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The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
So they are being influenced, and you have all of these undeveloped, you know, children, adolescents, teenagers, young adults, and they don't know who they are, and they don't understand what truth is, and they don't know what they don't know.
Narrator:This is the Transform Your Teaching podcast. The Transform Your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Ryan:Hello, and welcome to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. In this episode, Doctor. Rob McDole and Doctor. Jared Pyles chat with two educators in the homeschool environment, Kathy Kirtland and Stephanie Hill. Thanks for joining us.
Jared:Thanks so much for coming in. Rob, these are two of my friends who I'm not sure if they'll be my friends after this. But Stephanie. Stephanie.
Rob:On my right, for those who can't see, Kathy. Yeah. Kathy's on the left.
Jared:Let's have them introduce themselves and give us a little bit of a background of who they are and where they came from and all that stuff.
Rob:I like it.
Jared:I am going to say that Kathy will go first.
Kathy Kirtland:I'm Kathy Kirtland. I am a homeschool mom. I'm a very curious person. I like to learn. I'm a firefighter's wife, and I homeschool my three kids.
Kathy Kirtland:Always have. We never did any traditional school, So I feel like I'm sort of an expert in homeschooling as much as you can be.
Jared:Now what are the ages of your kids?
Kathy Kirtland:Oh, I have a let me think. 21 year old, a 17 year old, and a 13 year old.
Jared:Okay. Stephanie?
Stephanie Hill:I'm Stephanie Hill, and I'm also a homeschool mom. I did graduate from Cedarville University way back when we rode dinosaurs to to class. 02/2003. I graduated from the nursing department, so obviously, I am well, well versed in education. Served me so well.
Stephanie Hill:And we have five children. My husband wanted two, I wanted four. Math is hard. We have five. And, we have a 17 year old, a 16 year old.
Stephanie Hill:There's others. 11, 10, and eight.
Rob:And Again, math is hard.
Stephanie Hill:Again, math is hard.
Rob:I think it's the math shark.
Jared:It is. It is.
Stephanie Hill:Or just they were born in the spring. I don't know. I'll learn their names eventually. They're delightful. We have four girls, one boy.
Stephanie Hill:Yeah. My husband is a, he's a firefighter. I think he goes to work for twenty four hours just so he can escape. Mhmm. That's his that's his relaxing time.
Stephanie Hill:We have also always homeschooled, from day one. I looked at the cost of preschool and was like, It can't be that hard to teach him at home. Like, what are they learning? I mean, seriously.
Jared:In preschool, you mean.
Stephanie Hill:In preschool. Yeah. I'm like, they're putting Cheerios up their nose. We can probably do that at home for free. So
Jared:Well, welcome. We appreciate you guys being here.
Rob:Yes. This is this is going to be exciting.
Jared:Oh, yes. For sure.
Rob:It is truly a pleasure to have you here. Thank you for coming. And one of the things we've been looking at is looking at students coming from different backgrounds, and we've been talking to teachers. So in a previous episode, we we've talked to some public school teachers, and we've tried to get some understanding as to what we're seeing here in terms of college and on campus, what the research is telling us, then hearing from those who are being educated and those who are doing the education in these different areas. So homeschooling is next up on our slate.
Rob:So I think one of the things that that we've seen is this idea of mental health or grit or the need to be able to persevere through hard things, what are you seeing not only in your own children but maybe in others? Because I'm assuming you're probably having experiences with other homeschooling students.
Kathy Kirtland:As far as emotional maturity goes?
Jared:Or
Rob:Yeah. Mental health. What's what's that like? What are saying?
Kathy Kirtland:Just talking about this on the right end?
Stephanie Hill:I've actually had this discussion. I actually teach one day a week in our co op. Okay. We're part of a co op called classical conversations Mhmm. Where they actually give you the skeletal curriculum, and then you fill it in.
Stephanie Hill:And I teach in the high school level. So I teach biology and debate and British literature. Wow. So we have really good discussions, really good topics. But one of the things that we've talked about is grit.
Stephanie Hill:And we've used that word. I think it was 2014, Harvard University released a study about the lack of grit Mhmm. That they were and they kind of, like, defined that term that they were seeing a lack of that perseverance and a lack of that just discipline tenacity in their students. And so we've had a lot of conversations about that and just what it means to buckle down, follow through, do it even when it's difficult.
Jared:Mhmm.
Stephanie Hill:And, it's one of the reasons why my oldest daughter is a senior this year, and she's graduating here in six weeks because she's selfish and wants to grow up and leave me.
Kathy Kirtland:It's fine. It's fine. But
Stephanie Hill:one of the reasons why we've kind of forced her to finish the program is just to finish it and to finish what we started. And, you know, we started this whole classical conversations journey when she was in elementary school, and we had a whole plan, a whole trajectory for her educational process, and we wanted her to finish that. And the capstone of her senior year is writing a senior thesis, and a lot of high school students don't get the opportunity to write a senior thesis to do an entire thesis project. A 20 page paper, and they have to present it in front of judges, and it's a whole process. But that's kinda like the capstone of, well, this is what we've been working towards for the past fourteen years.
Stephanie Hill:Like, let's let's finish what we started. And of, yes, you're a senior, and it's it's such a blessing to have teenagers because I have a 17 year old and a 16 year old. And I don't wanna brag, but they know everything that I have to tell them. So, I mean, just what a blessing that that really just that freedom to just know that They already know it all. They already know it all.
Stephanie Hill:So you're you're prepared.
Kathy Kirtland:Fooling you.
Stephanie Hill:They are. I'm just I'm here to learn.
Kathy Kirtland:I am just
Stephanie Hill:I am the humble vessel. Just yeah. Yeah. It's fine. It's fine.
Stephanie Hill:But but just just that grit and, learning to follow through and just to finish what you started. And not every kid's, you know, educational journey looks that way. And to some, you know, especially if you live in a community like Cedarville that has such a great, public school and you've got the university right here, there's so many options. Some of us who live in other educational deserts, we don't have those options. And so it's just been we do the best that we can with what we've got, but sometimes it just requires forcing a student to finish and just stay the course.
Stephanie Hill:And no, we're not gonna bail on physics just because it's hard. And, you know, yeah, you have to do math. Sorry. Let's just it is what it is.
Kathy Kirtland:If we could find a way out, we already would
Jared:have.
Stephanie Hill:We already would have. We already would have. So
Kathy Kirtland:Yeah. I'm I'm kind of facing the same challenges. My family does a very different track than Stephanie's, and, we're very, we have been a part of groups. But this year, it's we've just been I only have two students now. It's just us, and we have a whole family of homeschoolers.
Kathy Kirtland:So they do have community that way. But, we were talking about this recently where I thought it was just my kids who were showing, like, this lack of motivation and this lack of drive. And I'm like, well, obviously, I have failed because they're homeschooled and everything's my fault. Yes. It all comes down to me.
Kathy Kirtland:So I was actually kind of relieved to hear that this is like a generational problem that that lots of teachers and parents are facing this and, looking for solutions of how to to, motivate their kids to finish well. And I wouldn't say I'm not your typical, brilliant homeschooling family. My kids are normal. Like, we get a lot of people that think our kids just must be straight A students. And no, they're not.
Kathy Kirtland:It's almost harder to motivate kids who are already kind of unmotivated when you're at home. I mean, it's mom. What is
Stephanie Hill:she going to do?
Kathy Kirtland:What is she going to do? But we we kinda have the same thing with our oldest when he was graduating. He just wanted to be done. He wanted to, you know, get to work. He wanted to make money.
Kathy Kirtland:And and we're like, okay. But this is, the last part of your childhood, and you wanna end it on, like, let's just be done? No. We're not gonna do that. We're gonna push through.
Kathy Kirtland:He also had to write some papers he wasn't happy about. But now on the other side of that, a couple years later, I've seen him kind of blossom, even though he's not in college. I've seen him, do hard things that he didn't think he could do and become more mature. And that's part of life, but I I do think it comes back to, his parents and his other educators, his family members pushing him to finish and complete the job. And I don't understand necessarily why teens today are so unmotivated, why they're struggling so much with mental health when I feel like our kids have had a pretty good life.
Kathy Kirtland:It's just different from when we were teenagers, I feel like. And I'm sure social media technology plays into that somehow. COVID, I'm sure, plays into it. We're just trying to navigate, okay, the end goal is to have a successful human adult. There are different ways to get there, but we're all facing the same problem of why are they so hard to motivate right now?
Jared:What do you find to help motivate your students or your, I guess so weird to say your students, your children to finish. I mean, besides saying, hey, gotta get this done. What other things have you done to help motivate? Is it finding interest? Is it
Stephanie Hill:Empty threats mostly.
Jared:Bribery?
Stephanie Hill:You're grounded from cereal. I mean, like, they're homeschooled. Like, what are you gonna do? Like, you can't go out with your siblings. Right.
Stephanie Hill:You put on real pants. Like, I got nothing. I got nothing. I have zero. So I'm like, you're not getting Captain Crunch today.
Stephanie Hill:No. You didn't finish your math yesterday. I have spoken. And
Kathy Kirtland:Great family dynamics
Stephanie Hill:we have. I got nothing. I've I've got absolutely nothing.
Kathy Kirtland:I do feel like we had to with our oldest, he was he had some learning challenges. He was dyslexic. So we learned very young too. Yeah. Very young too that traditional education always doesn't translate to kids, and you have to figure out what to do to get them to where they need to be.
Kathy Kirtland:So for him, we did a lot of, I would call it accommodating, I would say. He didn't like to be assigned to papers, so I would let him pick what he wanted to write about. And if he was curious about the thing, man, he would put a lot of effort into it and give me way more information than I needed. But if it was assigned, it was like, you know, phone it in kind of a thing, which, you know, in college, you don't get to pick what you want to do all the time. So I don't know if that was good or bad, but it definitely, motivated him to put a little more effort into things.
Kathy Kirtland:Now I'm trying to figure out how to motivate the other two because they're different.
Stephanie Hill:Well, and I feel like that's the other thing too is every child is different. So, like, even in the homeschool setting, like, they're my kids. It's all my fault. Absolutely. But each one of them learns just slightly differently.
Stephanie Hill:Mhmm. And I know you guys have talked about the active Mhmm. Learning, the active teaching. Mhmm. And one of the goals that we've kind of had as in our homeschool world is to create active learners.
Stephanie Hill:And, I normally give my students a big lecture on fault and responsibility and how, like, it is not your fault that you are a homeschooler. It is not your fault that, you know, this is what your parents have been called to. Because, really, your education is not about you. It's about your parents. And, this is what your parents were called to do.
Stephanie Hill:They were they felt called to homeschool you and to educate you in this manner. It's your responsibility to do something with It is not your fault that you've been born into this family, but it's your responsibility to do something with it. And to get them to be active learners and to take responsibility for their role in it and like, no. You don't wanna do Latin, but it's your responsibility to get the work done. No.
Stephanie Hill:You don't really care about Pride and Prejudice, but it's your responsibility to read it and write the paper.
Jared:I cannot believe people would not care about Pride and Prejudice. Right? That is a gem of a My
Stephanie Hill:soul was wounded. I had one student this year that refused to read it, and I wanted to banish him from the kingdom because I just felt like
Kathy Kirtland:Isn't there pride and prejudice and zombies? You could try that.
Jared:There is. Yeah. There is a pride and prejudice and zombies.
Stephanie Hill:There is. And they've even come out with, like, little women and werewolves or something. And I'm
Jared:just Abraham Lincoln vampire slaves
Stephanie Hill:as well. Like, creativity has died and I wait for the next generation. Like, I really, really do. It's just sad.
Jared:That's such a dynamic that I never even considered because, you know, as a teacher, as an educator, I could I see those kids for forty seven minutes, and then I don't see them for the till the next day. If there's an issue that we have with each other, usually by the next day it's over. But if it's my own like, but if I were teaching my daughters as high schoolers now, I would carry that with me Right. Home and see them at home and have to deal with it. So I I can't fathom that.
Kathy Kirtland:My dad didn't mind it that much. Was my high school teacher. He didn't carry it with him if I
Jared:did. Right. That's that's fair. That's fair. I get that.
Jared:Yeah. Let's shift topics slightly. Social connections.
Kathy Kirtland:Mhmm.
Jared:What what's that like? Because we we talk about
Stephanie Hill:What is that like?
Jared:What is that like?
Kathy Kirtland:Still trying to figure
Jared:that out. What is that like in the homeschool environment? Because I know you do co op, Stephanie. Mhmm. Kathy, you guys do
Kathy Kirtland:We have. We're out this year.
Jared:Past. Yeah. So what does that look like social wise? Because, you know, you can you can connect with your your siblings, but like, I mean, come on, really? Like social connection wise, what's that
Kathy Kirtland:look like? I can give you the standard homeschool answer and then I can give you our The real answer. Real answer. Okay. This is always the first thing people ask.
Kathy Kirtland:Well, what about social socializing? And truly, it's not that big of a problem. That's the answer is it's not that big of a problem. It's not that big of an issue comparatively to what your kids are going through. I mean, they're not alone in their house all day.
Jared:Mhmm.
Kathy Kirtland:We do go to church. Most homeschoolers probably go to church. We go to groups. We're in sports. We're in bands, music, all that kind of thing.
Kathy Kirtland:It's kind of the parents' responsibility, I think, to nurture that and foster that and get them involved, at least sometimes. I do have one child who's very socially anxious, and it's a trial to get him to go anywhere. But he's still able to communicate with people. He can talk to adults. And I take pride in that that we've gotten him to that point, that he will look someone in the eye, even relatives, look them in the eye and have a conversation with them.
Kathy Kirtland:I would say that my kids socialize the most online, far more than any other avenue of people they don't even know. I'm one of those bad parents that let them talk to strangers. But, you know, my adult son, I can't really control who he talks to in VR, but, he he's very social. He will talk to anybody about anything. So it's almost kind of a personality thing, which happens to kids in schools too.
Kathy Kirtland:You just have to kind of The standard homeschool thing is that these kids probably can talk to people of a lot of different ages cause they're not in groups of their peers all the time. They're they're used to talking to adults or someone older or younger than them because they're not in a room full of 30 kids their own age, usually. Is your answer any different? Or
Stephanie Hill:No. No. If anything, like, I enjoy our co op time because, you know, like, there's other weird kids there too where I'm like, oh, my kids fit right in. This is fantastic. So we've we've we've really benefited from all the things.
Stephanie Hill:I enjoy our co op from the academic side and that it does provide a layer of accountability where my kids, they meet on Tuesdays and every Tuesday they have work that's due.
Jared:Mhmm.
Stephanie Hill:And it's it's a little bit of pressure off of me, and it's that third party validation of, like, well, I don't care if you get your map done, but, you know, missus Stevens is gonna ask for your map tomorrow, and I don't know what you're gonna do when your map's not done. And, you know, well, that paper is due, you know, to mister Harshbarger tomorrow, and I don't know what you're gonna do if you don't have a paper to turn into mister Harshbarger. So that mean, not my circus. Mhmm. So it's it's really nice to at least have that little bit of third party validation where there there is accountability, and they do where it's it's more of like a positive peer pressure
Rob:Mhmm.
Stephanie Hill:Situation where it's like, oh, they don't have a presentation today. Oh, shun them. And I'm like, yes. Shun them. Shun them.
Stephanie Hill:They had all week to prepare. We've been really blessed by that too. And then, yeah, my kids are in church so they can be sanctified as well.
Kathy Kirtland:And because homeschooling didn't do it.
Stephanie Hill:Because homeschooling's not gonna do it. That is sanctification for me, not for them. But it's also I think it's good too. Like even family settings, church settings, you know, where our kids don't know to go congregate with just kids. And so, like, they're over there talking to grandma and grandpa about, you know, whatever and their latest bug collection and the rock that they collected.
Stephanie Hill:And, that's also been a blessing too of because they don't know to I don't I have I have very extroverted children. It's exhausting. It's exhausting. Very, very thankful for them. Because I can send them out and be like, go talk to people, and then I don't have to.
Kathy Kirtland:Stephanie didn't greet me at the door today. Just kids did and talked to me for a long time.
Stephanie Hill:I was like, go out and talk to Ms. Cat.
Kathy Kirtland:I do have an addition to this in context of homeschool kids going to college, because I pulled my nieces and nephews who are starting college. And it wasn't socializing with their peers that that was hard for them. Some of them are intimidated by professors a little bit. And it's a different relationship between, you know, your mom
Jared:Oh, that's a great point.
Kathy Kirtland:Can tell you what you need to know and you're you feel comfortable asking her questions, but some of them don't always feel comfortable asking, Am I doing this right? So there's that relationship there that probably needs to be fostered a little bit. And it does go to personality. Like, some kids don't have a problem. I have one nephew who has no problem questioning a professor, and we're like, Stop.
Kathy Kirtland:But then my nieces are like, this is a little more awkward. I don't know what they want. I wanna please them, but I don't wanna like, feel feel like they should already know when they don't. Sure. You just have to talk to people.
Jared:That's a really interesting point I never thought of was the connection. The educator student connection is different. So yeah, we've actually, when we did our previous, I'm not sure if this came up in the episode with Doctor. Wood, but he mentioned how some of the parent dynamic follows homeschool students into college to a fault. Awesome.
Jared:It's like
Stephanie Hill:Even their college is gonna be my fault. Right.
Kathy Kirtland:It's just it never ends. We knew what we were signing on for.
Stephanie Hill:Did we, though? Did we? No.
Jared:I mean, not like I mean, where it becomes like, okay, the mom is showing up for the job interview. Right. Or the mom is the mom is helping me with my homework in this class. When, you know, if that's a FERPA violation, that's a whole other thing. We have to get in privacy stuff.
Jared:So it's interesting, though, that it's like that dynamic is something I never even considered. Like, reason is because they're used to a parent or a co op person.
Kathy Kirtland:Mhmm.
Jared:You know? Where there's still a very intimate connection there between the co op person and the student. Or in and they get to the higher ed, depending on what campus they go to, it could be completely, how do I even approach this person? You know? Right.
Jared:It's interesting.
Rob:It's it's interesting to hear you all have these reflections, especially given the challenges that we're seeing and seeing how dissimilar they are. One thing that did pop out in in some of our if if you actually did binge them, some of our
Kathy Kirtland:episodes. Promise.
Rob:Now I think the thing that really hit me hard when we were having a conversation with a particular school, Grove City Christian, Nancy Gillespie, She was doing some work with someone at Ohio State in terms of doing some research, and the thing they were finding was the connection between the screen and mental health.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:So I think there's a huge amount of connection between the lack of motivation
Kathy Kirtland:Mhmm.
Rob:And what we're seeing in our kids and the amount of time they're spending on screens. Because what they're seeing, for better, for worse, they are thinking is the ideal, maybe, and or they're seeing all the problems in the world.
Jared:Yeah. Comparison game. Playing the comparison game as well.
Kathy Kirtland:I would say screens have been the biggest challenge as a parent that I've had. And not just as a homeschooler, as a parent. And I think we can all agree navigating this new age of they have all this information in their bucket and yet so do we. And so we think, well, I scroll and I'm fine, but we're not teenagers, we're not kids. Absorbing it completely differently than we do.
Stephanie Hill:You've got all the different areas where it impacts them socially. It impacts them spiritually. It impacts them you know, just physiologically and how how the brain develops. And, you know, just just those little hits of dopamine, you know, I mean, it's it's the brain reacts the same way. Like, we've we've seen the studies.
Stephanie Hill:You know, the brain reacts the exact same way to scrolling as it does to, you know, heroin, you know, or or cocaine. And it's just you know? I mean, even Steve Jobs, like, before he released the the iPad, like, that those were some of his things, and he refused to let his own children use have screen time before they were seven because of how the brain develops. And he didn't wanna interfere with those neurological pathways and their educational potential. You know, I mean, we see it in our own children where it's like, if they have a lot of screen time, you know, all of a sudden, they're, you know, feral wolves and fighting.
Stephanie Hill:And
Rob:Yeah. Yeah.
Stephanie Hill:They have, you zero depressed for no reason. Yeah. Or they're all they're they're very moody. And, you know
Kathy Kirtland:And then you say, maybe it's because you're on your phone too much. And they go, mom.
Stephanie Hill:Yeah. Or you're like, hey. How about you go outside and talk to people? Touch grass. Touch grass.
Stephanie Hill:Yeah. You're basically a glorified houseplant. You need water and sunshine and air and go. But, yeah, but also, you know, these are kiddos that I hate I hate the term, like, influencer, but that's really what they are, you know, when they're scrolling through all these influencers online. And so they are being influenced, and you have all of these undeveloped, you know, children, adolescents, teenagers, young adults, and they don't know who they are, and they don't understand what truth is.
Stephanie Hill:And, you know, they don't have a solid biblical or worldview. And so they're open to that influence, and they're open, you know, to anything, and they're open to and, you know, that comparison is the thief of joy. And they're just they're open to all of that because they don't know. And they don't know what they don't know. And that unknown, like, that's really scary is, and I don't know what they don't know because I don't know what I don't know.
Stephanie Hill:And so my biggest thing with my own children and then even bringing it into my little classroom that I have with my students, is that daily discipline of being in the word and of you can take out like, you can talk about your daily devotions, but it's it's that daily word that we need to focus on and just that daily discipline. And not every day is going to be, you know, peaches and cream, you know, and that that time with the word. And not every day, you know, the spirit comes down and it's anointed. Sometimes it's it's just dry cereal. It's just oatmeal that you're just getting through in the morning.
Stephanie Hill:But unless you are building that daily discipline into your children's lives, if you're not modeling that for them, and if they're not learning to implement that into their lives and to struggle with what truth is and what God's word says and to constantly taking everything back to scripture. And how does this line up with truth? And how does this line up with God's word? And bringing it back to that plumb line. You know, we're all gonna struggle, and we're all gonna fail.
Stephanie Hill:You know, ultimately, like you said, our our desire is to be more like Christ. Well, if I'm not in his word, I don't know what that is. Mhmm. And if I'm not spending daily time with him, I I don't know him. And it's it's really easy for these, you know, teenagers, for these young students to have these emotional experiences.
Stephanie Hill:But without that daily discipline to back it up, and let those deep roots grow, then when the storms come, they're they're easily influenced. They're easily swayed. And so I feel like, yeah, technology is a tool. We don't wanna be a slave to it, but we have our own sin natures. Our kids have our own their own sin natures.
Stephanie Hill:And, ultimately, it's it doesn't matter if you public school or if you Christian school. Like, it's just we've gotta get our kids in the word, and we've gotta keep pulling them back to that daily discipline. And if you say you know him, then show me the fruit.
Jared:Well, thank you so much both of you for coming in. We appreciate it. This has been very enlightening. Very good conversation. Yeah.
Jared:Oh, that's good.
Kathy Kirtland:I didn't expect to
Stephanie Hill:have fun, Jer.
Rob:Oh, thanks.
Jared:Usually with me, it's a horrible time. So
Rob:Except you're on it's okay. Except when you're on the podcast.
Jared:Yeah. Apparently, I'm very, very nice. After this is over, I'm gonna go back to the normal me.
Stephanie Hill:Yeah. Okay. Good.
Ryan:Thanks for listening to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. Don't forget to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn. Shoot us a question or any comments that you might have. Also, don't forget to check out our blog at Cedarville Dot Edu Slash Focusblog.
Ryan:Thanks for listening.