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Concluding the conversation with Carrie Carlson, reflecting on her family's homeschool journey. Carrie has many insights and tips along the way.
A podcast for homeschool families brought to you by Sequoia Grove Charter Alliance. Encouragement, tips & tricks, interviews with HSTs and curriculum help.
Rebecca: Welcome, listeners, to the Sequoia Breeze podcast, a breath of fresh air for your home school. I am your host, Rebecca LaSavio. Thanks for coming back to join us. As we finish the conversation that gives us a glimpse into homeschooling with Carrie Carlson, tk eight program administrator with Sequoia Grove. Last time Carrie told us about homeschooling, her two children and the unique ways that they approached education, we touched on some misconceptions that can surround homeschooling. And today we will dive into some of the benefits that come with an out of the box education. I really gleaned a lot from Carrie opening the door to her home and letting us in to get a glimpse of how their family life ebbed and flowed with school, with education, with learning, and all of the things that she studied and learned along her journey. So join with me as we listen back into the conversation that Carrie Carlson and I were able to have together. So what are some of the best benefits that you saw with your family?
Carrie: So I think first and foremost for us, it was relationships. I think that something that I learned even from when my son was, as he puts it, dropping out of kindergarten when he was rolling around on the floor. I thought if I force him because I'm bigger, I could whatever, punishments or bribes or whatever, find a way to coerce him into sitting here and paying attention, was I willing to do that? Was that going to affect our relationship? And that was really big for me, is that I would have a strong family relationship. And so to me, cuddling on a couch, the picture of that in my head where we're reading a story together sounds so much more fun than sitting more in front of my son with a whiteboard saying, hey, you must learn these letters. And sounds so to me it was all about relationships and that nothing in this world that I thought or somebody else thought was important for my child to learn at whatever age was worth me sacrificing a relationship with them. There was no math problem that was worth my son not talking to me ever. And then my husband worked retail, so he worked a lot of evenings and weekends. So our time together was very different than your traditional family. He didn't have a nine to five job Monday through Friday. So the idea that we had this alternative family not structure, but alternative family rhythm. Yes, that's a great word to it was like we had to find time together. Well, keep using the word intention a lot and I really do like that because we were very intentional and purposeful about our time together, I think because it was not traditional.
Rebecca: If your kids have been in school, they wouldn't have seen dad very often.
Carrie: Exactly. And so what were we going to do on a Tuesday or a Thursday? We would go to the beach or we would go to the park and play that way, or we would go on a family hike. And so that life that found us, I think, suited that because we blended life and learning through everything.
Rebecca: I could see that being really handy for a firefighting family or dad who travels a lot or lots of different maybe even a parent who's trying to home school and work full time that they could be able to do things on a different rhythm than perhaps traditional.
Carrie: School styles would allow, which is my best friend. Her husband is a police officer. And that's how we became really good friends, too, because we were the only two people that really knew each other that we could find within our circle whose husbands worked weekends, okay? And that was really protected family time for a lot of other families, which I fully respect. But we needed an outlet and that was our outlet. So we weekended together. We weekend schooled or whatever. So that's when we spent a lot of our time together because of that. And then I have transitioned. So I do work full time and my kids are older. Like I said, they're 15 and 18. And that has served us very, very well because a lot of our learning time is after hours on the weekends still, early morning still. And then I think, going back to other benefits my son at age five was already showing signs of depression and anxiety and so the mental health benefits for him. And I think giving him permission to learn by pursuing his passions and interests, by learning what he wanted to learn about and showing him that that was important really helped him. I get really sad when I hear, like a five or a six year old child being told you can learn about that after you do this. Like, all I want to learn about is spaceships. Well, we can learn about spaceships after you do this. But spaceships is the most important thing to that six year old right now.
Rebecca: It's an important thought to think about, to reevaluate priorities based on our kids.
Carrie: Interests and where their heart is absolutely another benefit. But the idea that learning does happen everywhere. We weren't confined to our kitchen table and we weren't confined to on day one, you need to be here in the book. And on day two, you need to be here in the book again. That's somebody else's prescription for what is best for your child. And I can't stress enough to any mother who's doing this, whether you're a teacher or have that background or not, that you know what is best for your child or your children. And so giving us that time together, we would spend time with grandparents and family in ways that other people can't because they are in school all day. We vacationed with my parents in October because we could take school anywhere and they spent ample hours baking with Grandma or gardening with Grandpa. So when you ask me about American history, I would so much prefer that my child spent hours with their grandmother, hearing her stories. That is American history, and I think they're going to have those memories for a lot longer than what they would have read in that textbook for that day.
Rebecca: How did you ensure that your kids developed good selfdiscipline in finishing a project, in following through on work? I ask this because I have no doubt that this was a lesson you made sure they knew, but when it was time to join a Japanese class that your daughter didn't change your mind two weeks later and say, no, I'm not interested in that anymore. How did you build that life skill or character trait into your kids through this process?
Carrie: That's a really good question. We were a single income family, so we had to be really careful and cautious about where our money went. And so doing all the things horseback riding, dance lessons, all of that was not something that we could really offer to our kids. We had to be very intentional again, about choosing. We made sure our kids asked like, two or three times before we would go down that road. So they would say, oh, I want to do horse lessons. Okay, well, that sounds really fun. Yeah, let's think about that. A couple of weeks later, if my daughter asked again, hey, I really want to do horse lessons, that dings in my mind. Okay, this is the second time she's asked. Maybe that's something I should look into and help her see if that's something she wants to do. We also believe in a trial period, so dance lessons or cause. My daughter did almost everything. She was and is extremely social like to try everything. And we did have those discussions where you would do something for a season. Okay, if we're signing you up for this, it's this much money, and you do have to commit. There's this idea. Blake Bowles talks about it in his book the Art of Self Directed Learning. There's this idea of what he refers to as educational consent. And I think that's where this comes into play, is that you have these discussions with your kids where you include them in that process and you do explain to them. So then they have to agree to those terms before you'll move through with offering that or allowing them to do that.
Rebecca: Next, Carrie and I moved into a conversation about what are some pitfalls to watch out for. If you are trying to walk a path of a more unique or nontraditional.
Carrie: Approach to education, the best advice or I don't know if you've been asking for advice, but the best thing I can say is be confident in the choice that you're making. One of the biggest pitfalls is playing that comparison game. But I think that's a pitfall in all of parenting. So you have to pull yourself out of that whole idea of he's doing A, B, and C. Oh, gosh, my kid's not measuring up. Or because everybody's at different stages and different has different trajectories, different pathways. So definitely eliminate the comparison game. And then you have to revisit the why did you choose homeschooling? Why did you choose to follow your child's lead or allow them that opportunity to make more of those educational choices? Why is that the path you chose? And when I revisit the why, when I step back, anytime that I get nervous or for lack of a better word, freak out about where we're at right now at this minute, that's where my husband comes into play. He's absolutely amazing at saying, but why did we do this? And then he usually talks me off the ledge and calm down, and we move forward another pitfall. Oh, this is a really good one. So you really do need to work on getting out of your head. The idea of every single minute, of every single second needs to be or look like learning. So one of the things that I've noticed is, let's say you take your kids on a hike and you point out every single educational thing along the.
Rebecca: Way, every bird, every plant, every slope.
Carrie: And that, I think, is just something to be cautious of, right? So you don't have to turn every single bug into an entomology lesson. It can just be, oh, this is a cool bug. Oh, my gosh, let's go home and look that up later. But we don't have to stop and have, like, a mini lecture about the lifecycle of a bug right then and there. Enjoy it for what it is right then and there. Downtime is necessary. Kids are taking in so much of the world all the time, and so they need time to slow down and process that. So if your kid is laying on the couch for an hour and it looks like they're doing nothing, don't assume that learning or something is not happening. Maybe they're just thinking, maybe they are coming up with the next great idea. Don't be so quick to fill every minute. And that's a lesson that I still have to learn. Like, I only speak for this knowing that I make these mistakes still all the time. I'll walk in and my son will have his AirPods in, and I won't see that, and he'll be just, like, sitting on the couch or something, and what are you doing? You're doing nothing. He's like reading a book. Oh. So don't assume and don't feel like it's not your responsibility to fill every waking moment with some type of educational opportunity. One of my favorite things to think about in this case is, like, that flower analogy. So the downtime is when those roots are growing strong, right. And the evidence of any type of learning or growth is usually delayed, and it's not long lasting unless we have a strong foundation.
Rebecca: When you transplant a plant, it doesn't do anything for a while until it's had a chance to really develop that root system, and then it can start worrying about flowers and production.
Carrie: Exactly. And so I think a lot of that downtime or what we see is they're not doing anything, is when those roots are really grabbing strong.
Rebecca: I've seen that even with my kids, whether it's a new concept or with memorization, that they'll struggle with it one day and then the next day, and you think, we just really aren't getting this. But then the next day, it seems to have almost clicked into place because it's just sat and stewed, and the next day they're fresh and they got more than I thought they did.
Carrie: Absolutely. Sleep is huge, right?
Rebecca: Yeah.
Carrie: Just letting it process while you're sleeping.
Rebecca: After listening to Carrie talk about all the ways that she had been intentional in training up her kids, I wondered what factors need to be in place to make a non traditional childlike education successful, but not feel overwhelming in all of its vast, open options.
Carrie: Like, to me, and this might be where we differ philosophically, just like part of this conversation, my job is not to educate my child. That's their job. Their job as a human is to educate. Like, I cannot you can't do that to somebody. You can't.
Rebecca: Your job is to present the opportunity. It's their own responsibility to pick it up.
Carrie: I believe that I think home schoolers are held to a higher standard, right? I do feel that way. Like, we are held to a higher standard than our public school counterpart. There's this assumption that because a student or because a person goes through kindergarten through 12th grade in our public school system, that there's no gaps, that they learned everything that they were supposed to. There's an assumption that they passed their algebra class, or better yet, they probably passed it because they have their high school diploma, but that they understood it. So I think that that's part of the challenge that we have. So I think when you're unschooling, it's even a higher standard now because right.
Rebecca: Because everybody's looking to see if this is a legitimate thing you're doing.
Carrie: Right.
Rebecca: Because it's so outside the box.
Carrie: It is outside the box. And so nobody asks a parent that has a student enrolled in algebra at the local high school, how do you make sure your students understanding algebra? Nobody asks that parent that question. How do you know your student just learned algebra?
Rebecca: That's fair.
Carrie: So I think when your students are younger, the factors that need to be present I love what you've put a word into my head throughout this whole thing that I really love is you have to be intentional. And it's not necessarily intentional about schooling. It's intentional about living a rich, educated life. It's intentional about, I'm going to cook with my children. I'm going to talk with them while we're doing this because that's where the learning is happening. When they're five and six and seven, I'm going to intentionally play this Candy Land game for the 800th time. But because there's learning happening and because my child just asked me to do that and I'm going to be available to them, I'm going to be present when we go to the zoo. I'm going to put my phone down. I'm going to not scroll on Facebook right now because when my child asks me a question about that animal in the cage, we're going to have a little bit of a conversation about it, or we're going to read that plaque together. So when they're little, that is how I approached life and learning.
Rebecca: So the main factor is simply the intentional presence of a parent.
Carrie: For me, I think that's a really good way to sum that up. Now, as my kids grew older, that turned into inviting them into the process. How do you want to approach this subject? Because now the stakes are a little bit higher. We are enrolled in a charter school, and the charter school is requiring work samples. And we have committed to that because as a family, we follow through on our commitments. The school is requiring state testing. And as a family, we've committed to that. And again, we follow through on our commitments because my job is to raise good humans and good people that do that. But how you learn history, or what you learn about in history, in my opinion, was definitely up to my child. And they had to be invited into that process. So from the time we joined the charter and were offered this instructional funding, it was very, very intentional at that point, but we included our kids in that process. How do you want to spend your funding? Where do you want to see this going? And hey, you're getting this funding. So you start test and there's no arguments. Or you can choose not to do that. And we can file a private school affidavit, which we had done before, but now maybe you don't get to do that third class at that local vendor because we don't have the resources to be able to do that. You can choose one or two classes because that's what we can pay for. So that help.
Rebecca: Yeah.
Carrie: So then in high school, and I will be very honest here, when my son transitioned from 8th grade to 9th grade, we were like, is this going to work? And again, that's where that educational consent really became a big deal. And we sat down and we talked with him and we said, what do you want? Do you want a high school diploma? Is that important to you? Blake Bowls, who I mentioned before, has a couple of incredibly good books. One is called College without high school. So he talks about different alternative paths where you don't have to have a high school diploma. That is actually a very common misconception about you won't be successful in life if you don't have a high school diploma. And he has another book called why are you still sending your kids to school? Which also talks about some alternative paths. And he really has a lot of information about debunking some of these myths or misconceptions. So anybody that's straddling this journey and wants to learn more, I highly recommend Blake Bowls. But that educational consent for high school became a big deal because I said to my son when we talked about it and again with my daughter when she enrolled was, well, these are the course requirements. And now let's look at the course outline together and let's talk about how are you willing to follow these guidelines? It's like if you're signing up for a class in college, you don't go into the class and tell the professor, well, I'm not going to do these things. You make that choice to sign up for the class and then you agree to what that class is covering. We approached it that way with our kids as they got older. And so now you're following through, going back to your algebra question. My son had to take algebra and he had to pass algebra. He didn't have to get an A right in algebra. And that is something I really encourage parents to think about, is what is your value system and what emphasis do you put on grades in your family? Because in our family, the grade was secondary, right. And we didn't overemphasize an A. There's a really, really great article and I wish I could find it. If I do, I'll share it with you called let's Hear It for the see, right? There's this kind of idea again, which is I think a big myth is that we haven't learned anything unless we earned an A in the class, or that we're not good unless we earned an A in the class. So, yeah, you had to do algebra and we had to do it. We had to learn enough to get through it because maybe it's not your strength because again, you chose the high school diploma and that's a requirement of that. But my son graduated with his high school diploma and had a C in algebra and I was OK with that.
Rebecca: I'm sure we could sit here and talk about this for a lot longer. And I know I have lots of questions still, which is the point. We want to peak interest and we want to continue to be lifelong learners and model that to our kids. And I really appreciate you coming today and sharing rather vulnerably about your journey and about what your experience has been. And I've learned a lot from you. So thank you so much for being here today.
Carrie: Thank you for having me, listeners.
Rebecca: I know that I have felt a real sense of peace as I have listened to Carrie tell us about her journey through homeschooling with her kids. I also know that I've been challenged to think very intentionally about what is worth our time and effort as a family and what will help enrich and encourage my kids best. I hope that you've also found this story of one family's home school experience to be helpful and encouraging and a breath of Fresh air. Carrie mentioned Several Books that she Read that inspired her along her Way, and those will be listed in Our Show Notes. Before you go today, I hope that you will subscribe to the podcast so that you don't miss when Season three comes out early next Spring. Because this is the last episode of Season two, I can't tell you how much I have enjoyed having you join me each week as we've talked about various issues and topics about homeschooling. So please don't forget to subscribe and drop a review down there and help other listeners find us more easily. I always love to hear from my listeners. I would love for you to email me at podcasts@sequoiagrove.org. If there's anything you have been hoping to hear on these episodes and haven't yet, let me know. I want to hear from you. I want to know what you would find helpful. There's something that somebody said throughout one of these podcasts that has really been resonating with you and rolling around in your mind and you're thinking about it, or it's really helped change how you view home school and how you interact with your kids. Please tell me. I would find that so encouraging to hear your story. And thanks again for joining us for this final episode of Season two of the Sequoia Breeze Podcast, a Breath of Fresh Air for your homeschool. I am your host, Rebecca LaSavio, and I've been so happy to have you with us.