Ask Dr. Ross
"Ask Dr. Ross" answers the important and nagging questions parents and potential college students raise about higher education. Topics include preparing for college, avoiding student debt, and secrets to good grades. Hosted by award-winning professor Catherine Ross, Ph.D., and student producer Ashley Worley, listeners can ask their own questions by emailing ADRquestions@gmail.com.
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Ask Dr. Ross
How Can Homeschoolers Prepare for College?
The first day of college can be overwhelming for anyone. Just navigating the campus is a common challenge - but what if you'd never even set foot on a high school campus before? What if you'd never experienced traditional education until today? This is what homeschoolers are faced with on their first day.
Or is it?
This week, Dr. Ross and (homeschooled) cohost Ashley Worley tackle some of the myths and misconceptions of becoming college-ready as a homeschooler. Joining them are two formerly homeschooled students with vastly different experiences: senior Economics major Sara Maldonado and freshman Music major Lucy Holden. Together, they unpack what it's like to be homeschooled, from joining co-ops and purchasing curriculum to building independence and discovering your identity. There's lots to prepare for when the college transition approaches, and the way homeschooling translates just might surprise you.
Have questions about entering college as a homeschooler? Email us at ADRquestions@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you!
Stay tuned to the Ask Dr Ross podcast. It's created to give you info to succeed at college. Our hosts are highly qualified. Dr Catherine Ross is a member of the University of Texas System's Academy of Distinguished Teachers. She's also a popular professor of 19th century English literature. Ask Dr Ross is a community service of the University of Texas at Tyler.
Speaker 2:So welcome to another episode of Ask Dr Ross. This is our second series and today we wanted to talk about homeschooling. I wanted to say a little bit about the history of homeschooling before we introduce our guest. So I thought it'd be interesting to tell you that homeschooling the movement started in the United States about oh about the 1960s and 70s, and there were two people who were particularly powerful in getting it and they were actually coming from totally different perspectives. There was John Holt, who was a progressive critic of institutional schooling, and Raymond Moore, who was a Christian educator advocating for parental control. They both promoted homeschooling for different reasons. Holt emphasized child-centered experience and experience-based learning, while Moore was more interested in instilling values and the family experience. But over the years it really did change, and so when I asked Ashley, well, were you a John Holt or Raymond Moore homeschooler? She didn't even know what I was talking about, and I'll bet neither of you do as well. But both of these men wrote books. One of the ones that Holt wrote, he actually wrote how Children Learn and how Children Fail in the 1960s. Raymond Moore wrote Better Late Than Early, 1975. And both of them were truly interested in the child experience. So the critique of traditional schooling is common to both.
Speaker 2:The notion of unschooling came about, the notion that children learn more from experiences in life than through reading in books and sitting still in places, and that there's a kind of a sense of we can do it on our own without all this big help. There's a lot of concern that the study of the curriculums that were part of the public school system were too narrow or in some way problematic to these individuals. Now, as you probably know, public schooling didn't start in the US until 1918. In 1918, the whole country had some sort of compulsory education, but prior to that time much of education was done in the home. For girls, and a lot of times boys, were sent away to boarding schools to prepare them for university. I don't think that we need to go too much into the history now, but what we want to do is introduce both of our guests and find out how you did this, why you did this, what the experience was like. So I've introduced you, sarah. Would you tell us a little bit more about yourself? You are a student at UT Tyler now.
Speaker 3:Yes, I am an economics major. I'm a junior and I'm in the Honors College, and yeah, Okay, what about you, Ms Lucy Holden?
Speaker 4:I'm a freshman music major and I'm also in the Honors College.
Speaker 2:And also, just to mention, our wonderful producer, ashley Worley, is also a homeschool person, so we've got a homeschool roundup here. One of the things I wanted to add to the background is that to do homeschooling, it's all set up so that the way you do it, there's certain legal requirements. You have to notify the local school district or state education department. You have to follow a state-specific rules regarding curriculum, record-keeping and standardized testing. This should all sound very familiar to you, but it might not be known to our audience. You have to meet any teacher qualifications, so sometimes the teacher must have a certain level of education and you have to submit annual assessments or portfolios in most regulated states. Does that sound familiar to you all that your families did all of that?
Speaker 4:Somewhat. If they did, I did not know.
Speaker 2:Your parents were busy taking care of you and you didn't even know it. Huh, so you started school, Lucy, when you were four, five, six years old I'm not really sure. It's all kind of vague. Huh, it is very vague, Okay, and how about you, Sarah? Do you remember how old you were when you started homeschooling?
Speaker 3:Yeah, probably around four, because I had an older brother, so it was kind of just I got grouped in with him and like we just were kind of doing similar stuff.
Speaker 2:Okay, so why don't you tell us a little bit about the story of your experience of when you started? Did you know that there was something called public school or did you just, since your brother was already homeschooling, you were kind of into that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I kind of was aware that it was slightly non-traditional because all of my friends went to public school and so I was like, oh, there is something different. So I knew about it, but in my head it was never that different. It was more so just what my family did. But because I saw all my friends going to public school even like sometimes I would go and meet them up there for lunch, and so I was very aware of it, I just it was never any sort of stigma associated with it for me.
Speaker 2:Do you know what your parents reasons were for sending you to, taking you out of the public schools or just doing it home?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so my dad's a wedding photographer and so his hours he was gone most weekends and my family's very family focused and they were like, well, if they're in public school, like they'll never be able to see dad, because the only times that they'll be home are the times that he'd be at weddings, traveling and that sort of thing. And so that was the main reason that they did that, because they wanted him to be in our life and see us and stuff.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's really interesting. Family planning around daddy's career, huh, Lucy, tell us about. Do you know what your parents' thinking was when they chose to homeschool you?
Speaker 4:I do. I had a very nontraditional childhood. My parents worked in like a missions humanitarian organization called Mercy Ships. We traveled a lot as a child. So when we first moved to Texas, my sister was in public school. However, she hated it and we were always like leaving and we couldn't leave with the school and she was always getting sick and it was really bad. So my parents decided that they'd try homeschooling, since neither of them had ever heard of it because they both came from cultures that do not homeschool, and so then we started homeschooling and it made just everything going back and forth back to the ships and stuff way easier.
Speaker 2:So once again it was about family cohesion. Following dad, or mom too, I guess. Huh, ashley, let's hear your voice too. Do you know what your parents were thinking when they decided to homeschool you and your sister?
Speaker 5:Yeah, it was pretty similar actually to what they've been talking about. We traveled a little bit for my dad's work. He was an actor and so we lived in New York City. They didn't think they were going to have kids, so we were born and as it came time for us to get into school there's a lot of restrictions on homeschooling in New York and they looked at several of the private public school options couldn't afford it, weren't loving the options in the district, so we moved to LA and again, with the moving, homeschooling makes that so much easier. Did you start homeschooling in New York? We were just under the age where we would have started school in New York, so then when we get to LA, that's when we started.
Speaker 2:Now think about your friends in the homeschooling environment. Did they have the same, a lot of the same reason?
Speaker 3:For me. Most of my friends, their parents decided because of more like distrust of the public school systems. I saw that a lot more with anyone who I knew who was homeschooled.
Speaker 2:Okay, and I saw you nodding your head when she said that, Lucy.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think a lot of people just didn't agree with a lot of the public school things and decided that ultimately, homeschooling would be better. So they can, you know, lay the foundation for their own kids.
Speaker 2:I don't really want to criticize public schooling because I'm a teacher at a public university and I'm really glad. I think it's a fine school. I think you all are all here because it is a fine school. But yeah, of course historically there have been concerns. Both John Holt and Raymond Moore had both issues about the way children learn and also sort of ethical, personal family values involved. But what I'm most interested in is how did you learn in these schools? What was the experience like? And you know, how did the transition from being at home homeschooling, where you had a whole lot of freedom to be in the university, work for you? So why don't we just start with you, sarah? Tell us a little bit about your earliest memories of homeschooling and how you felt about learning and being a learner.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the way that most of our curriculums worked was we had like a book or a base that we were working through with my mom, and so that's kind of how we did it. And I just remember, for instance, for math, we kept with the same curriculum our entire like K through 12. It was the same guy doing it.
Speaker 2:And when you say the same guy doing it? And when you say the same guy doing it, were these materials that came from a homeschooling publication outlet?
Speaker 3:yeah, I'll be honest, I have no idea where she found it, but it was this one specific man who was a math teacher and we'd like watch his videos and work through his book and stuff and so have the fondest memories of him because he was like prevalent to my childhood. But so that's how most of it was. Like we'd have a history book and work through it and it was part my mom like going off of that and then part coming up with like activities to enhance it and to fit it more to us.
Speaker 2:My understanding that the states require certain texts being used or a certain range of texts being used, that all of these materials are approved for getting you ready to go to college if you want to do that. So it's not just some fly-by-the-night fellow who thinks I know how to teach math and so I'm going to do it. And in fact it might be a good idea to tell us a little bit about these co-ops, because I think aren't the co-ops kind of a clearinghouse for where you get your materials? Does that sound right to you, lucy?
Speaker 4:Before I started a co-op, my mother would find the materials on her own. There's multiple curriculums online that you can buy and you can research which ones you like and stuff. When I was in like elementary, we used this one called my Father's World, I think was the name of it, and so it was very like nature based or like biblical based as well, because my family is Christian, and so then we would go through all of these like different things and they had different like history section, math section, science section. So a lot of my like early childhood was spent like outdoors and being able to look at stuff. When we did like science, we'd go to like find stuff in the wild. You know, oh, that sounds like fun. It was very fun. But then once I got to I think it was fifth grade or fourth grade my parents enrolled me in a co-op and that's where I stayed until I graduated.
Speaker 2:Is it graded like first grade, second grade, on the way up to 12th grade? Yeah, okay, so you feel like you're moving through a curriculum year by year. Is there a time limit? Feel like you're moving through a curriculum year by year. Is there a time limit? Do you have to finish first grade by the end of June or something?
Speaker 3:I think that that more is how the individual family set it up, for instance, like we often took our summers a good bit earlier than whenever a public school got out because, like I've lived in East Texas my whole life, so it gets warm down here in the summer oh yeah, get out down here in the summer, oh yeah, get out of Texas in the summer.
Speaker 3:And so they wanted us to like, whenever we're off of school, actually be able to play and go outside and everything, whereas I think that public schools, I think it's like it's like June yeah, and then, like even in July and so like you just don't want to be outside at that time, and so I think it was more, more to the individual families how the structure of when does first grade end?
Speaker 2:Do you remember when you first started, what it was like? Were you reading books as a family or with your mom?
Speaker 4:Yeah, my mom would often like read the history books to us and we do like little projects and things. When we first started, I feel like the elementary part was way more fun than anything else that we ever did.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that was the only time really that my mom actually taught me.
Speaker 2:Was your mother trained as a teacher? No, my mother is a nurse. She's a nurse. And what about your mom, Sarah?
Speaker 3:My mom had some college for teaching. Yes, and what about your mom?
Speaker 5:My mom is a speech-language pathologist, so she worked with little kids and did some level of learning and activities with them, but she's not a teacher or anything in that vein.
Speaker 2:So now that you've had some university teachers which are real different from elementary school teachers, I know, but you look back and you say my mom was pretty darn good as a teacher. I'll look at you first, sarah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think that I personally probably would have been better suited for a public school, not because of anything of her teaching wise, just relationship dynamic wise. It makes it a lot easier for me knowing that this is my professor I go to them for this versus where my mom and oftentimes moms are anyway. But like the catch all be all. You know what I mean. This is my teacher, my mom, you know, caregiver.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was wondering about, as a mother, my training as a teacher. And I will tell you, I'm an English professor at the university but I was never a public school teacher. I did teach for a while 7 through 12, at a very posh private boys school and another very posh girls school where the kids were highly motivated to be there and their parents were paying a lot of money for them to be there. So I know a little bit about teaching that lower level. But teaching is a complicated job. It's also a job where you have to discipline, you have to say no, you have to give bad grades. Sometimes you have to look at a student and say you know this will not do. And so I'm'm kind of wondering you mentioned that you and your mom maybe was it tough for your relationship sometimes?
Speaker 3:yeah, I think that impacted both sides of like the mother-daughter relationship and like the teacher-student relationship because, like I love to have a coach, I love to know this is the person in charge, I'm listening and it really helps me to set myself up on a path for that. And so, whenever those lines are blurred and it's just a different level of and this is on me, like I don't feel like I have to bring my best, like because it's just my mom, do you know? Because she loves you anyway, right, she loves me. Versus whenever I go to class, I'm like okay, okay, I'm here to work, this is what you know, it just for me, the different mindsets, them overlapping, didn't work as well.
Speaker 2:Did your dad ever act as a teacher, or was it always your mom?
Speaker 3:Not really. It was mostly my mom.
Speaker 2:But then did you go to a co-op where you had other teachers.
Speaker 3:That's the thing. I didn't go to a co-op. I did a lot of dual credit in high school, so that was the first time that I had a outside the home learning experience, because a lot of my high school was dual credit at our community college.
Speaker 2:So did you attend the classes at the community college or were they online? A mix of both? Yeah, so you did go to some traditional classrooms where freshman English or freshman history. How old were you when you were doing that?
Speaker 3:Oh, my goodness, I would have been, I guess, 14, 13, 14, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you're a 14-year-old college freshman.
Speaker 3:Yes, and I loved it. I just really thrive so much more in that environment.
Speaker 2:That's interesting to hear. Now I'm looking at you, lucy, and did you say you're a music major? Yes, ma'am. So we're going to want to hear about how you got there, but I'd like to hear a little bit more about how your relationship with your mom or your teachers were when you were in homeschool.
Speaker 4:Well, unlike Sarah, I did go to a co-op, so my mom stopped teaching me when I like before grades were really a thing. So I mean, where you got graded was for us sixth to twelfth grade mostly, and so I had teachers for every subject and teachers for everything. So my mom really didn't have a teacher role in my education. So that's quite different from Sarah's, yes. So I had teachers who would grade me and I'd be fine with it and would you attend classes Like would you go to somebody's home.
Speaker 4:No, it was in a church actually, and it was Tuesday, thursday I would go to classes, so twice a week. But this church was specifically set up for a lot of homeschool things, so there's like a lab in the church and a library and things. So it was very similar to like a traditional school, with a lot less people and a lot less like amenities.
Speaker 2:Ashley, you did your homeschooling, started it in LA.
Speaker 5:Yes, and so that was when I was pretty little. We went to a little private school for, I think, pre-k and they realized very quickly she's not going to do good in public school. And not because I wasn't like smart or anything, because they would be like so how's she doing? Teachers, and they're like, well, she's such a sweet person and she loves to learn and she loves to read, but she doesn't want to change stations when she's told and she can't sit still. Oh, okay. And they were like is she staying at the reading station? They were like yeah, she's staying at the reading station.
Speaker 2:Because you love reading okay.
Speaker 5:And I'm also a very kinetic learner. To this day, I can't sit with both my feet on the ground straight. It just doesn't work for me. I'm distracted, so I have to sit legs crossed or do something with my hands.
Speaker 2:So what I'm hearing you say is that the public school routine was limiting you and you couldn't hold still long enough. And that's actually one of the things that John Holt talked about is that public schools are oftentimes too routine, too regimented for children and they needed greater freedom. So you're sort of telling us that it wasn't just because your parents had to move around and they wanted to be with their dad during the week or when your family was going off on a mercy ship. That was partly because of the way you were learning, and so it was about your personal learning style. What about your older sister? Was there anything going on there too? Not necessarily. She's very organized, so you were the busy little kid who couldn't sit still in school. Your older sister was more routine and organized, but was she already doing homeschool, or were you the reason they started homeschool?
Speaker 5:No, I think they were already thinking about homeschooling and the private school we went to. There was like a change in who was running it, and so that's kind of what pushed us towards okay. Well, maybe let's just we'll do our curriculum at home.
Speaker 2:So just to make it clear to me, those of you who were not in a co-op you were in the house but you also went outside. Did you go on trips? I mean because I know part of the idea of homeschooling is supposed to be very experiential. Can you tell us, sarah, a little bit about the experiential part of your homeschooling?
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure. So I am from Palestine and like, for instance, there we have like a big park and so anytime we're doing anything like like you mentioned, like science wise, we're going to that park and we have a pretty good sized backyard. So it's a lot of moving around in that way. And they were also very big on taking trips, like little trips Like, for instance I can't remember what city it was, it must've been Houston we had a pass which allowed us to go to the zoo and the museum at any point, and since our dad is off during the week, he goes with us whenever, like.
Speaker 3:I think back of my like school experience. I don't really think of it as much in the house, especially because, even though it wasn't necessarily a co-op, we had friends who were also homeschooled, and so a lot of the times it was us going to their house. My mom had a friend and I believe she was a high school Spanish teacher before, and so we would go to her house and a couple other people would come over and we would all do a Spanish lesson and then afterwards we would all go play outside in their backyard because they have like land.
Speaker 2:So learning and playing was kind of the routine, and going to different places, so it wasn't just staying in the house. Yeah for sure. How about that for you, lucy? I guess you were on ships and things. You were moving all around when you were being educated. And was mom doing all of that, or did your dad?
Speaker 4:help. My dad helped some. It was mostly my mom, though. My dad has a very time-consuming job. What's your dad do? He's in charge of the maintenance of both of the ships that they have right now. Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:So I think he's an engineer.
Speaker 4:He was an engineer, yes, and now he's more like overseeing.
Speaker 2:So he had a really demanding job, day in and day out, while you were traveling. So your mom was doing it. Did you have siblings? I have one sister. She's older than me, older than you, so you were both doing it, but you would have been at different grade levels, right? Yeah, she's three years older than me, oh wow. So did your sister ever help you to study or learn, or was she ever a part of that? Oh, we just got a funny look when we said that. Not at all, huh she tried.
Speaker 4:She was very nice if I asked her and stuff, but eventually, like she is a mechanical engineer and you're the musician, she's also musician, she's just multi-talented. It's crazy. But she would be able to help me with stuff because she's good at everything. But then we'd get to like math that I don't understand. And so my senior year of high school she said don't take math at the co-op, I'll teach you at home with this curriculum we already have. That I took in high school and I think we got about two weeks in and we fought so much that I said I'm doing it myself and I almost failed that class but we were good.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, okay, Okay. So did your sister go on to college? Yes, she's graduating in May.
Speaker 4:Is she at UT Tyler? She's at Laterno University.
Speaker 2:Laterno. Okay, and did you come in as an honor student too?
Speaker 4:To UT.
Speaker 2:Yes, so just a little thing here. We've got three honors students here and I think we better take a moment to talk about that for a minute. We have an honors college at UT Tyler, established by one of my colleagues, dr Paul Stroyford, and it's not real easy to become an honors student. Could you tell us a little bit about why don't we start with you, ashley how? Honors student. Could you tell us a little bit about? Why don't we?
Speaker 5:start with you, Ashley. How did you get picked to be in the honors college? Do you know? Well, the only reason.
Speaker 2:We even knew about it in the first place was because Whitney got accepted before me, your older sister. Okay, and do you know what the applications included? Because it's very selective to be in the honors college.
Speaker 5:It is the applications start with. I think, just like a traditional application where you tell them a lot of information about yourself. They ask you an essay. Then, after the essay, they call you in for an interview. Whitney did hers in person, I had mine over Zoom. I think it's changed a little bit. Then they interview you and they make selections for who's on what scholarship and who's accepted into the cohort. Do you all?
Speaker 2:get grades in homeschooling? Do you have grades? You have a class, I mean, so you have an A in your English class and an A in your, and so they could look at your grades. Did you all also take things like the SAT or the ACT test? I did not.
Speaker 3:I took the TSI and like that one, but I didn't take the SAT.
Speaker 2:Okay, and Lucy, you nodded, you did take.
Speaker 4:I took the SAT and PSAT.
Speaker 2:And what about you, Ashley?
Speaker 5:I took the SATs and I also took the TSI.
Speaker 2:The TSI is a set of tests that tells where you are in your readiness for college. So, backing up a minute, the Honors College is pretty special too. What do you do in the Honors College? What makes it different from the rest of the university, lucy?
Speaker 4:Well, you get to take a world text class, a literature class, basically for your freshman year for two semesters. It's a lot of discussion and getting to throw around ideas that you read in these books. The section I'm in started with Greek tragedies in the first semester and then this semester we've done a lot of like Kant, freud and Nietzsche, and so it's been very interesting getting to hear all the differing perspectives from all of these kids who have very like different backgrounds and, you know, went to public school, private school, homeschool, everyone's like kind of in there, so it's nice to be able to discuss about it.
Speaker 2:I would just insert this right now my experience with students who are homeschooled is that they were always really well motivated, really well prepared and engaged in class and I felt as though whoever their parents were had done a great job. And you know, I've worked with you now, ashley, for a while and I, although I haven't had you in class, my sense of you is you're extremely responsible, resourceful, and I've heard the same thing about the two of you as well, by the way, that you're something special. But I do know that when I've taught honor sections, that the students were highly motivated. Highly motivated students tend to be much more ready to engage. They don't want to sit back. Do you understand how your homeschooling made it possible for you to be one of these more actively engaged intellectual students?
Speaker 4:I feel like homeschooling really gave me the opportunity to like come into my own person faster than other people, because I've always been me and it's so.
Speaker 4:My parents have struggled with that a little bit because, you know, trying to raise a kid who's not like you sometimes is a little bit, hmm, but I think getting to become my own person and have my own thoughts really early. So, like going through my high school years as a very confident individual, I just loved learning, I loved consuming like knowledge and I loved being in classes and discussing and being able to share my thoughts and like go into places that, like you know, you don't really get to go into when everyone around you isn't as involved. So I think joining the Honors College and seeing other people who are also really engaged and like being engaged even if you don't like say much in class, like you say this one comment and like it goes 10 places and then you know you've said one thing in class the whole time, but you still get to sponge everything in, I guess, and I've really enjoyed that for sure.
Speaker 2:I do think this is true. There's something that you all have done that has made you, I think, lifelong learners. What about that, Sarah? Do you kind of understand what I'm talking about there? Do you feel like homeschooling made you a lifelong learner?
Speaker 3:I think that, and like what you were saying about engaging too, in my head there was never another option. There was never another option. Do you know what I mean? Like versus, if I'm sitting in a classroom of 20 to 50 people at the university yes, ma'am, or just even like imagining myself in a public school, I don't have to be the one to raise my hand to answer the question, to volunteer my thoughts. Whenever you're in a room with either your siblings or by yourself, or whenever you're talking about those thoughts, you have to be the one to engage and to talk about the ideas. So it was never an option to just like sink into the wall, you know. So I think that that's what really made it to where, when I had to be engaged, whenever I had the option to be engaged, I chose that because of my past experience with that.
Speaker 2:Well, and you're also with your siblings. I mean, everybody has different experiences with siblings, but I think you tend to know that they care about you and if they tease you or make fun of you it's usually kindly meant. I don't know, maybe your brother's a real stinker, I don't know. But I do know that oftentimes we hear stories of children being really intimidated by their classmates. And I've had neighbors who I'm thinking about. One daughter in particular, daughter of a friend in the neighborhood who she started at the local public school and she was a little bit larger than some of the other kids and had been in a different school system and the kids were really mean to her and they took her out and homeschooled her. That worries me a lot, that that can happen. My guess is that there's something about the homeschooling experience that gives you a kind of intellectual independence, a kind of natural curiosity that makes you an ideal college student. So how's college going for you, lucy, when you got here? Was it any big surprise? Any big differences?
Speaker 4:No, I've really just adjusted well. It was pretty seamless for me. I didn't feel overwhelmed or anything. The amount of work I get here was the same at my co-op. Basically, I guess I have more of a focus on music parts because of my major, which I've really enjoyed, of course.
Speaker 2:How did you get to be a music major as a homeschool kid? Because usually I think of schools as the places where they have bands and orchestras. So how'd that?
Speaker 4:work. It was very interesting because the co-op I went to was very STEM focused. There's no arts at all, like I mean, well, ashley and I went to the same co-op so we like there was a journalism club and that was about all that there was for like arts related things, unless you took like an art class. So there was no music. Everything I've done in music has been on my own and taking lessons and stuff. So I just so happened to take lessons with Dr Park, the professor of voice here at UT Tyler.
Speaker 4:I took lessons with her in high school and so then I had no idea what I wanted to do when I graduated. So this was probably February or January of last year and I ran into her and she's like, come talk to me and we'll talk about it. And so she gave me this whole plan of, like you know, start with your BA in music so you're not stuck in music if you want to change. And so then that's what I did. I started and I'd never done choir, never done theater or anything. So I was a voice major last semester in BA. Then I eventually switched to this semester. I'm doing vocal performance as my BM.
Speaker 2:So I know that you mentioned that your co-op was pretty STEM oriented and I think, ashley, you've told me that too, and I think you had some thoughts about that.
Speaker 5:You want to share those? Yeah, lucy and I went to the same co-op. Actually she followed me here but it was very STEM oriented. Like she said, journalism only became a thing when I was coming into my freshman year in high school and besides that, I think they had theater, but that was always like a question mark subject, because sometimes they had it, sometimes they didn't, and it was always a very small group of kids. So it was very STEM focused and I was not a very STEM oriented person.
Speaker 2:So you were an artistically inclined student, and yet your co-op was a STEM place. You think about homeschooling as being able to tailor things to individual students' needs and interests, and so you're telling me that maybe you felt a little bit constrained.
Speaker 5:A little bit, but one thing about homeschooling is that it teaches you. If something is not already set up for you to go in and get what you need, you build something. So I did not have a lot of the same resources and having a music class, having tons of fun English classes or something like that, but that gave me more room to be like well, how can I learn some of this stuff on my own? And when I hit my senior year in high school, they started this new thing. We were the first class to do it for the senior capstone project, so it was completely customized to whatever the student wanted to do. They had to create a project with such and such criteria, but the criteria were very broad and as long as you turned in progress markers of your work and you would come to class and share what you had. Because of that, I got to go. Oh well, you would come to class and share what you had. Because of that, I got to go.
Speaker 5:Oh well, let me make a short film, because I absolutely love movies and I have never even come close to knowing what's involved in making one. So it was a little bit of a dumpster fire. Wow, I say it was a dumpster fire on my end, completely on my end, because, like I said, I'd never done any of this before. But you know what? I think I learned more from that project than I could have by taking any kind of class in how to make a movie. Lucy came and she scored the film for me. We got some art that we needed as props from a friend of mine another one of the people, who was my classmate, wonderful guy, he was the main actor in it. So all of this stuff I didn't have necessarily the resources, as in there's already a film class set up, there's already a music class set up, there's already these sorts of things for you to go in and have the opportunity. But homeschooling, inherently like, has room for you to create your own opportunities and I think that's a valuable experience of itself.
Speaker 2:So you all are all independent-minded people, but are there any kids that you experienced that you went to homeschooling co-op with who maybe weren't so self-motivated, who weren't such good engagers? Is that a problem? Do you have some kids that just kind of sleep through it and their parents just let?
Speaker 4:them. There's a lot of kids in homeschool who don't put in the work needed. So then they get to their junior senior year and they have nothing that's there for them to be able to go to a good college or anything and stuff Not a lot but a few of these kids end up not being able to complete any sort of degree or they just don't have any sort of meaning to their life after, like, they finish their schooling and some parents are very enabling of allowing their kids to just go through homeschool and have easy school. I guess it's not rigorous, it's just them getting the core curriculum done that you need to graduate. Sarah wants to say something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I was just thinking of, like my own experience, whereas most of the other homeschool people I had a like knew a lot about were my brothers, and so we are all completely like opposite personalities. And so whenever you said parents enabling, I think that's really what it comes down to, because I'm a very independent do it myself, I'm going to put in the work, whereas my brothers like some of them are more reserved or more like I'll kind of like take what the world kind of gives to me, sort of things, but we all had the same parents. They weren't okay with that. Do you know what I mean? And so whenever you said parents enabling, I think that's when it comes down to, because some kids are going to go for it and some are going to be much more like to the side, and so I think if you are wanting to homeschool your kids, I think you have to be able to be that we're not going to let this fly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it strikes me that it's incredible amount of responsibility to be a parent, just a parent, for individual kids especially. Every child is different. Every child deserves to be treated and brought up to what their best selves are, and add into that having to be their teacher too. That's a lot to put on a parent, and I'm sure that's probably part of the reason why these co-ops got developed, so that they could kind of share it, Not only because it's you know, being a teacher and a parent is a hard thing. But teaching math and music, teaching literature and biology, you know that's a lot of things for a parent to know. What did you want to add to that? I think I saw you respond for a minute there, Lucy.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think that a lot of just the co-op development was definitely to come alongside parents. I mean, my mom's not really a math person, so her teaching me math wouldn't have gone well, and so I think it's really cool to have the opportunity that if there's a subject that you just didn't excel in in school or you just struggled with, always it's like there's someone out there who will teach your kid for you and they'll get a good education still.
Speaker 2:So what is social life like for kids in homeschool? Now, you were not in a co-op, right, sarah? So did you have a social life, or was it just you and your brothers?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so my house was the house that, like all my friends, came over to. So most of my friends I met through church or like my parents' friends had kids and so we had a good little group that we knew, and a lot of it was people coming to our house and hanging out with us. Whenever I think about my childhood, I don't just think about my brothers and I in a room. There were always lots of people around and friends.
Speaker 2:Do you think your parents intentionally encouraged that because you all were homeschooled, or was it just the way your parents were? They were just the family in the neighborhood everybody loved.
Speaker 3:A little bit of both, I would say for sure.
Speaker 2:And this is out in Palestine, which is a little town.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's small and so I think that they are very intentional people in that way. So they saw, we don't want them to be in a corner just knowing each other, like we want them to grow and like talk to people and be social, but then in the other way, that's just who they are as people. Ashley, what was your?
Speaker 2:social life like.
Speaker 5:I'd say it's pretty normal Co-ops have that a little bit built into them. But I think maybe a common thing that I've heard from other homeschoolers, regardless of how they set up homeschooling, was that you don't have a group that's already inbuilt for you to belong in. So you end up kind of talking to a lot of different types of people and talking to everybody. So we not necessarily in LA we had a co-op in LA that we would go take field trips with, know these other kids through, but here especially we would join like homeschool sports groups.
Speaker 2:That's what I was going to ask about if you have sports and musical performances.
Speaker 5:Oh yeah, I don't know about the music side of it, but definitely there were sports. My parents were coaches for the middle school girls basketball team. They got it started and now I think they're fairly competitive. So there's other things that you get involved in, kind of because you have to. That's the other thing about homeschooling is that it really takes the engagement of the parent because, like you said, they're having to do all of these different things. So if you're not engaged, if you're wanting to treat it like maybe a public school, where well, we'll send our kids one day a week and they'll do all the stuff, but you're not helping them to learn their own time management and say, hey, did you do your homework? Sit around the dinner table with them and ask them how things are going and talk about things, then I don't think homeschooling necessarily is going to work.
Speaker 2:Well, if we think about public school, we think, okay, kids go to school. Classes start probably at 7.30, 8 o'clock in the morning. They do stuff in the morning, they go to a big lunch cafeteria and have lunch and they go do some sports. Or maybe they have class in the afternoon and they have some sports and they go home by three o'clock and maybe they have the boys basketball team and the girls basketball team. We had a choir and all those sorts of things, and so things are kind of done for you and for parents. The parents don't have to do much but, as you said, send them off, although I think a lot of parents are involved in things like the Parent Teacher Association and sometimes parents are coaches and things. But what I'm wondering about is do you have a school day? I know you said Tuesdays and Thursdays you would go to the co-op, but Monday, wednesday, friday, what'd you do?
Speaker 4:I did homework because they would send us home with homework for the week. So how it would work is you would go to your class on Tuesday and then they give you like a week's worth of work that you would turn in the next Tuesday or Thursday or whenever. So that's a lot of time management, isn't it? Yeah, it is, isn't it Because you don't have anyone over your shoulder, like being like am I getting it done Because we have class that ends in like 15 minutes Right?
Speaker 2:and you don't have a study hall where they say, okay, do your homework.
Speaker 4:now there's no study hall, and so it was just up to me to get it done. Granted, I mean, I didn't always do the best job of not procrastinating until like the day before, but I would try to get it done over like the five day period.
Speaker 2:Do you feel as though what you learned about how to do that in homeschooling environment has served you well in college? Are you just as good at time management, or maybe you're just so used to it?
Speaker 4:Yeah, it felt very natural coming in. You know, there's some weeks where I don't do as well as other weeks, of course, but, like you know, just depends on like the workload, practice and things, and so it's been pretty good.
Speaker 2:So it's about time to pull this thing together, and I was wondering what was the biggest challenge for you, Sarah, coming to college from a homeschool background.
Speaker 3:I think that for me, my biggest challenge didn't lie in anything related to my actual education or time management. I think that it was about finding my support system and finding my team here, whereas I was literally born into my team and support system before, and so I know that this can be like the way, obviously, with public school students as well. But I think that they've kind of had that experience of like, okay, this is the teacher I can go to for this. You know, they've had to find that a little bit more, whereas I always knew who it was, and so coming to college, I'm like okay, who can I go to for this? Who's your family? Yeah, who's my family here, since before my family covered everything. My family was my teachers, my family was everything in that way. So having to find my family covered everything. My family was my teachers, my family was everything in that way. So having to find my family in college was a whole new learning experience.
Speaker 2:Well, and you know, of course, one of the big developmental shifts for college-age students is to find a certain amount of autonomy so that they stand alone without their family. Not that you ever, you know, not have your family, but you've got to go on out in the world one day without mom and dad, and so has that been a challenge for you too no, I came out of the womb wanting to go off on my own, so not really in that way no. Would you say the same thing for your brothers?
Speaker 3:um, so actually one of them he had same experience. He's kind of like quiet independent, I'm loud independent. But there's two more on the way. One is starting school actually this coming fall, so I'm curious to see how it looks for them, because they're so opposite of us and so what will be their experience in that way?
Speaker 2:So, lucy, when you think about it, has there been any particular challenge as you've entered the college, experience that you feel like your homeschool either really helped you with or maybe didn't help you with as much?
Speaker 4:Not particularly. I mean, I was lucky to come into the music program, where it's very small and it's really easy to connect with people. So I have really good friends and I get to be with them a lot, because we have classes every day for two semesters until like the end of our sophomore year we're going to be together, so Well and plus you had your music teacher from when you were in school before you came here, and I would say that that gives you a certain continuity.
Speaker 4:Yes, I was very set up before I got here. It was very nice. I mean, I guess something like I wasn't used to is like being around so many people all the time. Well, to a certain extent I was, because living on the ships you're around a lot of people, but we haven't lived there in a little while. So I've been at home, you know, and getting to stay home and only go to school twice a week. But now you know I have to drive in every day, like commuting and stuff. You have an hour every day. It depends on the traffic, but it can be anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour. But I have music. We're good guys.
Speaker 2:Oh well, you're the music girl. There you go, Okay. So, ashley, can you answer the same question? Is there something that you were either especially well prepared for, maybe not as well prepared for because of the homeschooling as you came into the university environment?
Speaker 5:I think one of the things that I felt really prepared for, kind of like what they were talking about, is time management skills, because you have to do all of your stuff, like when I was in kindergarten through elementary, when we were in LA and it was just us at home, our mom, she bought us the curriculums. She'd leave a list for each of us on the table, had our little name on top of it and it was the list of the stuff that we needed to do homework wise.
Speaker 5:Like chores like you know, feed the dog, fold the laundry, do the math, yeah, so there was that element of it where this is what you have to do and there's like our dad is working. He worked from home, but he's working and so we have to do it and like, if you don't do it, mom's going to come home and be like why didn't you do your work you had all this time. It was empty space, literally. What were you doing? No-transcript. Same way.
Speaker 2:Exactly. I don't think you could have gotten away with that in a public school, could you no? So I guess we ought to kind of wrap up there. Is there anything that you all wanted to say about being a homeschool student, or are there misconceptions about homeschool? Are there things that you want to? I saw some nods there.
Speaker 4:I don't know. I mean there's obviously misconceptions about like they're all like not socialized. I get called homeschool jungle freak like the Mean Girls movie a lot. Homeschool jungle freak yeah, in the movie because the get called homeschool jungle freak like the Mean Girls movie a lot. Homeschool jungle freak, yeah, in the movie because the girl was homeschooled in Africa. That's what happened to me too, so we have to get the nickname, I guess. But like that's like one of the stereotypes is that you know, they're all kind of just like geeks, are like really like conservative scary people, are like really cult type person, and so I think a lot of people do have that mindset. Me and Ashley were talking to someone the other day who went to a private school and he was like yeah, y'all are just like the most normal homeschoolers I've ever met. Like who have you been meeting? But I like to think that most homeschoolers are pretty normal, at least the ones I hang out with, do you?
Speaker 2:ever have to worry about a stereotype there, normal at least the ones I hang out with.
Speaker 3:Do you ever have to worry about a stereotype there, sarah? Yeah, I think that my biggest misconception. I think that it's every homeschool experience is quite similar, whereas, like even like here, y'all are a bit more similar because y'all had the same co-op, but we have very different experiences and what our homeschool community life day-to-day looked like, and so I think that whenever someone's like they either knew someone who was homeschooled growing up, they kind of assume that it's a copy and paste, very similar to everyone's experiences, whereas I think that maybe even more than public school, it's very, very different experiences.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I certainly gathered that from you all is that it allowed you to be an independent individual person. There was freedom for you to develop who you needed to be and if you wanted to read on your stomach all day long, and that was fine. You know, none of you seem to be sociopaths or have bad habits, and you know your grammar's good and your hygiene's good. I'm teasing you, but I'm also saying that the thing I have loved the most about my homeschooled students is what we've been talking about here, which is that you really do engage and you seem to be lively learners, and to me, that is the biggest thing about college is that we want to keep you learning, opening up the world to you, and if you're already a lively learner, if you're already knowing how to engage and you have time management, then you are on the road, and so I hope that this is an interesting program for people who have been thinking about it.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of information out there if you want to look into it for your children. There's important state regulations and rules and standards. If a parent is really motivated to be both a parent and a teacher and feel that they have the skill, it does sound to me like your parents are all pretty amazing, and I think oftentimes amazing parents make amazing students, whether they're homeschooled or not. So I'm just real glad to have gotten to talk to you all today. I guess that's a way to wrap it up, huh, Ashley, Do you want to add anything or conclude of any other thing?
Speaker 5:No, I don't think so, but if you're a homeschooler and you have specific questions about coming to college, definitely send us an email. Our email is adrquestions at gmailcom and you can ask us anything. You could leave a comment under the YouTube video if you're listening to this on YouTube, and, yeah, we'll answer your questions for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're real eager to have our listening audience to call in and talk to us about just about anything that confuses them or interests them, and if I can't answer it and Ashley can't answer it, we'll get Sarah and Lucy. Ut Tyler is eager for the community to know what a great resource we are, and we're really happy to be here. So I think that's a wrap, thank you.
