedule, work around your partner’s schedule, you can teamwork, you can delegate, you can be organized, you can do it.

Gretchen Roe: 00:07:50.282
Absolutely. And tangential to that, Kathleen, I think I would love for you to answer the question. We’re going to do exactly as they did in public school, only faster and better. We’re we’re going to set up a schedule that allows us to homeschool from 8:00 to 3:00, but I can add field trips and enrichment activities into the mix.

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:08:10.710
Well, I think with this, it’s just the understanding that home education is not school at home. It is not the same thing. You do not have a classroom. You do not have 25 children. So to try to replicate what they’re doing in school, there’s no reason to do that. You have to come to the realization that your kids are learning all the time. They’re learning through everything. You’re in the kitchen preparing lunch. They’re learning. They’re watching you. They’re learning, or they’re jumping in. They’re helping. You’re preparing your grocery list. They’re learning. You’re taking them food shopping with you. They’re learning. That’s all part of home education. And I think it’s just a matter of realizing that they’re learning all the time. And the benefit that you’ll see in that is that when your children understand that they’re learning all the time, they also understand that they can explore all the time. They can ask questions all the time. It doesn’t just have to be between 8:00 and 4:00. I’m allowed to ask mom a question about Thomas Jefferson. No, you can ask that question anytime of day. You can ask it on a Saturday. You can. So it allows the children even the freedom to understand that learning happens all the time.

Gretchen Roe: 00:09:30.433
I have the misapprehension. I actually went out and bought desks that came from Maryland surplus that had actually been used in the Maryland State House until they retooled the State House. And I thought it was going to be so cool for my kids to sit at desks that legislation had actually occurred on. I was so excited about that. Those desks had the worst cases of flat surface disease. They just got piled with junk, and nobody ever sat at them. So after about four years, I was able to finally set aside my firm held belief that, “Oh, if we could just all sit at our desks–” because homeschoolers don’t sit at desks. Kathleen, where was your son’s favorite place to read in your basement?

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:10:21.675
His favorite place to read was on the swing. For my youngest son, he could not sit still. And so even sitting in a chair did not work for him. He was either upside down somewhere on the couch or just somewhere upside down, or he was swinging. My husband actually put a swing in the room, and he sat on the swing, and there was a lot of education that went on while he was on that swing.

Gretchen Roe: 00:10:47.602
Right. Absolutely. And I think that’s one of the hardest things that parents expect. If you come into the home education experience thinking it’s going to look like a public school experience, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick from the get-go. And so Amanda, even though my child is behind in their current academic situation, I can use resources to catch them up in a single academic year, and everything will be amazing.

Amanda Capps: 00:11:21.795
Sometimes. That would be my answer to that. Sometimes. I’m going to piggyback off of Kathleen’s really quick because I just want to say in my classroom, I have a rebounder. I have exercise balls. There are things for kids to be able to move and to get energy out. And I’m still constantly amazed at how much just my toddlers playing on the floor in the same room where schooling is happening or read-alouds are happening, or educational experiences are being conducted and how much they pick up through osmosis when you would think that they are getting zero And then suddenly several hours later, we’re around the table.

Amanda Capps: 00:12:05.596
Dad asks how the day went and those little voices just pipe up and they just start talking about all of the things and you’re like, “Oh my word, they were literally listening. They were comprehending. This is fantastic.” So I just wanted to throw that in there. Now, as far as I can personally vouch for that situation because I was that student. I was an all around average student in all the other subjects. Math was my nemesis. It just so much anxiety, so much anxiety. And our family, because my mom had some math anxiety stuff, the curriculum hopped a lot, which created a lot of gaps.

Amanda Capps: 00:12:48.965
And so I was in about seventh grade, sixth-ish, seventh grade when our family found Math-U-See recommended to us from another homeschool family. They had eight children and they weren’t crying through math. They were actually kind of happy about it. And my mom was like, “Okay, I need to know what this is about because we’re definitely crying over here and it’s not going well.” I think my mom kind of had the expectation that my dad was going to kind of handle math, especially once it got out of like the addition, subtraction, multiplication, division phase of things.

Amanda Capps: 00:13:22.001
And just because you have an adult who is good at math themselves does not mean that they can then take those same concepts, break them down and explain them or teach them to someone else. So that is another huge expectation we have to look at. But I had siblings that were starting at the beginning of the Math-U-See program, and so my mom just made the executive decision that I was going to go back to the beginning. I was still counting on my fingers. I was not doing well at grade level where I was at. And so I very quickly reviewed and I was back up to grade level in about a year, year and a half tops. But with my foundation completely relayed and I do not think I would have been successful in my high school math experience had we not taken the time to do that, and it was very worthwhile in my case.

Gretchen Roe: 00:14:15.719
I want all three of you to answer this next question. It’s okay. I’m going to homeschool my student, but they’re behind. I know how all of us love that word. So I’d like to get each of your perspectives briefly on the word behind. And my perspective is the reason you’re homeschooling is because you want something different than what the public school provides and there is no behind when you homeschool. Your student is where they are and it’s your job to dedicate yourself to bringing them forward, however long that takes and in whatever manner is necessary for them to be successful. Lisa, what do you think about that?

Lisa Chimento: 00:14:58.516
Yeah, you said it. I really like what you just said. We need to remember that standards for education have changed a great deal over many, many, many years. And they are men’s standards that some people pulled out of whatever experiences they’ve had with education. Certainly there are milestones that we might expect for certain things. But when you’re talking about behind, you have to go behind whom? You can pull eight fourth graders out of the class who have all been taught the same material and I guarantee you that they don’t all know the same stuff.

Lisa Chimento: 00:15:39.959
So when we do that behind ahead thing, what we’re talking about is some written thing that someone has created that says, “Your student should know this at this time.” But, there’s no scripture about that. There’s nothing that is universal about that. So we need to just set that aside. And I do understand as parents, peer pressure happens for us too. And we need to really lay that down and let that go and just say, like Gretchen just said, “My child is where he is.” And our goal is progress. We want to make sure that we are moving forward and that they are learning appropriately and go from there.

Gretchen Roe: 00:16:22.054
That’s right. Our goal is progress. Kathleen, what do you have to say about that?

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:16:26.742
This one, to me, the struggle is real because I think this is probably the biggest or one of the biggest concerns of homeschoolers. I know for myself, my oldest son was reading by the time he was four. And anything I put in front of him, he could do. There was never any issues. And then seven and a half years later, my youngest son started homeschooling, and it was not the same. And he did not learn to read until he was eight years old. And even though I had already been homeschooling for 10 years and I knew there is no behind– and I would talk to other homeschool moms and they would say, “Okay, he’s just not ready yet.” And I would hear them and I would say, “Yeah, you’re right.” And then the next day I’d order another reading curriculum. And I’d try that one. And then a couple of weeks later, I talked to a homeschool mom, they’d say, “He’s just not ready yet.” And I go, “Yeah, you’re right.” And then the next day, I’d order another reading curriculum, and I try that one. And I tried every reading curriculum there was. Honestly, I spent money on every single one out there. I tried every single one of them. And the truth is he just wasn’t ready.

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:17:37.047
When he was eight years old, one day we’re in the car, and he’s reading billboards and signs as we’re going past. And I was like, “Wait a minute, this child can read. When did this happen?” And it really and truly is it wasn’t the curriculum. He just wasn’t ready. So even though I knew I shouldn’t be worried about him being behind, that struggle is real. And in some respects, it’s so hard to resist it. And I did keep trying other curriculums. I wish I didn’t, but I did because I was worried. Whether I was comparing him to his brother or just comparing him to other kids in second grade and he wasn’t reading, it was hard. But the truth is he just wasn’t ready. He’s now in college. He gets straight-A’s in college. So he did catch up. And with him even, once I realized that he was eight and he was now reading, I did even go back to pull out first-grade curriculum and then start doing that with him because I had to teach him basic reading. And I learned to put tape over anything that said a grade so that he didn’t see it so that he didn’t feel funny about it.

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:18:47.725
And I would say it probably wasn’t until about fifth grade until I would say he was grade level on everything. It was probably about fifth grade. And, honestly, once he did start reading, I did then relax and say to myself, “You know what? He just wasn’t ready. And now we’re just going to move forward from here.” And I was then able to relax and kind of just say, “This child learns differently. He learns at a different pace.” And then I didn’t push it and force it and say, “Okay, hurry up, hurry up. We got to get you caught up.” It just kind of naturally happened then. And I’m glad that at least from that point on, I did allow it to naturally happen to understand that he will pick up on everything. It will come. It just came at a different pace for him.

Gretchen Roe: 00:19:36.537
Now, Amanda, behind in your world is a wholly different kettle of fish because you were homeschooled all the way through and you’re homeschooling this next generation. So because we all have talked about the pressure from the little kid in your homeschool group who is speaking Chinese and writing essays and is seven years old and your kid can’t find their shoes. So how do you deal with behind?

Amanda Capps: 00:20:09.566
So my favorite saying in the whole world is, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” [laughter] So don’t let comparison steal your joy. There is always going to be somebody who is doing it sooner and better, and that’s just life. That’s just experience. When I have the behind conversation with parents, I’m like, okay, wait a minute. Have you retained 100% of everything you’ve ever learned? You’ve never had to go look something up again or refresh your memory or reference an article? You’ve retained 100% of everything you were ever exposed to and you’ve got it all. No. And now we’re aging, which is even more fun because then we really lose it and we’re like, “I know I had that. I know I had that at some point.”

Amanda Capps: 00:21:01.858
So yeah, I mean, the beauty of homeschooling is, and especially when you have multiple children, is you’re constantly, I mean, you’re constantly US, and then world, and then you’re going through geography. It’s always going to come back around. It’s always kind of cyclical. And you’re going to catch more every pass you make. So look at the way you’re making the pass and make sure that you’re being as thorough as you can. Keep it grade appropriate, but then don’t sweat it if it doesn’t always get picked up 100% the first time around. Because again, I don’t know a single person who is in a public school that actually uses the entire book. They don’t go from start to finish. That was a revolution for me as being a second generation homeschooler that I was really not aware of, because I wasn’t exposed to that environment. But I remember totally stressing with my first senior, and being like, “She didn’t do every single lesson in Algebra 2. She probably didn’t do the last four. Oh my goodness, I can’t put that on her transcript. I can’t count it. She didn’t complete everything.” And my mom was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute, take a deep breath, calm down.” Like in school, the teacher looks at the curriculum, they look at the amount of time they have and they pick the things that are critical to hit, and they hit those and then you just count it and move on. And that was such a freeing conversation because it was like, oh, okay, so we’ve actually done more than the average public schooler would have done in this curriculum. That’s great. [laughter] What a relief.

Gretchen Roe: 00:22:44.775
Well, and it’s hard because we all have these little voices inside of our heads that talk to us all the time. And I don’t know about you all, but mine is sometimes really loud. And when I see a child who is learning Chinese and on a travel soccer team and won the speech contest at our homeschool co-op, I’m thinking, what’s wrong with me? And the truth of the matter is many of you are sitting out there thinking the same thing. And the answer to that is absolutely nothing. Lisa, I want you to talk to this particular topic, which is I don’t have a lot of stick-to-it-tiveness, but my kids are going to be really dedicated to their academics.

Lisa Chimento: 00:23:35.429
Yeah, I volunteered for this answer because I was that person. Yeah. So I was raised by an amazing father who was a loving man, but he was fondly known throughout our town as being late for everything and would probably be late for his funeral. Procrastination was the method of operation in our home. We flew by the seat of our pants on everything. Projects were started started, never finished, no time management. I mean, it just didn’t exist. So I was not– and I didn’t have the personality that just took that on myself. So I just floated along and skated that way and into adulthood. So I learned a little bit of time management in college to get myself through. But then, the struggle has been with me my whole life. I still struggle with time management as an adult. And when I started homeschooling, I had great intentions, and I make a great list. Let me tell you. I’m a good list-maker. Whether or not I follow through with that list is an entirely different story. And I found myself starting things and not finishing. And screwing up time, I took some great advice from some friends that helped different things. But what I came to be was– what came to happen was I had to come to my kids and say, listen, this is my reality. And I wish for you to be better at this than I am. And my hope for you is that you don’t struggle with this your whole life because of these reasons. I want you to be prepared as an adult. I want you to be prepared if you want to go to college to be able to manage your time. So I’m going to be learning right along with you. And I had to do a lot of acknowledging and apologizing the whole way when that happened. But here’s the bottom line. I found a great quote. Some of you have probably heard it by a man named John Maxwell. And what he said is, “More is caught than is taught. You can teach your kids what you know, but you reproduce what you are.” So action speak louder than words is your bottom line here. And you cannot not prepare.

Lisa Chimento: 00:25:56.974
You cannot sleep in all day and expect them to get up and do this stuff. That has to be part of you. And even if you’re not good at it now, you can learn. Learning is lifelong. And I think that’s one of the things that I wanted my kids to understand that they can learn things outside of me, on their own, from other people for their entire lives. And so those things that I have been remiss in or poor at, they can find somebody who’s better at it at some point in their life and learn from that person. But these are the things that there are things in our lives that we want to be good at. This one I’m going to take with me until I’m gone and with the Lord. And then somebody will say fondly about me, oh, she was late for everything.

Gretchen Roe: 00:26:52.011
I have worked alongside you for eight years, and I don’t find that to be the case. But you can’t expect your children to produce what you don’t model for them. And so I think it’s really important to recognize that your kids don’t wait. So if you know, like Lisa and I, that you are by the seat of your pants kind of person, you’re going to have to practice the discipline of recognizing what is coming for them academically before you can effectively expect them to implement those academics. Now, the flip side of that coin, Amanda, I want you to talk about, and that is my six-year-olds can do their academics successfully on their own.

Amanda Capps: 00:27:41.370
Yeah. This one just gets me– I don’t know. Being a second-generation homeschooler, my mom was, of course, incredibly involved. I had some siblings that had learning challenges that required even more involvement. And let me tell you if you do have a kiddo that struggles, it’s way less likely that they will specifically be able to achieve the same level of independence as other children who maybe don’t have those challenges. But the reality is there’s always going to be some subject that one of your kids is not going to be– rare is the child that is proficient in all the subjects at the same time, in the same year, that the curriculum you picked out is working perfectly for. I mean, I feel like those are kind of unicorn rainbows, those kinds of things. And so chances are there’s going to need to be some engaged parenting, some sitting right there next to them. I mean, sometimes their love language comes into play. I mean, if you have a kiddo and their love language is quality time, you’re going to be sitting next to that kid. You’re going to be sitting right there next to them and cheerleading and encouraging them every step of the way. And that’s how they’re going to feel loved and like they’re being supported in their educational journey. You’re going to have some kids that are absolutely capable and can be given responsibility and can be given independence and can be trusted to check their work. And then there are the kids who are going to copy answers may vary from the teacher’s manual on their desk. And you’re going to go, gotcha. Happened in my house. So when you have eight children, you get the full mix. You get all of it. And it makes it even more fun because then you have to figure out which kid is going to do what and it changes on you. And it’s so much fun. And I love every minute of it. But again, bring realistic expectations. And it’s not that you can’t try it, but if you see that it’s not working, adjust accordingly.

Gretchen Roe: 00:29:58.933
Well, I think one of the things that’s really important is to recognize that each one of your children is different. And Kathleen has a really important answer with regard to this because we talked a little bit about it this morning. But what I often tell parents is my eldest son taught himself to read at the age of four. When I said, “I’d prefer you to learn to play cooperatively first,” he said, “Well, I’ll just teach myself to read.” And I kind of thought that that was the way it was going to roll from that point. Oh, we all teach ourselves to read. No, this was the same child who had to sit next to me for every math problem he ever completed until he was a senior in high school. And so making the assumption two ways. One, that child number one and child number two will behave the same way is fallacious. Number two is that assuming that because your child can row the boat in one academic experience, they can also row the boat in all their academic experiences is super dangerous. And so I know you guys, if you’ve ever joined us for a webinar, you’ve heard us say be the best student of your student. Observe them. See when they’re getting stressed. See when it’s not going well. Kathleen, you have a very unique experience in the fact that your kids were seven years apart. So you got to start rowing the boat all over again. And how was your expectations of what that experience would be? Wildly different. Because there was a mom who asked a question of us.

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:31:40.245
I have her question. How to remember all kids are different and not have wrong expectations toward younger sons was her exact question. And I had that situation because my kids are seven and a half years apart. And again, my oldest, I picked a curriculum and he did fantastic with it. It worked with him. I was using Sonlight, which is reading a lot of books. So we spent a lot of time sitting on the couch and just reading books, reading books. He was learning through those books and it was wonderful and everything was wonderful. And I had all these years of Sonlight books on my bookshelf and I told my husband even, “Yes, we’re spending all this money, but I’m going to get to use it for two children so I won’t have to buy new curriculum when Michael’s ready for school.” And he said, “Okay, great.” And then Michael was ready for school and I pulled the Sonlight books off the shelf and I started reading and I would read a chapter or I would read however much, and then I talked to Michael about it and he said the same thing to me every single time. “I have no idea what you just said.” And I started to realize, Okay, he can’t just sit here in the chair and listen to a story and wait, this isn’t working. And even then, I remember– and this is funny about expectations. So then I started researching and then asking questions, well, how do I make this curriculum work for this child? And I got a lot of suggestions of, okay, well, you need to do this and you need to do that. And it was things like he needs to be moving. So we brought in the swing and the bouncy ball and I allowed him to hurdle himself over the couch while I was reading. I let go of that expectation that he was going to sit in the chair. However, I even had to let more go because he wasn’t going to get through 35 books in a year. That wasn’t going to work with him. It just wasn’t. Thankfully, I had all these books still on my shelf and I could pull them off and read to him and do that with him so that he was still hearing the read-alouds.

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:33:54.767
35 wasn’t going to happen in a year like it did with my older son. So I did then even have to say, “Well, it’s not the curriculum. The curriculum is wonderful. I still have those books. Maybe one day I’ll get to read them to my grandchildren.” But the curriculum is wonderful and I love it. But for that particular child, I did have to let go of the expectation that every curriculum works for every child because trying to make him sit through 35 books, it just wasn’t going to work. He’s actually and this is something again about expectations. As a homeschooler, when I found sunlight, I said, I’m not going to be a worksheet person. I’m not putting worksheets in front of my kids. Well, guess what worked for Michael? Worksheets. Loves worksheets. Loved, loved, loved them. Loved that colorful worksheet or even a black and white worked. because I also realized he liked knowing exactly what do I need to do. These 13 questions? Okay, good. Now his expectations were met. So that worked for him. So I had to really just get rid of a bunch of my expectations when I had a child who didn’t learn the same. I had no choice. I had to do it. I would have driven both of us crazy if I tried to just keep forcing on him something that wasn’t going to work.

Gretchen Roe: 00:35:15.562
Absolutely. I think that’s really true. And so again, back to that same premise, you have to be the best student of your student to recognize when it is working well and when it’s time to change and change something about that. Toward that, Amanda, my husband has professional degrees in math and science. So he’ll be the best teacher for my children for math and science.

Amanda Capps: 00:35:44.661
That was my dad. And he would explain it to me and bless his heart, he would sit next to me and he would– and I would just– it just didn’t go in. And I didn’t understand. And he might as well have been speaking a foreign language when it came to math. It wasn’t until Math-U-See, and I actually saw math presented with manipulatives and it had that visual element, that math finally started to click for me. And what was interesting is when we watched the demonstration, which was on a VHS tape at the time, so I’m dating myself real good here, I remember my dad going, “Wow. The way that this is broken down, the way that it’s shown visually,” he’s like, “I’ve always understood this. This always made sense to me, but now I see, and now I see the tools, the visual part of it.” Then it was like, “Oh, yeah I can explain this, because now I have all the pieces. I can see the why and I can see the how.” And then he could model those concepts. But prior to that, there was a huge disconnect there. And it really doesn’t matter how well you understand it. If you can’t break it down and teach it to somebody else, and we can’t teach something we don’t understand. We all have those things that it’s like, “Well, that just came very naturally to me.” And that’s the way I felt about reading, because I was that four-year-old who just taught herself to read. And my mom really didn’t have to do anything to get me reading. And there is this idea that, “Well, if you have a good reader, everything’s golden,” but you still have to be able to do math. [laughter] You still have to be able to balance a checkbook and budget and understand how loan amortization and mortgage structuring and all of that stuff works. So you can’t just be so heavily on the reading and the literacy that the math doesn’t get done. And so you need to be able to read well, you need to be able to write and express yourself well, and you need to be able to do math. Those are the three critical things, and then everything else can kind of fall into place around them.

Gretchen Roe: 00:38:05.732
Right. And I think very often we have find parents when we’re at conferences who say to us, “Well, I’m beginning the homeschooling journey, but my husband’s comfortable with that and I’m not. So he would be a better instructor.” And that sometimes is not a true statement. Because when you are very proficient at something, you forget how it took time to get there and become proficient. So you don’t have the runway for your student that they need to become proficient. So sometimes the best instructor is the parent who’s willing to say, “Look, I don’t understand either, but we’re going to sit here until we understand.” And what a powerful tool that is to model to your student, that you don’t understand but you’re willing to hang in there and persevere until you do. Kathleen, can you talk about I object to the content taught in public schools, so I’ll control the content for my children, and I’m going to homeschool my children without technology because I don’t think they need it.

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:39:15.712
Sure. So as a home educator, I do get to control what I am teaching my children about. It doesn’t mean that I can control every single thing they’re exposed to unless I’m keeping them in the house and never letting them out, and never letting them talk to other people. And that is the realization that you have to come to. Yes, you can control exactly what you’re using as curriculum to educate them with, but they are still in this world. So really, you have to learn that the biggest thing is teach them to discern the truth so that they can then, with what they’re exposed to, know what is truth and what is believe things that your family believes in, things like that. So you can’t completely– again, unless you lock them in the house and never let them out, you can’t completely keep them from that. And then as far as technology goes, it’s 2024. We are a world that technology is everywhere. It’s in everything. I don’t think that you can completely keep it away from your children and then, again, expect them to go out into this world. At some point, whether they’re parenting, whether they’re in the workforce, they’re going to need technology. I mean, they’re going to need to learn how to use it. Even you can find the ways that it’s helpful in your education, where if you’re allowing them to go on the computer to look up things for topics that they’re interested in, you can certainly monitor what they’re doing on the internet. There’s nothing wrong with that. But the internet is a useful tool, even to the point of– I mean, when kids go to take their driving test, that’s on a computer. I’m not even talking about after they graduate, before they graduate, they’re hitting it. That’s on a computer. They better know how to use a computer just to take their driving test. I’m not aware of anywhere where it’s just written. Everything is computer now. But then again, going into college, my son is in college classes and his professors expect him to be computer literate. He has to submit papers through the computer. His schedules are all on the computer. The assignments are all on– everything is computer based. If he wasn’t computer knowledgeable, he would have really been thrown a curveball just going into college to try to then, at the age of 18, try to learn all of that. So thankfully, he had prior knowledge and he knew how to make documents. He knew how to save things. He knew how to be able to send things to his professor. He knew how to go into calendars and look up things. He needed all that information because the the professors, that’s where they’re at now.

Gretchen Roe: 00:42:20.294
Absolutely. And I think there’s a tangential question to this that goes along with that, Lisa. And I’m going to ask you to answer that. And that has to do with standardized tests. Because often, we talk to homeschool parents who engage in no type of standardized testing. And what are the implications of that?

Lisa Chimento: 00:42:42.844
Okay. So state laws differ. From state to state, there are different requirements. There are different allowances for homeschooling families. I’ve homeschooled in five states now in the US. And I think in every state that I’ve been in, they gave us an option that you either have to take a standardized test at the end of the year, or you could do a teacher evaluation by a state certified teacher. And at different times, I chose different options. When my kids were young, I chose the teacher evaluation route because I knew that the curriculum that I had chosen wasn’t aligned with what was being taught in those particular grades. And I just didn’t want to set them up for frustration at that point. Not everybody has that choice though. And I know that we hear a lot from parents about, “Well, Math-U-See is not grade aligned. What will happen when my child goes in there?” So there’s a couple of things to think about. And I think the first thing I want to encourage you about is be careful of teaching to the test. That’s not something that I would encourage anybody to do for a few reasons. First of all, you’ll run out of time to be able to teach the things that you know and feel are valuable for them to be learning that year. Secondly, that test is not reflective of everything that you deem important. It’s the materials that the state has deemed should be known at this age, but that doesn’t mean that it’s important to you or your family. And so I just want to encourage you to be careful. It could eat up all of your time doing that. The other thing is you need to ask yourself if your state does require standardized testing, maybe at every grade or at certain grades, what’s riding on them not doing great on that test? And I’m not asking that sarcastically. I want to be earnest in this. What will happen if your child doesn’t score high on that test? Are you going to lose them? Are you not going to be allowed to homeschool them anymore because you’ve been deemed a failure? For the most part, as much as what I know, nothing is going to happen. You’re going to submit those scores, and it will be over, and you move your merry way.

Lisa Chimento: 00:45:20.652
So there were times for different reasons– when we moved to New Hampshire, I didn’t have to do testing, but I was pregnant with my fourth and I had a rough time during the pregnancy. And so I just decided that year I was going to give them certain curriculum and I would let them take the test. But we were still using Math-U-See, which is not grade aligned. And I said to them, “Listen, you guys, you’re old enough now. I think it’s a good idea for you to get used to taking tests because they are going to be part of your future. So let’s just go and do this. It’s not a big deal. And if you find material on there that you’ve never seen before, just skip it. I don’t care.” As homeschooling parents, we have this lovely opportunity to assess our children daily. The tests are needed for the schools because they’re assessing huge groups of children for whom they could not possibly know what their progress is. So this is the way they do it. As a homeschooling parent, you know every day what your children are learning, what they know and what they don’t know. And so you don’t need to have some tests tell you. But if they have to take a test, then just prepare them ahead of time.

Lisa Chimento: 00:46:37.498
There’s going to be information on here that we haven’t covered this year. No biggie, just skip that stuff. I don’t care what grade you get on the test. I know what you know. When the test is over, we’re going to go out and get pizza and ice cream or whatever you want to do to celebrate. I would say don’t reward for a high score or punish for a low score. Just celebrate that the year is over, they got through that awful test and be done with it and just carry on. So unless there’s some kind of significant punishment or penalty that you’re going to receive if they don’t score a certain thing, then I would just really try to encourage you, don’t worry about what score they get on a test if you have to do it. And if you have the option to do teacher evaluations, the evaluations are going to be your child is making appropriate progress. That’s basically what the teacher evaluations are for. So that kind of a thing, if it’s optional to you and you want to take it, go for it. And then you can leave the stress behind.

Lisa Chimento: 00:47:41.364
Now, when we get into high school, we have some different issues going on because they are older. I think it’s a good idea for them to start getting used to test taking. I think I started my kids around sixth or seventh grade. I started letting them take the standardized test. We made no big deal about it, but I wanted them to get used to the format and the time that was involved in each of those testing sessions and what would be required. But I never talked to the test and you don’t have to. When you are dealing with high school, if you’re preparing them for college boards, there are test prep opportunities. There are books, there are courses that can be taken. But even in those situations, you can decide appropriately what you want them to be prepared with, and you can check on that. I know that when my kids were thinking about going into college, I went to the local community college where they would be kind of hopscotching first. They would be going first to the local community college and then on to university. And I went in and sat with an advisor and said, “Okay, these are the kinds of things my children are thinking of going into. What do you want to see them have on their high school transcript? And I’ll make sure that we take those courses.” And so that’s an opportunity for you as well.

Gretchen Roe: 00:48:59.799
Absolutely. And I think that that makes a tremendous amount of difference. There’s one more question I want to get to before you all provide closing thoughts. And this is an Amanda and Kathleen question. And this is something we often hear from moms whose husbands have thought homeschooling was a terrific idea. And mom is not necessarily on board. And the reason she’s not on board is, “I’m not a teacher. I don’t have a high school– I don’t have a college degree. How can I possibly teach my children?” Ladies? Amanda, I’ll let you go first.

Amanda Capps: 00:49:35.213
Well, I don’t have a college degree. So I think the thing is, if you have come through your own educational journey equipped with the ability to learn, to be a lifelong learner, then the reality is we’re going to learn right alongside of our kids. My personal feeling is after I have homeschooled and graduated eight kids, I should have an honorary master’s in teaching. I mean, I just feel like that should be a thing.

Gretchen Roe: 00:50:08.697
I think we can make that happen for you.

Amanda Capps: 00:50:11.553
Thank you. I would really appreciate that. In my head, it will be there, regardless of whether I have the paper or not. But yeah, but I mean, we learn right alongside of our kids. And so, it’s not like you can’t retake or study up or– there are so many supportive teaching materials and tools now. Or find somebody else that does. I mean, if you’re not the one that’s going to be able to get them through Algebra II, find a mom who that’s their strong suit. And then if hers are not maybe doing super great on the English front and that’s your strong suit, trade out. I tell my kids all the time, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. And networking and collaboration are invaluable. And so if you teach your kids early to look for and to take advantage of those types of opportunities, networking, collaboration, finding somebody that knows or is at where you want to be. And they can mentor you. Your community is huge. All of that is super important. But where you made it academically should have no bearing on what you are capable of doing for your own children.

Gretchen Roe: 00:51:29.913
Absolutely. And Kathleen, I know you had some thoughts on this.

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:51:34.232
Right. So growing up, I was not a good student. I wasn’t. There was much stuff that I had no idea what I was learning. And I pretty much went from grade to grade. And, I know I went to summer school for Algebra I because I failed it in high school, so I had to go to summer school and take it there. But I wasn’t a great student. And then I know when I decided to homeschool, and I had a lovely family member say to me, “Why are you going to homeschool. You didn’t even go to college. Well, thank you. And I remember at the time, and I said this through my entire 21 years, “I’m going to take one year at a time. I’m going to take one year at a time.” And that is really what I did. I did that as far as what curriculum I was using with them, but even as far as me and what I could do. “I’m going to take one year at a time,” is always how I said it. And I learned right alongside with them. And I’ve told parents, in customer service, I’ve told parents, I’ve gone through Math-U-See now two times because I sat right next to my kids and I was doing it with them and I was learning it with them. And then I had that seven plus year gap before the next child came into alpha. So here we go again. Here we are back in alpha again. And I sat and did it with them all the way up through, I believe, into pre-algebra is when they were both kind of like, “Okay, mom, let me just take it to my room. I’m good here.” And even then I was like then, “Okay, well, I’m going to go through it on my own,” in another room.

Gretchen Roe: 00:53:14.354
Just in case, right?

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:53:15.257
Right. I was still watching the video so that if they had a question, I could help them. And I was still trying to go through it and maybe do some problems for sheets that they hadn’t done. I was still trying to go through it so that I could help them. And I was able to help them all the way up through geometry. Algebra 2, if they needed help, that’s where then I had to go to somebody else for help because I wasn’t doing every lesson so I just didn’t know. I couldn’t help them. But you do learn right alongside with them. So it doesn’t matter. As Amanda said, “It doesn’t matter what your education was prior.” You’re starting in kindergarten and you’re learning about what the colors are and how to count to 10. And, “Okay, I can do this. I got this.” And then it gets a little harder in first grade, but you sit with them and you learn along with them. We are lifelong learners. We can do that.

Gretchen Roe: 00:54:07.973
Right. And I have talked to a lot of parents that I think if we could encourage you to have one character quality, it would be sticktuitiveness. That if you stick to it, you will be able to be successful in the process. Whether you’re starting with a kindergartener or whether you’re starting with a middle schooler, back to that, observe your child, pay attention to how they’re relating to you, how they’re relating to the curriculum, and be able to mentor them and guide them as you walk through that process. Ladies, I can’t believe we’re at the top of the hour. So I’m going to reverse the order here in our closing commentary. And Lisa, if you had one message you would like to provide to our viewers, what would that be today or our listeners as well?

Lisa Chimento: 00:55:02.031
Yeah, and it kind of rolls off of what Amanda and Kathleen just said, find yourself a good support network. It was invaluable to me. It’s such a blessing. Sometimes you will have family support and sometimes you won’t. If you can find a family member who is supportive of you homeschooling, latch on to that person. There are local homeschool support groups. Most states in the US have state homeschool groups that you can reach out to and find out who’s in your area if there are any local groups. There are online groups you can take advantage of. But find folks who will support you and encourage you. You will have days where you’re questioning and you will have rough days and you will have days you feel like tossing in the towel. And those are the people who can help gird you up and help you carry on through the rougher times because there will be days that are not as bright and cheery as others. And that’s expected because this is life. So find folks who will encourage and support you.

Gretchen Roe: 00:56:03.802
Absolutely Kathleen.

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:56:05.602
So bouncing off of that, the title of the show is The Risk of Wrong Expectations. So I would just say just think about where you’re getting your expectations from. For the most part, are they coming from comparison? Did you see something online? Did you see someone else’s student succeeding a certain way? Did another mom say, “Well, this is what works with my kids”? Just be careful in that comparison thing and understand that your children are different than other people and your education in your house is different. Again, I had to learn that even my two children learned very differently, so my expectations were so altered from one child to another. It wasn’t just, “In my house, we’re going to homeschool this way.” I had to change it for the second child. I had to alter that. So I just think be very careful about the comparison. When you’re thinking about your expectations and whether they’re met or not met, just think about where you’re getting those expectations from.

Gretchen Roe: 00:57:12.575
I like that, where you get your expectations from. Amanda?

Amanda Capps: 00:57:18.801
So I think what I would say in closing is we chose the homeschool life. The homeschool life didn’t choose us. And so we need to act like it. We need to own it and bring some confidence to the table. And if we don’t feel confident, again, find somebody that is and ask them how they got confident., what are they using, what is working for them, because that networking, again, can be such a huge benefit. We are in a marathon, ladies. This is not a sprint. It’s not. The days are long and the years are short. And as one with a senior this year, I thought– when my oldest graduated three years ago, I thought, “Oh, three years, I’m good. I’ve got some time.” And now here we are. And she’s graduating in May. And I’m going, “Wait a minute. Where did these three years go?” So just keep those things in mind. Don’t get so focused on the academics that you miss the God moments and the connection and the relationship and the fact that we get the privilege of spending our days raising our children and pouring into their lives. And let’s be real, they pour more into us than we ever pour into them.

Gretchen Roe: 00:58:41.484
Absolutely. I think those are wise words. You all see why it’s such a privilege for us to work together here at Demme Learning. If you ever have– if you ever feel like you don’t have a network or you don’t have support or you find yourself on this journey, and you’re like, “Gee, I’d really like to talk to someone,” if you pick up the phone and call Demme Learning, you might have the opportunity to talk to one of these three ladies. And I believe that you will be encouraged and blessed by that experience. It’s a very great pleasure to work alongside them, and I have to tell you that they teach me something every day. And I hope they have shared something today that has been a blessing and a benefit to you. This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show. Thanks for joining us. You can find the show notes and watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or on our YouTube channel. Be sure to rate, review, follow, or subscribe wherever you may be hearing this, especially if you really enjoyed it. And we’ll look forward to welcoming you to conversations we’re having in the coming weeks. Thanks, everyone. Have a wonderful day.

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