Homeschool Mom Spotlight #10

Meet Jen

Every month here at Patterns for Life we highlight an individual homeschool mom through a written interview in order to encourage and inspire our readers. We know it can be helpful to meet — whether virtually or in real life — other mothers who are in the trenches with us here and now, and can relate to our daily struggles and joys.

This month we are pleased to introduce Jen, who homeschools her son Ethan. Enjoy getting a glimpse into her day to day!

1. Tell us about yourself and your family.

I’m Jen, an older mom, having married my husband, Mark, at age 35. We have 4 heavenly children, and one son, Ethan, 12 years old, almost 13. We are converts, chrismated into the Orthodox church in 2010. Orthodoxy and homeschooling is in part what brought us together. We both grew up Roman Catholic but were individually already looking at converting to Orthodoxy when we met. We also both knew we wanted to homeschool. Early on we both named our homeschool and wrote a mission statement. We chose to call it St. Theodota Academy after St. Theodota of Asia Minor, mother of Cosmas and Damian. She raised them as Christian men, after their father died, by reading holy books to them. Our school mission statement is used to guide us in choosing priorities and curriculum.

2. How long have you been homeschooling and what motivated you to start in the first place?

We had always wanted to homeschool. I attended private Catholic schools for 16 years. My husband attended rural public schools. We both felt that the school system had failed us, that neither of us was properly challenged or mentored. We wanted better for our own family. Even if we didn’t get it right, we couldn’t get it any more wrong than traditional brick and mortar school had done for us. We have been homeschooling Ethan in one way or another since birth, perhaps not academically, but encouraging his growth and development from the beginning. We have always followed his lead, which meant easing into informal schooling at age 4 when he showed interest in learning to read. Ultimately we began a structured school day most days by ages 5-7.

3. Describe a typical homeschool day in your home.

Now that we are in middle school, three days a week, we start our mornings at 8:30 with math, spelling, and writing before an early lunch. After lunch, we have more of a block schedule, tackling different subjects each afternoon. Ethan is in the band at a local Christian school and he has rehearsals 3 days a week in the afternoons. Between lunch and band, we cover subjects like Religion, Study Skills, and Literature. We are also working on goal setting, accountability, and time management. One morning a week, Ethan attends an online catechism class through St. Raphael School. That day we also study science and grammar instead of math, spelling, and writing. One day a week we visit what we call our “South Campus” because that day we visit Grandma and Grandpa who live 90 minutes south of us.

4. What is your favorite part of homeschooling?

The flexibility of homeschooling allows us to spend one day a week with Ethan’s elderly grandparents. His grandfather, a retired mechanic, is restoring a 1984 Chevy El Camino with Ethan. They plan to have this car ready for showing next summer. Grandpa has also taught Ethan how to maintain a lawn and he happily drives Grandpa’s riding lawnmower weekly. Ethan’s grandmother, a history buff, teaches history, though we have recently pivoted our approach to history from a guided curriculum that she administrated to reading books about different historical interests and having a book discussion between Ethan, Grandma, and myself. We also have taken epic field trips over the years to Washington, DC, Niagara Falls, New England, and, most recently, a week in Virginia touring Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown.

5. Does homeschooling affect the way you parent? If so, how?

I would say that homeschooling is the way we parent. We approach life as a learning opportunity. Our emphasis is on learning how to learn, not what to learn. We also prioritize relationship over curriculum, process over product.

6. What is your least favorite part of homeschooling?

I hate that there are so many fun things to learn but not nearly enough time to study all of them, even in a lifetime.

7. What have you found to be the most humbling aspect of parenting/homeschooling?

Children are their own people, of course. They have their own personalities and attitudes. Those attitudes are all too often your own reflected back at you. Ugh. Sometimes I get back the worst of me from him.

8. Looking back to the beginning of your homeschool journey, what are some things you wish you had known? What would you tell your younger self as she was just starting out?

Ethan was borderline legally blind for many years and we were not told this. He had worn glasses since he was just about 2 years old. For 7 years, we had not been told that even with his glasses he could barely see and had no depth perception. We expected that doctors would tell us all the relevant information, but they didn’t. Despite this, Ethan learned to read by age 5 and became an avid reader. I wish we had known the severity of his vision problems so that we could have advocated better. Eventually we found the right help and Ethan no longer wears corrective lenses at all and has 20/20 vision. But this vision problem has profoundly impacted our homeschool and Ethan’s physical and educational development and there is much work yet to be done for a full recovery. I’d tell my younger self to ask more questions.

9. How does your faith affect your homeschooling?

Our faith permeates our homeschooling. While we do not specifically study Orthodoxy daily, we are always talking about our faith during school time. While we have a time set aside for academics, we are always learning and often have deep conversations while riding in the car, at mealtimes, while doing chores, or while resting. We have a family prayer rule. Mark and Ethan are both involved in Trail Life, an outdoor group for boys and young men similar to Boy Scouts, but decidedly still Christian, where we have found much opportunity for faith discussion.

10. What are some of your favorite homeschool resources?

We really appreciate the gift of St. Raphael School. Our favorite curriculum resources are Beast Academy Math, Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) for writing and grammar, and All About Spelling. Outside of these, we love our public library which offers unique services such as Book Club in a Bag, where the library staff will create a book club from any book we choose, complete with multiple copies of the book and suggested discussion questions, and a library of things such as telescopes, podcasting kits, and reading pens. We also like to consider friends and family as resources, founts of knowledge and wisdom.

11. What do you consider to be the most rewarding aspect of homeschooling?

By homeschooling, we are able to live according to our faith and philosophy. Learning is not limited to specified hours of the day or certain times of the year. We do not rely on instructors to bestow learning upon us but rather seek out knowledge and wisdom on our own in our own time.

12. Anything else you’d like to add?

We emphasize learning how to learn over what to learn in our homeschool. We explore what it means to be an autodidact and often run off on tangents, following breadcrumbs, and discovering ideas, theories, and philosophies we might never have considered. We consider long term, midterm, and short term goals and the actions we need to take to achieve them. Then we make a plan and execute it to the best of our abilities, evaluate our success weekly, pivot when necessary, and try to continue moving forward.

Thank you, Jen. Your emphasis on learning how to learn is a great reminder that by teaching our children how to learn we set them up to be able to learn anything they need to throughout their lives.