JUNE: So we get questions from folks, friends, people I don’t know.
MAGGIE: It’s true
JUNE: Wife of a kid I used to babysit when I was in high school and they want to know how do you homeschool? You two, what is homeschooling?
ALL: What is homeschooling? What is homeschooling? What is it?
CHRISTINA: Well, I would say it’s creating an atmosphere of learning in your home. We’re all learning together, parents, children, siblings.
JUNE: Yeah, obviously it’s providing an education, right?
CHRISTINA: Right.
JUNE: And inside your home, what do you think, Maggie?
MAGGIE: Wow, we’re talking about our own personal selves here because I think that as we’ve talked about, I think there’re different ways for different people. For me, I felt like the homeschooling thing was the atmosphere of learning. It was very relational, relationship between parent child, the relationship between siblings and really ultimately a relationship with Jesus and taking all those thoughts captive. If we know all the thoughts that are being talked about during the day, it’s easier to infuse a biblical worldview really into every discipline when you’re the one that’s shepherding what they’re learning about.
CHRISTINA: Right.
MAGGIE: So I think it’s relationships to me. It’s what I feel like it’s shaped out to be. I don’t know that that’s what I would have said initially. I would have just said it’s teaching them at home literally.
CHRISTINA: Right.
JUNE: I think for a young mom who might be a millennial, we had a certain stereotype that we thought of some of our friends our age who were homeschooled, there was an idea that it was the mom with the jumper and the kind of the maladjusted children.
MAGGIE: So when I told my brother that I–
JUNE AND CHRISTINA: Never leaving the house. Never leaving the house.
MAGGIE: When I told my brothers I was going to homeschool, they literally said to me and I won’t say the person’s name, they were like, “You remember that someone said–“
CHRISTINA: You remember how they turned out.
MAGGIE: Totally crazy and it were. These were fringe people.
JUNE: Yeah, yeah.
MAGGIE: Fringe.
JUNE: Yes.
So, I doubt that millennials–
MAGGIE: Think of homeschool in that way.
JUNE: … Right, but even they don’t think of it at all, they…
CHRISTINA: It’s come a long way though.
JUNE: It has come a long way. So, we know what homeschooling is. Also there’s a lot of different ways to do it. What homeschooling is for us is not necessarily taking what you would do at school and reenacting that in your home, okay? So for a lot of the people right now that were being schooled at home, right? And they’re doing the curriculum that they were doing two weeks ago, pre COVID that feels like homeschooling. But if that mommy is pulling her hair out because it is so frustrating, that is not because homeschooling is not for you. Can either of you speak to that?
MAGGIE: I feel like that’s a great point because I have heard that a lot from personal interactions with people you see it on social media and it is hard and it’s if building that framework yourself of why am I doing what I’m doing and not just taking the curriculum that you were doing in the classroom and then trying to slog through that at home. Those moms are not necessarily feeling like they’re equipped to do that and like I probably would not feel like I was equipped to do that. So I think everybody was just thrown in the deep end and I would say homeschooling is a lot of hard work, but it’s good work and it’s enjoyable work and you see the benefit of it. It’s not just I’m going to check all the boxes and get these assignments done today.
CHRISTINA: And it can take a while to find your rhythm, find the right method, what works for you in your home. I don’t think there’s any way that I could just bring home school and do it with my children, all different ages at the same time, I would go crazy.
JUNE: Yeah, the girls I’ve talked to, they’re working long days to get this work done for the schools that really continued to try to do our neighbors like that. It’s a private school and so they really feel like they want to fulfill and provide. So they’re doing zoom classes all day long, right?
MAGGIE: Right.
JUNE: The difference that I see, like what is homeschooling? My husband and I are the CEO or the principal, we are the janitor. You wear all the hats, but you’re the visionary. And so you take your worldview, the values you have for your children and before this, we’ve been talking about this conversation you’ve been having in your family of what drives your homeschooling and we’re going to talk about that somewhere on this table day, but there’s a hub and spokes. And what is that hub? Like what is that middle thing that drives everything else? Like you have your hub and then you might have literature and you might have all these other things you do, but what is homeschooling? You pick that hub, right? Like you and your husband based on your value. So we’re going to talk about that some today. Do we cover that, What is homeschooling?
CHRISTINA: A little bit I think.
JUNE: We can come back to that.
CHRISTINA: I think it can take a while to figure out what your philosophy of homeschooling is and talking to other moms who are doing it, reading books about it are great places to start and trying a few things out, see what works, but I think ultimately it comes down to you love your child more than anybody else does, except for the Lord Jesus and so you are shepherding that child’s heart, you are learning alongside, you’re discipling that child and that’s where you start.
JUNE: Yes, you make lots of changes and adjustments along the way.
