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The Homeschool How To
I don't claim to know anything about homeschooling, so I set out on a journey to ask the people who do! Join me as I chat with homeschoolers to discuss; "why are people homeschooling," "what are all the ways people are using to homeschool today," and ultimately, "should I homeschool my kids?"
The Homeschool How To
#186: What Happens When You Stop Making School the Center of Childhood?
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My guests this week, Owen and Christina, have five kids—and their family's answer to that question took them much farther than they ever expected.
It started with something surprisingly simple: their son wanted another thing.. "to be happy."
Around the same time, Christina watched a video about families who didn't have access to clean water.
So Owen and Christina did something most of us would probably never consider.
They shut off the water in their house.
For 10 days, their family walked to collect water, carried it home, washed clothes in buckets, and experienced firsthand how much of life we take for granted.
And then something unexpected happened.
When it was time to turn the water back on, they didn't want to.
That experience eventually led them to leave Canada and move their family to rural Guatemala, where their children have learned Spanish through immersion, worked alongside their parents, taken risks, made mistakes, participated in real community life, and learned skills you probably won't find on a traditional report card.
We talk about homeschooling, worldschooling, entitlement, purpose, community, raising capable kids, letting children fail, and why Owen and Christina don't see education as something that only happens in a classroom.
If you've ever looked at your homeschool and wondered, "Is this enough?"
This episode might make you rethink what education actually means.
Connect with Owen & Christina:
website: https://www.culturechalk.org/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/culture_chalk_travel/
Ready to homeschool but wondering where to start?
📘 Grab my book, So You Want to Homeschool? Everything You Need to Know Before You Start
🎓 Need a step-by-step plan? Check out Cheryl's mini-course, How to Work and Homeschool
📚 Still wondering, "What do I actually teach?" My guide walks you through exactly what homeschool families focus on by age and subject.
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Why Homeschooling Became The Plan
SPEAKER_01I didn't plan to homeschool. I started asking hard questions, realized how little control parents actually have, and made the hard decision to leave a government job to homeschool my kids. Now I interview other homeschooling parents to learn how this all works. I'm Cheryl, and this is the Homeschool How-To podcast. Let's learn this together. Today I am chatting with Owen and Christina, a family who started realizing that the culture that their kids were growing up in wasn't necessarily the culture that they wanted shaping them. They began seeing things in their own family, including entitlement issues, kind of like what I'm seeing as well. I'm sure you are too. And it made them stop and ask some pretty big questions about how they're raising their kids. What they did next was pretty drastic. Now, you might not be ready to pack up everything you know and move to Guatemala, and that's okay. But maybe you've been having the same thoughts. Maybe you're looking at the ways your kids are being raised, the culture around them, and the direction your family is headed and thinking, man, something
Working And Homeschooling Help
SPEAKER_01needs to change. And maybe part of that change is homeschooling, but you have absolutely no idea how you could make that work because you also have a job. That's exactly why I created my course, How to Work in Homeschool. I've taken everything that I've learned from interviewing homeschooling families, from parents who have figured out how to make homeschooling and work possible. And I put everything into one practical course to help you figure out what this could look like for your family. The link is in the show's description. Now let's hear about Owen and Christina's journey.
Meet Owen And Christina
SPEAKER_01Welcome. And with us today, I have Christina and Owen from El Salvador. How are you guys? Good. We're doing great. You're not you're not actually from El Salvador.
SPEAKER_03You're from Canada, is that correct? That's right. We're from Canada and we've been living mostly in Guatemala for the last five years. We're just on a quick trip down to El Salvador, just scouting out some locations. We run cultural immersion retreats, so we're just doing a bit of homework right now and family time.
SPEAKER_01I mean, if that that is the kind of homework that I can get on board with, a little bit of travel. I'm in New York, in the States, and I know New York's pretty bad, but Canada, I mean, they've had it, you guys have had it rough for the last few years since COVID and probably even before that. So I mean, saying like, let's up and just leave for Guatemala is I understand it, but it's pretty intense. Where did this journey begin for you guys? How well let's start with how many kids do you have?
SPEAKER_03We have five, and it began shortly after we had our fifth in 2020, coincidentally. Yeah, should we launch into that story?
Entitlement Triggers A Family Reset
SPEAKER_02That's great. That's a good way to get to know us. We lived in a little ski town in BC, Canada called Rossland, BC, and we're just running into all the roadblocks that I think a lot of families could probably relate to. Just feeling burnt out, the COVID thing, neighbors not talking to each other, there not being enough community, not enough of a village for our kids. So that that was we came to a few catalysts all at once. One of them was just seeing having a moment with my second son, his entitlement coming to the like full surface of I was driving with him one day, and he's like, Dad, can I get a scooter? I was like, Well, you already have a mountain bike, you just worked for a BMX, you have a skateboard, like why do you need a scooter? And he's like, Well, that's just it. Like, I have all of those things, but I'm missing the scooter. And if I have a scooter, like then I'll be happy. And that was that was it. I slammed on the brakes we were driving and put tire marks on the road.
SPEAKER_03And I'll just share kind of my side of what was going on for me. I was, I think it was about three weeks after having our fifth child, and I was, you know, just spending a lot of time in bed and with this baby, and I came, I was watching something on YouTube, and a commercial came on, and this was a 20-minute commercial, and I watched the whole thing, and it just had me, you know, hormones, everything. I was just wrecked, and it was when you know, this time where we were given some things to consider very important, but it was showing me a picture of people outside of our bubble, and there were it was it was a a water, it was called charity water, and it was a commercial for building wells and just this charity for building wells. I would have skipped it any other time. This time, for some reason, it caught me and it grabbed me. I think it's because we were also coming up with some of this entitlement with our kids and also just North American culture, we were feeling fairly disillusioned with it. So I Owen gets home and I'm like, you've got to watch this commercial.
SPEAKER_02She called me in like she was an emotional wreck, I have to say it. Like, I was like, Do I need to turn around and come home? What's going on? And she's like, No, I'm good. I just I watched an infomercial.
SPEAKER_03Like sobbing. Like, yeah. Like, I'm okay.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'll be back then afterward. Like, I came home and she asked me to watch it, and I grew up very like poverty was very much in my face. My parents were missionaries, I was a missionary kid in Peru, and it just didn't phase me the same way. And it was like, yeah, this is this is a big deal, but it's You didn't know.
SPEAKER_03Did you not know that you know other people in the world were suffering? No, no, it's just kind of like this like it's a commercial, yeah. Like, but then when when one of our kids had this conversation with him in the van that kind of caused him to put the brakes on.
SPEAKER_02I was like, we're going home and we're watching this infomercial together.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so he brings them home and he puts this commercial on for him.
SPEAKER_01Don't ever watch the ASPCA one with the dogs crying, because you know that'll really get you too.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think ever since having kids, I can't even watch commercials anymore. They just get me.
SPEAKER_02I the second time I watched this this commercial for charity water, I just started crying. And I was with my sons, and and I at first I was like, okay, what like I could feel my lip quivering and the like water welling up in my eyes, and I wanted to like hold it back, and then I had this moment of like, no, this is so important for my boys to see that this is not okay as well. I want I wanted the same reaction that Christina wanted out of me from them, you know. And when we finished watching, and I was like, Okay, guys, we're doing something. We're gonna do, we're gonna fundraise for this just to be able to get out of.
SPEAKER_03We just need to do something. We need a catalyst right now.
The Ten-Day Water Shutoff Challenge
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so we shut our water off for 10 days in our house, like the main water valve in our house, and we grabbed our kids, made them walk to a well with like a spring, a spring with us, and we brought our our water that we were consuming, like from a kilometer away, walking it every day with the kids. And we kind of advertised it and kind of did this fundraiser tied to us walking our water home every day, and it was amazing. We raised a ton of money for a well to be drilled, and we just felt like we were bonding as a family, going on these walks every day, grabbing our water, and like the kids were becoming so self-aware of where their water was coming from, like how much it takes to flush a toilet or how much it takes to wash the dishes, all of it. And yeah, it was really cool. We were washing, we were washing our clothes in a five-gallon pail at the end of the day with them.
SPEAKER_03And it just shifted something for us that needed to be shifted, and it gave us this pause of shutting everything down. We had to slow down. I mean, we had five kids just having a new one, then the laundry stopped for 10 days, and it was like this freedom. And when it came time for us to turn the valve back on, we were just we realized that we didn't want to, and it just didn't feel like something we wanted to go back with too. So that was kind of a point where we had a decision that we could make, where we were at a bit of a crossroads where it was like, okay, we can go back to this, and or we could go forward, and what does that look like? And we didn't really know completely what that looked like, but for us it was deciding to leave that lifestyle behind. We weren't, yeah, we didn't know what the future held, but we started packing.
SPEAKER_02We had never been to Guatemala or even it wasn't on our radio as a family, we didn't have passports.
SPEAKER_01Did you guys already homeschool at this point, or were your kids all in school?
SPEAKER_03We were homeschooling, so our kids were in school part-time before COVID. We actually part-time, we we had a chat with the principal kind of as an interview process before we put them in and just asked him, we'd like to put our kids in the school, but would you be okay with them coming maybe twice a week? And and they're most likely going to be skiing the other days, and he was very supportive of that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this is actually something that I like wrote down as a note to talk about because we went into that interview with the principal. We were like nervous what this school was gonna say to us as parents, being like, Hey, we want our kid to come, but actually we only want him, we only want him coming two days a week on Mondays and Fridays, so he can start the week and finish it with the rest of the class. But the rest of the days we want him to be snowboarding. And the the principal was like, You guys are awesome.
SPEAKER_01So it's going in a ski town, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this would only happen in a ski town.
SPEAKER_01Right. Very rare.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But doesn't that just say so much too about like you're the parents and you're like, I'm afraid to ask if my kid can be with me for three days of the five-day week.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. And very good to have support, but we realized how rare that was. And that played into it too, as our kids developed in the sport, and all of that we started noticing what recognition.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah. I think just to touch more on the homeschooling, when COVID happened, everyone left school. So I think everyone was forced into this homeschooling,
Part-Time School And Critical Thinking
SPEAKER_03at least in our community. And we were also very fortunate with our we were we signed up for like a homeschooling school. I I think it is. I'm not sure what they are in the States, but it was like a program, and we were assigned a teacher. And he said, Well, what what would you like your kids to learn? I'm like, you know, this is great. It's not I'm not thinking, you know, math, reading. I'm thinking, okay, can you get me something on logic and fallacies? Can you get me something on economics that I can break down even inflation? Like, can we look around at world events right now and how can we shape what they need to learn by what is taking place in the world? And again, he was so supportive. He was like, this is great, let's get them onto learning, you know, just how to spot truth and critical thinking. And so again, I had five kids. Our oldest, I think, was 10 at the time. And we had like a a month old. She was born in August, so I'm trying to start homeschooling in September with a baby. We're shutting our water off. We've got a a two and a four-year-old, and then a seven and ten-year-old. And it was just mayhem.
SPEAKER_02It was mayhem. Yeah, it was mayhem.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I think, I think the the beauty of your podcast is just giving people this kind of, I don't know, this this space, this space to be real enough to be like, you don't have to have everything figured out to to be doing this. Like, I think a lot of people are like, how do you start homeschooling? You know, you have to, you know, be this perfect educational system within your home. And and we are very unusual candidates for a how to homeschool podcast because we're so unconventional, right? But we're learning more and more just to lean into that, of like, hey, this is where we're really strong, and this is where we're terrible, and that's where our building the community has come really in in a lot of it's been very useful, so so good to outsource things that you're not good at to other people.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but you know what I love too, because I think about that a lot. My son is he just turned eight and he'll say things sometimes where I'm like, man, how do I stop this entitlement? Because, you know, I don't feel like my husband or I live that way, but he still talks to people, even you know, neighbors and stuff that go to school, and it's the same thing with the BMX and the mountain bike. We do all that stuff too, the four-wheelers, and you know, the neighbor got an electric bike. And you know, so like last Christmas he was like, Can I get an electric bike? And we're like, No, there's no need. Like, you have two legs. God gave you two workable legs for you to pedal. And if you do need to go into the mountains on a four-wheeler, you have that. Like it was oh yeah, but everybody else has one. And it was, we were like, How do we get them out of this mindset that like, and I even thought to myself, I'm like, can I take him to like a children's hospital so that he can see that there are kids actually like, you know, dying or going through these horrible things? But I'm like, well, no, because that kind of like puts them on spectacle, and that's not what I'm after, but to appreciate like how good he has it, because he's not aware that there are children suffering, you know, and and how to do that. But I love this we're shutting off the water thing. And it makes me, I'm I'm reading a book right now, The Four Winds from Kristen Hannah, where she's talking about the Dust Bowl, and she just really makes you feel like you're living right there, and there they went from normal life, you know, living in Texas, being farmers, to having to be, you know, now try to move to California like people were back then in the 60s 30s, 30s, and uh and carrying the water now, just to and from. Like this is how we have to wash our clothes and boil the water and strain it through a cheesecloth before we can drink it. And it's like, wow, man, that wasn't even that long ago, right? Like it's a grandparent ago. It's so crazy. I I that that's the I'm gonna shut our water off today. I love that idea. It is such a wonderful way to teach like the just that entitlement thing.
SPEAKER_03What actually tomorrow is uh the anniversary of when we shut our water off? Is it yeah? Tomorrow. That's amazing. Yeah, how many years?
SPEAKER_01Five it would be 10, 10, 20, 20.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, six years ago.
SPEAKER_01Oh wow, and what made you decide Guatemala or like
Why Guatemala Fit Their Values
SPEAKER_01let's move? Like you shut the water off and then you were sad to turn it back on. What made you say, like, let's get on the road and pick Guatemala?
SPEAKER_02I grew up in Peru and Spanish and teaching a second language to the kids was really important to me, and it was such a huge part of my upbringing, just like this the second culture. I found it uh growing up, I noticed that people that spoke a second language, there was just a lot more depth in my perception, a lot more depth to personality and the were their way of thinking and worldview, and like there's so many jokes that I would laugh about in Spanish that are just not funny in English, and yet these these things can coexist to me. It's not the words, it's not anything, it's like the gestures and all of it. And I just wanted to I'm with my sisters, I always shared that kind of thing. We would talk in Spanish on the phone, and I wanted something similar for our kids.
SPEAKER_03And then I grew up partially in the far north of Canada with the Inuit, and for me, the cultural component and having people that also spoke a native language and had their own clothing. We wanted to find somewhere that was kind of like moving back to a time period of when we grew up in those locations. And as we were looking around, we weren't sure where we were gonna move at first, but the more we looked around, we just we had this kind of list that we were going through, and when I got to Guatemala and I said Guatemala, it just kind of felt right.
SPEAKER_02We looked, let's move there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it was a pretty quick decision with Guatemala.
SPEAKER_02It was like, yeah, it kind of checks all of these boxes for us, and I should say rural Guatemala, because there's places like Guatemala City and and Antigua that are very nice and very developed, and going back to this kind of yeah, it's like going back in time. Kids are still playing with marbles, there's kite season, and so all the kids go out and buy materials to build their kites with, and this like long grass that grows around the lake, and it's just really cool, and all of those components add to community mindset because you have older people teaching the kids how to make these kites and teaching them how to play with them as the game, like this. There's a whole game and tradition of surrounding it.
SPEAKER_03Kite season, there's a whole season about it.
SPEAKER_02I bought my kids marbles one time of the year, and they're like, Dad, it's not marble season.
SPEAKER_04Like, oh, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So that's what we were looking for. We ruled out Peru because I knew that like all the chains and McDonald's and fast food and all the American stuff had already arrived to the city that I grew up in. I it wasn't there when I grew up, but now it is. So it's like I just wanted to be far enough removed from just the globalized American culture that we were kind of looking to escape from, I guess.
The Giving Experiment And Starting Over
SPEAKER_03And then a big spin-off of our water shutoff was we wanted to turn it into a longer, more experimental approach to life in general, but also the way we raised and taught the kids. And so we started an experiment called the Giving Experiment, and with that we just had the general question. We were both raised in the church, and for us, I think 2020 kind of shook a lot of people and us as well. Of just wondering, we were kind of at a point in 2020 where we felt like we had lost faith in humanity, and we were asking these questions of do we lose faith in God as well? Do is there anything to the Bible? Can we put this to the test? Can we actually go somewhere and just kind of almost scientifically but very loosely I say that? Experiment with what happens when you put your neighbor equally as yourself, what happens when you take care of widows and orphans. Just with the curiosity of what happens, what what comes of it? Is there anything to this? Are you providing for? We went to Guatemala with less than two grand, Canadian. We started off sleeping on the floor on with straw mats, and we really did start from the ground up again. So so that was the bigger kind of question that we we went there with.
SPEAKER_02Bringing that back into the homeschooling round realm, our kids adapted so well. And I just want to mark that for people because it's like, well, what about the kids? What like how we made a rule the first year that they weren't allowed to play with any expats, so no English speaking kids, and they were fluent in Spanish within a like a few months. It was it was insane.
SPEAKER_01Like if you meet an American on the playground, walk the other way.
SPEAKER_02You you just like don't bring them home. No, uh good thing is there weren't observations. Yeah, there weren't any. We were we were out in the boonies, like this town had it was COVID to start with, so nobody was traveling, and we arrived there, and it it really was a small like town.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I have a couple couple questions. Okay, so first of all, did you have to leave jobs and stuff? Like, did you completely leave it all, sell the house, quit the jobs, and go, or did you have something that you could travel and still work?
SPEAKER_03We wrapped up our business, we had our own business, we were self-employed, we were renting, and yeah, we no, we we sold everything that we everything else we had. We had a little storage unit that we put a few sentimental things in. But no, I wasn't.
SPEAKER_02No, we started from zero. Like we we gave everything away, arrived with no money. Like, and I say no money not loosely, like we had you know like fifteen hundred dollars because we paid off, we paid off debt, and there was just not what we hoped would be left afterwards. Like it was it was just like it seemed every bit of debt we paid off it was just like this this never-ending hole being self-employed. We didn't like live through it long enough to build any real equity. So we like had this moment where we looked at each other and we're like, do we still do this? Like we we actually don't have any money. Are we still going to do this? And we also have nothing now. And this one this this lady that had been following our block. Yeah, my dad called one night because we had already gotten rid of the house. We were living in this camper of a friend's on this farm property with the kids, and they were just exploring and tending chickens and having a great time. And my dad one night called me and he's like, All right, so are you really moving to Guatemala? What's going on here? And it's like, Yeah, I think we are, but you know, I I don't know how it's all gonna play out yet. It's like, well, I think you're crazy. And they took us to Peru.
SPEAKER_00I was gonna say, didn't you grow up in Peru?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. So that was my argument with them. I was like, wait a second, you guys went to Peru in the 90s at like the height of the Shining Path. It was a terrorist group down there. It was like, it was bad. They killed like 28,000 people in the year that we arrived to Peru. I was like, They don't teach that in school. What's that?
SPEAKER_01But they don't teach that in school.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, they don't. So we got there, we got there to Peru, and I'm like, you had you had four little kids in like one of the most dangerous countries. Countries in the world at that time. He's like, Yeah, but we had the backing of a mission organization and all this stuff, and you're just winging it. What's up with that? And I was like, Dad, I think we've established that you're a man of prayer, and I think you should pray about it tonight, and tomorrow you'll have an answer. And it's probably very good that you do pray about it. So he did, and then in the morning I got this random call from a lady that's actually, I've just noticed she's texting me right now. That's kind of weird. I haven't heard from her in a long time. She she texted and was like, Hey, I like Googled you and I saw this thing about you going to Guatemala. We had known her years back from this little delivery service that we were running with our kids. So, like a farm to table and egg. We did egg deliveries. So we're that this just I'm saying that because it encapsulates kind of our way of education, very like entrepreneurial with our kids and stuff. So we had run this little farm to table business with our kids, and so she loved greeting us at the door, and we'd give her her eggs or carrots from from the Hutterites, like kind of like Amish uh farmers in in Canada. And she just reached out randomly and is like, she's like, Is this true that you're going to Guatemala? Why are you going to Guatemala? I think it's great, but like what? I've been reading your blog, and I was just like, Yeah, you know, we're just waiting for a sign. And she goes, I'm gonna buy your tickets right now. Is that enough of a sign for you? Okay, we're going to Guatemala. So she did. She did like on the phone. We like she walked us through and we were on the plane three days later. So we had no return tickets, very little money, and it was just like, throw us in the fire and let's learn. And this was our family story.
SPEAKER_03It was like there's no other option than for miracles to take care of us.
SPEAKER_01That is amazing. Oh my goodness. And she bought the ticket. I mean, for seven of you, that still wasn't cheap. I'm sure.
SPEAKER_02Actually, because of Guadalupe, because of COVID, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Our tickets came to like 1400?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, Canadians. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Cheapest. We have never found tickets that cheap.
SPEAKER_04But anywhere. Yeah.
Arriving With Nothing And Serving Locals
SPEAKER_01Okay, so you get there, you arrive. Where do you go? Where do you go to sleep? You do you have anything with with a church, a missionary, anything set up?
SPEAKER_03No, so we are not affiliated with any mission organization. Uh, a friend had lined up some volunteering for us, which when we arrived was fell through within hours. So we were homeless and and we went Homeless in Guatemala with our five kids. So we went to we kind of started looking around at the different towns, and we found a town pretty quickly that it just felt right. And so we walked along the shore of the lake and knocked on doors until we found somebody that had a like it was like a gardener's quarters, like a maintenance man, like at the a little bungalow type thing. Yeah. And it had bunk beds, and and a few of the kids got the bunk beds, and the rest of us slept on the floor.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it had one single bunk bed in the house that was like the furnishing. It was I think it was $150 a month, and we were like, okay, we can be here for 10 months on what we've got type thing. And we just started, we got into it. We got into it. I started blogging, and none of that was really going anywhere, but we're just like, we just keep going with this.
SPEAKER_03This is Owen started taking the kids out every day to pick up garbage. We were like, Well, what do we do? You know, how do we love our neighbors as ourselves right now? Like, what does that look like right here, right now? Let's pick up garbage. There's garbage everywhere. Anyone that's ever been to Guatemala, there's just garbage everywhere.
SPEAKER_02So beautiful country, but lots of trash. Yeah, and so that was like the most obvious thing that we could help on. As we learnt about the culture, as we like kind of got settled in, it was like, let's do this. So, our kids, it was just a rule we would go out every day and pick up trash with the kids, and that was they were going to friends' houses to play. We did put them into a Spanish school there, like a Spanish language school to go to two or three times a week for an hour. It's really great just to get them plugged into that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think uh one thing to note we we went there with essentially nothing. We did have as Canadians, we had child tax that would come in every month. So that's what we lived off of for our first year.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. That's like a it's like a a benefit that you get as parents in Canada if you're in a certain tax bracket. So we had one calendar year to kind of figure things out and yeah. Not a whole lot, but enough to keep us going.
SPEAKER_01I think this puts into perspective too. Your kids are just experiencing life at this time, right? How worried were you about like, let's make sure we get your your subtraction in today, and let's make sure we're that's out the window, right? Because you see the world differently when you're experiencing what you guys were going through, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I did bring a whole suitcase, which was a ton of weight full of books down, and we didn't get through like a single work. I still got some of it with these.
SPEAKER_01It didn't matter. It didn't matter, right? Okay, so all right, your kids are adjusting now, they're learning Spanish. You guys eventually what how did you come up with the idea of the cultural emergent programs? How long has that been going on?
SPEAKER_03Second full year of that?
SPEAKER_02Is that uh third, I think. I think third. I could do that.
SPEAKER_03And so I stayed. We actually within that first year, we had kids start to come out and pick up garbage with us. So every Saturday we had sometimes, you know, 30 upwards. I think the most we had was about 60 kids coming to pick up garbage with us, and it kind of started a bit of a movement within the community, but also within some volunteer circles, and so we had tons of volunteers coming. There's so many side stories that it's like that's hard to choose what to talk about. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, we that project was was it it consumed us for the first year in a really good way. Like we were into the community, we would go to like neighborhoods with all these kids, we'd get sponsors, and there's a sponsor in Canada that sent down money to give like the kids little uniforms for the club, and we would give lunches to the kids after we picked up trash. We would we would clean it, do art with it, and then have a meal, and that was like the basic program. And then we'd do stuff as we get more and more volunteers. We'd do stuff like grab the pot bottles, cut them open, plant seeds in the like have little containers, and then the kids would like take tomato plants home or take plants that was like art projects with the garbage and just finding creative things to do with the garbage that we were picking up.
A Hotel Opportunity Changes Everything
SPEAKER_03As Owen went back to Canada, I was heading up this children's club every week. I had to learn Spanish very quickly because I I realized the second year how much I depended on him the first year. So it really threw me into learning the language very quickly. And then it was almost a year that he was in Canada and we just felt like this couldn't be our future. We can't we can't do this. Where he's working in Canada. He comes back to Guatemala and then he's gone again. So we we got very specific with what we wanted, and then we said a prayer and we asked for a hotel, and we were very specific about it. A hotel that maybe somebody had built and they didn't want to run it. And within a week, we got a call from a friend that Owen was still in Canada, and this friend calls Owen. He's like, Okay, I just need to ask you because my brother won't let it go. You can just tell me no, and then I can tell him. But he has this hotel that he built and he can't run it. He wants to he wants you to run it. And um, yeah, just cold call.
SPEAKER_02Cold call. That's such a crazy part of this story is that we prayed to run a hotel. We had zero capital and not enough to buy a building or anything. That's just where our gifts are. We had seen how many people had come through, and our hospitality was definitely has always been a strong point of ours, and we had so many volunteers coming through with the giving experiment project that we had found that to be our niche. We're like, this is what we love doing. People obviously enjoy coming. Let's let's find a way to get a hotel and run it. Sorry for jumping in there.
SPEAKER_04No, no.
SPEAKER_02It was it was just cold call saying, Yeah, hey, you wanna you wanna rent a hotel off of my brother?
SPEAKER_03And Owen Owen's painting a house, and and so I go over and look at the hotel on a video call with him, and we're like, is this really happening? Okay, let's take this over. We don't have any money, the hotel's not finished. There's some serious investment that needs to go into it. And so Owen's painting a house for a couple, and they get chatting, and the the man asks Owen, Well, what are you going to do next? And he's like, I'm gonna raise money to go back to Guatemala. We're gonna take over this hotel, and he just starts sharing with him about it, and the man goes, Well, how much are you trying to raise? And he gave him a number, and the many half of that. Yeah, I'll give you half of that right now. So within a few days, like we go from not having anything to Owen's back in Guatemala. We've got keys to a hotel, and we are running a hotel.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we're running a hotel.
SPEAKER_01That's remarkable.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, through this, you know, our kids are living life with us and they're they're doing things alongside us.
SPEAKER_02So they're crunching numbers for like our oldest super inside into all the like spreadsheets and accounting and all the stuff that that takes, and it's been a really hands-on approach for them. One one person asked me, how will they ever know how to work for somebody else?
SPEAKER_01And yeah, I mean That's not my goal.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What do schools look like in Guatemala? Are they like, are your kids homeschooled in Guatemala, or is it just that like all kids are pretty much homeschooled in Guatemala?
SPEAKER_03We had our girls, well, all of our kids tried out the public school. This is really interesting. Our oldest, he was actually just walking down the steps. It happened to be the first day of school, and one of our neighbors was coming out the door to take her son to school, and she said, Where are you going, Simon? He's like, Oh, I don't know. And she's like, Well, do you want to go to school? He's like, sure.
SPEAKER_02So he just registered himself.
SPEAKER_03So she she took him and registered him for school, and I he tells, yeah, he tells me later, he's like, Mom, I'm gonna go to school. Like, okay, cool. Then all of this to me is education. Like, he's gotten himself into school. I don't know where he's learned to write in Spanish, but somehow he knows. I didn't he didn't learn to read and write in Spanish. Like he learned to speak in Spanish when we had him in Spanish classes for a little while. But this is grade seven, and he's full on in school and knows how to read and write. I'm like, okay, that was a big sign for me that what we're doing is working. This approach of letting them live and work with us and learn life through work. That's something that we found is really important is having them learn how to work with their parents as a family business, as that we have a family purpose together. We have a purpose as a family, and it grows as they grow and it evolves, and is something that they feel ownership of. Our son, right now, he's 16 and he's gone up to Canada to work.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I want to touch on that. He f he worked enough hours to buy himself a plane ticket to go to Quebec to work and learn French, living with the family in Quebec for some time. So taking that initiative to set that up on his own to learn his third language, and it's just in a way really vindicating because there are a lot of people that see this lifestyle, I guess, a little bit judgmentally, of like, you're not hitting benchmarks or you're not doing this, or like how um he signed up for university courses last year and got 90s.
Rethinking School And Teenhood
SPEAKER_01It's like so what I guess it leaves this question for us of what if he's already able to get into university without going to school, what is the what is all of that purpose in between of the K-12 of Well, and yeah, that was huge for me to learn and to kind of realize that it's it was like even going back to the 1800s to sort of make that obedient society, and they took it from the Prussian model for the to creating the soldiers and saying we could do that to society, and then looking at the women's movement, at least here in the States, I'm sure it it was in Canada too, where it was like in the 60s, 50s, 60s, okay, let's get women into the workforce and and and not just because you know, in the Great Depression or and stuff when when they had to, but it was like, no, we want to. Like, I don't wanna be Susie Homemaker anymore. I want to have my independence and my money. And but really, I think that was the government was behind that to get a hold of our kids earlier on, so that they're kind of breaking apart this family unit from all all these different avenues, and we think it's our idea.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's like this stunting of growth for for adolescents. So our son is 16, but he's like an adult. This idea of what a teenager is is such a modern concept that was also, I think, pushed, I think in the 50s and 60s. That's interesting. Yeah, the idea of a teenager is a very new concept.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's like Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. Because before it was like what you you learn you're reading, writing, and arithmetic at the at the community school, and then you're helping your family on the farm, right? You know, doing chores and or whatnot. Or or taking helping with the little kids in the household. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and at 13 or 12, you have young ladies and young men that are like fully capable human beings that have been shaped by all those other things, not a classroom.
SPEAKER_03So at 13 he started, no, at 12 he started guiding, and he's been guiding people up mountains since he was 12.
SPEAKER_02Hiking, yeah.
SPEAKER_03In Guatemala.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I was in Canada at this point, and we when we took over the hotel, we didn't jump right into the cultural immersion thing. That was an idea that evolved as people comment came, and we had world schooling families coming and asking us to put programs together for them. But while we were kind of launching it, we put it on Airbnb and I had this menu of things that you could do. You could do a sunrise hike with Simon and I, and we would make pancakes and a fire at the top of the mountain for people. It was just a beautiful experience to have pancakes after this like 3 a.m. hike. But when I went back to Canada, I got this call from Simon and he's like, Hi dad, you know, like can I do the hike with the group tomorrow? And I had this moment of like, are you crazy? You know, like I and I just had to stop for a second. It's like, man, he's gonna have to take the cast iron pan all on his own. He's gonna have to do this. That's a two and a half hour hike.
SPEAKER_03Starting at three in the morning.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, starting at three in the morning. And it's just like, I guess, like, what could go wrong? Like, he fails, or like that, like we look bad because you know, it's like you gave me a 12-year-old guy, this guy, this family knew that he was 12 and was like, yeah, go for it. And I sent him the list.
SPEAKER_00They get lost in the hillsides of Guatemala.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, honestly, that he had done it enough times with me, but like that's not the worst that can happen. But that's like that that's a probable thing. And it was just like, I guess these opportunities to fail are something that we've embraced a lot through like I guess our appetite for risk. And and it's it's been okay. Like it's he I think he forgot the butter or something, you know, like the first time, and he does amazing with that stuff, and he's so into it now.
SPEAKER_01Even just bringing it back to the like shutting off your water in the beginning.
Purpose Through Work And Real Life
SPEAKER_01I've been thinking all the like since I started this podcast and talking to homeschoolers, you know, like purpose in life, right? And why kids today, and even adults, why people today, uh at least in in our culture here, just are you know depressed or have no purpose. And and it's because we don't grow our own food anymore. We're not literally seeing the fruits of our labor, you know, how hard it is to get clean water and take care of your family, your loved ones, and how each member of the family actually has this big role in making sure everybody stays safe and fed and healthy, you know. And that's a huge thing. I mean, they've been trying to, I think, you know, emasculate men so that they don't feel that they need that role and make women feel like I don't need the man, you know. It starts from that. It starts from kids just like, yes, here's your cereal bowl, and you know, your pasteurized milk from the store and and run off to to sit in a class all day where you literally like, what is the biggest accomplishment you can have that you get an A on a task? What does that do for you? It doesn't really, it's so different than like, hey, I raised this cow from a calf and and I I love it, and now I we're at to the point where we have to butcher it and you're going through that process and the emotion to it and the appreciation of what that life gives. And it's just like something so missing today. And and and you can just see why when you really look at it, why the depression and the having no purpose exists in so many lives.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's the disconnection and everything you just said.
SPEAKER_03I feel like in North America there's so much of a buffer even between life and death, which is just removed in Guatemala, especially. And we can be living around people that economically are in such a different spot or what could be considered poverty, but we don't see depression. Yeah, I mean, the wealth mental illness doesn't manifest the same way, the same neuroses aren't present. I'm not gonna paint it with rose-colored glasses because there's other things that are going on that are big issues as well, but yeah, we don't.
SPEAKER_02The definition of wealth has changed a hundred percent.
SPEAKER_03And that that line between life and death here is so different, and the the relationship to death is so different.
SPEAKER_01Can you get
Death Rituals And Community Support
SPEAKER_01into that a little more? How how is that? Like, what do you see as different? Death is just such a part of life here.
SPEAKER_02People are very open about a perfect example if you're okay with me jumping in. The the relationship with death is like when my sister died, I had my I lost my sister when I was 18. We had our immediate community come and be part of it. But as things are published or you know, people post on Facebook or what whatever, it's like please respect the family's privacy as they mourn. In Guatemala, it's everybody go and visit the family and take them groceries and drop off corn and drop off coffee and like you're never left alone. No, you're there's no privacy. That is the time where the whole community will show up for you, and it's absolutely beautiful. There's no health insurance, there's no life insurance. People are stopping in with a pound of coffee or a couple pounds of corn, sugar, whatever, and so with all these people comes the responsibility on the family that just lost a loved one to feed everybody that's showing up. So they use all the resources that people are bringing to do that, and it's a nine-day process.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, in those nine days, the body is in the home with the family for the first 24 hours. There's somebody in the community that is given the purpose of washing the body, but everybody is there to say goodbye. Everybody interacts with the body to say goodbye, and then 24 hours later the body is taken from the house in a procession where the whole community joins in and walks with a casket, maybe to the market if the person worked at the market or down to the lake if they did something fishing or you know, around town to say goodbye, and then they're taken to the church and then to the cemetery, and the community the family builds the tube. Everybody has a purpose. Going back to what you were saying, like you know, what are people's purposes? Yeah, people still have the purpose, even if it's selling a basket of avocados and that's what you do.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's my family grows avocados or the avocado people, like everybody has their Yeah, there's that part of community that's very much still intact, like the roles, the the there's the baker, the you know, all the the milkman, all those things are still very much present in the community, and I think that's which are at risk of getting lost because of things like education.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Like Bill Gates hasn't got his hands on Guatemala yet, it sounds like not rural Guatemala.
COVID Realities And Government Distrust
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's kind of what was it like going there during COVID? Did did they unmask and get vaccines?
SPEAKER_03It was almost like they didn't do it the same. So they're the public transport here, they're called chicken buses, and they're all of the retired school buses from the states, they get shipped down here and then they get like done up big time.
SPEAKER_02Chrome, vivid colors.
SPEAKER_03They take any sort of governors off and like they change the engines so they can. Go way too fast. But anyway, so this was a cultural experience. You get onto a chicken bus, and you know how you have the X's for where you're not supposed to stand or sit. Well, on a a bench in a school bus, you know how it's supposed to fit two people, right? So there's a check mark, an X, and then a check mark. So instead of fitting three people on a bench, you just have two people on the bench.
SPEAKER_02That was the social distancing.
SPEAKER_03That was social distancing.
SPEAKER_01And I they don't strike me as the type to be like, yes, give us that vaccine, please.
SPEAKER_03No, interest sorry. Yeah. Interestingly enough, did you want to speak to it?
SPEAKER_04No, no, no.
SPEAKER_03The old the older generation, like the grandparents, the abuelos, were like, do not take it. Do not take that.
SPEAKER_02They're like, we know what the government is. We've learned our lesson.
SPEAKER_03Don't if they give you any gifts, don't take them. If they say they're coming in special medicines or you know, this or that, don't take it.
SPEAKER_02There was pickup trucks that would go down the road with like ice cream truck music and be like, it was like calling everybody, come down and get your vaccinated.
SPEAKER_03This happy barimba music.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's unbelievable.
SPEAKER_03And then it would shut off for a second, like serious voice would be like, come and get vaccinated.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it was pretty the whole thing was real.
SPEAKER_03Did kids run up to get this? No. No. But they did go door to door.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they went door to door.
SPEAKER_03But a lot of people there was no there was no consequence that we knew of if you didn't get it. Like unless you're not going to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_02No, I mean this is a country that's come out of civil war in the 90s just fresh, and there's just a lot of uh scar tissue from like distrust, and I I think I mean I think in the States and in Canada, like so many people are just like, government, they want what's best for us. Here it was kind of like we know what they're up to. So in that sense, it was it was great, and there was no real social distancing or there was I guess at the beginning we missed it.
SPEAKER_03They locked everyone down and and everyone went up to their roofs because it was kite season, and it was supposedly this really amazing, just everybody on their roofs, on their terraces, and just the sky filled with kites. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, paints a pretty picture of community still fighting to have their community.
Keeping Kids Rooted As They Grow
SPEAKER_01Oh my goodness, what do you see? I'm thinking to so you have your son that kind of took it upon himself to say, I raised the money, I'm going to Quebec. And but yet you have this such a strong family unit. And but part of that is equipping them to go on their own life experiences. How is that? As you're kind of like, how are you guys moving through those, you know, emotions or or thought process as they're they're getting older?
SPEAKER_03I think for us it's a little bit easier because we know he's coming back. Is that our joining force, yes, is the family, but it's also this joint mission that we have now, which is our business, but the side to our business is our cause of why we're doing it. And it's our social work in the community that's kind of grown into a life of its own from the children's club and the garbage pickup.
SPEAKER_02That's grown a lot since then, and it's grown into a whole lot bigger projects, but um it's a whole ecosystem now of its own that that actually offers like educational opportunities for children in the community that like alternative educational opportunities like coming and doing art or swimming lessons in the lake or kids know how to swim. Making sure kids in the community know how to swim. They live on a lake, so and a whole bunch of other stuff, but that's what gives us purpose and our children. You know, there's sometimes that they've really struggled with our our core values being like what govern us a hundred percent. That's like our education. If I had to sum it up, it's way more honed towards like this is what we stand for, and these are your anchors upon which you make every decision. And so there's been for sure some resentment when you know a kid down the street gets shoes instead of them, or you know, whatever. And but I love that they've had those lessons earned this early, and they see they know what our answer is gonna be because we're tied into those core values and those anchors. All that to say that like Simon and Royal, like the whole family, there's purpose, and there's purpose in in him going and learning stuff and then coming back and putting it to use with us.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so it's never to go out into the world to make his way. He's going out right now with this strong purpose to go see what first aid courses he can get for guiding. And so he's got this vision now. We've taken this business to this point, and he this year when we were we were running programs in Peru, he was hiking I don't know how many.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, some pretty gnarly mountain peaks.
SPEAKER_03Honest like getting himself like a guide going up on his own. I think it was 5,000 meters was his first higher, yeah. But but he's got it in his mind now. His vision for the for the family business, this legacy that we're going to leave to them is that he wants to get you know as much guiding education as he can get right now. And he's been taking courses in business and and all of these things with this idea to build a stronger family unit going forward. I think that's again a big part of our education for them is how do we strengthen what we're doing together.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's so beautiful. And then if people want to, you know, if they're world schooling or if they just want to do some trip, can they come to your program?
Culture Chalk Programs And How To Join
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02We'd love to. Where do you go?
SPEAKER_01Where tell tell everybody what what is that like? Where do they go to find that info? And I'll I'll link it as well.
SPEAKER_02But culturechalk.org and chalk like chalkboard. So it's education through culture, culturechalk.org.
SPEAKER_01We work primarily with homeschooling fans. So what does that look like? Like if I want to come out, how long am I coming for? What am I doing there? Can I can I launch expertise?
SPEAKER_02So we have a number of different lengths of programs, uh, just because of different people's work schedules and homeschooling curriculum and all the stuff that they're doing. We do 10-day programs that are it's it's basically everything that you could want in like a cultural immersion. We pair you with a local family. So once you arrive to Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, you arrive to the hotel and you have a local family with kids similar age to yours, and they we just kick you out of the hotel right away. You drop off your stuff, uh, you go for a walk with this local family. A lot of times people can't communicate with them, and it's a beautiful thing just to see that that resourcefulness of communication without words and kindness, and it it's really beautiful to see families arrive and just share. The families that host this or that they're the like local guides, they're so used to this program by now, and they just love receiving people and showing them.
SPEAKER_03It's changed their lives in big ways. Yes. A lot of these people won't travel, they won't leave the country, and so this is this has been a really beautiful way to bring travel to people, bring new cultures to people, break the barrier between tourists and locals to actually see into each other's lives a little bit.
SPEAKER_02They'll have them over to their house to make tortillas or go down to the lake and wash their laundry with them and just like very traditional practices here. So that's like the cultural immersion 10-day program. And then uh in October and November we host something called Old School, which is an amazing program. We turned San Juan and San Pedro, they're these two small towns on the lake, very close to each other. They basically become a campus for learning stuff from mom and pop shops. Like the shoemaker in town, he comes and teaches a shoemaking course. So people that want to learn how to make sandals out of leather can come and actually do the step-by-step process with this shoemaker. We have carpentry, and that isn't like you come and make cabinets or something. That's us going into one of the homes. We have a construction, a local construction crew working seven or six days a week on homes for either single moms or families in need. So the kids that come and participate in these month-long programs get to come and build shelving and different carpentry stuff for families in need. What other there's weaving, sewing, cooking. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03The vision behind it was to find as many local artisans to teach their trade and and just kind of see what evolved from it. We did we did it last year for the first time. We did it for three years, three months. And just talking to some of these artisans, finding out from them as well that there aren't many that are taking these on in the community anymore because they're going off to university or they're deciding they want to be something different than what their family trade has been. And so it's brought purpose to these people in the community as well to be able to teach and pass the information and knowledge on, which has been a very special kind of spin-off that we weren't necessarily expecting from it.
SPEAKER_02The shoemaker was stoked when I proposed, like they're not teachers, right? It's like, hey, can I bring a bunch of kids to your shop on Tuesdays and can we make shoes with you? And it's like, what do you mean? And then we get into it, and it's like, oh my goodness, I've always wanted to teach. This is a great opportunity for me to learn how to teach. So, you know, like it's it it was very, very grassroots, and there's some messy stuff in it. Like the we'd had a welding class, and the welder was just like, No, I got a bigger project today. I'm not like whatever.
SPEAKER_03So the shoemaker in the first class is like, I'm just eating lunch right now. It's like, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the culture is so different, it's so relaxed. And I was like, wait a second, I've got 12 kids here. You're eating lunch later. And he's like, Okay, okay, you know, and and he gets there. So that's the kind of yeah, it's cultural immersion. There's so much beauty in all of that together.
SPEAKER_01This is amazing. I just you can tell you guys, you have just been touched, you know. You you pray for something, it happens. There, there's a bigger force moving through you guys, and it is is spreading to so many. And I love that. I love that I can even just be a platform for you to talk about this on to inspire people. I mean, I think this would be amazing for us to go on. I maybe my kids are a couple years older to really appreciate it. I would love this. In fact, I threaten my husband to I'm gonna move to Guatemala all the time, but I never really it's always just like that. That'd be uh epitome place of like because you won't want to go there, but yeah, you make it sound so amazing.
SPEAKER_02It is amazing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, this is awesome. And I encourage everybody to follow your Instagram too, because that's or was it a TikTok? Which one did you send me the video on?
SPEAKER_02On Instagram, yeah. We don't have TikTok.
SPEAKER_01On Instagram, okay. I am gonna, yeah, I was banned from TikTok too, but I'm gonna link your Instagram account too because I really think people would love to follow this journey and you're documenting it so well. Is there anything else that you guys want to make sure you touch on or just to leave people
Gratitude And Building A Family Mission
SPEAKER_01with today?
SPEAKER_02I think just gratitude as well for I I mean, I think one of our friends nominated us to be on your show, and I I I appreciate those final words a lot. It's been a really fun journey, and to be able to share it with people is half the fun because it is super wild. It's been a crazy ride.
SPEAKER_03I think trusting the process of of keeping your kids creating a family mission that will keep your kids working towards something for the family. That's something that Latin America really taught us was how much families work for each other. I was talking with a surf coach the other day, and he was saying, Yeah, you know, I was on the El Salvadorian surf team, and it meant that I got to go work in the States, and then I got to send money home so that my two brothers got to one became a chef and the other one became something else. But now they're supporting people in the family, and it just how much one family can really provide a strong foundation for generations if they have that vision in mind of not this individualist kind of mentality of working for the family.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And the community and yeah, for the family unit, and then it just spreads and ripples to the community, and you see people as soon as they get on their feet through our projects, as soon as families are capable. I mean, uh these families that come and share things with their host families. We've seen so many times it's like, oh, we already have this from past guests. Can I give it to somebody down the street? Or can I and I mean, and then if you looked in their houses, you would go, Wow, like they could have sold it or you know, use but they're so eager to share with people, and that's yeah, it's just so beautiful.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it is a it's a lost thing here for sure. And hopefully, hopefully, people listening to this today are like, let's let's each do our part in bringing that back in one way or another, even if it's shutting off the water while you brush your teeth.
SPEAKER_03People start their start small. We get water turned on three times a week, two hours at a time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we don't have running water in the in the in our house uh except for those hours in the week. And and what a great training process before we came.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, I love that. Christina Owen, thank you so much for being here today. Everybody check out their link. It's in the show's description. Follow them on Instagram, and I look forward to hopefully chatting with you guys again.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, hopefully we'll see you sometime in Peru or Guatemala or El Salvador.
SPEAKER_01I would love that. Hopefully, it's not going to.
Final Thanks And Listener Next Steps
SPEAKER_01Thank you for listening to the Homeschool How To Podcast. If today's episode helped you, please be sure to follow the show and leave a review. It's the best way to support the podcast. And if you're just getting started or need a reset, head to the homeschoolhow.com and grab my free 30-day homeschool quick start guide. Until next time, keep learning, keep questioning, and thank you for your love of the next generation.