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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
#143: "I Was Homeschooled, Tried Public School, Then Homeschooled My 5 Kids - Here's What I Learned"
Nicole Goff was homeschooled by "hippie" parents, tried public school for two years (8th-9th grade), excelled academically but faced bullying, and chose to return home. Now she's homeschooled five kids for 20+ years and runs Four Corners Community School—a 32-family cooperative in Florida.
What we cover:
- Florida's PEP scholarship: $8,000 per homeschool child for tutoring, curriculum, sports, music lessons, and more
- Waldorf education philosophy: waiting until age 7 to teach reading and prioritizing imagination
- Starting and sustaining a homeschool co-op from 2 families to 32 (including during COVID)
- Screen time reality: why tech CEOs ban social media for their own kids and how to protect yours
- Socio-emotional learning done right vs the concerning agenda in some public schools
- Teaching special needs and dyslexic kids at home
- The mistake of bringing "school" into your home (curriculum burnout and constant battles)
- Parent emotional regulation: Nicole's #1 strategy for the hardest homeschool days
Perfect for: Parents considering homeschooling, veteran homeschoolers needing encouragement, anyone wanting to start a homeschool co-op, moms struggling with burnout, families exploring Waldorf/unschooling/experiential learning methods.
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/nicoledesireegoff/
Coaching Website: https://www.nicolegoffspeaks.com/
Ecstatic Life Podcast: https://nicolegoffspeaks.podbean.com/
Homeschool Co-op: https://4cornerscommunityschool.org/
Nicole Goff guides women in bringing the joy back into their lives at Ecstatic Life Coaching.
The Homeschool How To Complete Starter Guide - Thinking about homeschooling but don't know where to start? Purchase Here!
Let's Talk, Emergencies!
The most important lessons we can teach our kids aren't reading, writing, and math - they're how to keep themselves and others safe. Available on Amazon
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Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool How-To. I'm Cheryl and I invite you to join me on my quest to find out why people are homeschooling? How do you do it? How does it differ from region to region? And should I homeschool my kids? Stick with me as I interview homeschooling families across the country to unfold the answers to each of these questions week by week. Welcome. And with us today on the homeschool how-to, I have Nicole Goff. She is, has been homeschooling for over two decades and was homeschooled for a portion of her education. So welcome, Nicole. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to do this. So let's go back to your childhood. What made your parents decide to homeschool you?
Speaker 1:Well, my my parents fall under the uh hippie homeschooler category and uh kind of uh you know anti-government, anti-institution. Um, and so they just kind of knew better to keep me away from all the things. Uh so I grew up out in the woods on a little we had horses. It wasn't really a farm, but you know, we gardened, we had horses and chickens. Yeah, so it was very like um, you know, unschooling or nature-based for the beginning of uh my school years. And then as I got older, I had tutors, we had a homeschool cooperative. Uh, I did go to public school for two years, uh, eighth and ninth grade, which was not the best years as a 13 and 14 year old to choose to go into the system. I can say that. And then I I went back to to homeschooling after that.
Speaker:Oh, that's super interesting. So, what were some of the reasons that made you go back? Because you you lasted two years. I mean, it's better than two months, right? But what made you decide that you want to go back to the homeschooling world? Kids are me. Yeah. Even back even back then, I mean, I'm not trying to say you're old. I'm I'm 41, but me too. Yeah.
Speaker 1:No, it was back then. It was in the 90s. And uh yeah, no, I just I I experienced um uh a lot of judgment for kind of just who I was and how I was, and then I experienced some interpersonal trauma with some people, and I just uh yeah, didn't didn't really feel safe in that environment.
Speaker:So it was more the social aspect versus like the um educational purposes or just, you know, oh I have to sit here for eight hours or six hours and why?
Speaker 1:You know, to to be honest, I loved school and I ended up um, you know, I was in all the honors classes. You know, I just besides algebra, I guess that was a part that I hadn't really like gotten enough uh help with, but besides that, like I was in all honors classes and um, you know, I ended up getting my GED um and going to college, going to university for five years, and was always 4.0, you know, chancellors list, all that stuff. So I was really good at school and I really liked that aspect. And I was always like teacher's pet. So yeah, it was just the social stuff. It wasn't, it wasn't that aspect at all. Although it was a lot of, you know, like I would be doing this sometimes. Like it seemed either too easy or like pointless, but I always I always did a good job.
Speaker:So yeah, so and I think that would be another question people would have was like, when you went back to school, were you behind? You know, but you obviously were not at all.
Speaker 1:And I'll tell you, this is the reason because I was taught how to learn.
Speaker:So what we and we hear that a lot. Can you explain to us what does that mean? What does it look like?
Speaker 1:Well, I I didn't have the model of memorizing for the test. So I actually knew how to inquire and study and find answers for myself and use my brain, use my creativity. Never had an IQ test done, but I imagine I would have done really well on one. You know, it's just the ability to problem solve, to figure things out. And so that was what school was given a problem and then you figured it out. And it was just very easy for me to do because I didn't have the programming.
Speaker:Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Just recently for me, you know, I'm reading uh there's a book called The Lilac Girls. It was very popular, best time seller, and you know, had to do with World War II. And it kind of led me thinking, you know, at 41, I'm like, gee, they just tell us in school like World War II is about Hitler wanted a race of, you know, all blonde haired, blue-eyed. And I'm like, that doesn't make any sense because this book is saying that they're taking Polish into concentration camps, and they're usually blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and you know, I'm Polish. I didn't even realize that Polish people were going into concentration camps and they were doing things like experiments on them. So to see, like, hey, if a soldier got, you know, uh something in his leg, you know, bullet or whatever in his leg, what are they would like actually put just horrible things in their legs to see what would happen? How can can an infection heal itself and different ways that they could heal a really bad infection? So that was interesting. And it made me think like, I think there's more to this story than they told us in school. Why are why are they taking the blonde-haired, blue-eyed people and putting them in these camps? And then her second book, or maybe it's her third book, I'm reading now, I think it's called Sunflower Sisters, and it's about the Civil War. And we've always been taught North good, South bad, North wanted slave freedom for slaves, and South wanted the slaves. And I'm like, well, that doesn't make sense that everybody in the North happened to be an altruistically good person, and everybody in the South happened to be a horrible, evil person. Could there be more to this story? And so I'm researching now, like, okay, well, the North was industrialized, so they actually didn't benefit from any sort of slavery, and it had already been abolished in the North. They didn't like the all the power the South was getting at the power in Congress, all the money that they were making because they were exporting their goods to Europe, and they just had so much power in Congress that they had a lot of power on what laws were going to get passed. And they were like, hey, if we want our industrial society up in the north to work, we need we need actual workers that earn wages that can then put those wages back into society and you know, it kind of make this whole cyclical thing go around. So it's interesting that the whole thing, it wasn't really about abolishing slavery because they just the north just didn't want the south to expand westward and gain even more power with the slave slavery that was going on. So I'm like, all right, well, that actually just makes more sense because it's like, how did all of the good people move to the north and all the evil people move to the south? But they never taught us to think like that in school. And now that I'm educating my kids, I see things in such a different perspective. Like, let's dig a little deeper. And so I I think that's what you're talking about when you say, like, you know, I learned how I didn't learn what to think, I learned how to think. Does this make sense? Or is it just what they're telling me? So bango.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And yeah, that's a I could do a whole podcast on that subject. I'm a big truther. Yeah. But I I will not teach my kids history. So history has been so adulterated in our system for the last couple hundred years. The history books have been manipulated. Every textbook that you read has been manipulated for a particular agenda. And so I won't even teach my kids history because so much of what we were taught is just factually dishonest. You know, it's just untrue. And there's other, there's cause cosmology I won't teach the children. There's a lot of subjects. I tell them these are my ideas, but honestly, nobody knows because it's it's been obfuscated.
Speaker:Yeah, right. And even going back to the Bible, like how do we know that the Roman Empire was not forcing scribes to add a little bit, take a little bit out, you know, the book of Enoch. So it makes it really hard to actually educate your children when you have gone down these rabbit holes. Even I was reading, I was reading a children's book to them yesterday. We're doing a unit study on stars, and you know, they talked about like going to the moon, and I'm like, well, kids, I was like, if you want to believe that they had that sort of communication, you know, Papa lives five miles away, and we can't get service to his house when we call him on our cell phone. So what do you think?
Speaker 1:Yep, yeah, and so that's what I'm trying to do with my kids too. It's like, you know, using your deductive reasoning, using your intelligence, making your own conclusions about things rather than like this is the narrative and it is the truth. And so much of science, the same thing. You know, there's stuff about the dinosaurs and the age of the earth, and there's just so much that we have been misled, that the science and you know has has been falsified. And so, yeah, I I, you know, the basic stuff, like we do, like, you know, the chemistry, and like, but when it comes to that kind of stuff, I always introduce it with a grain of salt. Like, well, yeah, this is what these people say, and this is what some other people say. And you know, none of us were there, so we're not exactly sure. And here's some really far out ideas.
Speaker:Yeah, it it is hard. Um, but I think that's a beautiful way of doing it. Here are some different opinions, and you can take the time when you're older or now or whatever to research, figure out what makes sense to you. That that is awesome. So you ended up doing what did you end up doing after graduation?
Speaker 1:Graduation from college, high school, uh, from university. So I I went back, I had my first daughter young, and so I I ended up going back for my undergrad at 23, 24. And then I was going to go into a PhD program for psychology. And I met my current husband, and we ended up having four kids. So I never went back and got my PhD. Um, and instead I have now become a coach. So I really dodged a bullet because I already had $60,000 in student loan debt, which is again, that's like a whole other podcast we could get into why college is BS. But um I really got disheartened with the system. You know, I worked under a professor who gave me inside knowledge about how scared she was of losing her tenure because of trying to teach the truth. And the university did not want this particular truth to be taught. And so she was so, you know, she confided in me how she wanted to like give this knowledge. And it was things that she had been teaching, she was in her 60s and she had been teaching for like 35 years, and it was stuff she used to teach, and now all of a sudden it was, you know, taboo or whatever. It was stuff she wasn't allowed to um to talk about anymore. This was an anthropology. And uh, yeah, and that was that was concerning to me. And then things got weirder and weirder and weirder at college. And um, I was like, wow, my dreams of being a professor and being a PhD psychologist. I was just kind of like, you know, I think I dodged a bullet. I would have had like $200,000 in student loan debt and been in a system where I was silenced.
Speaker:So just yeah, all doctors, really. Okay, so that's interesting. So when did you decide that you wanted to homeschool your kids?
Speaker 1:I knew forever. Yeah, it wasn't. There was no question. There was no question. My oldest daughter, we did a homeschool co-op from like I think I started one in in our hometown, Gainesville, Florida, when she was four years old, preschool age. And then when I moved uh down to South Florida to be with my current husband, joined another co-op there. Um, and she ended up having dyslexia, and I was having a really hard time teaching her to read. So in second grade, I put her in Waldorf. And she did Waldorf for I think four or five years, she did Waldorf. And then she went back to homeschooling once she was really like, you know, caught up.
Speaker:And yes, isn't well, was it Waldorf or Montessori? I mean, it must have been one Montessori. And I I I write about the differences in my ebook, but it's still hard to pull the differences out. But you know, people like I I think it was Mark Zuckerberg that just got kind of put on blast that he has this Montessori group for his children and other children in his home. I think he was in trouble because there were too many of them there. But you don't use computers with that style of education. And yet he is famous for pushing the social media and now AI and into the schools, and it's really interesting.
Speaker 1:Well, you you will find that all of those big tech guys do not allow their children to use social media and very, very severely limit their screen time. Yeah.
Speaker:All of them. I've seen reels where they say that about video game makers too. And I don't know how true they are, but yeah, where they said, like, how you know, what age or how often would you let your child play, I don't know, Minecraft or I don't even know the video games that are out there because we're just not a video game family. Um my son's never really asked for it, other than we have like a Nintendo 64 from when my husband was a kid, so he'll play Zelda sometimes. But I thought that was interesting because then so many people come to me too and say, like, why doesn't your son play, I think it's Minecraft. Is that the one where they build things? And it actually probably has a lot of really good, I don't know, architectural or you know, building educational things to it. But then again, just like with Facebook or any of the social media, there's also probably a negative connotation to it too. So depending on how you use it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's g it's very addictive. My older four are all girls. So the video game reality hasn't been really a thing. Girls don't seem to be as attracted to it in that way. Um, so that's not my youngest is the only boy, and he's only two. So we haven't gotten to that point yet.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But I know it can be extremely addictive, and I know there is also an aspect of chats where adults will interact with kids on these like chat room kind of things. So I'm not again, I'm not really sure how all that works, but I know there is a bit of a scary aspect to that.
Speaker:Yeah, and I think that's the problem is that it went from zero to 60. Like us growing up as kids. Um, I mean, I was like 17 when we started text messaging, and I was in college when Facebook came out. So you know, like the mice-based era to the you had to have a college email address in order just to have a Facebook account. And I remember what a big deal it was years later when, like, oh my God, my mother's on Facebook. Like, so they opened it up to everybody. But it went from that to now we can't even keep up with all the social media like apps that there are. And so, how do I know which ones are messaging my child or not? Or the video games that are messaging? How is it any different? And you don't know who is behind that. It's really scary and it's impossible for parents to keep up. And I think that is one of the most beautiful benefits of homeschooling is that most homeschoolers do not have the technology. They do not have the social media, they do not have the screens. So you are not in competition. Your kids are not coming to you saying their parents love them more and I'm left out of everything because you won't allow me to have this. It's really hard to do that in school, even for the even for the parent that wants to be diligent, your kid is getting left out of these conversations. So I'm sure there's some aspect of loneliness or bullying or you know, making fun of because of it. Um, that's really hard. I mean, I don't know. Have you your oldest is how old? 19. 19. So have you had to kind of walk that path with her?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have. And, you know, unfortunately, it's out of my control at this point. So she is a mother herself. Her and her fiance moved out and had their own place for a while, and now they're back in our guest room currently. Um, but you know, it's it's out of my hands now. All I can do is try to be a good influence. But, you know, I I see the screen addiction with her and I see how it affects her. She's an artist and she's involved in these online art communities where they buy, sell, trade digital art. And there's definitely, you know, comparison and competition and this need to be something. And I see how it affects her mood and you know, affects her self-esteem. Um, but at this point, all I can do is just try to be there for her and try to, you know, give her the wisdom. You know, she's a mom. She's about to be a married mom. She's about to get her own place again. And, you know, I can't, I can't control her screen time. With the little ones, I have a one-hour limit on they have a phone because unfortunately now we're at a time where we don't even have landlines anymore. And so when I am not here, you know, if I if I leave them with their older sister with a babysitter, I want them to have a phone. And so I got them a phone, but I put a one-hour time limit on it and I can check it. I have an app, I can see what they look at.
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Speaker 1:Uh unfortunately, now for her, it's out of my hands. But as um as a high school age kid, it wasn't quite as prevalent yet. So when she got her first cell phone and kind of entered into that world, it hadn't gotten as crazy as it is now. Luckily, so it wasn't, it wasn't quite as difficult to navigate in those like earlier teen years with her because it just it wasn't quite as ubiquitous as it is now.
Speaker:So talk to me about um how you homeschooled five kids. I mean, obviously it wasn't all at once because she's a little bit older and you have a two-year-old, but how what is your day-to-day look like? I know you did co-ops, you've organized some yourself, and um, you know, uh have actually really accomplished a lot with that. So, what did the day-to-day look like maybe 10 years ago versus now?
Speaker 1:So, 10 years ago, my second oldest is about to turn 11. So, 10 years ago, that was when my eldest daughter was in uh the private Waldorf school. And so I put her right about the time her little sister was born. And that was part of that decision too, because I was feeling overwhelmed as a new mom again and couldn't give her as much as I wanted to. It was quite a transition. So, um, because it was just me and her for the first six years. You know, I was a I was a totally single, solo mom for you know, just me and her. So it was a it was all a big transition for her to be a big sister. So at that point, my day-to-day wasn't focused on homeschooling, but as my second daughter got older and I had, you know, the other three siblings, we just have been very much into experiential learning. And so with my eldest, I made the mistake of trying to bring the school system into the home, which I see so often, even though I didn't come from that system, even though you know I wasn't indoctrinated in that way, I still had this idea. And I guess as a young mom, like I wanted to prove something. And so I got the workbooks and the curriculum. And you know, we sit down at this time, and she's a very strong-willed person, and we butted heads, and we butted heads, and it just became it was such a fight. And so the second time around, when I started out with my my second eldest, I really had the intention to let it be fun and let it be something that was focused on their loves, you know, their interests, and not like because they're supposed to. And I had also learned because I worked in the Waldorf schools that my daughter attended, I became an uh an assistant administrator. And so I really learned a lot about the Waldorf philosophy, and they don't even start teaching reading until seven years old. Right. Same as Finland. Yep, because it actually inhibits their creativity, you know, it it inhibits their imagination. And from birth until seven, they're supposed to be all in their imagination. And I realized what I had done by starting it, you know, for pushing reading on her. And then the dyslexia diagnosis, I even went back and, you know, I had to really reflect. Did I do that to her? You know, did I cause some kind of schism with trying to push so hard, trying to prove like, oh, I I know what I'm doing, I can teach her how to read, you know, and push those academics when her little brain just was not ready for that. So, you know, I did a lot of self-reflecting on that. And um, I just really focused on hands-on experiential learning and you know, cooking, like baking is one of the best things for that. So we did a ton of baking because there's like, you know, math and science, and you know, it's all reading and writing, you know, writing out recipes. And my 11-year-old is like, she's an amazing baker at this point. She wants to start her own company. She bakes, she bakes cookies and sells them. She bakes cakes for people's birthdays. And so she's like in the process of starting her own little bakery business, which is really great. But um, yeah, and it looked like a lot of going out in the yard and talking about bugs and flowers and gardening and raising animals. We had a homestead for many years and just, you know, animal husbandry. I mean, there's there's so many things in our day-to-day lives that teach us what and and this hands-on experiential learning sticks with you. When it's in a textbook and you're doing a worksheet and you're learning the, you know, memorization words for the test, it's in one ear and out the other. As soon as your mind doesn't need that information, it lets it go. Versus when you're actually getting hands-on live experiences with the world around you, with things you can manipulate, your body remembers that. You know, you carry that through the rest of your life. And so mostly what it's looked like is just having fun and following their curiosity. But along the homeschool co-op, because I do think that the socialization aspect and the learning, especially how to get along with other people. And they have a lot of siblings, so there's a lot of practice there. But learning from others, not just from me, because I don't want to be their only teacher. I don't want my philosophy to be the only philosophy that they're exposed to. So starting homeschool co-ops and having other moms come and bring their knowledge, sometimes dads, mostly moms. We have had a few really good dads in the in the group too. So I established Four Corners Community School, which is the not-for-profit uh cooperative that I run now, uh, in the very beginning of 2020. Perfect. I met I met my partner, Mandy Jones. You should have her on the podcast too. She's awesome. I met her in 2019, and the first week of 2020, we got together. We had kids the same age, and we're like, all right, let's start a homeschool cooperative locally, and then COVID, and then everybody got crazy. And so it was just like me and her and our kids, and all the parks were empty, and all the museums were empty, and all everything was all the playgrounds. So for like the first year, it was just us, and then a couple moms kind of trickled in meeting up several days a week. And it was, it was, it was actually really amazing because we just got it was such a good experience for us. We just got the run of everything because everybody was scared to go out. Even in Florida. Yes, even in Florida. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we, I mean, we we joke about it now. We miss the the good old days when we could go somewhere and it was like literally nobody in sight. We just even the beaches. I mean, you know, like even the beaches people weren't going to. We're out here like, yeah, we have the whole beach to ourselves. So that's that's where it started. But then by 2021, we had gained some families. Um, we found a schoolhouse, um, and uh it's just grown and grown. And now we're up to 32 families.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we meet two days a week. Uh still, we're still using a public building. We rent an indoor pavilion over a lake. It's really beautiful. Um, but we still use a public facility. But right now we're looking for our own land and we want to build a schoolhouse. Really, we're all about bringing the community in. So the idea that being a community school, we bring the community in to get involved, to teach classes. We keep our fees are like super, super low and it's all run on volunteer work. All of you know, we we do as a not-for-profit, you know, we do a bunch of different fundraisers to pay for field trips, to pay for supplies. And it's really just like all hands on deck. And the parents all take turns teaching classes. Um, and so we get a really a big variety. Right now, one of the dads is teaching sprouting to the kids. Ooh. Like, yes, yesterday we wrong sprouts. Yesterday they grew they grew wheatgrass over the last few weeks. They grew trays of wheatgrass, and yesterday he brought in his juicer and did wheatgrass shots for everybody.
Speaker:No, that's funny that you say that because I've been, I think I must have been watching one of the docuseries, The Truth About Cancer, at one point, and I remember them talking about how sprouts were even more nutritional than just a vegetable, you know, like if you could get the broccoli sprout that is more nutrient dense than just broccoli. So I've been on a quest for like five years to find sprouts, and I'm like, you can't find them as seeds. Like, I don't even I don't know how to get this. And then I forget to look it up online because I'm sure you could order some.
Speaker 1:But um it's pretty easy.
Speaker:Is it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's easy.
Speaker:Like, is there a good website?
Speaker 1:You know what? I should have uh I should have the dad. We've been talking about so we're we're hoping to build a library of courses on our website. Um, and that's fourcornerscommunity school.org. I'm sure we'll link it. But we're hoping to build a library of courses and we're talking about having him, you know, create a course so that we can, you know, again, another way to fundraise so that we can get our school. We want to do permaculture, we wanna, we wanna have a whole, yeah, like a whole thing, a whole community thing, like it be a hub of our area too.
Speaker:So have you but yeah, I'm sure have you found that homeschooling has grown in your area? Yes, yes. We get with new increase every week. Which is funny because so I'm in New York and we definitely have had a growth in homeschoolers ever since um really 2018, 2019, when Cuomo took away our vaccine religious exemptions. So you you can't just say because of my religion, we're gonna skip out on part of the schedule, the whole schedule. And there's five states that you you have to get every vaccine in order to go to school. But the other 45, and I don't think people realize this, the other 45 states, you do not have to get any anything on the CDC schedule in order to attend school, but you can do a religious exemption. Um, but so I I'm interested, it's interesting that in Florida you have a lot of freedoms down there, and yet still the homeschool community is growing. Why do you think that is?
Speaker 1:Well, we just had introduced the last uh two school years, the PEP scholarship. And so the money that is normally given to public schools to support your child's education if you decide to homeschool is given directly to the parents. So the last time we're gonna go to the look like uh it's about $8,000 per child. And so you get uh this scholarship is handled through a government website, and you don't just get the cash. Like you have to either get a reimbursement or you go through their um scholarship site to buy supplies, but that pays for tutoring, music lessons, karate, dance, horseback riding lessons, um, you know, curriculum, all kinds of stuff. So we we got that this year. The first year I didn't do it because I was a little like sus, like.
Speaker:Yeah, like are there gonna be strings attached to this? Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. So I wanted to give it a year to see, and then it seemed legit. And so we signed up this year, and uh it's been it's been really great because now we have access to really top-tier tutoring. So my kids are now doing tutoring two days a week with this beautiful woman and women, actually, it's two different, and it's it's just been it's something we couldn't have afforded otherwise, and it's it's been really great to have access to that. As it should be, the public school system shouldn't be getting money for my children.
Speaker:Yeah. You know what they did at the public school down the road from me? They had a budget, no, they had a budget increase last year, and they had another proposal for a budget increase this year, and everybody went and voted no. So, what they did is the following month, they had a revote. And oh, look, it passed this time. I'm like, are you kidding me? I mean, there's some sketchiness going on there. One, you can't just have a revote. Oh, I didn't like the way that that turned out. Let's have a revote. And now all of a sudden it's it's a yes. All these people that didn't want to increase their taxes yet again. And it's to put in stupid stuff like, oh, we're redoing the turf on the track or the football field or whatever it is. I mean, it's like, are they reading when they graduate? Can they read? Like that would be the more important stuff. So it's just angersome. But yes, I've had people on the podcast before say, be very wary of accepting any sort of government funds. And I know there's different ways that they come through too. So sometimes it's I don't I'm not sure what PEP stands for, but sometimes there's vouchers, sometimes it's a tax credit when you file your taxes, sometimes it's actually a check and just here used as you know, for whatever. So I don't I don't know. Yeah, there's different ways. And I know even in some states, and they might call it like a charter. I've heard people refer to it as we do a charter. So it's kind of like they have a middleman, but they have said to me that the curriculum that the school will accept, it cannot be Christian based at all. So if they're doing the good and the beautiful curriculum, they have to lie and say they're doing something else because it's through the school.
Speaker 1:The good and the good and the beautiful is what their tutor uses and it is available. Yeah, Florida's Florida doesn't play around like a lot of the other states. Yeah.
Speaker:No, that's great. That's so interesting. Okay, so how did you go from well, all right, this is a good question. Co-op or co-ops are tough, right? And if you're the one organizing the co-op, I would imagine it's even more tough for you because have you had to say to people like you're not a good fit, please stop coming? Or maybe you have a parent teaching something, or you hire somebody to teach something in the co-op and like you're not working out, kids are dropping out, I'm not making the money anymore, cyanara. Like it, it's like having a business. How has that worked out for you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, most of it's worked itself out. You know, we're we're very open and accepting. Um, we've had a couple of adults with disabilities that have joined in. We've had kids with, you know, severe autism and we're very welcoming. And the people that haven't fit have just found their way out. And usually it's the ones that think we're too hippie or woo-woo. Mm-hmm. So, you know, if uh if people don't vibe, they find their way out. We we have we've had qigong teachers, you know, we we do we do some fun, interesting things there. And if it bothers people, they just they just move on. We haven't actually had to kick anybody out.
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Speaker 1:So it's all worked itself out. Anytime there's been, we're very big on the socio-emotional learning aspect. And we do uh group circle every morning with all ages. So we have ages babies to um 13, um, and then one disabled adult, like I said right now at this point, all the parents are involved in the circle. We do brain games in the morning, which is what they do in China, to have like the left and right hemispheres work together. And yeah, so we we do we we have a very strong flavor, I would say. And so either you vibe or you don't vibe. But currently we have a lot of people that vibe.
Speaker:Yeah, that's awesome. And I I asked uh the last guest I had about this too on my podcast because she worked she was a teacher in England, or I'm gonna get it wrong because like England, Wales, and she was somewhere over there, but she left her teaching job because she was like, I can't work for this system anymore. And she's in the Dominican Republic and has her own school. And same thing she was saying the morning, it's this very much like getting in touch with our feelings. And I asked her, I said, Well, where is the line? Because now we have a nation of like high schooler, middle schoolers, high schoolers, college kids that can't regulate their emotions at all. And it's, I'm triggered. I can't, I can't process that. I can't. And so when people hear socio-emotional learning, they almost get like, ooh, I don't know. We don't want to like coddle the the kids and tell them that they can't function, you know, we want to give them the empowerment. But she explained it beautifully, and I want to hear your answer too. That how where is the difference in that to where it's like a healthy thing versus we're just gonna coddle kids that can't handle life?
Speaker 1:I think really that it has nothing to do with coddling. It's it's about learning about your emotions. How many adults do you know that don't know how to recognize the emotion that they're feeling? Right. So, you know, and this is what I do is in my coaching business with women. I mean, there's so many adults out there that can't even recognize what's happening in their body when they get angry. They can't even name where in their body they're feeling the emotion or what that emotion is, you know. And so getting in touch with your emotions and understanding your emotions has nothing to do with with coddling in in any way. And it's also the social aspect of that is how how do we deal with another person when we have conflict with them?
Speaker:You know, very true.
Speaker 1:How do how do we get past differences and work with each other? And so that's that's a big part of it. We're really, and you know, I think as I said before when I was introducing the idea, it's like I am doing this so that my kids can have that social experience because they're going to be out in the world dealing with lots of different types of people. And I can tell you, the first um, the first disabled adult that we had in, she was a 21-year-old young lady and she was confined to a wheelchair. And she had uh probably cognitive abilities of, you know, maybe like a five-year-old. And it was very, it was very different for the kids at first. And as they learned to navigate that and to ask questions and to be curious and become accepting, this girl just became part of the group. And it was so good for her and her mother. And, you know, I don't know how many years she had probably felt outside and then to come into that group was just so nourishing for both of them. And so to learn to navigate these differences, and you're not always gonna get along with somebody, and there are conflicts that happen between the kids, especially with so many kids. And learning to navigate that, I think is just so important.
Speaker:Do you think I've had a psychologist tell me before that part of the social emotional learning in school, there's actually an agenda behind it where parents don't realize like that it comes across as we're learning how to deal with the emotions, we're learning how to identify them. And then the agenda pushes through further in the year, like more into a sexual thing where it's inappropriate. And I think that's what scares parents because she actually had told me that she took her daughter out of the social emotional learning part of that was in the same school, actually, as the one down the street from me. And so her daughter like sat out because she read the curriculum beforehand. You know, they had to sign a permission slip saying that their kids would be part of it, and she didn't sign it. But then you I'm thinking, well, gee, how much is her daughter missing out on? Because a lot of this sounds like beneficial things. And I wonder if there's an agenda in the school to like, okay, then Yeah, that's so interesting. Well, it was, you know, slipping in. Like, are you feeling today like you're in that you're the gender that you're supposed to be? And if you're not, it's okay. You can tell me the teacher. You don't have to tell your parents sort of thing. I mean, that's putting it very wow abruptly. I'm sure this is over time, but yeah, her daughter was in the first grade and she was like, I asked for the curriculum and I read through it all, and I asked for her to not be a part of it, which you know alienates her child too, because then her daughter's missing out on probably beneficial things. But yeah.
Speaker 1:That's crazy to me. Okay, so I I took three levels of developmental psychology in college, and none of that was ever introduced, none of that was ever talked about. And so to me, that's like shocking. I that they're adding that into that curriculum.
Speaker:Almost sneaking its way in. And I wonder, is it just New York? Because we have a very like, I don't know, crazy people in power here. Um I don't know if it's it's all you know worldwide, but I thought that was very interesting for her to tell me.
Speaker 1:Um, but I have never I have never heard of that, but I am I'm pretty separated. I try to I try to stay out of the drama, I try to stay out of the news. I went deep in some rabbit holes in like 2020 to 2023, and I got a little like, I'm gonna pull back and just concentrate on the joy in life. I got too much, too much in the politics, and I was like, yeah, and the conspiracy, and I just so I had to explain it. I had to take a step back. Yeah, yeah. I felt that that it was, you know, um, I mean, and I learned so much. I went down so many rabbit holes, and there's so much more I know about how the world works and how the government works, and you know, just like we were talking about World War II and all the things that have been kept from us. And yeah, again, that's like a whole podcast to go down that rabbit hole.
Speaker:Yeah, and yeah, in that I think if we all had the understanding that there's not really a right or a left, it's like, okay, opposite sides, to the same coin, they've got the same people running both sides. It's like trying to tell you to drink coke or drink Pepsi. I mean they're both owned by the same people. All the news networks are owned by the same people. Whether it's Fox or CNN, it's the same people on the top. But if they can divide us, they can. And yeah, it's it's interesting. It's such a crazy world to raise our kids in. And I try to think back to like my grandmother's days where, you know, she was in Poland hiding from German and Russian soldiers. And of course, you're worried that, like, okay, are they gonna put a bomb on us or whatever, but we just have such a different type of warfare today. And and it is it's hard to have kids in it and to be on top of all that.
Speaker 1:And so how they're conducting it. Oh, sorry, I was gonna say they're conducting it in the school system. So, what what you're saying about them sneaking that agenda into the curriculum, you know, that is part of the warfare because they are brainwashing, psychologically damaging our children and creating um a whole generation or probably two generations now of kids that are just so confused. It's it's so sad.
Speaker:It's it's such, I mean, yeah, it's it's tragic. It is. No, I really feel that they do want to break up the family unit because when you don't have a strong family unit, you look to your government for guidance. And, you know, so that yeah, it all does kind of fit together. But like you said, you can't go down too deep on the rabbit holes because it will swallow you up and you'll get a little frustrated. So, yeah, what do you think is most important? How having the kids grow food, not only just to know how to be self-sufficient if there was ever a need, a hurricane, a attack from you know, any anybody. Um, you couldn't get to a grocery store, you know, growing food and just the satisfaction of that. I know you talked about the sprouts. Is that something that you work with your kids on or in the co-op?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And the reason that we want to buy land, that we want to establish our own schoolhouse is for that reason. We want to teach sustainability and we've brought it, we've brought it into our, we don't have a curriculum, but we brought it into our teachings uh a lot over the years. But we ultimately want to create a a little homestead that the school runs and teach the kids. We're very big on teaching the kids entrepreneurial uh skills and uh we do markets, the kids make and sell things. Uh that's part of our fundraising efforts. The kids, you know, make crafts and other items and we sell them. We've done probably four or five art shows where the kids have done art and sold art. And we would like them to sell eggs, have their own farmer's market, do farm to table. So ultimately, as our kids grow, my 11-year-old daughter and my partner Mandy's 10-year-old son, you know, they're in the senior class. And as they grow, their capabilities and needs change and grow. And as they move into their teen years, we want them to learn to be more self-sufficient and to run their own businesses. And the idea is to really create a hub where not just the kids come to learn, but the whole community comes together and participates, where we have classes for all ages, where we have workshops, where, you know, we have events, farm to table and things like that. So we really we have a big dream, and this has been the dream the whole time. So that's what we're working towards. Oh, I love that.
Speaker:So, where can people find you if they're in the area or just kind of want to follow along with what you're doing so that they can maybe replicate it where they are?
Speaker 1:So we are in the north central Florida area, and we're in a tiny little town called Keystone Heights. And like I said, Four Corners Community School.org is our website. We have a uh pretty big Facebook following, and um we do a lot of posting on there. So that's really a good place to go to like actually see what we're doing because we post about all the adventures that the kids are having. Um, and uh that's just Four Corners Community School on Facebook. And yeah, we we are absolutely we're looking for angel donors, we're looking for ideas about you know, land where we could, you know, get this started. I don't know if we're necessarily like tied to the Keystone Heights area. We're kind of we're looking, we've even talked about taking it international.
Speaker:So yeah, anybody that wants to get involved, please reach out. Okay, and I can leave that information in the show's description as well. Um, so they can find you on Facebook and look at your website. Any other last words that you want to, you know, to let parents know, maybe the parent that's like, I want a homeschool, but it just seems so far-fetched. What if my kid resents me? What would you say to them? Oh gosh, you'll never regret it. You'll never regret it, you know? That's what about on the hard days? What do you tell them to get through those?
Speaker 1:That's my personal belief that on the the hardest days, it's never as hard to me as sending my children away from me to have someone else raise them.
Speaker:Yeah, that's so true.
Speaker 1:And what that's heartbreaking.
Speaker:What about to the mom like me that nobody ever taught how to regulate emotions or identify where the feelings are coming from? Crazy upbringing. And when things are just like, you know, mom, mom, mom, mom, and I need this, I need that, and you're trying to get something done in your day. What is your number one recommendation for that person, that mom or dad, to do identify or regulate or just help the situation? Because downing a bottle of vodka isn't a good idea. So what else can we do that's actually healthy?
Speaker 1:I love that question because this is actually what I do in my coaching and all the time talking about this. So, one of my number one tips is to give yourself a parent timeout. And so that would be when you feel those emotions rising up, when when you feel that heat coming up your body to take a deep breath and say, mommy needs to take a few minutes to herself. And, you know, rather than sending the kid away and making the kid feel less than, you know, punished, unloved, giving yourself a timeout and whatever that looks like to you, to go outside, not drink a bottle of vodka, go out, go outside and stand in the sunshine, look at the sunshine. Go if you have to go and lock yourself in the bathroom, follow me out there, you know that, right? Yes. Yeah. So I have a porch that locks. I can go outside if I need to. And your kids get used to it also. When you say mommy needs a breather, mommy needs a timeout, then they learn to respect that because you come back in two minutes and you're regulated, you know, that emotional regulation. And the second thing I would say, the second most important, is to actually be able to identify, to learn those triggers and to stop it before they actually come up, before you get to that place where you feel like you want to explode. Start getting in touch with your own emotions and learn what it feels like when they first start coming up. And oh, maybe I need to do some breathing. Maybe I need to do some tapping.
Speaker:Okay. Breathing, tapping, identifying, perfect. And um, do you do coaching for anyone? Is that a link that you want to provide as well?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, absolutely. So my website is NicoleGoffspeaks.com. I'm on Instagram, Nicole Desiree Goff. Um, and uh also Nicole Desiree Goff on Facebook. But but yeah, absolutely would love to provide a provide a link.
Speaker:So yeah, we'll put that link in there. Nicole, thank you so much. Our sped by. I looked up and I was like, oh my goodness, we have to end this already. Thank you. This has been so much fun to hear. I love this perspective and all of the fun things that we can do, the co-ops and you know, really homeschooling. You've never been surrounded by more homeschoolers than we have right now. It's the time to do it. Join the revolt from the public school system.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Absolutely. And join me on my podcast too. So we didn't go there. I have a podcast, so ecstatic life. It's all about practices, modalities, products, lifestyles that bring more joy into your motherhood experience, but more I'm expanding into just your human experience.
Speaker:So I'd love to have you on to talk about homeschooling. I love that because I was a government worker for 16 years and I cut up and left it to homeschool the kids. I was like, I don't think I can do this, but you know what? It has been so worth it. Even the hard days, like you said, because at least I'm there. I'm not sitting in a cubicle waiting for the clock to just keep ticking. Yeah. Awesome. I would love to do that. All right, thank you so much, Nicole. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me on. Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of the Homeschool How-To. If you've enjoyed what you heard and you'd like to contribute to the show, please consider leaving a small tip using the link in my show's description. Or if you'd rather, please use the link in the description to share this podcast with a friend or on your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. Any effort to help us keep the podcast going is greatly appreciated. Thank you for tuning in and for your love of the next generation.