Homeschool Mom Spotlight #9
Meet Autumn
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 Autumn Kern, homeschool mom of 4. Autumn is the host of the Commonplace Podcast, which is fabulous. Highly recommend! (She even had me and Laura on as guests at one point, which episode you can find here if you’d like to listen). We hope you enjoy getting to know her!
1. Tell us about yourself and your family.
Hello! I’m Autumn, and I live in Pennsylvania with my husband, Josh, and our four children. While pregnant with our eldest, I started researching home education. I thought I was merely choosing a curriculum, but instead found myself walking through the classical wardrobe into a far more enchanting world. Since that moment, we’ve learned to see how the world “is charged with the grandeur of God” and to order our lives around God’s design and presence.
Almost four years ago, we realized our educational philosophy was stretching beyond our theology. It was unsettling that educational ideas—like the transcendentals, Mason’s instruments of education, virtue, ordo amoris, embodiment, and more—offered a way to live in Reality, beyond mere head knowledge. But what to do? Where to go? A dear friend invited me to visit her parish a few months later, and thus began our journey into Classical Christianity, or, the Orthodox Church. We found the harmonising, whole picture of life in Christ, and are grateful to have been baptized and chrismated earlier this year. (And that dear friend is now godmother to some of my children! Isn’t it such a good story?)
2. How long have you been homeschooling and what motivated you to start in the first place?
I joke that our children are born into their classical education as these ideas and ideals shape much of our life together. However, we’re beginning our fourth formal year presently.
The inspiring idea to home educate came from my husband in one of our early conversations as we were getting to know one another. Sitting under a large tree on our college campus, he mentioned his future children would be homeschooled. (I’ve always thought this was a great compliment to my mother-in-law who homeschooled him and his four siblings!) I told myself it was unlikely I would be that woman but, as he was so handsome, we could at least put a pin in it. After spending the early years of marriage surrounded by his family (and hearing their stories), I warmed up to the idea of home education. By the time I was expecting our first baby, I was all in. I Googled, “how to homeschool”, and quickly tripped through the classical wardrobe.
3. Describe a typical homeschool day in your home.
We Kerns fall more into rhythms than schedules, so our days do not follow clear timestamps. With my husband and I working from home and the children schooling at home, we exercise a great deal of flexibility.
Once everyone has tumbled down the stairs, we gather for morning prayers, scripture reading, and our daily life of the saints. As we are bodied selves, we must also eat, and so we head to first breakfast. (Are all children hobbits? Surely so.) After making sure morning tasks are completed, we make our cups of coffee and tea, light a candle, and stand atop our chairs. I find reciting our lesson catechism and the creed is more fun when standing on one’s chair.
My older two are together for most of our lessons so the table is full of beautiful books, narration notebooks, colored pencils, sticky tea cups, interruptions, and even the occasional kick under the table. It’s during this group time that my younger son works his best mischief. We added another daughter this spring, so we’ll see what life she brings to this time in just a couple of weeks.
At some point (usually after more tea), I send my daughter to do some independent work while I work on mathematics and reading with my son. Then we switch, and my son is off to read to the little ones while she does mathematics
When we’re having one of our stellar days, we’re able to practice the violin and cello before breaking for lunch. However, more ordinarily, I must face the quest that is getting the children to come finish up after lunch.
We spend most of our afternoons out-of-doors, exploring and caring for our home. Depending on the evening, we rotate between ballet, soccer, jiu jitsu, and Latin.
We’re growing into the life of the Church, and, each term, add a part of liturgical life to our school day. We try to be at liturgy for weekday services and to study the corresponding icon at home, as well as alter the sense-experience within our home according to the liturgical season.
My hope is my children do not experience the secular-sacred divide from which I’m still healing. Whether at Church or the school table, we are learning repentance, obedience, and joy in Christ
4. What is your favorite part of homeschooling?
We’re learning to live, and we’re doing it together. When we’re struck by a story or calmed by the woods, busy in the kitchen or praying by candlelight, I can’t help but think of St. Iranaeus’ quote,”For the glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God”. What is teaching but to point to the love of God in all things? What is our duty but to walk the path of humility? I’m thankful and delighted to learn how to behold God as a family in every part of our lives.
5. Does homeschooling affect the way you parent? If so, how?
Absolutely. As I mentioned, I began learning about educational philosophy while pregnant with the my eldest. By the time she was a toddler, most of our day was ordered around what I had learned: plenty of time out-of-doors, great stories, meaningful work alongside of me, family togetherness, and Church. As she grew—and we added more children—and parenting grew more difficult, I learned to use our atmosphere, habits, and inspiring ideas for teaching almost everything. Rather than only “tell a rule”, I’ll play the rule, read the rule, practice the rule, model the rule, and tell the rule. Learning to educate all parts of my children helps me parent all parts too: emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual.
6. What is your least favorite part of homeschooling?
I struggle with how little feedback we receive as mother-teachers. I’m a first-generation homeschool mother and I was public schooled almost my entire education. Thus, everything I do, I’m doing for the first time, and, admittedly, I’d love a report card at the end of each year that tells me I’m doing a good job and my children will be whole-souled adults at the end of this. But I’d also love a faster picture of the fruit in my children. Like a woman staring down the coastline looking for imperceptible changes every morning, I squint and stare at each of my children hoping to see something that calms my fears, some proof to my efficacy.
Instead, I’m offered many chances to pray, which is, of course, what I truly need. But it’s still difficult for me to receive!
7. What have you found to be the most humbling aspect of parenting/homeschooling?
The most humbling aspect of my days is the distance between my ideals and my struggles! I love the world of ideas and ideals. Images of family life in books fill my mind and make my heart swell. I see a dazzling picture of the Good Life, full of family love, warmth, and jollification. While all of that truth, goodness, and beauty remains, I also bring my struggles into the picture. How quickly I go from being Jo March at Plumfield to Marianne on Green Dolphin Street. It is humbling to see, so clearly, that I am not the virtuous woman I long to imitate, that there is much work to be done within me.
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?
I’m still such a young homeschooling mother, but if I could speak to me, as the mother-of-three-year-old, I would say:
Your excitement to homeschool is commendable and your heart is on the right path! Don’t despise the early years by wishing for or beginning the work of the later years. There is a right form to education at every “age of man”, and for a young one, it is to experience as many Real things as possible. Grab that little girl and snuggle her, letting her feel your heartbeat shout your love for her through your very body. Point out the constellations and smell the flowers. Sing nursery rhymes and hymns. Don’t panic over her wiggles at Church and don’t buy any curriculum. Let her roll around in the mud, float down the creek, and spend empty hours in free play. Give her stories worth repeating over and over again until they shape the desires of her heart. If you need to “do math”, count her toes. Ten is imaginary, toes are hilarious. Her childishness is not the same thing as foolishness, so simply pull her back to the Path of Life and walk together again. Tea time will teach her delight and will teach you that circumstances do not need to be perfect in order to pause for beauty. This is not a checklist, this is living.
9. How does your faith affect your homeschooling?
Classical education is what led us to Orthodoxy, so our experience has been that they are one in the same. I’ve not had a great question to expound on my definition of the classical tradition (or to defend Mason’s place in it!), but when I say classical education, I’m not speaking to American neo-classical education which is rampant and loud. I’m speaking of the broad tradition of enculturating (paideia) of persons by nourishing their souls (mind, body, spirit) with that which is true, good, and beautiful. The desire for whole-souled communion with God is the same telos in our education and our faith.
Another interview mentioned that not every book, word problem, or art piece is explicitly Christian in their homeschool but because their faith permeates all that they do, it is the Christian life. I couldn’t agree more. Whether we eat or drink, read or write, worship or work, we do it all to the glory of God.
10. What are some of your favorite homeschool resources?
Personally, my mother-in-law and my godmother as they are both faithful, loving mothers who homeschooled their five and seven children, respectively. As you do not have access to them, I recommend finding women who have homeschooled in a way you admire and have raised enjoyable, godly adult children. Ask them questions, invite them into your life, and receive their advice! Of course, books are a close second. Many of my dearest friends and most inspiring images of motherhood are found in books (fictional) and histories (saints).
11. What do you consider to be the most rewarding aspect of homeschooling?
The most rewarding aspect of homeschooling is watching my children learn to move in the world. Seeing them practice how to speak to others, how to ask forgiveness, how to climb a tree, how to read (!)…it’s all exhilarating. Once they’ve really mastered something and it becomes habit or delightful for them to do, I stand in awe that I was part of that formation. It didn’t happen far away, and the trials and wins weren’t hidden from me. It is a gift to be in the struggle and the growth with them. Thank God!
12. Anything else you’d like to add?
Through the prayers of our holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.
Amen.
Thank you, Autumn, for sharing with us. I love your advice to find homeschooling mothers we admire to look to as resources on which to draw. Well said!